Show how the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play balances religious and secular elements.

Show how the Wakefield Second Shepherds’ Play balances religious and secular elements.

Answer: The Second Shepherds' Play is part of the Wakefield mystery play cycle. It is a play of number thirteen of thirty-two contained in the only surviving manuscript, currently held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The Second Shepherds' Play dates from the latter half of the fifteenth century. No exact date can be determined, but studies in handwriting analysis of the manuscript suggest an approximate date of mid to late fifteenth century as a composition date. The play was written in Middle English, which is the vernacular (everyday) language that was used in England between about 1100 and 1500. The ascendancy of King Henry VII to the throne marks the end of the medieval period and generally signifies the shift from Middle English to Modern English (the basic predecessor of English as we know it today). Authorship of The Second Shepherds' Play is unknown, and the play is simply attributed to the Wakefield Master, whose real identity was also unknown, although a local cleric or monk was probably the author. The Second Shepherds' Play is included in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1 (1993) and in The Towneley Plays (2001), Volume 1, edited by Martin Stevens and A. C. Cawley.

The title refers not to a second shepherd but to the fact that this play was the second of two plays that dealt with the biblical Nativity story. Mystery plays, which are so named because they refer to the spiritual mystery of Christ's birth and death, combine comic elements with biblical stories. For example, in The Second Shepherds' Play, the author combines the Shepherds' story of stolen sheep and a swindle involving the birth of a nonexistent infant with the biblical story of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem. The dual plot is designed to remind the audience of the two-fold nature of man's existence—the real world on earth and the spiritual world of the afterlife. The play, itself, contains no divisions of act or scene, but there are three distinct scenes: the Shepherds' soliloquies in which they lament their poverty, the oppressive natures of their lives, and the terrible weather; the scene with Mak and Gil in which they try to disguise the stolen lamb as their newborn child; and the adoration of the Christ-child in Bethlehem. The text shifts both time and place, referring to Christian saints and to the birth of Christ, although these things and events would have been separated by hundreds of years and reversed in time. Additionally, while the first half of the play takes place in Medieval England, the shepherds are easily able to walk to Bethlehem in a matter of hours, where events occurred fourteen centuries earlier. The audience, however, would have had no concern about such details, since The Second Shepherds' Play easily mixes symbolism and realism with entertainment and biblical lessons..................................................................................................................................

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