"Curtesy Doth It Yow Lere": The Sociology of Transgression in the Digby Mary Magdalene

Abstract

The critique of gendered moral behavior in this Digby saint play bears witness to late medieval consciousness of attributes and responsibilities associated with particular status positions and social roles. Focusing on the scene of Mary Magdalene's seduction, this essay argues that the play employs late medieval discourses of status and courtesy, made familiar through conduct literature, to foreground the sociology of Mary Magdalene's transgression, linking her moral demise not exclusively with feminine moral culpability but also with deceptions and instabilities of the social order. The play's preoccupation with social identity attests to late medieval vernacular theater's broader engagement with the spiritual and material formation of subjectivities in premodern England.

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