To sacrifice a child: the development of a theme in medieval and Renaissance drama

In his study Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil,. Bernard Spivack demonstrates the organic relationship between the Vice character of medieval drama and the Shakespearean villain; a similar case can be made for the referential if not organic relationship between the English medieval mystery cycle plays of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac upon a collection of Renaissance dramas in which a parent kills his child or in some literal or figurative way sacrifices his child.

The Abraham and Isaac plays have an obvious, intentional Christian dimension as exempli of faith and obedience. With the Renaissance and the parallel growth of the Protestant spirit came the decline of religious drama as it was known in the medieval era. Among the factors which contributed to this secularization and growing humanism in English society and, consequently, its drama are the "rediscovery" of classical texts and philosophy, the rise of certain Protestant ideas, the changing economic situation due to the decline of feudalism, and the rise of a collection of ideas which made tragedy a possibility on the Renaissance stage.

The secularization of values in the Renaissance can be perceived in the treatments of child sacrifice in Renaissance drama. The story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac became, consequently, a theme. Renaissance plays which deal to some extent with a parent's literal or figurative sacrifice of a child are Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc: R. B.'s Apius and Virpinia; Thomas Preston's Cambvses; Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part II and The Jew of Malta; Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, The Merchant of Venice, Henry IV, Part I, King Lear, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, and The Winter's Tale; Massinger and Field's The Fatal Dowrv; and John Webster's Appius and Virginia. These plays differ from the Genesis story and the medieval plays based on it in that none of the Renaissance parents is responding to God's command. However, the Renaissance dramatists examine the ethics of a parent's killing a child within the context of more secular motivations which range from materialism, pride, anger at the child's disobedience, and obedience to an earthly ruler to the more metaphysical concepts of sacrifice for the sake of patriotism, justice and honor.