Too Many Angels

I was outside on “Holy Saturday” (which seems like it should be truly a day of rest amidst the constant Easter services but apparently isn’t, and counts as a “vigil” day) and looked down the street to my neighbor’s house. Without my glasses, I saw two white-clad figures I took to be angels.

My inclination was to wave and shout, “Quem queritas!” But in spite of the fact that the family often attends a local Latin Mass at their Catholic Church (and I would have thought that Latin Masses ended years ago, but apparently not), I assumed they would not have gotten the reference, and so I refrained.

“Quem Queritas” is the famous performance trope from the Medieval era that depicted the moment when Jesus is discovered missing from the tomb. Rather than read the account as tradition dictated, one church decided to act it out. Altar boys dressed as the women coming to the tomb encounter an altar boy dressed as an angel, and ask, “Quem Queritas?”

My easy English translation of this exchange for my Intro to Theatre students went like this:

“Where’s the body?”

“He is risen.”

“Oh, joy and rapture!”

Not an ideal translation since I have so little Latin and less Greek* (as Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare), but it conveyed the idea.

History tells us that the reenactment was so popular that it expanded into other short performances which themselves lengthened into short dramas—giving birth to longer cycles of plays and eventually jump-starting the resurgence of secular drama, preparing the path for Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, et al. 

My title for this blog entry is a play on the term applied to an apocryphal story regarding one such cycle play. One performance of the Last Judgement featured devils leaping out of a smoking hellmouth, cavorting about, and pinching spectators. Rumor has it that at one performance a real devil joined the proceedings and, as the actors later reflected on the event, realized there had been “one devil too many.”

My personal favorite church reenactment came a few years back when, at Midnight Mass, someone decided to present tableaus of various Biblical moments. Most memorable was the Annunciation. Spotlight on the angel (altar boy) arms raised and standing over a young girl portraying Mary. Music swells. Blackout. Followed by the sounds of vomiting and vomit splattering on the marble church floor. Apparently the angel suffered from stage fright.

Or maybe he had one pre-Christmas treat too many.

*Funny thing: while directing Euripides’ Women of Troy, the term “necessity” came up, and I thought, “Ananke!” Which is the Greek term for it that I learned in my Greek and Roman seminar lo, these many years ago. Strange the things that stick with you.