"Malapert" Appearances: On the Croxton Play of the Sacrament and Medical Publicity

Abstract: This article contextualizes a comic interstitial scene in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament —the misstepping, "malapert" arrival of the physician Brundyche and his servant Colle—in two ways. I work to frame it, first, as a dramatized failure of medical publicity legible to local audiences in late medieval England, by tracing out the expectations and anxieties attaching to performances of medical expertise and their trustworthiness. The second frame situates the interlude in a broader theatrical tradition: a multilingual repertory of scenes dramatizing the purchase of oil and ointments for the anointing of Christ's body before his resurrection. In these socalled mercator scenes of Continental Passion plays from across medieval Europe, an apothecary or medicus hawks medical and mercantile expertise; a servant's crude sales pitch often spoils their performance. These two overlapping frames—social-and genre-historical—allow us to better perceive what was so outrageously "malapert" about Brundyche and Colle's clumsy routine. The Croxton Play pairs the practices of medical and mercantile publicity, each with their typical scripts and postures, and makes them the subject of dramatic representation. In doing so, the Play presents an exaggerated picture of what is already dramatic about the self-styling entailed by life lived in public.