The Theology of Jacob and Esau

The Theology of Jacob and Esau

   An especially interesting mid-Tudor play is the Biblical interlude, Jacob and Esau. The play was printed in 1558, right on the cusp between Mary and Elizabeth’s reigns and, crucially, between the Catholic revival of Mary's reign and the full fledged Protestantism of Elizabeth's. In light of the date of this play's publication, in this post I will explore the arguments as to whether the play espouses a more Catholic or Protestant theology.

   The play is based on the story of Isaac’s son Esau who is robbed of his inheritance by his twin brother Jacob in Genesis 25 and 27. This may seem like an unremarkable biblical plot but the fact that it was printed in the year of Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s accession gives it inescapable political resonances. This is, after all, a play that is at its most basic level about succession. Jacob asks the starving Esau, ‘can ye be content to sell your birth-right to me?’¹ and their mother Rebecca conspires to ensure that ‘Jacob [may] have the blessing’ (4.2.6) of Isaac and therefore become Lord after Isaac’s death in place of his brother. Indeed, most of the last two acts are taken up by Rebecca’s plan to trick the blind Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing meant for Esau, thereby ensuring that Jacob should succeed his father. The play, then, in much the same way as the cycle plays of the previous century discusses issues of significant and dangerous contemporary importance through the smokescreen of biblical stories and imagery. Of course, Mary was not tricked out of her throne in the way that Esau was but what is important is not the detail of the story but the fact that it raises questions as to the legitimacy of succession at a time when Elizabeth had either recently taken the throne or was about to.

   However, the play is not just related to succession; it also advances an attitude to the religious changes of the preceding period. The nature of the attitude and whether it is primarily Catholic of Protestant is debated by various critics. The argument, in essence, centres around the prologue which states that ‘before Jacob and Esau yet born were,/ Or had either done good, or ill perpetrate:/ As the prophet Malachi and Paul witness bear,/ Jacob was born and Esau reprobate:/ Jacob I love (saith God) and Esau I hate’ (Prologue, ll. 8-12). Critics disagree as to whether this is, as Paul Whitfield White states, ‘moderately Calvinist in its view of predestination’² or in fact much earlier in its theology.

   In 1969, Helen Thomas suggested that there was no need to look to Calvin for the source of this predestination theology when ‘the Biblical story on which the play is based forms part of the lively controversy in the twenties between Erasmus […] and Luther on the question of free will and eternal predestination with no regard to the merits of man’.³ While more recent scholars such as White and Ephraim argue against this view, opting instead for the more conventional description of the play as Protestant in its theology, Thomas is convincing and it would be a mistake to dismiss her views entirely.

   Of course, the description of Esau as 'reprobate' may seem to be rooted in Calvinist theology but the OED cites reprobate being used to mean 'predestined by God to eternal damnation' as far back as c.1425 which would support Thomas' theory that the play's theology is linked to earlier Catholic theological debates. If Thomas is indeed correct and the play espouses an Erasmian theology, it can be placed securely in Mary’s reign and can therefore be seen not only as a comment on the succession but as a deliberate return to the Biblical model of the earlier cycle plays made possible by the presence of a Catholic monarch on the throne.

   I would like to end on the caveat that, despite the fact that I find Thomas' argument more convincing, the answer to the question of the play's theology will always be up for debate until new evidence should arise. Unfortunately, due to the lack of interest in Marian drama, new evidence seems unlikely to appear any time soon.

   NOTE: All of the essays referenced in this piece come highly recommended and were available on Jstor at the time of writing. Farmer's edition of Jacob and Esau, however, leaves a lot to be desired. It lacks line numbers and any substantial notes. A new edition is definitely required if anyone wanted to take up the challenge!

1 Anonymous, Jacob and Esau, in Early English Dramatists: Six Anonymous plays ed. by John S. Farmer (London: Early English Drama Society, 1966), pp. 1-90, 2.2.105. Further references follow quotations in the text.

2 Paul Whitfield White, ‘Predestination Theology in the Mid-Tudor Play Jacob and Esau in Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 12 (1988), pp. 291-302, page 300. For a more recent proponent of this view see Michelle Karen Ephraim, ‘Jewish Matriarchs and the staging of Elizabeth I in The History of Jacob and Esau’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 43, no. 2, (2003), pp. 301-21.

3 Helen Thomas, ‘Jacob and Esau – “Rigidly Calvinistic”?’ in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1969), pp. 299-213, page 210.