The same techniques are found elsewhere in England in the York mystery plays. Despite each play being written by different clerics and for the sponsorship of different trade guilds, one finds throughout the cycle the incorporation of satire and anachronistic portrayal to enhance the message and accessibility of the play. One such case revolves around the character of Joseph, the earthly father of Christ, in the plays depicting the coming of Jesus. The medieval world was a skeptical one that functioned in the tension between believing in miracles and the supernatural while alternately believing such things did not happen personally. In other words, miracles existed, just not to the person who believes in them. The clerics who wrote these plays, however, did believe in the supernatural and were forced with the difficulty of making the supernatural events of the Virgin Birth believable. Joseph, therefore, becomes characterized at the quintessential York citizen, skeptical of all things supernatural and almost completely disbelieving that any such thing could ever happen to him.
In Joseph’s Trouble about Mary, the playwright characterizes Joseph as an older man who is past his prime and potentially impotent remarking, “My bones are heavy as lead, and may not stand in stead, as kenned it is full rife.” The audience would have understood and identified with the breaking down of Joseph’s body after a life of hard labour. They also would have recognized the social pressure that Joseph speaks of in lines 31-40 to marry someone younger to take care of him. In The Nativity he prays on his own behalf that, “God help them that are old and namely them that are unwield.”
Joseph is tired and much weaker than he use to be and in this stage of life is more concerned about physically surviving than much else. Playing off of this aspect, the playwright characterizes Joseph as nearly oblivious to the higher work taking place all around him. Concerning Mary’s pregnancy with the apparent Messiah, Joseph remarks, “But well I wot through prophecy a maiden clean should bear a child, but it is not she (Mary), sikerly, forthy I wot I am beguiled.” Later he attempts to rationalize Mary’s pregnancy, arguing, “Then see I well your meaning is – the angel has made her with child. Nay, some man in angel’s likeness with somekin gaud has her beguiled and that trow I.” Because of his limited scope and capacity, Joseph continually tries to rationalize Mary’s pregnancy. He, like any citizen of York watching, has no reason or conviction to believe that great divine works could involve him for either good or bad. Equal to his ignorance of divine providence and blessing is his ignorance of evil, remarking in response to Gabriel’s warning of Herod’s intent to kill Jesus in The Flight into Egypt, “But Lord, what ails the king at me, for unto him I never offend? Alas, what ails him for to spill small young bairns that never did ill in word nor deed, unto lede by night nor day?”
The playwrights of these plays, somewhat oddly, find Joseph’s situation the most intriguing of the themes of the coming of Christ rather than the actual coming of God’s son into the world. The average medieval citizen is able to relate most to Joseph, so in highlighting his role within these series of Biblical events the playwrights are able to draw the audience into the plays and impart lessons of trust and faith in obeying God. The plays also reinforce Church doctrine and belief in divine, supernatural occurrences, such as the mystery of the Eucharist, and attempt to convince the audience that God’s work is all around and ever-present.
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