24 pages • 48 minutes read
Wakefield MasterThe Second Shepherd's Play
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1500A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Charity
One of the key themes of the play is the importance of Christian charity, and the ability to show love and generosity toward others in the way that God shows love toward humanity. Despite their poverty, the three shepherds–Col, Gib, and Dave–recognize the importance of Christian values and show themselves capable of performing charitable acts. After they are unable to find the missing sheep, the shepherds show their generosity by returning to Mak’s cottage to offer his new baby a gift, even though they barely have money themselves. When they discover that Mak has tricked them, Col persuades the others to forgive the thief and let him off lightly, instead of pursuing the death penalty.
This decision to love and forgive their neighbor despite the wrong he has done them is rewarded when the Angel appears to them and directs them to visit the Christ-Child in Bethlehem. The shepherds once again demonstrate their sense of charity when they each present a gift to the newborn baby, even though they are poor and can barely provide for themselves. The fact that the shepherds recognize the value of charity shows that they are already modeling the values that will be taught by Christ during his time on earth. The play suggests that their charity will be rewarded because of the salvation that Christ’s birth has made possible.
Unlike the shepherds, Mak does not practice charity but continually puts his own needs before those of others. Most notably, he steals from the shepherds, rather than working hard to earn a living for himself. He also tries to trick the shepherds by pretending to be a messenger from a nobleman and thus tries to suggest that he is part of the elite class who exploits the poor. Further, he consistently refuses to accept the charity offered to him by the shepherds; he refuses their offers of friendship and does not take the money that they offer to give him for the sake of his child. While the shepherds are invited to visit the Christ-Child and participate in spreading the news of his birth, Mak disappears from the play before the beginning of the Nativity scene.
Suffering and Salvation
From the beginning, The Second Shepherds’ Play highlights the earthly sufferings of the three shepherds; they experience hunger, frigid weather, exhaustion, low wages, and poor working conditions. They feel oppressed by their poverty and exploited by the wealthy men who own the lands. Despite their personal grievances, however, the shepherds manage to look past their own hardships in various ways. Even after Mak causes them further suffering after stealing a sheep from them, they find it in their hearts to forgive him and waive the normal punishment for such a crime. In this way, they give Mak his own chance to redeem himself and seek salvation for his crimes. At the end of the play, their suffering is rewarded when they are visited by the Angel and chosen to be the first people to visit Christ and his mother in Bethlehem. Their encounter with the Christ-Child provides a reminder that the Son of God has been sent down to earth to redeem mankind first by teaching and then by suffering death on the cross. Because of Christ’s time on earth, ordinary men like the shepherds who lead good lives but suffer on earth will have hope of spiritual salvation and eternal life. Furthermore, the poverty of the shepherds echoes the humble circumstances in which Christ himself is born; although he is the Son of God, the Christ-Child is born to poor parents and placed in a manger in a lowly stable. The poverty that the Christ-Child and the shepherds share provide a reminder that Christ’s coming redeems the sins of all, regardless of whether they are rich or poor; before God, the shepherds are equal to their masters and have an equal chance of salvation.
The Earthly and the Spiritual
One of the key themes of The Second Shepherds’ Play is the relationship between the earthly and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane. One of the ways in which this theme is explored is through the mixture of broad comedy and serious religious symbolism. The anachronistic expressions that Mak and the shepherds use are one way in which the sacred and profane are mixed in the play, since swears like “by the rood,” “by Jesus,” and “Christ’s holy name!” turn sacred language into profanity (often to comic effect). Most notably, the Biblical story of the shepherds who visit the Christ-Child in Bethlehem is juxtaposed with the comedic tale of the shepherds’ struggle to reclaim their sheep from the roguish characters of Mak and Gill. In particular, the earthly nativity story–in which Mak and Gill disguise the stolen sheep as a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes–foreshadows the sacred nativity scene featuring the Angel, Mary, and the Christ-Child. The significance of the sheep wrapped in swaddling clothes would have been apparent to audiences of the play, since they would have been very familiar with the Nativity story and the image of Christ as the Lamb of God.
