Play of Paul of Japan

Anon. (1624)

Historical Records

Registrum Audomarensis Anglorum gymnasii

Pauli Iaponensis pueri cer

tamen virile productu[m] est a Gra

maticis in scena[m] 3^o Idus Iunii

vt proluderent novo magistratu

um instaurationi, quæ sic

institutua est:

(British Library, Add. MS 9354, fol. 17r; Takenaka 135)

Takenaka (12) offers the following translation: "The manly contest of the boy Paulus of Japan is produced on the stage by the Grammar class [i.e. the boys of the fourth year of school] on the third day before the Ides of June [11 June] to celebrate the arrival of the new masters. It begins in this way."

Theatrical Provenance

Performed at the English Jesuit College at St. Omers on 11 June 1624.

Probable Genre(s)

Religious play.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

See Critical Commentary below.

References to the Play

(Information welcome.)

Critical Commentary

McCabe proposes that the subject was "probably one of several Pauls martyred at Nagasaki with the Jesuit Charles Spinola in 1622" (363).

Takenaka discusses the play in the context of other Jesuit plays at St. Omers that take Catholics in Asia as their subject, including Antipelargesis (extant in a manuscript at Stonyhurst) and Sanctus Franciscus Xavierius (Wiggins #2163). He endorses McCabe's suggestion of the play's subject (12).

Wiggins (#2117) offers as a candidate Paul Miki (1564–97), whose Jesuit seminary was sacked in 1582. As Wiggins describes, "One of the schoolmasters tries to evacuate the boys by water, but the boatman robs them of all their possessions, and only the providential intervention of a Christian nobleman saves them from being murdered."

Works Cited

Takenaka, Masahiro. Jesuit Plays on Japan and English Recusancy. Tokyo: The Renaissance Institute at Sophia University, 1995.

Site created and maintained by Misha Teramura, Reed College; updated 14 June 2018.