Cast of Characters:
FIRRAS, VCU graduate student and communications major
R. JANKAUSKAS, Professor of Anatomy, Histiology and Anthropology at Vilnius University in Lithuania.
JAMES THOMPSON, Professor at the University of Chicago
SAMUEL PEPYS, English naval administrator and Member of Parliament
SAMUEL K. COHN JR., Professor of Medieval History, University of Glasgow
ACT ONE
LIGHTS UP on FIRRAS, a beleaguered college student, poring over papers at a small wooden desk, exhausted. He has been cramming for a test for ages; going nearly 24 hours without sleep or even a break, the man is clearly beset upon with stress.
FIRRAS: (muttering to himself) The Black Death....saw parents....removed from children....but why?! (slams pencil on desk, rubs head) Ugh, I need sleep.....
FIRRAS' head begins to droop, but he stops himself before he collapses into sleep. Suddenly, he hears a voice pop into his head.
COHN: Need some help, laddie?
FIRRAS jumps at the sound of the Scottish brogue.
FIRRAS: Who's there?
He gazes in wonder as the door to his room opens: in walks three eminent scholars on the subject of the Black Plague: Lithuanian scholar R. JANKAUSKAS, bedecked in a tweed jacket and tie, carrying a distinctly Eastern European stride as he walks toward FIRRAS; JAMES WESTFALL THOMPSON, a meek, extremely old, mild-mannered man hobbling in after JANKAUSKAS; and SAM COHN, a Scottish professor, strong but salt-of-the earth, grinning jovially at the others before joining them to surround FIRRAS at his desk. Looking around, the setting changes: FIRRAS is sitting on a crate in the middle of a decrepit, smelly, dark European village at dawn, surrounded by the smoke of dying fires and shambling, desperate people.
COHN: Looks like you need a little help, boy. What can we do you for?
FIRRAS: Where am I?
THOMPSON: A village in Europe in the 14th century. Don't worry, you're perfectly safe. Seems like this is what's on your mind boy. Care to talk about it?
FIRRAS: I need your help. I'm trying to study the Black Death, and there's something that just isn't matching up for me. I've been studying all your works, but I can't seem to make the pieces fit in my head.
THOMPSON: You might need a little sleep there, son.
FIRRAS: Fair enough. But could you help me?
JANKAUSKAS: We would be delighted. What concerns you about the Black Death?
FIRRAS: I want to know its effect on the parents who had lost children in the Black Death, from a psychological standpoint, and vice versa. Wait....why am I hallucinating you?
JANKAUSKAS: Look, do you want our help, or do you want to question why there are three medieval scholars manifesting themselves in your head? Ask away, boy.
FIRRAS: (hesitant) Fair point. Mr. Jankauskas, what would you say was the psychological tenor of the Middle Ages in Europe?
JANKAUSKAS: Medieval Europe was no stranger to death, Mr. Firras. Five hundred years ago, in Europe, it was safe to say that there were much larger gaps between health and disease, as well as joy and grief. Also, population densities and distribution were much different then, leading to unique effects to world-changing events such as the Black Death; depending on where you were, you experienced different consequences to the event. Cities were hit the hardest; while they were not as populous as they were now, more people relied on cities to find work, get married, and so on.
FIRRAS: What was the overall toll of the Black Death?
JANKAUSKAS: The Black Death was one of the most destructive population-changers in the world, my son; imagine a disease that could sweep across an entire continent, through rats, through human transmission, etc. Combine that with an increasingly mobile and interdependent medieval culture, and you have a very dangerous time to be in.
FIRRAS: What would this mean to someone living in medieval times, regardless of whether or not they contracted the plague?
JANKAUSKAS: People were well aware of the dangers of living in that time; it was essentially a 50/50 chance that you would reach adulthood, even less so if you lived in a town. You would count your lucky stars if you reached 40. This led to a culture of death, essentially, where the loss of your loved ones was never far away. As a result, people were less attached to each other, or at least did not expect to live as long as we do now.
COHN: I'd certainly say that's true, lad.
FIRRAS: Is that so?
COHN: Aye. When the plague hit, life became even cheaper than it was before; in fact, the mass deaths that occurred increased persecution, warfare, crime and the like. It led to a 'violent tenor of life' that pervaded throughout the Black Death. There was less to lose; you could die at any moment, so why not take a chance?
FIRRAS: So it is safe to say that the overall attitude of the Black Death was a slightly more cavalier attitude to life?
COHN: Aye. (JANKAUSKAS nods in agreement.)
FIRRAS: Now, what about our specific topic, that of parents and children? How did this cavalier outlook on life affect their relationships?
COHN: With less of a lease on life, parents did not have the luxury of cherishing their children as if they were special. What's more, children tended to die in droves, far faster than the adults, since they had not developed the proper immunities or resistance to the plague yet. In Siena, Italy, three out of every four children died. There existed many parents who had to bury their children by themselves. Many couples tended to just have more babies, in the hopes that some of them would survive the plague. This led to a quick rise in fertility throughout the Black Death, which prevented the overall population from sinking even lower than it would have.
FIRRAS: How did the parents react to having to bury their children?
COHN: Oh, they hated it; I mean, that's the normal reaction to being forced to bury your progeny, isn't it? Not only that, there was tremendous grief and despair at the way in which they had to bury their wee ones. Mass burials abounded, where parents just abandoned the bodies of their children because they could not handle the sheer number of people being buried; there just was not enough room. The Black Death became known as the "plague of children," children comprising nearly 80 percent of the death toll of some of these towns in Europe.
JANKAUSKAS: Now, with all due respect to Mr. Cohn, I want to point out that death of a child was not at all an uncommon event in medieval Europe. Medieval women birthed 5 children on average, usually about two and a half years apart. It was a certainty that two or three of those children would die as children, perhaps more if you lived in a city. While the effects of the Black Death were certainly tremendous and intense, especially for parents, their grief could be said to be only marginally higher than in normal circumstances. Compared to modern times, especially, the overall attitude of medieval Europeans was to just hope to survive.
THOMPSON: If I may interject, gentlemen, there were other effects of the Black Death too that affected the psychology of these families.
FIRRAS: Please, Mr. Thompson, enlighten us. You've been awfully quiet.
THOMPSON: First off, I must say that my primary level of expertise relates to the years immediately following the Black Death - its aftermath, if you will. However, I believe that this sheds a great deal of light on those who were at least reasonably surer that they would not die from the plague, but who had lost parents or children.
COHN: I'm all ears, laddie.
THOMPSON: Those survivors of the Black Death experienced a kind of psycho-physical shock, if you will; having lost so many friends and family members takes its toll. Particularly when parents are lost, the children would often soon follow; without someone to support them, they would often die, or turn to crimes such as pickpocketing to support themselves, leading to lonely lives. These abandonment issues would carry over even past the Plague, provided they survived. However, some lucky few would end up fortunate, as they would find themselves the only heirs to their parents' estates, making those few who were left after the Plague was over richer than they were before. Of course, even during the plague, some children would fall victim to crowd psychology and emotional excitement.
FIRRAS: How so?
THOMPSON: Well, take the story of the Pied Piper, which has a small basis in real history. The town of Hamelin experienced an infestation of rats, which was the primary means of spreading the plague. The Pied Piper showed up and claimed to scare the rats off; whether or not he did is irrelevant, but the Piper managed to stir up enough emotion in the people, particularly young, impressionable children whose parents had died, that they followed him out of town and were lost forever.
FIRRAS: Interesting. Wait....someone else is coming....
FIRRAS looks out in the distance to see another figure start to approach. He raises his hand to look closer; meanwhile, a MEDIEVAL EUROPEAN MOTHER begins to loudly weep at the sight of her deceased child in front of her.
End of Act One.
ACT TWO
Long beat. Finally, a small, smartly-dressed African-American woman approaches them, eyes full of regret. She is SHONA KELLY WRAY.
WRAY: Good evening, gentlemen. Sorry I'm late by the way.
COHN: It's about bloody time; even as a hallucination, you can't manage to be punctual.
WRAY: He'll manage. Now, where were we?
THOMPSON: I believe we were discussing just how badly children had it during the Black Death. Any thoughts, young lady?
WRAY: Funny you should ask - I happen to. Now, what had you boys decided on, other than things were just generally kind of bad? She looks around at the horrific destitution and destruction around them.
COHN: (shifting in his seat, nervously looking to others) Well, eh....we discussed the general social conditions, the 'violent tenor of life' and all that...
WRAY: Yes, the abandonment of children by their parents in the wake of the plague.
JANKAUSKAS: This was indicative of a heartlessness and lack of caring found in medieval societies due to the already harsh conditions found there...
WRAY: Are you kidding me? The family was at the heart of society in medieval Europe. For parents to abandon their children was to show just how hollowed-out society had become. Religion, particularly Catholicism, was king there, meaning that a great deal of medieval literature revolved around moralizing and the guilt that came from their own sins, namely abandoning their children. Parents wrote testaments left and right to provide their children with their possessions following their death; they did it so fast for fear of dying that they were often just fill-in-the-blank documents.
THOMPSON: I agree, the loss of a child can be devastating, but is it possible that these parents, on a relative scale, did not place as much emotional importance on keeping their children alive, as a coping mechanism to deal with all the death that was part and parcel of that period in history?
WRAY: I suppose it's theoretically possible, but the presence of religion in particular left those parents who lost children to the Black Death absolutely devastated by guilt at having to abandon them in their time of need, whether through the death of the child, or their own deaths.
A rapidly growing BEEP sound begins to rise in volume. FIRRAS looks around, then to WRAY.
WRAY: Wasn't me this time. Sounds like you're about to wake up.
FIRRAS: (relieved)All right then, thanks for the help! (beat) Oh wait, what was the consensus?
JANKAUSKAS: Oh! That medieval conditions for children surviving were dire enough that parents carried greater emotional distance!
COHN: Right, parents just had more babies to increase the odds of them having one or more children survive!
WRAY: No, the presence of the church and deep attachment to their children tore them apart, leading to a rash of quickly-written wills to make sure their property went to their descendants!
THOMPSON: Don't forget that orphaned children often fell into a crowd mentality, leading to further crime, vandalism and death - the Pied Piper's the key to that!
FIRRAS: Okay, hopefully I remember this....wait, what--
FIRRAS jerks awake at his desk; he looks around in a panic to find everything normal. Letting out a sigh of relief, he wipes the sleep from his eyes, looks at the clock. Collecting himself, he stares at the piece of paper in front of him....and begins writing.
CURTAIN.
Works Cited
Cohn, Samuel K. "The Black Death: End of a Paradigm." American Historical Review, vol. 107,
no. 3, 2002. pp. 1-54. Print.
Jankauskas, R. and Urbanavicius, A. "Diseases in European Historical Populations and Their
Effects on Individuals and Society." Collective Anthropology, vol, 22. issue 2, 1998. pp.
465-476. Print.
Kelly, John. The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death: The Most Devastating
Plague of All Time. HarperCollins, 2006. Print.
Ress, William. "The Black Death in England and Wales, as exhibited in Manorial Documents."
Section of the History of Medicine, 1923. pp. 27-45. Print.
Thompson, James Westfall. "The Aftermath of the Black Death and the Aftermath of the Great
War." American Journal of Sociology, Vol, 25, no. 5, 1921, pp. 565-572.
Wray, Shona Kelly. "Children during the Black Death," in Children and Youth in History,
2011.
