Plot and Drama
The Rachel of the play is symbolically every Hebrew mother who lost her child to the massacre. In the Freising version, she opens the action by singing a planctus over her children's bodies before a consolatrix (female comforter) arrives to soothe her spirit. In the Fleury version, she sings a series of four plancti before two consolatrices come out to catch her as she faints. The consolatrices fail to comfort her, but lead her away. In both versions they sing the final lines. In the Fleury version the drama began with a procession of young boys per monasterium (down the aisle of the church's nave) and a lamb bearing a cross appears running "to and fro" (huc et illuc). Then the action shifts to Herod receiving his sceptre and Joseph at the manger receiving a message from Gabriel to flee to Egypt. Joseph and the holy family exit secretly while Herod attempts suicide as news is brought that the Magi avoided telling him the Christ child's location. After he regains his composure, he orders the massacre. The lamb is then led off stage and the massacre begins, despite the pleas of the mothers and the children to the angels above. After the Rachel scenes, an angel conducts the children to the choir and a dumb show shows Herod being succeeded as king by Archelaus before the holy family returns from Egypt. The entire Fleury play ends with a singing of the Te Deum.
Read more about this topic: Ordo Rachelis
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