ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use of embodiment as a physical aspect of performance—in costume, in mimicking, in gestures—as well as the enactment of character through the ingenious use of language—comic and bawdy, biblical and pious. Rashi's reading of the biblical text illuminates Martin Luther's discussion of the physical and spiritual modalities of difference. These modalities of difference, both physical and spiritual, between the brothers are vividly dramatized throughout the play Jacob and Esau. Identity as difference and disguise is a central issue of the list of stage properties in the twelfth-century Ordo de Ysaac et Rebecca: Tece manuum pilose. A fourteenth-century manuscript, the Codex Manesse, also displays the Jewish costume as well as the performative dimension of identity. The performance of identity—in terms of both gender and religion—is enriched by being studied within the context of biblical and medieval representations of differences in identity, as well as through the continuous use of biblical and proverbial language.
