Mary Magdalene As New Custance? "the Woman Cast Adrift" in the Digby Mary Magdalene Play (1) (Critical Essay‪)‬

A woman floats helplessly on the sea, alone or with a few companions, driven by wind and waves across the ocean in a boat without pilot, oar, or rudder. Whether by luck or by the grace of God, she arrives in a foreign land, inhere her experiences change both her life and the lives of others. SUCH A SCENARIO FIGURES in a number of medieval folk tales, romances, and saints' lives. I would argue that it also appears in the late medieval Digby Mary Magdalene play. If this is the case, how might the play's East Anglian audience have read this motif of "the woman cast adrift" in the context of a dramatic performance which situates its heroic version of Mary Magdalene within a larger discourse about women's speech, action, and personal power--a discourse which certainly included romance?