The role of the metrical and rhyme pattern in Mary Magdalene

In this paper, starting from the assumption that the scribe of Mary Magdalene was competent in his copying, we will highlight those forms which have always been classified as scribal mistakes, and analyze their function in the prosodic pattern of the play. The paper will show that in Mary Magdalene the accomplishment of a precise prosodic scheme is the reason why such ‘confusing’ varieties, ascribed to the scribe’s misunderstanding, have on the contrary been selected by the author for his own poetical purposes. Such forms will then be categorized into two classes: (a) peculiar forms that can be explained by the metrical structure of the stanzas where they occur, and (b) peculiar varieties, misunderstood by scholars, that can be reconstructed etymologically thanks to the rhyme-pattern of the stanza in which they occur. The result will be that the metrical and rhyme patterns of the play have a fundamental role in identifying those diachronic and diatopic varieties employed by the Mary Magdalene author which are apparently nonsense and have therefore been underestimated in previous studies.