One important piece of background information for Ti-Jean and His Brothers is the genre of medieval morality plays. Ti-Jean and His Brothers is far from Walcott’s only work that engages with the history of English literature in complex ways. Much of his poetry responds to the legacy of the Western canon, both adapting it and transforming it. In Ti-Jean and His Brothers, that dynamic is less explicit, but its still an important part of understanding what Walcott is doing in this play.
Medieval morality plays were the most popular genre of drama in fifteenth-century England. They use personification allegory to discuss moral questions. Personification allegory is a specific form of allegory in which individual characters personify, or are human representations of, abstract ideas. For example, a character named “Avarice” would embody the idea of greed, acting greedy throughout the play and encouraging other characters to do the same. Morality plays have as their main character a generic personification of humankind, who is led towards good and evil by personifications of sins and virtues. Sometimes, demons and devils also make an appearance.
Ti-Jean and His Brothers isn’t a straightforward personification allegory. Most of the characters are not named after what they represent (Gros Jean, whose name means “large” in French, is an exception to this rule), and not everyone represents an abstract idea. However, the three brothers act like personifications in that each embodies a specific attribute: Gros Jean is strong, Mi-Jean is smart, Ti-Jean is witty and perseverant. Furthermore, the old man is explicitly identified as an embodiment of “worldly wisdom” at one point in the play. These ideas compete with one another on stage, and the play ultimately has as much to say about these abstract ideas as it does about the individual characters, who are often somewhat two-dimensional, especially the older two brothers.
Beyond structure, Walcott was possibly inspired by the staging of medieval morality plays. In the middle ages, plays were performed by members of the community, rather than professional actors. They were extremely interactive, with characters often directly addressing the audience. In this sense, they embody a mode of theater more directly rooted in the community than later Western theatrical traditions. In Ti-Jean and His Brothers, the costumes and set design are stripped down, and the lines are straightforward: it feels like a play any group of people could put on, anywhere. Yet it also makes many specific references to the Caribbean, and was probably initially written to be performed on St. Lucia, as were most of Walcott’s early plays. In this way, Ti-Jean and His Brothers echoes the medieval morality play tradition in that it is a play meant to be performed with and through the participation of a specific community.
