Perhaps unexpectedly, the play begins with a somewhat scholarly dialogue between clerics regarding the harmony inherent in the created world. The subject of concord sets the stage for the drama of the disordered life of the courtesan Thaïs. "She shines forth in wondrous beauty" yet she also "threatens men with foul shame." In the play Thaïs is presented as someone "who was always eager to accumulate wealth". The saint Pafnutius explains to his disciples that "not only frivolous youth dissipate their families' few possessions on her but even respected men waste their costly treasures by lavishing gifts on her...." A modern writer observes: "Hrotsvit's Thaïs became a prostitute because of her love of money. The root of her immorality is avarice, which in combination with her great beauty, resulted in her choice of prostitution as a career." After her conversion to Christianity she "destroys" 400 pounds of gold and burns other articles of treasure before her former patrons. Pafnutius exclaims to Thaïs, "O how you have changed from your prior condition when you burned with illicit passions and were inflamed with greed for possessions!" The depiction of her conversion, her transition from courtesan to Christian, may appear rather truncated to a modern audience. Afterwards Pafnutius would describe the event to a brother religious: "I visited her, disguised as a lover, secretly, and won over her lascivious mind first with admonitions and flattery, then I frightened her with harsh threats." Their first meeting is presented in part as follows: Pafnutius then bluntly condemns her actions as meriting damnation. Thaïs acquiesces to the view of Pafnutius without protest; she becomes anxious. Apparently, she had managed to hide from herself her knowledge of her sin. When Pafnutius confronts her, quickly Thaïs realizes her self-deception. Then she came to hear the discord within her that had caused her unbalanced life, with its disruptive results. She repents. After entering a process of spiritual transformation, Thaïs tells Pafnutius that "All angels sing His praise and His kindness, because He never scorns the humility of a contrite soul." Thaïs burns her ill-gotten treasures; she then follows Pafnutius into the desert, to a convent where she will live under the guidance of the abbess for several years. There, in solitude, cloistered and penitent, she reviewed in a new light her former life and sought forgiveness. Pafnutius here, in delivering the newly converted Thaïs to her to the place of her spiritual refuge and retreat, addresses the abbess of the convent in the Egyptian desert, concerning her recent past and her proper care:
"I have brought you a half-dead little she-goat, recently snatched from the teeth of wolves. I hope that by your compassion shelter will be insured, and that by your care, will be cured, and that having cast aside the rough pelt of a goat she will be clothed with the soft wool of the lamb."
Later as death approaches her, Thaïs prays to God: "Thou who didst create me have mercy on me...." Pafnutius also prays "that Thaïs be resurrected exactly as she was, a human being, and joining the white lambs may enter eternal joys."
Commentary
"The philosophical ideas of harmony throughout creation" presented early in the play oblige us "to interpret the sinfulness of Thaïs not as the triumph of evil but as an imbalance or discord between parts of her created being. Hrotsvit looks at this woman, who acts as a volcano of lust.... What she sees is... the discord of her musica humana of body and soul.... Once Pafnutius has guided Thaïs to actions that bring her body and its behavior into agreement with her knowledge of God" there is "concord between body and soul as the essence of the human being." Hrotsvitha's play is not without subtlety.
Productions
The play was produced in the 1890s by Alfred Jarry's Théâtre des Pantins in a version featuring marionettes.
