This moral play, to which we might give the title of hygienic poetry,
appeared in 1507, under the name of its author, Nicolas de la Chesnaye,
along with another work, the latter in prose, on the “Government of the
Human Body.”
Nicolas de la Chesnaye was not only a poet but a doctor. He was a
physician of enough importance to be personal friend and medical
attendant of Louis XII, at whose instigation the poetical play was
written. This work is considered by many French critics to be a classic
of its kind; it is a poem dealing with all the curious manners and
customs of the time, and treats of morality and the stage. In a
prologue Nicole de la Chesnaye informs us how he came to be a poet, or,
rather, a writer of verses to be recited on the public stage, in which
were embodied the hygienic and dietetic precepts of the epoch, together
with the medical doctrines in vogue. Let us cite a few lines from this
prologue: “Oh, ye who write or attempt to follow copies of ancient
works, ye should strive to omit such phrases as are difficult to be
understood by the masses of the people; endeavor then to not exceed in
quantity and quality their mental capacity and your own understanding.
On such an occasion as this, I, who am ignorant as compared to many
among ye, have had the hardihood to compose and put in rhyme this
little play of mine upon morality. The intention of this work is to
make an exterminating war on gluttony, debauchery, inebriety, and
avariciousness, and to praise and extol temperance, virtue, sobriety,
and generosity, to the end of improving mankind. So in this work I have
given the personages of my play the names of different maladies, as,
for example, Apoplexy, Epilepsy, Dropsy, Jaundice, Gout, etc., etc.”
The object of the author’s play is thus plainly stated at the outset.
In the first act we see Dinner, Supper, and Banquet conniving against
honest gentlemen by inviting them to feast. Among the plotters are also
Good Company, Fried Meats, Gourmandizer, Drink Hearty, and others. In
the midst of the festivities rascals fall on the assembled guests and
give them deadly blows; these villains are Apoplexy, Gout, Epilepsy,
Gravel, and Dropsy. Almost all the guests present are more or less
injured, and upon their complaint their assailants are cited to appear
before a court held by Judge Experience, while the attorneys for the
plaintiffs and defendants are Remedy, Medical Aid, Sobriety, Diet, and
Old Pills. The trial, carried on in rhyme, is piquant and amusing, and
ends in the conviction of Supper, who is condemned to wear bread and
milk handcuffs. Dinner is doomed to a long exile on penalty of being
hung should he return. Supper is well pleased with the light sentence.
One of the attorneys abuses wine during the course of his argument for
plaintiffs, as, for instance:
“Good wine is full of wicked lies,
Good wine a wise man will despise,
Good wine corrupts the blood and tongue,
Good wine has many a fellow hung.[100]
Good wine lascivious men will rue.
Good wine, though red, makes drinkers blue.
Good wine means lost ability,
Good wine means lost docility.
Good wine means jaundiced liver pain.
Good wine means a wild, raving brain.
Good wine means arson, murder, lust,
Good wine means prison chains and rust.
Good wine means broken family ties.
Good wine means woman’s tears and sighs.
Good wine makes cowards of the brave.
Good wine digs a good drinker’s grave.”
He then goes on and gives examples, as, for instance, Alexander the
Great killing his foster-brother Clitus at a drinking banquet; he cites
the opinions of Saint Jerome and Terrence; he depicts Lot debauching
his daughters and Noah exposed to the mockery of his sons; he shows
Holofernes decapitated by Judith, and places all these cases to the
credit of intemperance. Then he adds a long list of diseases resulting
from drink, of which we shall only quote one verse of the original:
“D’ou vient gravelle peu prisie
Y dropsie,
Paralisie,
Ou pleuresie’
Collicque qui les boyaulx touche?
Dont vient jaunisse, ictericie
Appoplexie,
Epilencie,
Et squinancie?
Tout vient de mal garder la bouche.”
In quaint old French all the symptoms of alcoholism are perfectly
enumerated. It is evident that the epilepsy mentioned by the author is
only the epileptiform convulsion noticed in modern cases of chronic
drunkenness.
As to the _ictericie_, which a modern critic has translated as meaning
_black humor_, it is nothing more than what is now known as cirrhosis
of the liver. Nicole de la Chesnaye was a physician; his critical
commentator not much of one. We cannot follow this classical author
through the innumerable reasons he gives for blaming liquor drinking
and his high tributes of praise to the cause of Middle Age temperance,
and we cannot quote those original strophes on the ancient satirical
poet:
“Le satirique Juvenal
Avoit bien tout cousidere.
Quand il dist qu’il vient tant de mal
De long repas immodere,” etc., etc.
In another scene the drunken revelry of the Banqueters is re-enacted,
on the return of the convicts from exile, and another temptation to the
weak and young and foolish. In fact, one of the youths present, Folly
(_Le Fol_), is attacked and badly used up by the villain Gravel. The
poor fellow cries:
“Alarme! Je ne puis pisser
La Gravelle me tient aux rains!
Venez ouyr mes piteux plains,
Vous, l’Orfevre et l’Appoticaire.”
Then follows a comical scene of suffering, couched in such language as
would offend modern ears polite, and, therefore, out of respect to the
reader omitted.
In this play are many dialogues between Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna,
and Averrhoes, who discuss medical topics at length, but these are too
lengthy for reproduction in this epitomized translation.
The morality of Nicole de la Chesnaye is full of good intentions, but
it is questionable whether he accomplished any considerable result in
reforming the morals of the Middle Ages; he perhaps fell as short in
his aim as modern hygienists on the morality of our own epoch. The same
instincts predominate now as in days of antiquity; the society man of
to-day is generally a mere digestive tube, serving to keep alive the
more or less badly served vital organs.