I promise him, if he has the gout or the itch, he will soon get rid
of them.
St. John dies a perfect martyr, resigned to the boiling oil and gross
jests of Patroclus and Longinus. One is astonished in the present times
at the excessive absurdity, and indeed blasphemy, which the writers of
these Moralities permitted themselves, and, what is more extraordinary,
were permitted by an audience consisting of a whole town. An extract
from the "Mystery of St. Dennis" is in the Duke de la Vallière's
"Bibliothèque du Théâtre François depuis son Origine: Dresde, 1768."
The emperor Domitian, irritated against the Christians, persecutes them,
and thus addresses one of his courtiers:----
Seigneurs Romains, j'ai entendu
Que d'un crucifix d'un pendu,
On fait un Dieu par notre empire,
Sans ce qu'on le nous daigne dire.
Roman lords, I understand
That of a crucified hanged man
They make a God in our kingdom,
Without even deigning to ask our permission.
He then orders an officer to seize on Dennis in France. When this
officer arrives at Paris, the inhabitants acquaint him of the rapid and
grotesque progress of this future saint:----
Sire, il preche un Dieu à Paris
Qui fait tout les mouls et les vauls.
Il va à cheval sans chevauls.
Il fait et defait tout ensemble.
Il vit, il meurt, il sue, il tremble.
Il pleure, il rit, il veille, et dort.
Il est jeune et vieux, foible et fort.
Il fait d'un coq une poulette.
Il joue des arts de roulette,
Ou je ne Sçais que ce peut être.
Sir, he preaches a God at Paris
Who has made mountain and valley.
He goes a horseback without horses.
He does and undoes at once.
He lives, he dies, he sweats, he trembles.
He weeps, he laughs, he wakes, and sleeps.
He is young and old, weak and strong.
He turns a cock into a hen.
He knows how to conjure with cup and ball,
Or I do not know who this can be.
Another of these admirers says, evidently alluding to the rite of
baptism,----
Sire, oyez que fait ce fol prestre:
Il prend de l'yaue en une escuele,
Et gete aux gens sur le cervele,
Et dit que partants sont sauvés!
Sir, hear what this mad priest does:
He takes water out of a ladle,
And, throwing it at people's heads,
He says that when they depart they are saved!
This piece then proceeds to entertain the spectators with the tortures
of St. Dennis, and at length, when more than dead, they mercifully
behead him: the Saint, after his decapitation, rises very quietly, takes
his head under his arm, and walks off the stage in all the dignity of
martyrdom.
It is justly observed by Bayle on these wretched representations, that
while they prohibited the people from meditating on the sacred history
in the book which contains it in all its purity and truth, they
permitted them to see it on the theatre sullied with a thousand gross
inventions, which were expressed in the most vulgar manner and in a
farcical style. Warton, with his usual elegance, observes, "To those who
are accustomed to contemplate the great picture of human follies which
the unpolished ages of Europe hold up to our view, it will not appear
surprising that the people who were forbidden to read the events of the
sacred history in the Bible, in which they are faithfully and
beautifully related, should at the same time be permitted to see them
represented on the stage disgraced with the grossest improprieties,
corrupted with inventions and additions of the most ridiculous kind,
sullied with impurities, and expressed in the language and
gesticulations of the lowest farce." Elsewhere he philosophically
observes that, however, they had their use, "not only teaching the great
truths of scripture to men who could not read the Bible, but in
abolishing the barbarous attachment to military games and the bloody
contentions of the tournament, which had so long prevailed as the sole
species of popular amusement. Rude, and even ridiculous as they were,
they softened the manners of the people, by diverting the public
attention to spectacles in which the mind was concerned, and by creating
a regard for other arts than those of bodily strength and savage
valour."
_Mysteries_ are to be distinguished from _Moralities_, and _Farces_, and
_Sotties_. _Moralities_ are dialogues where the interlocutors
represented feigned or allegorical personages. _Farces_ were more
exactly what their title indicates--obscene, gross, and dissolute
representations, where both the actions and words are alike
reprehensible.
The _Sotties_ were more farcical than farce, and frequently had the
licentiousness of pasquinades. I shall give an ingenious specimen of one
of the MORALITIES. This Morality is entitled, "The Condemnation of
Feasts, to the Praise of Diet and Sobriety for the Benefit of the Human
Body."
The perils of gormandising form the present subject. Towards the close
is a trial between _Feasting_ and _Supper_. They are summoned before
_Experience_, the Lord Chief Justice! _Feasting_ and _Supper_ are
accused of having murdered four persons by force of gorging them.
_Experience_ condemns _Feasting_ to the gallows; and his executioner is
_Diet_. _Feasting_ asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public
confession of so many crimes, such numerous convulsions, apoplexies,
head-aches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has occasioned, that his
executioner _Diet_ in a rage stops his mouth, puts the cord about his
neck, and strangles him. _Supper_ is only condemned to load his hands
with a certain quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many
dishes on table: he is also bound over to remain at the distance of six
hours' walking from _Dinner_ upon pain of death. _Supper_ felicitates
himself on his escape, and swears to observe the mitigated sentence.[97]
The MORALITIES were allegorical dramas, whose tediousness seems to have
delighted a barbarous people not yet accustomed to perceive that what
was obvious might be omitted to great advantage: like children,
everything must be told in such an age; their own unexercised
imagination cannot supply anything.
Of the FARCES the licentiousness is extreme, but their pleasantry and
their humour are not contemptible. The "Village Lawyer," which is never
exhibited on our stage without producing the broadest mirth, originates
among these ancient drolleries. The humorous incident of the shepherd,
who having stolen his master's sheep, is advised by his lawyer only to
reply to his judge by mimicking the bleating of a sheep, and when the
lawyer in return claims his fee, pays him by no other coin, is
discovered in these ancient farces. Bruèys got up the ancient farce of
the "_Patelin_" in 1702, and we borrowed it from him.
They had another species of drama still broader than Farce, and more
strongly featured by the grossness, the severity, and personality of
satire:--these were called _Sotties_, of which the following one I find
in the Duke de la Vallière's "Bibliothèque du Théâtre François."[98]
The actors come on the stage with their fools'-caps each wanting the
right ear, and begin with stringing satirical proverbs, till, after
drinking freely, they discover that their fools'-caps want the right
ear. They call on their old grandmother _Sottie_ (or Folly), who advises
them to take up some trade. She introduces this progeny of her fools to
the _World_, who takes them into his service. The _World_ tries their
skill, and is much displeased with their work. The _Cobbler_-fool
pinches his feet by making the shoes too small; the _Tailor_-fool hangs
his coat too loose or too tight about him; the _Priest_-fool says his
masses either too short or too tedious. They all agree that the _World_
does not know what he wants, and must be sick, and prevail upon him to
consult a physician. The _World_ obligingly sends what is required to a
Urine-doctor, who instantly pronounces that "the _World_ is as mad as a
March hare!" He comes to visit his patient, and puts a great many
questions on his unhappy state. The _World_ replies, "that what most
troubles his head is the idea of a new deluge by fire, which must one
day consume him to a powder;" on which the physician gives this
answer:----
Et te troubles-tu pour cela?
Monde, tu ne te troubles pas
De voir ce larrons attrapars
Vendre et acheter benefices;
Les enfans en bras des Nourices
Estre Abbés, Eveques, Prieurs,
Chevaucher tres bien les deux soeurs,
Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs,
Jouer le leur, l'autrui saisir,
Donner aux flatteurs audience,
Faire la guerre à toute outrance
Pour un rien entre les chrestiens!
And you really trouble yourself about this?
Oh, _World!_ you do not trouble yourself about
Seeing those impudent rascals
Selling and buying livings;
Children in the arms of their nurses
Made Abbots, Bishops, and Priors,
Intriguing with girls,
Killing people for their pleasures,
Minding their own interests, and seizing on what belongs to another,
Lending their ears to flatterers,
Making war, exterminating war,
For a bubble, among Christians!
The _World_ takes leave of his physician, but retains his advice; and to
cure his fits of melancholy gives himself up entirely to the direction
of his fools. In a word, the _World_ dresses himself in the coat and cap
of _Folly_, and he becomes as gay and ridiculous as the rest of the
fools.
This _Sottie_ was represented in the year 1524.
Such was the rage for Mysteries, that René d'Anjou, king of Naples and
Sicily, and Count of Provence, had them magnificently represented and
made them a serious concern. Being in Provence, and having received
letters from his son the Prince of Calabria, who asked him for an
immediate aid of men, he replied, that "he had a very different matter
in hand, for he was fully employed in settling the order of a
Mystery--_in honour of God_."[99]
Strutt, in his "Manners and Customs of the English," has given a
description of the stage in England when Mysteries were the only
theatrical performances. Vol. iii, p. 130.
"In the early dawn of literature, and when the sacred Mysteries were the
only theatrical performances, what is now called the stage did then
consist of three several platforms, or stages raised one above another.
On the uppermost sat the _Pater Coelestis_, surrounded with his Angels;
on the second appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men; and the last
and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet passed from this
transitory life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest
platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued
appearance of fire and flames; and, when it was necessary, the audience
were treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the
howlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relentless
demons. From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended
to delight and to instruct the spectators:--to delight, because they
were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and
to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were
delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men
carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and
remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery
presents a curious specimen of the manners of our country, which then
could admit of such a representation; the simplicity, if not the
libertinism, of the age was great. A play was acted in one of the
principal cities of England, under the direction of the trading
companies of that city, before a numerous assembly of both sexes,
wherein _Adam_ and _Eve_ appeared on the stage entirely naked, performed
their whole part in the representation of Eden, to the serpent's
temptation, to the eating of the forbidden fruit, the perceiving of, and
conversing about, their nakedness, and to the supplying of fig-leaves to
cover it. Warton observes they had the authority of scripture for such a
representation, and they gave matters just as they found them in the
third chapter of Genesis. The following article will afford the reader a
specimen of an _Elegant Morality_.