BOOK II_The mediaeval stage, volume 1 (of 2)

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations

in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other

spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

On page xxii, "FOURNIER" has been moved before "FOWLER", to correct the

alphabetization of the List of Authorities.

Italics are represented thus _italic_, superscripts thus y^n,

subscripts as y_{n}.

[Illustration: BEGINNING OF DUBLIN _Quem quaeritis_, FROM BODLEIAN

RAWLINSON LITURGICAL MS. D. 4 (14TH CENTURY)]

THE

MEDIAEVAL STAGE

E. K. CHAMBERS

VOLUME I

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

_Oxford University Press, Amen House, London E.C.4_

GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON

BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA

CAPE TOWN SALISBURY NAIROBI IBADAN ACCRA

KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG

FIRST EDITION 1903

REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN

BY LOWE & BRYDONE, PRINTERS, LTD., LONDON

FROM SHEETS OF THE FIRST EDITION

1925, 1948, 1954, 1963

To N. C.

PREFACE

Some years ago I was thinking of a little book, which now may or may

not ever get itself finished, about Shakespeare and the conditions,

literary and dramatic, under which Shakespeare wrote. My proper

task would have begun with the middle of the sixteenth century. But

it seemed natural to put first some short account of the origins

of play-acting in England and of its development during the Middle

Ages. Unfortunately it soon became apparent that the basis for such

a narrative was wanting. The history of the mediaeval theatre had

never, from an English point of view, been written. The initial

chapter of Collier’s _Annals of the Stage_ is even less adequate than

is usual with this slovenly and dishonest antiquary. It is with some

satisfaction that, in spite of the barrier set up by an incorrect

reference, I have resolved one dramatic representation elaborately

described by Collier into a _soteltie_ or sweetmeat. More scholarly

writers, such as Dr. A. W. Ward, while dealing excellently with the

mediaeval drama as literature, have shown themselves but little

curious about the social and economic facts upon which the mediaeval

drama rested. Yet from a study of such facts, I am sure, any literary

history, which does not confine itself solely to the analysis of

genius, must make a start.

An attempt of my own to fill the gap has grown into these two

volumes, which have, I fear, been unduly swelled by the inclusion

of new interests as, from time to time, they took hold upon me; an

interest, for example, in the light-hearted and coloured life of those

_poverelli_ of letters, the minstrel folk; a very deep interest in

the track across the ages of certain customs and symbols of rural

gaiety which bear with them the inheritance of a remote and ancestral

heathenism. I can only hope that this disproportionate treatment of

parts has not wholly destroyed the unity of purpose at which, after

all, I aimed. If I may venture to define for myself the formula of

my work, I would say that it endeavours to state and explain the

pre-existing conditions which, by the latter half of the sixteenth

century, made the great Shakespearean stage possible. The story is

one of a sudden dissolution and a slow upbuilding. I have arranged

the material in four Books. The First Book shows how the organization

of the Graeco-Roman theatre broke down before the onslaught of

Christianity and the indifference of barbarism, and how the actors

became wandering minstrels, merging with the gleemen of their Teutonic

conquerors, entertaining all classes of mediaeval society with

_spectacula_ in which the dramatic element was of the slightest, and in

the end, after long endurance, coming to a practical compromise with

the hostility of the Church. In the Second Book I pass to _spectacula_

of another type, which also had to struggle against ecclesiastical

disfavour, and which also made their ultimate peace with all but the

most austere forms of the dominant religion. These are the _ludi_

of the village feasts, bearing witness, not only to their origin in

heathen ritual, but also, by their constant tendency to break out into

primitive forms of drama, to the deep-rooted mimetic instinct of the

folk. The Third Book is a study of the process by which the Church

itself, through the introduction of dramatic elements into its liturgy,

came to make its own appeal to this same mimetic instinct; and of that

by which, from such beginnings, grew up the great popular religious

drama of the miracle-plays, with its offshoots in the moralities and

the dramatic pageants. The Fourth and final Book deals summarily

with the transformation of the mediaeval stage, on the literary side

under the influence of humanism, on the social and economic side by

the emergence from amongst the ruins of minstrelsy of a new class

of professional players, in whose hands the theatre was destined to

recover a stable organization upon lines which had been departed from

since the days of Tertullian.

I am very conscious of the manifold imperfections of these volumes.

They are the work, not of a professed student, but of one who only

plays at scholarship in the rare intervals of a busy administrative

life. They owe much to the long-suffering officials of the British

Museum and the London Library, and more recently to the aid and

encouragement of the Delegates of the Clarendon Press and their

accomplished staff. The literary side of the mediaeval drama, about

which much remains to be said, I have almost wholly neglected. I

shall not, I hope, be accused of attaching too much importance in

the first volume to the vague and uncertain results of folk-lore

research. One cannot be always giving expression to the minuter

shades of probability. But in any investigation the validity of the

inferences must be relative to the nature of the subject-matter;

and, whether I qualify it in words or not, I do not, of course, make

a statement about the intention, say, of primitive sacrifice, with

the same confidence which attaches to one about matters of historic

record. The burden of my notes and appendices sometimes appears to me

intolerable. My excuse is that I wanted to collect, once for all, as

many facts with as precise references as possible. These may, perhaps,

have a value independent of any conclusions which I have founded upon

them. And even now I do not suppose that I have been either exhaustive

or accurate. The remorseless ideal of the historian’s duties laid

down in the _Introduction aux Études Historiques_ of MM. Langlois

and Seignobos floats before me like an accusing spirit. I know how

very far I am from having reached that austere standard of scientific

completeness. To begin with, I had not the necessary training. Oxford,

my most kindly nurse, maintained in my day no _École des Chartes_,

and I had to discover the rules of method as I went along. But the

greater difficulty has been the want of leisure and the spacious life.

Shades of Duke Humphrey’s library, how often, as I jostled for my turn

at the crowded catalogue-shelves of the British Museum, have I not

envied those whose lot it is to tread your ample corridors and to bend

over your yellowing folios! Amongst such happy scholars, the canons

of Clio may claim implicit obedience. A silent company, they ‘class’

their documents and ‘try’ their sources from morn to eve, disturbed

in the pleasant ways of research only by the green flicker of leaves

in the Exeter garden, or by the statutory inconvenience of a terminal

lecture.--

‘Tanagra! think not I forget!’

E. K. C.

LONDON, _May, 1903_.

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

PAGE

PREFACE v

LIST OF AUTHORITIES xiii

BOOK I. MINSTRELSY

CHAP.

I. THE FALL OF THE THEATRES 1

II. MIMUS AND SCÔP 23

III. THE MINSTREL LIFE 42

IV. THE MINSTREL REPERTORY 70

BOOK II. FOLK DRAMA

V. THE RELIGION OF THE FOLK 89

VI. VILLAGE FESTIVALS 116

VII. FESTIVAL PLAY 146

VIII. THE MAY-GAME 160

IX. THE SWORD-DANCE 182

X. THE MUMMERS’ PLAY 205

XI. THE BEGINNING OF WINTER 228

XII. NEW YEAR CUSTOMS 249

XIII. THE FEAST OF FOOLS 274

XIV. THE FEAST OF FOOLS (_continued_) 301

XV. THE BOY BISHOP 336

XVI. GUILD FOOLS AND COURT FOOLS 372

XVII. MASKS AND MISRULE 390

VOLUME II

BOOK III. RELIGIOUS DRAMA

XVIII. LITURGICAL PLAYS 1

XIX. LITURGICAL PLAYS (_continued_) 41

XX. THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS 68

XXI. GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS 106

XXII. GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS (_continued_) 124

XXIII. MORALITIES, PUPPET-PLAYS, AND PAGEANTS 149

BOOK IV. THE INTERLUDE

XXIV. PLAYERS OF INTERLUDES 179

XXV. HUMANISM AND MEDIAEVALISM 199

APPENDICES

A. THE TRIBUNUS VOLUPTATUM 229

B. TOTA IOCULATORUM SCENA 230

C. COURT MINSTRELSY IN 1306 234

D. THE MINSTREL HIERARCHY 238

E. EXTRACTS FROM ACCOUNT BOOKS 240

I. Durham Priory 240

II. Maxstoke Priory 244

III. Thetford Priory 245

IV. Winchester College 246

V. Magdalen College, Oxford 248

VI. Shrewsbury Corporation 250

VII. The Howards of Stoke-by-Nayland, Essex 255

VIII. The English Court 256

F. MINSTREL GUILDS 258

G. THOMAS DE CABHAM 262

H. PRINCELY PLEASURES AT KENILWORTH 263

I. A Squire Minstrel 263

II. The Coventry Hock-Tuesday Show 264

I. THE INDIAN VILLAGE FEAST 266

J. SWORD-DANCES 270

I. Sweden (sixteenth century) 270

II. Shetland (eighteenth century) 271

K. THE LUTTERWORTH ST. GEORGE PLAY 276

L. THE PROSE OF THE ASS 279

M. THE BOY BISHOP 282

I. The Sarum Office 282

II. The York Computus 287

N. WINTER PROHIBITIONS 290

O. THE REGULARIS CONCORDIA OF ST. ETHELWOLD 306

P. THE DURHAM SEPULCHRUM 310

Q. THE SARUM SEPULCHRUM 312

R. THE DUBLIN QUEM QUAERITIS 315

S. THE AUREA MISSA OF TOURNAI 318

T. SUBJECTS OF THE CYCLICAL MIRACLES 321

U. INTERLUDIUM DE CLERICO ET PUELLA 324

V. TERENTIUS ET DELUSOR 326

W. REPRESENTATIONS OF MEDIAEVAL PLAYS 329

X. TEXTS OF MEDIAEVAL PLAYS AND INTERLUDES 407

I. Miracle-Plays 407

II. Popular Moralities 436

III. Tudor Makers of Interludes 443

IV. List of Early Tudor Interludes 453

SUBJECT INDEX 462

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

[_General Bibliographical Note._ I mention here only a few works

of wide range, which may be taken as authorities throughout these

two volumes. Others, more limited in their scope, are named in the

preliminary notes to the sections of the book on whose subject-matter

they bear.--An admirable general history of the modern drama is W.

Creizenach’s still incomplete _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_ (Band i,

_Mittelalter und Frührenaissance_, 1893; Bände ii, iii, _Renaissance

und Reformation_, 1901-3). R. Prölss, _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_

(1881-3), is slighter. The earlier work of J. L. Klein, _Geschichte des

Dramas_ (13 vols. 1865-76), is diffuse, inconvenient, and now partly

obsolete. A valuable study is expected from J. M. Manly in vol. iii of

his _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_, of which two volumes,

containing selected texts, appeared in 1897. C. Hastings, _Le Théâtre

français et anglais_ (1900, Eng. trans. 1901), is a compilation of

little merit.--Prof. Creizenach may be supplemented for Germany by

R. Froning, _Das Drama des Mittelalters_ (1891). For France there

are the exhaustive and excellent volumes of L. Petit de Julleville’s

_Histoire du Théâtre en France au Moyen Âge_ (_Les Mystères_, 1880;

_Les Comédiens en France au Moyen Âge_, 1885; _La Comédie et les Mœurs

en France au Moyen Âge_, 1886; _Répertoire du Théâtre comique au Moyen

Âge_, 1886). G. Bapst, _Essai sur l’Histoire du Théâtre_ (1893),

adds some useful material on the history of the stage. For Italy A.

d’Ancona, _Origini del Teatro italiano_ (2nd ed., 1891), is also

excellent.--The best English book is A. W. Ward’s _History of English

Dramatic Literature to the death of Queen Anne_ (2nd ed., 1899). J.

P. Collier, _History of English Dramatic Poetry_ (new ed., 1879), is

full of matter, but, for various reasons, not wholly trustworthy. J. J.

Jusserand, _Le Théâtre en Angleterre_ (2nd ed., 1881), J. A. Symonds,

_Shakespeare’s Predecessors in the English Drama_ (1884), and G. M.

Gayley, _Representative English Comedies_ (1903), are of value. Texts

will be found in Manly’s and Gayley’s books, and in A. W. Pollard,

_English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes_ (3rd ed., 1898);

W. C. Hazlitt, _Dodsley’s Old Plays_ (15 vols. 1874-6); A. Brandl,

_Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England_ (1898). F. H. Stoddard,

_References for Students of Miracle Plays and Mysteries_ (1887),

and K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, _English Drama; a Working Basis_

(1896), are rough attempts at bibliographies.--In addition the drama

of course finds treatment in the general histories of literature. The

best are: for Germany, R. Kögel, _Geschichte der deutschen Literatur

bis zum Ausgange des Mittelalters_ (1894-7, a fragment); K. Gödeke,

_Grundriss zur Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung aus den Quellen_ (2nd

ed., 1884-1900); W. Scherer, _Geschichte der deutschen Litteratur_ (8th

ed., 1899): for France, L. Petit de Julleville (editor), _Histoire

de la Langue et de la Littérature françaises_ (1896-1900); G. Paris,

_La Littérature française au Moyen Âge_ (2nd ed., 1890): for Italy,

A. Gaspary, _Geschichte der italienischen Litteratur_ (1884-9, Eng.

transl. 1901): for England, T. Warton, _History of English Poetry_ (ed.

W. C. Hazlitt, 1871); B. Ten Brink, _History of English Literature_

(Eng. trans. 1893-6); J. J. Jusserand, _Literary History of the English

People_ (vol. i. 1895); W. J. Courthope, _History of English Poetry_

(vols. i, ii. 1895-7); G. Saintsbury, _Short History of English

Literature_ (1898), and, especially for bibliography, G. Körting,

_Grundriss der Geschichte der englischen Litteratur_ (3rd ed., 1899).

The _Periods of European Literature_, edited by Prof. Saintsbury,

especially G. Gregory Smith, _The Transition Period_ (1900), and

the two great _Grundrisse_, H. Paul, _Grundriss der germanischen

Philologie_ (2nd ed., 1896-1903), and G. Gröber, _Grundriss der

romanischen Philologie_ (1888-1903), should also be consulted.--The

beginnings of the mediaeval drama are closely bound up with liturgy,

and the nature of the liturgical books referred to is explained by W.

Maskell, _A Dissertation upon the Ancient Service-Books of the Church

of England_ (in _Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae_, 2nd ed.,

1882, vol. iii); H. B. Swete, _Church Services and Service-Books before

the Reformation_ (1896); Procter-Frere, _New History of the Book of

Common Prayer_ (1901). The beginnings of Catholic ritual are studied by

L. Duchesne, _Origines du Culte chrétien_ (3rd ed., 1902, Eng. trans.

1903), and its mediaeval forms described by D. Rock, _The Church of our

Fathers_ (1849-53), and J. D. Chambers, _Divine Worship in England in

the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries_ (1877).

The following list of books is mainly intended to elucidate the

references in the footnotes, and has no claim to bibliographical

completeness or accuracy. I have included the titles of a few German

and French dissertations of which I have not been able to make use.]

* * * * *

_Aberdeen Records._ Extracts from the Council Register of the Burgh of

Aberdeen. Edited by J. Stuart. 2 vols. 1844-8. [_Spalding Club_, xii,

xix.]

_Acta SS._ Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, quas collegit

I. Bollandus. Operam continuavit G. Henschenius [et alii], 1734-1894.

[In progress.]

AHN. English Mysteries and Miracle Plays. By Dr. Ahn. Trier, 1867. [Not

consulted.]

ALCUIN. See DÜMMLER.

ALLARD. Julien l’Apostat. Par P. Allard. 3 vols. 1900-3.

ALLEN. The Evolution of the Idea of God: an Enquiry into the Origins of

Religion. By Grant Allen, 1897.

ALT. Theater und Kirche in ihrem gegenseitigen Verhältniss. Von H. Alt,

1846.

_Anal. Hymn._ Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi. Ediderunt C. Blume et G. M.

Dreves. 37 parts, 1886-1901. [In progress.]

ANCONA. Origini del Teatro italiano. Per A. d’Ancona, 2nd ed. 2 vols.

1891.

ANCONA, _Sacr. Rappr._ Sacre Rappresentazioni dei secoli xiv, xv e xvi,

raccolte e illustrate per cura di A. d’Ancona, 1872.

_Anglia._ Anglia: Zeitschrift für englische Philologie. 24 vols.

1878-1903. [In progress.]

_Ann. Arch._ Annales Archéologiques, dirigées par Didron aîné. 28 vols.

1844-81.

_Antiquarian Repertory._ The Antiquarian Repertory: A Miscellaneous

assemblage of Topography, History, Biography, Customs and Manners.

Compiled by F. Grose and T. Astle. 2nd ed. 4 vols. 1807.

ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE, _Civ. Celt._ La Civilisation des Celtes et celle

de l’Épopée homérique. Par H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, 1899. [Vol. vi

of _Cours de littérature celtique_.]

ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE, _Cycl. Myth._ Le Cycle mythologique irlandais et

la Mythologie celtique. Par H. d’Arbois de Jubainville, 1884. [Vol. ii

of same.]

_Archaeologia._ Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to

Antiquity. Published by the Society of Antiquaries of London. 57 vols.

1770-1901. [In progress.]

ARNOLD. The Customs of London, otherwise Arnold’s Chronicle. Edited by

F. Douce, 1811.

ASHTON. A Righte Merrie Christmasse!!! By J. Ashton, n. d.

BAHLMANN, _Ern._ Die Erneuerer des antiken Dramas und ihre ersten

dramatischen Versuche: 1314-1478. Von P. Bahlmann, 1896.

BAHLMANN, _L. D._ Die lateinischen Dramen von Wimpheling’s Stylpho bis

zur Mitte des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts: 1480-1550. Von P. Bahlmann,

1893.

BALE. Scriptorum illustrium maioris Britanniae, quam nunc Angliam et

Scotiam vocant, Catalogus. Autore Ioanne Baleo Sudouolgio Anglo. 2

vols. Basileae, Oporinus, 1557-9. [Enlarged from the edition in one

vol. of 1548.]

BALE, _Index_. Index Britanniae Scriptorum quos ex variis bibliothecis

non parvo labore collegit Ioannes Baleus. Edited by R. L. Poole and M.

Bateson, 1902. [_Anecdota Oxoniensia, Mediaeval and Modern Series_, ix,

from a MS. compiled 1549-1557.]

BAPST. Essai sur l’Histoire du Théâtre. Par G. Bapst, 1893.

BARBAZAN-MÉON. Fabliaux et Contes des Poètes françois des xi, xii,

xiii, xiv et xv siècles. Publiés par E. Barbazan. Nouvelle édition, par

M. Méon. 4 vols. 1808.

BARRETT. Riding Skimmington and Riding the Stang. By C. R. B. Barrett,

1895. [_Journal of British Archaeological Association_, N. S. vol. i.]

BARTHÉLEMY. Rational ou Manuel des divins Offices de Guillaume Durand,

Évêque de Mende au treizième siècle. Traduit par M. C. Barthélemy. 5

vols. 1854.

BARTSCH. Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen. Par K. Bartsch,

1870.

BATES. The English Religious Drama. By K. L. Bates, 1893.

BATES-GODFREY. English Drama: a Working Basis. By K. L. Bates and L. B.

Godfrey, 1896.

BEDE, _D. T. R._ Venerabilis Bedae Opera quae Supersunt Omnia. Edidit

J. A. Giles. 12 vols. 1843-4. [The _De Temporum Ratione_ forms part of

vol. vi.]

BEDE, _E. H._ _See_ PLUMMER.

BÉDIER. Les Fabliaux. Études de Littérature populaire et d’Histoire

littéraire du Moyen Âge. Par J. Bédier, 2nd ed. 1895.

BELETHUS. Rationale Divinorum Officiorum Auctore Joanne Beletho

Theologo Parisiensi, 1855. [In _P. L._ ccii.]

BELL. Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England.

Edited by R. Bell, 1857.

BÉRENGER-FÉRAUD. Superstitions et Survivances étudiées au point

de vue de leur Origine et de leurs Transformations. Par L. J. B.

Bérenger-Féraud. 4 vols. 1896.

BERNHARD. Recherches sur l’Histoire de la Corporation des Ménétriers ou

Joueurs d’Instruments de la Ville de Paris. Par B. Bernhard. [_Bibl. de

l’École des Chartes_, iii. 377, iv. 525, v. 254, 339.]

BERTRAND. Nos Origines: iv. La Religion des Gaulois; Les Druides et le

Druidisme. Par A. Bertrand, 1897.

_Bibl. des Chartes._ Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes. Revue

d’Érudition consacrée spécialement à l’étude du Moyen Âge. [I quote the

numbers of the annual volumes, without regard to the _Séries_.]

BINGHAM. The Works of Joseph Bingham. Edited by R. Bingham. New ed. 10

vols.

BLOMEFIELD. An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of

Norfolk. By F. Blomefield. 2nd ed. 11 vols. 1805-10.

BÖHCK. Die Anfänge des englischen Dramas. Von Dr. Böhck, 1890. [Not

consulted.]

BOLTON. The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children. By H. C. Bolton, 1888.

BORETIUS. Capitularia Regum Francorum. Ediderunt A. Boretius et V.

Krause. 2 vols. 1883-7. [_M. G. H. Leges_, Sectio ii.]

BOURQUELOT. Office de la Fête des Fous. Publié par F. Bourquelot, 1858.

[_Bulletin de la Société archéologique de Sens_, vol. vi. Not consulted

at first hand.]

BOWER. The Elevation and Procession of the Ceri at Gubbio. By H. M.

Bower, 1897. [_F. L. S._]

BRAND. Observations on Popular Antiquities, chiefly illustrating the

Origin of our Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies, and Superstitions. By J.

Brand. Enlarged by Sir H. Ellis. 3 vols. 1841-2.

BRAND-HAZLITT. Observations on Popular Antiquities. By J. Brand. Edited

with additions by W. C. Hazlitt. 3 vols. 1870.

BRANDL. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare. Ein

Ergänzungsband zu Dodsley’s Old English Plays. Herausgegeben von A.

Brandl, 1898. [_Quellen und Forschungen_, lxxx.]

BREWER. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of

Henry VIII. Arranged and catalogued by J. S. Brewer [and afterwards J.

Gairdner and R. H. Brodie]. 18 vols. 1862-1902. [_Calendars of State

Papers._]

BROOKE. The History of Early English Literature: being the History of

English Poetry to the Accession of King Alfred. By S. A. Brooke. 2

vols. 1892.

BROOKE, _Eng. Lit._ English Literature from the Beginning to the

Norman Conquest. By S. A. Brooke, 1898.

BROTANEK. Die englischen Maskenspiele. Von R. Brotanek, 1902. [_Wiener

Beiträge zur englischen Philologie_, xv.]

BROWN. Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts relating to English

Affairs, in the Archives and Collections of Venice and in other

Libraries of North Italy. Edited by H. F. Brown and R. Brown. 10 vols.

1864-1900.

BRYLINGER. Comoediae et Tragoediae aliquot ex Novo et Vetere Testamento

desumptae. Basileae, Brylinger, 1540.

BURCHARDUS. Burchardi Wormaciencis Ecclesiae Episcopi Decretorum Libri

xx, 1853. [In _P. L._ cxl.]

BURNE-JACKSON. Shropshire Folk-lore: A Sheaf of Gleanings. Edited by C.

S. Burne, from the collections of G. F. Jackson, 1883.

BURNET. A History of the Reformation of the Church of England. By G.

Burnet. Edited by N. Pocock. 7 vols. 1865.

BURTON. Rushbearing. By A. Burton, 1891.

BURY-GIBBON. _See_ GIBBON.

CAMPBELL. Materials for a History of the Reign of Henry VII, from

documents in the Public Record Office. By W. Campbell. 2 vols. 1873-7.

[_R. S._ lx.]

CANEL. Recherches historiques sur les Fous des Rois de France. Par A.

Canel, 1873.

_Captain Cox._ _See_ LANEHAM.

_Carmina Burana._ _See_ SCHMELLER.

CASPARI. Eine Augustin fälschlich beilegte Homilia de Sacrilegiis.

Herausgegeben von C. P. Caspari, 1886. [_Gesellschaft der

Wissenschaften zu Christiania._]

CASSIODORUS. Cassiodori Senatoris Variae. Recensuit Theodorus Mommsen,

1894. [_M. G. H. Auctores Antiquissimi_, vol. xii.]

_Catholicon Anglicum._ Catholicon Anglicum: an English-Latin Wordbook

(1483). Edited by S. J. Herrtage, 1881. [_C. S._ N. S. xxx.]

CAVENDISH. The Life of Cardinal Wolsey. By J. Cavendish. Edited by S.

W. Singer. 2 vols. 1825.

CHAMBERS. Divine Worship in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,

contrasted with the Nineteenth. By J. D. Chambers, 1877.

CHAMPOLLION-FIGEAC. _See_ HILARIUS.

CHAPPELL. Old English Popular Music. By W. Chappell. A new edition by

H. E. Wooldridge. 2 vols. 1893.

_C. H. B._ Corpus Scriptorum Historiae Byzantinae. Editio emendatior,

consilio B. G. Niebuhrii instituta, 1828-97.

CHÉREST. Nouvelles Recherches sur la Fête des Innocents et la Fête des

Fous. Par A. Chérest, 1853. [_Bulletin de la Société des Sciences de

l’Yonne_, vol. vii.]

CHILD. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Edited by F. J.

Child. 10 vols. 1882-98.

_Christmas Prince._ _See_ HIGGS.

_C. I. C._ Corpus Iuris Civilis. Editio altera, 1877-95. [Vol. i

contains the _Institutiones_, ed. P. Krueger, and the _Digesta_, ed.

Th. Mommsen; vol. ii the _Codex Iustiniani_, ed. P. Krueger; vol. iii

the _Novellae Iustiniani_, ed. Schoell and Kroll.]

_C. I. Can._ Corpus Iuris Canonici. Editio Lipsiensis secunda: post A.

L. Richter curas ... instruxit A. Friedberg. 2 vols. 1879-81. [Contains

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WILKINS. Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 446-1717. Accedunt

Constitutiones et alia ad Historiam Ecclesiae Anglicanae Spectantia. 4

vols. 1737.

WILMOTTE. Les Passions allemandes du Rhin dans leur Rapport avec

l’ancien Théâtre français. Par M. Wilmotte, 1898. [_Ouvrages couronnés

et autres Mémoires publiés par l’Académie Royale de Belgique_, lv.]

_Winchester Troper._ _See_ FRERE.

WIRTH. Die Oster-und Passionsspiele bis zum xvi. Jahrhundert. Von L.

Wirth, 1889.

WISSOWA. Religion und Kultus der Römer. Von G. Wissowa, 1902.

[Vol. v, Part 4 of I. von Müller’s _Handbuch der classischen

Altertumswissenschaft_.]

WOOD, _Athenae_. Athenae Oxonienses, an Exact History of all Writers

and Bishops who have had their Education in the University of Oxford.

By Anthony à Wood. 2nd ed. by P. Bliss. 4 vols. 1813-20.

WOOD, _Hist. Univ._ History and Antiquities of the University of

Oxford. By Anthony à Wood. Now first published in English with

continuation by J. Gutch. 2 vols. 1792-6.

WOOD-MARTIN. Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland. By W. G.

Wood-Martin. 2 vols. 1902.

WORDSWORTH. Notes on Mediaeval Services in England, with an index of

Lincoln Ceremonies. By C. Wordsworth, 1898.

WORDSWORTH, _Proc._ Ceremonies and Processions of the Cathedral Church

of Salisbury. Edited by C. Wordsworth, 1901. [From _Salisbury Chapter

MS._ 148 of †1445, a book for use by the _principalis persona_ in the

choir, and supplementary to the printed Processional.]

WRIGHT. Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the Twelfth and

Thirteenth Centuries. By T. Wright, 1838.

WRIGHT, _Chester Plays_. The Chester Plays. Edited by Thomas Wright. 2

vols. 1843. [_Shakespeare Society._]

WRIGHT, _Map_. The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes.

Collected and edited by T. Wright, 1841. [_C. S._ O. S. xvii.]

WRIGHT-HALLIWELL. Reliquiae Antiquae: Scraps from Ancient Manuscripts,

illustrating chiefly Early English Literature and the English Language.

By T. Wright and J. O. Halliwell. 2 vols. 1841.

WRIGHT-WÜLCKER. Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies. By T. Wright.

Edited and collated by R. P. Wülcker. 2 vols. 1884.

WÜLCKER. Grundriss zur Geschichte der angelsächsischen Litteratur:

mit einer Übersicht der angelsächsischen Sprachwissenschaft. Von R.

Wülcker, 1885.

WYLIE. A History of England under Henry IV. By J. H. Wylie. 4 vols.

1884-98.

_York Breviary._ Breviarium ad usum insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis.

Edidit S. W. Lawley. 2 vols. 1880-2. [_Surtees Soc._ lxxi, lxxv.]

_York Manual._ Manuale et Processionale ad usum insignis Ecclesiae

Eboracensis. Edidit W. G. Henderson, 1875. [_Surtees Soc._ lxiii.

Contains also _Sarum Manual_.]

_York Missal._ Missale ad usum insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis. Edidit

W. G. Henderson. 2 vols. 1874. [_Surtees Soc._ lix, lx.]

_York Plays._ The Plays performed by the Crafts or Mysteries of York on

the Day of Corpus Christi. Edited by L. T. Smith, 1885.

_Z. f. d. A._ Zeitschrift für deutsches Alterthum [_afterwards added_

und deutsche Literatur], 1841-1903. [In progress.]

_Z. f. rom. Phil._ Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 1877-1903.

[In progress.]

ZSCHECH. Die Anfänge des englischen Dramas. Von Dr. Zschech, 1886. [Not

consulted.]

BOOK I

MINSTRELSY

C’est une étrange entreprise que celle de faire rire les honnêtes

gens.--J.-B. POQUELIN DE MOLIÈRE.

Molière est un infâme histrion.--J.-B. BOSSUET.

CHAPTER I

THE FALL OF THE THEATRES

[_Bibliographical Note._--A convenient sketch of the history of

the Roman stage will be found in G. Körting, _Geschichte des

griechischen und römischen Theaters_ (1897). The details given

in L. Friedländer, _Sittengeschichte Roms in der Zeit von August

bis zum Ausgang der Antonine_ (vol. ii, 7th ed. 1901), and the

same writer’s article on _Die Spiele_ in vol. vi of Marquardt and

Mommsen’s _Handbuch der römischen Alterthümer_ (2nd ed. 1885),

may be supplemented from E. Nöldechen’s article _Tertullian und

das Theater_ in _Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte_, xv (1894),

161, for the _fabulae Atellanae_ from A. Dieterich, _Pulcinella_

(1897), chs. 4-8, and for the _pantomimi_ from C. Sittl, _Die

Gebärden der Griechen und Römer_ (1890), ch. 13. The account

in C. Magnin, _Les Origines du Théâtre moderne_ (vol. i, all

published, 1838), is by no means obsolete. Teuffel and Schwabe,

_History of Latin Literature_, vol. i, §§ 3-18 (trans. G. C. W.

Warr, 1891), contains a mass of imperfectly arranged material.

The later history of the Greek stage is dealt with by P. E.

Müller, _Commentatio historica de genio, moribus et luxu aevi

Theodosiani_ (1798), vol. ii, and A. E. Haigh, _Tragic Drama of

the Greeks_ (1896), ch. 6. The ecclesiastical prohibitions are

collected by W. Prynne, _Histriomastix_ (1633), and J. de Douhet,

_Dictionnaire des Mystères_ (1854), and their general attitude

summarized by H. Alt, _Theater und Kirche in ihrem gegenseitigen

Verhältniss_ (1846). S. Dill, _Roman Society in the Last Century

of the Roman Empire_ (2nd ed. 1899), should be consulted for an

admirable study of the conditions under which the pre-mediaeval

stage came to an end.]

Christianity, emerging from Syria with a prejudice against

disguisings[1], found the Roman world full of _scenici_. The mimetic

instinct, which no race of mankind is wholly without, appears to have

been unusually strong amongst the peoples of the Mediterranean stock.

A literary drama came into being in Athens during the sixth century,

and established itself in city after city. Theatres were built, and

tragedies and comedies acted on the Attic model, wherever a Greek

foot trod, from Hipola in Spain to Tigranocerta in Armenia. The great

capitals of the later Greece, Alexandria, Antioch, Pergamum, rivalled

Athens itself in their devotion to the stage. Another development of

drama, independent of Athens, in Sicily and Magna Graecia, may be

distinguished as farcical rather than comic. After receiving literary

treatment at the hands of Epicharmus and Sophron in the fifth century,

it continued its existence under the name of mime (μῖμος), upon a

more popular level. Like many forms of popular drama, it seems to

have combined the elements of farce and morality. Its exponents are

described as buffoons (γελωτοποιοί, παιγνιογράφοι) and dealers in

indecencies (ἀναισχυντογράφοι), and again as concerning themselves

with questions of character and manners (ἠθολόγοι, ἀρεταλόγοι). They

even produced what sound singularly like problem plays (ὑποθέσεις).

Both qualities may have sprung from a common root in the observation

and audacious portrayal of contemporary life. The mime was still

flourishing in and about Tarentum in the third century[2].

Probably the Romans were not of the Mediterranean stock, and their

native _ludi_ were athletic rather than mimetic. But the drama

gradually filtered in from the neighbouring peoples. Its earliest

stirrings in the rude farce of the _satura_ are attributed by Livy

to Etruscan influence[3]. From Campania came another type of farce,

the _Oscum ludicrum_ or _fabula Atellana_, with its standing masks of

Maccus and Bucco, Pappus and Dossennus, in whom it is hard not to find

a kinship to the traditional personages of the Neapolitan _commedia

dell’ arte_. About 240 B. C. the Greek Livius Andronicus introduced

tragedy and comedy. The play now became a regular element in the

_spectacula_ of the Roman festivals, only subordinate in interest to

the chariot-race and the gladiatorial show. Permanent theatres were

built in the closing years of the Republic by Pompey and others, and

the number of days annually devoted to _ludi scenici_ was constantly

on the increase. From 48 under Augustus they grew to 101 under

Constantius. Throughout the period of the Empire, indeed, the theatre

was of no small political importance. On the one hand it was the

rallying point of all disturbers of the peace and the last stronghold

of a public opinion debarred from the senate and the forum; on the

other it was a potent means for winning the affection of the populace

and diverting its attention from dynastic questions. The _scenici_

might be thorns in the side of the government, but they were quite

indispensable to it. If their perversities drove them from Italy, the

clamour of the mob soon brought them back again. Trajan revealed one

of the _arcana imperii_ when he declared that the _annona_ and the

_spectacula_ controlled Rome[4]. And what was true of Rome was true of

Byzantium, and in a lesser degree of the smaller provincial cities. So

long as the Empire itself held together, the provision firstly of corn

and secondly of novel _ludi_ remained one of the chief preoccupations

of many a highly placed official.

The vast popular audiences of the period under consideration cared but

little for the literary drama. In the theatre of Pompey, thronged with

slaves and foreigners of every tongue, the finer histrionic effects

must necessarily have been lost[5]. Something more spectacular and

sensuous, something appealing to a cruder sense of humour, almost

inevitably took their place. There is evidence indeed that, while the

theatres stood, tragedy and comedy never wholly disappeared from their

boards[6]. But it was probably only the ancient masterpieces that got a

hearing. Even in Greece performances of new plays on classical models

cannot be traced beyond about the time of Hadrian. And in Rome the

tragic poets had long before then learnt to content themselves with

recitations and to rely for victims on the good nature, frequently

inadequate, of their friends[7]. The stilted dramas of Seneca were

the delight of the Renaissance, but it is improbable that, until the

Renaissance, they were ever dignified with representation. Roughly

speaking, for comedy and tragedy the Empire substituted farce and

pantomime.

Farce, as has been noticed, was the earliest traffic of the Roman

stage. The Atellane, relegated during the brief vogue of comedy and

tragedy to the position of an interlude or an afterpiece, now once

more asserted its independence. But already during the Republic the

Atellane, with its somewhat conventional and limited methods, was

beginning to give way to a more flexible and vital type of farce.

This was none other than the old mime of Magna Graecia, which now

entered on a fresh phase of existence and overran both West and East.

That it underwent considerable modifications, and probably absorbed

much both of Atellane and of Attic comedy, may be taken for granted.

Certainly it extended its scope to mythological themes. But its leading

characteristics remained unchanged. The ethical element, one may

fear, sank somewhat into the background, although it was by no means

absent from the work of the better mime-writers, such as Laberius and

Publilius Syrus[8]. But that the note of shamelessness was preserved

there is no doubt whatever[9]. The favourite theme, which is common

indeed to farce of all ages, was that of conjugal infidelity[10].

Unchaste scenes were represented with an astonishing realism[11].

Contrary to the earlier custom of the classical stage, women took part

in the performances, and at the _Floralia_, loosest of Roman festivals,

the spectators seem to have claimed it as their right that the _mimae_

should play naked[12]. The _mimus_--for the same term designates both

piece and actor--was just the kind of entertainer whom a democratic

audience loves. Clad in a parti-coloured _centunculus_, with no mask to

conceal the play of facial gesture, and _planipes_, with no borrowed

dignity of sock or buskin, he rattled through his side-splitting

scenes of low life, and eked out his text with an inexhaustible

variety of rude dancing, buffoonery and horse-play[13]. Originally the

mimes seem to have performed in monologues, and the action of their

pieces continued to be generally dominated by a single personage, the

_archimimus_, who was provided with certain _stupidi_ and _parasiti_

to act as foils and butts for his wit. A satirical intention was

frequently present in both mimes and Atellanes, and their outspoken

allusions are more than once recorded to have wrung the withers of

persons of importance and to have brought serious retribution on

the actors themselves. Caligula, for instance, with characteristic

brutality, had a ribald playwright burnt alive in the amphitheatre[14].

The farce was the diversion of the proletariat and the _bourgeoisie_

of Rome. Petronius, with all the insolence of the literary man, makes

Trimalchio buy a _troupe_ of comedians, and insist on their playing an

Atellane[15]. The golden and cultured classes preferred the pantomimic

dance. This arose out of the ruins of the literary drama. On the Roman

stage grew up a custom, unknown in Greece, by which the lyric portions

of the text (_cantica_) were entrusted to a singer who stood with

the flute-player at the side of the stage, while the actor confined

himself to dancing in silence with appropriate dumb show. The dialogue

(_diverbia_) continued to be spoken by the actors. The next step was

to drop the _diverbia_ altogether; and thus came the _pantomimus_ who

undertook to indicate the whole development of a plot in a series

of dramatic dances, during the course of which he often represented

several distinct _rôles_. Instead of the single flute-player and

singer a full choir now supplied the musical accompaniment, and

great poets--Lucan and Statius among the number--did not disdain to

provide texts for the _fabulae salticae_. Many of the _pantomimi_

attained to an extreme refinement in their degenerate and sensuous

art. They were, as Lucian said, χειρόσοφοι, erudite of gesture[16].

Their subjects were, for the most part, mythological and erotic, not

to say lascivious, in character[17]. Pylades the Cilician, who, with

his great rival Bathyllus the Alexandrian, brought the dance to its

first perfection under Augustus, favoured satyric themes; but this

mode does not appear to have endured. Practically the dancers were the

tragedians, and the mimes were the comedians, of the Empire. The old

Etruscan name for an actor, _histrio_, came to be almost synonymous

with _pantomimus_[18]. Rome, which could lash itself into a fury over

the contests between the Whites and Reds or the Blues and Greens in the

circus, was not slow to take sides upon the respective merits of its

scenic entertainers. The _histrionalis favor_ led again and again to

brawls which set the rulers of the city wondering whether after all the

_pantomimi_ were worth while. Augustus had found it to his advantage

that the spirit of partisanship should attach itself to a Pylades or

a Bathyllus rather than to more illustrious antagonists[19]. But the

personal instincts of Tiberius were not so genial as those of Augustus.

Early in his principate he attempted to restrain the undignified court

paid by senators and knights to popular dancers, and when this measure

failed, he expelled the _histriones_ from Italy[20]. The example

was followed by more than one of his successors, but Rome clamoured

fiercely for its toys, and the period of exile was never a long one[21].

Both _mimi_ and _pantomimi_ had their vogue in private, at the

banquets and weddings of the great, as well as in public. The class

of _scenici_ further included a heterogeneous variety of lesser

performers. There were the rhapsodes who sung the tragic _cantica_,

torn from their context, upon the stage. There were musicians and

dancers of every order and from every land[22]. There were jugglers

(_praestigiatores_, _acetabuli_), rope-walkers (_funambuli_),

stilt-walkers (_grallatores_), tumblers (_cernui_, _petauristae_,

_petaminarii_), buffoons (_sanniones_, _scurrae_), beast-tamers and

strong men. The pick of them did their ‘turns’ in the theatre or the

amphitheatre; the more humble were content with modest audiences

at street corners or in the vestibule of the circus. From Rome the

entertainers of the imperial race naturally found their way into the

theatres of the provinces. Tragedy and comedy no doubt held their own

longer in Greece, but the stage of Constantinople under Justinian does

not seem to have differed notably from the stage of Rome under Nero.

Marseilles alone distinguished itself by the honourable austerity which

forbade the _mimi_ its gates[23].

It must not be supposed that the profession of the _scenici_ ever

became an honourable one in the eyes of the Roman law. They were for

the most part slaves or at best freedmen. They were deliberately

branded with _infamia_ or incapacity for civil rights. This _infamia_

was of two kinds, depending respectively upon the action of the censors

as guardians of public dignity and that of the praetors as presidents

in the law courts. The censors habitually excluded actors from the _ius

suffragii_ and the _ius honorum_, the rights of voting and of holding

senatorial or equestrian rank; the praetors refused to allow them, if

men, to appear as attorneys, if women, to appoint attorneys, in civil

suits[24]. The legislation of Julius Caesar and of Augustus added some

statutory disabilities. The _lex Iulia municipalis_ forbade actors to

hold municipal _honores_[25]: the _lex Iulia de adulteriis_ set the

example of denying them the right to bring criminal actions[26]; the

_lex Iulia et Papia Poppaea_ limited their privileges when freed, and

in particular forbade senators or the sons of senators to take to wife

women who had been, or whose parents had been, on the stage[27]. On the

other hand Augustus confined the _ius virgarum_, which the praetors

had formerly had over _scenici_, to the actual place and time of

performances[28]; and so far as the censorian _infamia_ was concerned,

the whole tendency of the late Republic and early Empire was to relax

its application to actors. It came to be possible for senators and

knights to appear on the stage without losing caste. It was a grievous

insult when Julius Caesar compelled the mimograph Laberius to appear

in one of his own pieces. But after all Caesar restored Laberius to

his rank of _eques_, a dignity which at a still earlier date Sulla had

bestowed on Roscius[29]. Later the restriction broke down altogether,

although not without an occasional reforming effort to restore it[30].

Nero himself was not ashamed to take the boards as a singer of

_cantica_[31]. And even an _infamis_, if he were the boon companion

of a prince, might be appointed to a post directly depending on the

imperial dignity. Thus Caracalla sent a _pantomimus_ to hold a military

command on the frontier, and Heliogabalus made another _praefectus

urbi_ in Rome itself[32]. Under Constantine a reaction set in, and

a new decree formally excluded _scenici_ from all _dignitates_[33].

The severe class legislation received only reluctant and piecemeal

modification, and the praetorian _infamia_ outlived the Empire itself,

and left its mark upon Carolingian jurisprudence[34].

The relaxation of the old Roman austerity implied in the popularity of

the _mimi_ and _histriones_ did not pass uncensured by even the pagan

moralists of the Empire. The stage has a share in the denunciations of

Tacitus and Juvenal, both of whom lament that princes and patricians

should condescend to practise arts once relegated to the _infames_.

Martial’s hypocrite rails at the times and the theatres. Three

centuries later the soldierly Ammianus Marcellinus finds in the

gyrations of the dancing-girls, three thousand of whom were allowed to

remain in Rome when it was starving, a blot upon the fame of the state;

and Macrobius contrasts the sober evenings of Praetextatus and his

friends with revels dependent for their mirth on the song and wanton

motions of the _psaltria_ or the jests of _sabulo_ and _planipes_[35].

Policy compelled the emperors to encourage _spectacula_, but even they

were not always blind to the ethical questions involved. Tiberius

based his expulsion of the _histriones_, at least in part, on moral

grounds. Marcus Aurelius, with a philosophic regret that the high

lessons of comedy had sunk to mere mimic dexterity, sat publicly in

his box and averted his eyes to a state-paper or a book[36]. Julian,

weaned by his tutor Mardonius from a boyish love of the stage, issued

strict injunctions to the priests of the Sun to avoid a theatre

which he despaired of reforming[37]. Christian teachers, unconcerned

with the interests of a dynasty, and claiming to represent a higher

morality than that either of Marcus Aurelius or of Julian, naturally

took even stronger ground. Moreover, they had their special reasons

for hostility to the stage. That the actors should mock at the pagan

religion, with whose _ludi_ their own performances were intimately

connected, made a good dialectical point. But the connexion itself was

unpardonable, and still more so the part taken by the mimes during

the war of creeds, in parodying and holding up to ridicule the most

sacred symbols and mysteries of the church. This feeling is reflected

in the legends of St. Genesius, St. Pelagia and other holy folk, who

are represented as turning from the scenic profession to embrace

Christianity, the conversion in some cases taking place on the very

boards of the theatre itself[38]. So far as the direct attack upon

the stage is concerned, the key-note of patristic eloquence is struck

in the characteristic and uncompromising treatise _De Spectaculis_

of Tertullian. Here theatre, circus, and amphitheatre are joined in

a threefold condemnation. Tertullian holds that the Christian has

explicitly forsworn _spectacula_, when he renounced the devil and all

his works and vanities at baptism. What are these but idolatry, and

where is idolatry, if not in the _spectacula_, which not only minister

to lust, but take place at the festivals and in the holy places of

Venus and Bacchus? The story is told of the demon who entered a woman

in the theatre and excused himself at exorcism, because he had found

her in his own demesne. A fervid exhortation follows. To worldly

pleasures Christians have no claim. If they need _spectacula_ they can

find them in the exercises of their Church. Here are nobler poetry,

sweeter voices, maxims more sage, melodies more dulcet, than any comedy

can boast, and withal, here is truth instead of fiction. Moreover, for

Christians is reserved the last great _spectaculum_ of all. ‘Then,’

says Tertullian, ‘will be the time to listen to the tragedians, whose

lamentations will be more poignant for their proper pain. Then will

the comedians turn and twist, rendered nimbler than ever by the sting

of the fire that is not quenched[39].’ With Tertullian asceticism

is always a passion, but the vivid African rhetoric is no unfair

sample of a _catena_ of outspoken comment which extends across the

third century from Tatian to Lactantius[40]. The judgement of the

Fathers finds more cautious expression in the disciplinary regulations

of the Church. An early formal condemnation of actors is included

in the so-called _Canons_ of Hippolytus[41], and the relations of

converts to the stage were discussed during the fourth century by

the councils of Elvira (306) and of Arles (314) and by the third and

fourth councils of Carthage (397-398)[42]. It was hardly possible

for practical legislators to take the extreme step of forbidding

Christian laymen to enter the theatre at all. No doubt that would be

the counsel of perfection, but in dealing with a deep-seated popular

instinct something of a compromise was necessary[43]. An absolute

prohibition was only established for the clergy: so far as the laity

were concerned, it was limited to Sundays and ecclesiastical festivals,

and on those days it was enforced by a threat of excommunication[44].

No Christian, however, might be a _scenicus_ or a _scenica_, or might

marry one; and if a member of the unhallowed profession sought to be

baptized, the preliminary of abandoning his calling was essential[45].

It is curious to notice that a certain sympathy with the stage seems

to have been characteristic of one of the great heresiarchs. This was

none other than Arius, who is said to have had designs of setting up

a Christian theatre in rivalry to those of paganism, and his strange

work, the _Thaleia_, may perhaps have been intended to further the

scheme. At any rate an orthodox controversialist takes occasion to

brand his Arian opponents and their works as ‘thymelic’ or ‘stagy’[46].

But it would probably be dangerous to lay undue stress upon what, after

all, is as likely as not to be merely a dialectical metaphor.

After the edict of Milan (313), and still more after the end of the

pagan reaction with the death of Julian (363), Christian influences

began to make themselves felt in the civil legislation of the Empire.

But if the councils themselves were chary of utterly forbidding the

theatre, a stronger line was not likely to be taken in rescripts

from Constantinople or Ravenna. The emperors were, indeed, in a

difficult position. They stood between bishops pleading for decency

and humanity and populaces now traditionally entitled to their _panem

et spectacula_. The theatrical legislation preserved in the _Code_ of

Theodosius is not without traces of this embarrassment[47]. It is

rather an interesting study. The views of the Church were met upon two

points. One series of rescripts forbade performances on Sundays or

during the more sacred periods of the Christian calendar[48]: another

relaxed in favour of Christians the strict caste laws which sternly

forbade actresses or their daughters to quit the unhappy profession in

which they were born[49]. Moreover, certain sumptuary regulations were

passed, which must have proved a severe restriction on the popularity

as well as the liberty of actors. They were forbidden to wear gold

or rich fabrics, or to ape the dress of nuns. They must avoid the

company of Christian women and boys. They must not come into the public

places or walk the streets attended by slaves with folding chairs[50].

Some of the rescripts contain phrases pointed with the bitterest

contempt and detestation of their victims[51]. Theodosius will not

have the portraits of _scenici_ polluting the neighbourhood of his own

_imagines_[52]. It is made very clear that the old court favourites

are now to be merely tolerated. But they _are_ to be tolerated. The

idea of suppressing them is never entertained. On the contrary the

provision of _spectacula_ and of performers for them remains one of

the preoccupations of the government[53]. The praetor is expected

to be lavish on this item of his budget[54], and special municipal

officers, the _tribuni voluptatum_, are appointed to superintend the

arrangements[55]. Private individuals and rival cities must not deport

actors, or withdraw them from the public service[56]. The bonds of

caste, except for the few freed by their faith, are drawn as tight as

ever[57], and when pagan worship ceases the shrines are preserved from

demolition for the sake of the theatres built therein[58].

The love of even professing Christians for _spectacula_ proved hard to

combat. There are no documents which throw more light on the society of

the Eastern Empire at the close of the fourth century than the works

of St. Chrysostom; and to St. Chrysostom, both as a priest at Antioch

before 397 and as patriarch of Constantinople after that year, the

stage is as present a danger as it was to Tertullian two centuries

earlier[59]. A sermon preached on Easter-day, 399, is good evidence of

this. St. Chrysostom had been attacking the stage for a whole year, and

his exhortations had just come to nought. Early in Holy Week there was

a great storm, and the people joined the rogatory processions. But it

was a week of _ludi_. On Good Friday the circus, and on Holy Saturday

the theatre, were thronged and the churches were empty. The Easter

sermon was an impassioned harangue, in which the preacher dwelt once

more on the inevitable corruption bound up with things theatrical,

and ended with a threat to enforce the sentence of excommunication,

prescribed only a few months before by the council of Carthage, upon

whoever should again venture to defy the Church’s law in like fashion

on Sunday or holy day[60]. Perhaps one may trace the controversy which

St. Chrysostom’s deliverance must have awakened, on the one hand in the

rescript of the autumn of 399 pointedly laying down that the _ludicrae

artes_ must be maintained, on the other in the prohibition of the

following year against performances in Holy week, and similar solemn

tides.

More than a century after the exile and death of St. Chrysostom the

theatre was still receiving state recognition at Constantinople. A

regulation of Justinian as to the _ludi_ to be given by newly elected

consuls specified a performance on the stage ominously designated

as the ‘Harlots’[61]. By this date the _status_ of the theatrical

profession had at last undergone further and noticeable modification.

The ancient Roman prohibition against the marriage of men of noble

birth with _scenicae_ or other _infames_ or the daughters of such,

had been re-enacted under Constantine. A partial repeal in 454 had

not extended to the _scenicae_[62]. During the first half of the

sixth century, however, a series of decrees removed their disability

on condition of their quitting the stage, and further made it an

offence to compel slaves or freed women to perform against their

will[63]. In these humane relaxations of the rigid laws of theatrical

caste has often been traced the hand of the empress Theodora, who,

according to the contemporary gossip of Procopius, was herself, before

her conversion, one of the most shameless of mimes. But it must be

noted that the most important of the decrees in question preceded the

accession of Justinian, although it may possibly have been intended

to facilitate his own marriage[64]. The history of the stage in the

East cannot be traced much further with any certainty. The canons of

the Quinisextine council, which met in the Trullan chamber to codify

ecclesiastical discipline in 692, appear to contemplate the possibility

of performances still being given[65]. A modern Greek scholar, M.

Sathas, has made an ingenious attempt to establish the existence of a

Byzantine theatrical tradition right through the Middle Ages; but Dr.

Krumbacher, the most learned historian of Byzantine literature, is

against him, and holds that, so far as our knowledge goes, the theatre

must be considered to have perished during the stress of the Saracen

invasions which, in the seventh and eighth centuries, devastated the

East[66].

The ending of the theatre in the West was in very similar fashion.

Chrysostom’s great Latin contemporaries, Augustine and Jerome, are at

one with him and with each other in their condemnation of the evils of

the public stage as they knew it[67]. Their divergent attitude on a

minor point may perhaps be explained by a difference of temperament.

The fifth century saw a marked revival of literary interests from

which even dignitaries of the Church did not hold themselves wholly

aloof. Ausonius urged his grandson to the study of Menander. Sidonius,

a bishop and no undevout one, read both Menander and Terence with

his son[68]. With this movement Augustine had some sympathy. In a

well-known passage of the _Confessions_ he records the powerful

influence exercised by tragedy, and particularly erotic tragedy, over

his tempestuous youth[69]. And in the _City of God_ he draws a careful

distinction between the higher and the lower forms of drama, and if he

does not approve, at least does not condemn, the use of tragedies and

comedies in a humane education[70]. Jerome, on the other hand, although

himself like Augustine a good scholar, takes a more ascetic line, and

a letter of his protesting against the reading of comedies by priests

ultimately came to be quoted as an authority in Roman canon law[71].

The references to the stage in the works of two somewhat younger

ecclesiastical writers are of exceptional interest. Orosius was a

pupil of both Jerome and Augustine; and Orosius, endeavouring a few

years after the sack of Rome by the Goths to prove that that startling

disaster was not due to Christianity, lays great and indeed exaggerated

importance on the share of the theatre in promoting the decay of

the Empire[72]. About the middle of the fifth century the same note

is struck by Salvian in his remarkable treatise _De Gubernatione

Dei_[73]. The sixth book of his work is almost entirely devoted to

the _spectacula_. Like Tertullian, Salvian insists on the definite

renunciation of _spectacula_ by Christians in their baptismal vow[74].

Like Orosius, he traces to the weakening of moral fibre by these

accursed amusements the failure of the West to resist the barbarians.

_Moritur et ridet_ is his epigram on the Roman world. The citizens

of Tréves, three times destroyed, still called upon their rulers for

races and a theatre. With the Vandals at the very gates of Cirta and of

Carthage, _ecclesia Carthaginiensis insaniebat in circis, luxuriebat

in theatris_[75]. Incidentally Salvian gives some valuable information

as to the survival of the stage in his day. Already in 400 Augustine

had been able to say that the theatres were falling on every side[76].

Salvian, fifty years later, confirms the testimony, but he adds the

reason. It was not because Christians had learnt to be faithful

to their vows and to the teachings of the Church; but because the

barbarians, who despised _spectacula_, and therein set a good example

to degenerate Romans[77], had sacked half the cities, while in the rest

the impoverished citizens could no longer pay the bills. He adds that

at Rome a circus was still open and a theatre at Ravenna, and that

these were thronged with delighted travellers from all parts of the

Empire[78]. There must, however, have been a theatre at Rome as well,

for Sidonius found it there when he visited the city, twelve years

after it had been sacked for the second time, in 467. He was appointed

prefect of the city, and in one of his letters expresses a fear lest,

if the corn-supply fail, the thunders of the theatre may burst upon

his head[79]. In a poem written a few years earlier he describes the

_spectacula theatri_ of mimes, pantomimes, and acrobats as still

flourishing at Narbonne[80].

The next and the latest records of the stage in the West date from the

earlier part of the sixth century, when the Ostrogoths held sway in

Italy. They are to be found in the _Variae_ of Cassiodorus, who held

important official posts under the new lords of Rome, and they go to

confirm the inference which the complaint of Salvian already suggests

that a greater menace to the continuance of the theatre lay in the

taste of the barbarians than even in the ethics of Christianity.

The Ostrogoths had long dwelt within the frontiers of the Empire,

and Theodoric, ruling as ‘King of the Goths and Romans in Italy,’

over a mixed multitude of Italians and Italianate Germans, found it

necessary to continue the _spectacula_, which in his heart he despised.

There are many indications of this in the state-papers preserved in

the _Variae_, which may doubtless be taken to express the policy and

temper of the masters of Cassiodorus in the rhetorical trappings of the

secretary himself. The _scenici_ are rarely mentioned without a sneer,

but their performances and those of the _aurigae_, or circus-drivers,

who have now come to be included under the all-embracing designation

of _histriones_, are carefully regulated[81]. The gladiators have,

indeed, at last disappeared, two centuries after Constantine had had

the grace to suppress them in the East[82]. There is a letter from

Theodoric to an architect, requiring him to repair the theatre of

Pompey, and digressing into an historical sketch, imperfectly erudite,

of the history of the drama, its invention by the Greeks, and its

degradation by the Romans[83]. A number of documents deal with the

choice of a _pantomimus_ to represent the _prasini_ or ‘Greens,’ and

show that the rivalry of the theatre-factions remained as fierce as

it had been in the days of Bathyllus and Pylades. Helladius is given

the preference over Thorodon, and a special proclamation exhorts the

people to keep the peace[84]. Still more interesting is the _formula_,

preserved by Cassiodorus, which was used in the appointment of the

_tribunus voluptatum_, an official whom we have already come across

in the rescripts of the emperors of the fourth century. This is so

characteristic, in its contemptuous references to the nature of the

functions which it confers, of the whole German attitude in the

matter of _spectacula_, that it seems worth while to print it in an

appendix[85]. The passages hitherto quoted from the _Variae_ all

seem to belong to the period between 507 and 511, when Cassiodorus

was _quaestor_ and secretary to Theodoric at Rome. A single letter

written about 533 in the reign of Athalaric shows that the populace was

still looking to its Gothic rulers for _spectacula_, and still being

gratified[86]. Beyond this the Roman theatre has not been traced. The

Goths passed in 553, and Italy was reabsorbed in the Empire. In 568

came the Lombards, raw Germans who had been but little under southern

influence, and were far less ready than their predecessors to adopt

Roman manners. Rome and Ravenna alone remained as outposts of the older

civilization, the latter under an exarch appointed from Constantinople,

the former under its bishop. At Ravenna the theatre may conceivably

have endured; at Rome, the Rome of Gregory the Great, it assuredly did

not. An alleged mention of a theatre at Barcelona in Spain during the

seventh century resolves itself into either a survival of pagan ritual

or a bull-fight[87]. Isidore of Seville has his learned chapters on

the stage, but they are written in the imperfect tense, as of what is

past and gone[88]. The bishops and the barbarians had triumphed.

CHAPTER II

MIMUS AND SCÔP

[_Bibliographical Note_ (for chs. ii-iv).--By far the best

account of minstrelsy is the section on _Les Propagateurs des

Chansons de Gestes_ in vol. ii of L. Gautier, _Les Épopées

françaises_ (2nd ed. 1892), bk. ii, chs. xvii-xxi. It may be

supplemented by the chapter devoted to the subject in J. Bédier,

_Les Fabliaux_ (2nd ed. 1895), and by the dissertation of E.

Freymond, _Jongleurs und Menestrals_ (Halle, 1883). I have not

seen A. Olrik, _Middelalderens vandrende Spillemænd_ (_Opuscula

Philologica_, Copenhagen, 1887). Some German facts are added

by F. Vogt, _Leben und Dichten der deutschen Spielleute im

Mittelalter_ (1876), and A. Schultz, _Das höfische Leben zur

Zeit der Minnesinger_ (2nd ed. 1889), i. 565, who gives further

references. The English books are not good, and probably the most

reliable account of English minstrelsy is that in the following

pages; but materials may be found in J. Strutt, _Sports and

Pastimes of the People of England_ (1801, ed. W. Hone, 1830);

T. Percy, _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (ed. H. B.

Wheatley, 1876, ed. Schroer, 1889); J. Ritson, _Ancient English

Metrical Romances_ (1802), _Ancient Songs and Ballads_ (1829);

W. Chappell, _Old English Popular Music_ (ed. H. E. Wooldridge,

1893); F. J. Crowest, _The Story of British Music, from the

Earliest Times to the Tudor Period_ (1896); J. J. Jusserand,

_English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_ (trans. L. T.

Smith, 4th ed. 1892). The early English data are discussed by

R. Merbot, _Aesthetische Studien zur angelsächsischen Poesie_

(1883), and F. M. Padelford, _Old English Musical Terms_ (1899).

F. B. Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_ (1901), should be

consulted on the relations of minstrelsy to communal poetry;

and other special points are dealt with by O. Hubatsch, _Die

lateinischen Vagantenlieder des Mittelalters_ (1870); G. Maugras,

_Les Comédiens hors la Loi_ (1887), and H. Lavoix, _La Musique

au Siècle de Saint-Louis_ (in G. Raynaud, _Recueil de Motets

français_, 1883, vol. ii). To the above list of authorities

should of course be added the histories of literature and of the

drama enumerated in the _General Bibliographical Note_.]

The fall of the theatres by no means implied the complete extinction of

the _scenici_. They had outlived tragedy and comedy: they were destined

to outlive the stage itself. Private performances, especially of

_pantomimi_ and other dancers, had enjoyed great popularity under the

Empire, and had become an invariable adjunct of all banquets and other

festivities. At such revels, as at the decadence of the theatre and of

public morals generally, the graver pagans had looked askance[89]:

the Church naturally included them in its universal condemnation of

_spectacula_. Chrysostom in the East[90], Jerome in the West[91],

are hostile to them, and a canon of the fourth-century council of

Laodicea, requiring the clergy who might be present at weddings and

similar rejoicings to rise and leave the room before the actors were

introduced, was adopted by council after council and took its place as

part of the ecclesiastical law[92]. The permanence of the regulation

proves the strength of the habit, which indeed the Church might

ban, but was not able to subdue, and which seems to have commended

itself, far more than the theatre, to Teutonic manners. Such irregular

performances proved a refuge for the dispossessed _scenici_. Driven

from their theatres, they had still a vogue, not only at banquets,

but at popular merry-makings or wherever in street or country they

could gather together the remnant of their old audiences. Adversity

and change of masters modified many of their characteristics. The

_pantomimi_, in particular, fell upon evil times. Their subtle art had

had its origin in an exquisite if corrupt taste, and adapted itself

with difficulty to the ruder conditions of the new civilizations[93].

The _mimi_ had always appealed to a common and gross humanity. But even

they must now rub shoulders and contend for _denarii_ with jugglers and

with rope-dancers, with out-at-elbows gladiators and beast-tamers. More

than ever they learnt to turn their hand to anything that might amuse;

learnt to tumble, for instance; learnt to tell the long stories which

the Teutons loved. Nevertheless, in essentials they remained the same;

still jesters and buffoons, still irrepressible, still obscene. In

little companies of two or three, they padded the hoof along the roads,

travelling from gathering to gathering, making their own welcome in

castle or tavern, or, if need were, sleeping in some grange or beneath

a wayside hedge in the white moonlight. They were, in fact, absorbed

into that vast body of nomad entertainers on whom so much of the gaiety

of the Middle Ages depended. They became _ioculatores_, _jongleurs_,

minstrels[94].

The features of the minstrels as we trace them obscurely from the sixth

to the eleventh century, and then more clearly from the eleventh to

the sixteenth, are very largely the features of the Roman _mimi_ as

they go under, whelmed in the flood which bore away Latin civilization.

But to regard them as nothing else than _mimi_ would be a serious

mistake. On another side they have a very different and a far more

reputable ancestry. Like other factors in mediaeval society, they

represent a merging of Latin and the Teutonic elements. They inherit

the tradition of the _mimus_: they inherit also the tradition of the

German _scôp_[95]. The earliest Teutonic poetry, so far as can be

gathered, knew no _scôp_. As will be shown in a later chapter, it was

communal in character, closely bound up with the festal dance, or

with the rhythmic movements of labour. It was genuine folk-song, the

utterance of no select caste of singers, but of whoever in the ring of

worshippers or workers had the impulse and the gift to link the common

movements to articulate words. At the festivals such a spokesman would

be he who, for whatever reason, took the lead in the ceremonial rites,

the _vates_, germ at once of priest and bard. The subject-matter of

communal song was naturally determined by the interests ruling on the

occasions when it was made. That of daily life would turn largely on

the activities of labour itself: that of the high days on the emotions

of religion, feasting, and love which were evoked by the primitive

revels of a pastoral or agricultural folk.

Presently the movements of the populations of Europe brought the

Germanic tribes, after separating from their Scandinavian kinsmen, into

contact with Kelts, with Huns, with the Roman Empire, and, in the

inevitable recoil, with each other. Then for the first time war assumed

a prerogative place in their life. To war, the old habits and the old

poetry adapted themselves. Tiwaz, once primarily the god of beneficent

heaven, became the god of battles. The chant of prayer before the

onset, the chant of triumph and thanksgiving after the victory, made

themselves heard[96]. From these were disengaged, as a distinct

species of poetry, songs in praise of the deeds and deaths of great

captains and popular heroes. Tacitus tells us that poetry served the

Germans of his day for both chronology and history[97]. Jordanis, four

centuries later, has a similar account to give of the Ostrogoths[98].

Arminius, the vanquisher of a Roman army, became the subject of heroic

songs[99]: Athalaric has no higher word of praise for Gensimund

than _cantabilis_[100]. The glories of Alboin the Lombard[101], of

Charlemagne himself[102], found celebration in verse, and Charlemagne

was at the pains to collect and record the still earlier _cantilenae_

which were the chronicle of his race. Such historical _cantilenae_,

mingled with more primitive ones of mythological import, form the basis

of the great legendary epics[103]. But the process of epic-making is

one of self-conscious and deliberate art, and implies a considerable

advance from primitive modes of literary composition. No doubt the

earliest heroic _cantilenae_ were still communal in character. They

were _rondes_ footed and sung at festivals by bands of young men and

maidens. Nor was such folk-song quick to disappear. Still in the

eleventh century the deeds of St. William of Orange resounded amongst

the _chori iuvenum_[104]; and spinning-room and village green were

destined to hear similar strains for many centuries more[105]. But

long before this the _cantilenae_ had entered upon another and more

productive course of development: they were in the mouths, not only of

the folk, but also of a body of professional singers, the fashioners of

the epic that was to be[106]. Like heroic song itself, the professional

singers owed their origin to war, and to the prominence of the

individual, the hero, which war entailed. Around the person of a great

leader gathered his individual following or _comitatus_, bound to him

by ties of mutual loyalty, by interchange of service and reward[107].

Amongst the _comitatus_ room was found for one who was no spearman,

but who, none the less honoured for that, became the poet of the group

and took over from the less gifted _chorus_ the duty of celebrating

the praises of the chieftain. These he sung to the accompaniment, no

longer of flying feet, but of the harp, struck when the meal was over

in tent or hall. Such a harper is the characteristically Germanic type

of professional entertainer. He has his affinities with the Demodokos

of a Homeric king. Rich in dignities and guerdons, sitting at the foot

of the leader, consorting on equal terms with the warriors, he differs

wholly from the _scenicus infamis_, who was the plaything and the scorn

of Rome. Precisely when the shifting of social conditions brought him

into being it is hard to say. Tacitus does not mention him, which is

no proof, but a presumption, that amongst the tribes on the frontier

he had not yet made his appearance in the first century of the Empire.

By the fifth century he was thoroughly established, and the earliest

records point to his existence at least as early as the fourth. These

are not to be found in Latin sources, but in those early English

poems which, although probably written in their extant forms after

the invasion of these islands, seem to date back in substance to the

age when the Angles still dwelt in a continental home around the base

of the Jutish peninsula. The English remained to a comparatively late

stage of their history remote from Roman influence, and it is in their

literature that both the original development of the Teutonic _scôp_

and his subsequent contamination by the Roman _mimus_ can most easily

be studied.

The earliest of all English poems is almost certainly _Widsith_, the

‘far-traveller.’ This has been edited and interpolated in Christian

England, but the kernel of it is heathen and continental[108]. It is

an autobiographic sketch of the life of Widsith, who was himself an

actual or ideal _scôp_, or rather _gleómon_, for the precise term

_scôp_ is not used in the poem. Widsith was of the Myrgings, a small

folk who dwelt hard by the Angles. In his youth he went with Ealhhild,

the ‘weaver of peace,’ on a mission to Eormanric the Ostrogoth.

Eormanric is the Hermanric of legend, and his death in 375 A. D. gives

an approximate date to the events narrated. Then Widsith became a

wanderer upon the face of the earth, one who could ‘sing and say a

story’ in the ‘mead-hall.’ He describes the nations and rulers he has

known. Eormanric gave him a collar of beaten gold, and Guthhere the

Burgundian a ring. He has been with Caesar, lord of jocund cities, and

has seen Franks and Lombards, Finns and Huns, Picts and Scots, Hebrews,

Indians, Egyptians, Medes and Persians. At the last he has returned

to the land of the Myrgings, and with his fellow Scilling has sung

loud to the harp the praises of his lord Eadgils and of Ealhhild the

daughter of Eadwine. Eadgils has given him land, the inheritance of his

fathers. The poem concludes with an eulogy of the life of gleemen. They

wander through realm upon realm, voice their needs, and have but to

give thanks. In every land they find a lord to whom songs are dear, and

whose bounty is open to the exalters of his name. Of less undeniable

antiquity than _Widsith_ are the lines known as the _Complaint of

Deor_. These touch the seamy side of the singer’s life. Deor has

been the _scôp_ of the Heodenings many winters through. But one more

skilled, Heorrenda by name--the Horant of the Gudrun saga--has outdone

him in song, and has been granted the land-right that once was Deor’s.

He finds his consolation in the woes of the heroes of old. ‘They have

endured: may not I endure[109]?’ The outline drawn in _Widsith_ and in

_Deor_ is completed by various passages in the epic of _Beowulf_, which

may be taken as representing the social conditions of the sixth or

early seventh century. In Heorot, the hall of Hrothgar, there was sound

of harp, the gleewood. Sweetly sang the _scôp_ after the mead-bench.

The lay was sung, the gleeman’s _gyd_ told. Hrothgar’s thanes, even

Hrothgar himself, took their turns to unfold the wondrous tale. On the

other hand, when a folk is in sorrow, no harp is heard, the glee-beam

is silent in the halls[110]. In these three poems, then, is fully

limned the singer of Teutonic heathenism. He is a man of repute, the

equal of thanes. He holds land, even the land of his fathers. He

receives gifts of gold from princes for the praise he does them. As

yet no distinction appears between _scôp_ and _gleómon_. Widsith is at

one time the resident singer of a court; at another, as the mood takes

him, a wanderer to the ends of the earth. And though the _scôp_ leads

the song, the warriors and the king himself do not disdain to take

part in it. This is noteworthy, because it gives the real measure of

the difference between the Teutonic and the Roman entertainer. For a

Nero to perform amongst the _scenici_ was to descend: for a Hrothgar to

touch the harp was a customary and an honourable act.

The singing did not cease when the English came to these islands. The

long struggle with the Britons which succeeded the invasions assuredly

gave rise to many new lays, both in Northumbria and Wessex. ‘England,’

says Mr. Stopford Brooke, ‘was conquered to the music of verse, and

settled to the sound of the harp.’ But though Alfred and Dunstan knew

such songs, they are nearly all lost, or only dimly discerned as the

basis of chronicles. At the end of the sixth century, just as the

conquest was completed, came Christianity. The natural development of

English poetry was to some extent deflected. A religious literature

grew up at the hands of priests. Eadhelm, who, anticipating a notion

of St. Francis of Assisi, used to stand on a bridge as if he were a

gleeman, and waylay the folk as they hurried back from mass, himself

wrote pious songs. One of these, a _carmen triviale_, was still sung in

the twelfth century[111]. This was in Wessex. In Northumbria, always

the most literary district of early England, the lay brother Cædmon

founded a school of divine poetry. But even amongst the disciples

of Cædmon, some, such as the author of the very martial _Judith_,

seem to have designed their work for the mead-hall as well as the

monastery[112]. And the regular _scôp_ by no means vanished. The

_Wanderer_, a semi-heathen elegiac poem of the early eighth century,

seems to be the lament of a _scôp_ driven from his haunts, not by

Christianity, but by the tumults of the day[113]. The great poet of

the next generation, Cynewulf, himself took treasure of appled gold

in the mead-hall. A riddle on ‘the wandering singer’ is ascribed to

him[114], and various poems of his school on the fates or the crafts of

man bear witness to the continued existence of the class[115]. With the

eighth century, except for the songs of war quoted or paraphrased in

the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, the extant Early English poetry reaches a

somewhat inexplicable end. But history comes to the rescue, and enables

us still to trace the _scôp_. It is in the guise of a harp-player that

Alfred is reported to have fooled the Danes, and Anlaf in his turn to

have fooled the Saxons[116]: and mythical as these stories may be, they

would not have even been plausible, had not the presence of such folk

by the camp-fire been a natural and common event.

Certainly the _scôp_ survived heathenism, and many Christian bishops

and pious laymen, such as Alfred[117], were not ashamed of their

sympathy with secular song. Nevertheless, the entertainers of the

English folk did not find favour in the eyes of the Church as a

whole. The stricter ecclesiastics especially attacked the practice

of harbouring them in religious houses. Decrees condemning this were

made by the council on English affairs which sat at Rome in 679[118],

and by the council of Clovesho in 747[119]. Bede, writing at about

the latter date on the condition of church affairs in Northumbria

complains of those who make mirth in the dwellings of bishops[120];

and the complaint is curiously illustrated by a letter of Gutbercht,

abbot of Newcastle, to an episcopal friend on the continent, in which

he asks him for a _citharista_ competent to play upon the _cithara_

or _rotta_ which he already possesses[121]. At the end of the eighth

century, Alcuin wrote a letter to Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne,

warning him against the snares of _citharistae_ and _histriones_[122]:

and some two hundred years later, when Edgar and Dunstan[123] were

setting themselves to reform the religious communities of the land, the

favour shown to such ribald folk was one of the abuses which called

for correction[124]. This hostile attitude of the rulers of the Church

is not quite explained by anything in the poetry of the _scôpas_, so

far as it is left to us. This had very readily exchanged its pagan

for a Christian colouring: it cannot be fairly accused of immorality

or even coarseness, and the Christian sentiment of the time is not

likely to have been much offended by the prevailing theme of battle and

deeds of blood. The probable explanation is a double one. There is the

ascetic tendency to regard even harmless forms of secular amusement

as barely compatible with the religious life. And there is the fact,

which the language of the prohibitions themselves makes plain, that a

degeneration of the old Teutonic gleemen had set in. To singing and

harping were now added novel and far less desirable arts. Certainly the

prohibitions make no exception for _poetae_ and _musici_; but the full

strength of their condemnation seems to be directed against _scurrae_

and their _ioca_, and against the _mimi_ and _histriones_ who danced as

well as sang. These are new figures in English life, and they point to

the fact that the merging of the Teutonic with the Latin entertainer

had begun. To some extent, the Church itself was responsible for

this. The conversion of England opened the remote islands to Latin

civilization in general: and it is not to be wondered at, that the

_mimi_, no less than the priests, flocked into the new fields of

enterprise. If this was the case already in the eighth century, we can

hardly doubt that it was still more so during the next two hundred

years of which the literary records are so scanty. Such a view is

supported by the numerous miniatures of dancers and tumblers, jugglers

and bear-leaders, in both Latin and Early English manuscripts of this

period[125], and by the glosses which translate such terms as _mimus_,

_iocista_, _scurra_, _pantomimus_ by _gligmon_, reserving _scôp_ for

the dignified _poeta_[126]. This distinction I regard as quite a late

one, consequent upon the degeneracy introduced by _mimi_ from south

Europe into the lower ranks of the gleemen. Some writers, indeed, think

that it existed from the beginning, and that the _scôp_ was always the

resident court poet, whereas the _gleómon_ was the wandering singer,

often a borrower rather than a maker of songs, who appealed to the

smaller folk[127]. But the theory is inconsistent with the data of

_Widsith_. The poet there described is sometimes a wanderer, sometimes

stationary. He is evidently at the height of his profession, and has

sung before every crowned head in Europe, but he calls himself a

_gleómon_. Nor does the etymology of the words _scôp_ and _gleómon_

suggest any vital difference of signification[128].

The literary records of the continental Teutons are far scantier

than those of the English. But amongst them also Latin and barbaric

traditions seem to have merged in the _ioculator_. Ancestral deeds

were sung to the harp, and therefore, it may be supposed, by a _scôp_,

and not a _chorus_, before the Ostrogoths in Italy, at the beginning

of the sixth century[129]. In the year 507 Clovis the Frank sent to

Theodoric for a _citharoedus_ trained in the musical science of the

South, and Boethius was commissioned to make the selection[130]. On the

other hand, little as the barbarians loved the theatre, the _mimi_ and

_scurrae_ of the conquered lands seem to have tickled their fancy as

they sat over their wine. At the banquet with which Attila entertained

the imperial ambassadors in 448, the guests were first moved to

martial ardour and to tears by the recital of ancient deeds of prowess,

and then stirred to laughter by the antics of a Scythian and a Moorish

buffoon[131]. Attila was a Hun and no German; but the Vandals who

invaded Africa in 429 are recorded to have taken to the _spectacula_

so extravagantly popular there[132], and Sidonius tells how _mimici

sales_, chastened in view of barbaric conceptions of decency, found a

place in the festivities of another Theodoric, king from 462 to 466 of

the Visigoths in Gaul[133]. Three centuries later, under Charlemagne,

the blending of both types of entertainer under the common designation

of _ioculator_ seems to be complete. And, as in contemporary England,

the animosity of the Church to the _scenici_ is transferred wholesale

to the _ioculatores_, without much formal attempt to discriminate

between the different grades of the profession. Alcuin may perhaps be

taken as representing the position of the more rigid disciplinarians

on this point. His letter to the English bishop, Higbald, does not

stand alone. In several others he warns his pupils against the

dangers lurking in _ludi_ and _spectacula_[134], and he shows himself

particularly exercised by the favour which they found with Angilbert,

the literary and far from strict-lived abbot of St. Richer[135]. The

influence of Alcuin with Charlemagne was considerable, and so far as

ecclesiastical rule went, he had his way. A capitulary (†787) excluded

the Italian clergy from uncanonical sports[136]. In 789 bishops,

abbots, and abbesses were forbidden to keep _ioculatores_[137], and in

802 a decree applying to all in orders required abstinence from idle

and secular amusements[138]. These prohibitions were confirmed in the

last year of Charlemagne’s reign (813) by the council of Tours[139].

But as entertainers of the lay folk, the minstrels rather gained than

lost status at the hands of Charlemagne. Personally he took a distinct

interest in their performances. He treasured up the heroic _cantilenae_

of his race[140], and attempted in vain to inspire the _saevitia_ of

his sons with his own enthusiasm for these[141]. The chroniclers more

than once relate how his policy was shaped or modified by the chance

words of a _ioculator_ or _scurra_[142]. The later tradition of the

_jougleurs_ looked back to him as the great patron of their order, who

had given them all the fair land of Provence in fee[143]: and it is

clear that the songs written at his court form the basis not only of

the _chansons de gestes_, but also, as we found to be the case with the

English war-songs, of many passages in the chronicles themselves[144].

After Charlemagne’s death the minstrels fell for a time on evil days.

Louis the Pious by no means shared his father’s love for them. He

attempted to suppress the _cantilenae_ on which he had been brought up,

and when the _mimi_ jested at court would turn away his head and refuse

to smile[145]. To his reign may perhaps be ascribed a decree contained

in the somewhat dubious collection of Benedictus Levita, forbidding

idle dances, songs and tales in public places and at crossways on

Sundays[146], and another which continued for the benefit of the

minstrels the legal incapacity of the Roman _scenici_, and excluded

_histriones_ and _scurrae_ from all privilege of pleading in courts of

justice[147].

The ill-will of a Louis the Pious could hardly affect the hold which

the minstrels had established on society. For good or for bad, they

were part of the mediaeval order of things. But their popularity had

to maintain itself against an undying ecclesiastical prejudice. They

had succeeded irrevocably to the heritage of hate handed down from

the _scenici infames_. To be present at their performances was a sin

in a clerk, and merely tolerated in a layman. Largesse to them was

declared tantamount to robbery of the poor[148]. It may be fairly said

that until the eleventh century at least the history of minstrelsy

is written in the attacks of ecclesiastical legislators, and in the

exultant notices of monkish chroniclers when this or that monarch

was austere enough to follow the example of Louis the Pious, and

let the men of sin go empty away[149]. Throughout the Middle Ages

proper the same standpoint was officially maintained[150]. The canon

law, as codified by Gratian, treats as applicable to minstrels the

pronouncements of fathers and councils against the _scenici_, and adds

to them others more recent, in which clergy who attend _spectacula_, or

in any way by word or deed play the _ioculator_, are uncompromisingly

condemned[151]. This temper of the Church did not fail to find its

expression in post-Conquest England. The council of Oxford in 1222

adopted for this country the restatement of the traditional rule by the

Lateran council of 1215[152]; and the stricter disciplinary authorities

at least attempted to enforce the decision. Bishop Grosseteste

of Lincoln, for instance, pressed it upon his clergy in or about

1238[153]. The reforming provisions of Oxford in 1259 laid down that,

although minstrels might receive charitable doles in monasteries, their

_spectacula_ must not be given[154]; and a similar prohibition, couched

in very uncomplimentary terms, finds a place in the new statutes drawn

up in 1319 for the cathedral church of Sarum by Roger de Mortival[155].

A few years later the statutes of St. Albans follow suit[156], while

in 1312 a charge of breaking the canons in this respect brought

against the minor clergy of Ripon minster had formed the subject

of an inquiry by Archbishop Greenfield[157]. Such notices might be

multiplied[158]; and the tenor of them is echoed in the treatises of

the more strait-laced amongst monkish writers. John of Salisbury[159],

William Fitz Stephen[160], Robert Mannyng of Brunne[161], are at one in

their disapproval of _ioculatores_. As the fourteenth century draws to

its close, and the Wyclifite spirit gets abroad, the freer critics of

church and state, such as William Langland[162] or the imagined author

of Chaucer’s _Parson’s Tale_[163], take up the same argument. And they

in their turn hand it on to the interminable pamphleteering of the

Calvinistic Puritans[164].

CHAPTER III

THE MINSTREL LIFE

The perpetual _infamia_ of the minstrels is variously reflected in the

literature of their production. Sometimes they take their condemnation

lightly enough, dismissing it with a jest or a touch of bravado. In

_Aucassin et Nicolete_, that marvellous romance of the _viel caitif_,

when the hero is warned that if he takes a mistress he must go to hell,

he replies that, to hell will he go, for thither go all the goodly

things of the world. ‘Thither go the gold and the silver, and the vair

and the grey, and thither too go harpers and minstrels and the kings

of the world. With these will I go, so that I have Nicolete, my most

sweet friend, with me’[165]. At other times they show a wistful sense

of the pathos of their secular lot. They tell little stories in which

heaven proves more merciful than the vice-gerents of heaven upon earth,

and Virgin or saint bestows upon a minstrel the sign of grace which the

priest denies[166]. But often, again, they turn upon their persecutors

and rend them with the merciless satire of the _fabliaux_, wherein it

is the clerk, the theologian, who is eternally called upon to play the

indecent or ridiculous part[167].

Under spiritual disabilities the minstrels may have been, but so far as

substantial popularity amongst all classes went, they had no cause from

the eleventh to the fourteenth century to envy the monks. As a social

and literary force they figure largely both on the continent and in

England. The distinctively Anglo-Saxon types of _scôp_ and _gleómon_ of

course disappear at the Conquest. They do not cease to exist; but they

go under ground, singing their defiant lays of Hereward[168]; and they

pursue a more or less subterranean career until the fourteenth century

brings the English tongue to its own again. But minstrelsy was no less

popular with the invaders than with the invaded. Whether the _skald_

had yet developed amongst the Scandinavian pirates who landed with

Rollo on the coasts of France may perhaps be left undetermined[169]:

for a century and a half had sufficed to turn the Northmen into Norman

French, and with the other elements of the borrowed civilization had

certainly come the _ioculator_. In the very van of William’s army

at Senlac strutted the minstrel Taillefer, and went to his death

exercising the double arts of his hybrid profession, juggling with

his sword, and chanting an heroic lay of Roncesvalles[170]. Twenty

years later, Domesday Book records how Berdic the _ioculator regis_

held three vills and five carucates of land in Gloucestershire, and

how in Hampshire Adelinda, a _ioculatrix_, held a virgate, which

Earl Roger had given her[171]. During the reigns of the Angevin and

Plantagenet kings the minstrels were ubiquitous. They wandered at their

will from castle to castle, and in time from borough to borough, sure

of their ready welcome alike in the village tavern, the guildhall,

and the baron’s keep[172]. They sang and jested in the market-places,

stopping cunningly at a critical moment in the performance, to gather

their harvest of small coin from the bystanders[173]. In the great

castles, while lords and ladies supped or sat around the fire, it was

theirs to while away many a long bookless evening with courtly _geste_

or witty sally. At wedding or betrothal, baptism or knight-dubbing,

treaty or tournament, their presence was indispensable. The greater

festivities saw them literally in their hundreds[174], and rich was

their reward in money and in jewels, in costly garments[175], and in

broad acres. They were licensed vagabonds, with free right of entry

into the presence-chambers of the land[176]. You might know them from

afar by their coats of many colours, gaudier than any knight might

respectably wear[177], by the instruments upon their backs and those

of their servants, and by the shaven faces, close-clipped hair and

flat shoes proper to their profession[178]. This kenspeckle appearance,

together with the privilege of easy access, made the minstrel’s dress

a favourite disguise in ages when disguise was often imperative. The

device attributed by the chroniclers to Alfred and to Anlaf becomes in

the romances one of the commonest of _clichés_[179]. The readiness with

which the minstrels won the popular ear made them a power in the land.

William de Longchamp, the little-loved chancellor of Richard I, found

it worth his while to bring a number of them over from France, that

they might sing his praises abroad in the public places[180]. Nor were

they less in request for satire than for eulogy. The English speaking

minstrels, in particular, were responsible for many songs in derision

of unpopular causes and personalities[181]; and we need not doubt

that ‘the lay that Sir Dinadan made by King Mark, which was the worst

lay that ever harper sang with harp or with any other instruments,’

must have had its precise counterparts in actual life[182]. The Sarum

statutes of 1319 lay especial stress on the flattery and the evil

speaking with which the minstrels rewarded their entertainers[183].

Sometimes, indeed, they over-reached themselves, for Henry I is related

to have put out the eyes of Lucas de Barre, a Norman _jougleur_, or

perhaps rather _trouvère_, who made and sang songs against him[184].

But Lucas de Barre’s rank probably aggravated his offence, and as a

rule the minstrels went scot-free. A wiser churchman here and there

was not slow to perceive how the unexampled hold of minstrelsy on

the popular ear might be turned to the service of religion. Eadhelm,

standing in gleeman’s attire on an English bridge to mingle words of

serious wisdom with his _carmina trivialia_, is one instance[185]. And

in the same spirit St. Francis, himself half a troubadour in youth,

would call his Minorites _ioculatores Domini_, and send them singing

over the world to beg for their fee the repentance and spiritual joy

of their hearers[186]. A popular hymn-writer of the present day is

alleged to have thought it ‘hard that the devil should have all the

good tunes’; but already in the Middle Ages religious words were being

set to secular music, and graced with the secular imagery of youth and

spring[187].

But if the minstrels were on the one hand a force among the people,

on the other they had the ear of kings. The English court to judge

by the payments recorded in the exchequer books, must have been full

of them[188]. The fullest and most curious document on the subject

dates from the reign of Edward I. It is a roll of payments made on the

occasion of a Whitsuntide feast held in London in the year 1306, and a

very large number of the minstrels recorded are mentioned by name[189].

At the head of the list come five minstrels with the high-sounding

title of _le roy_[190], and these get five marks apiece. A number of

others follow, who received sums varying from one mark upwards. Most

of these have French names, and many are said to be in the company of

this or that noble or reverend guest at the feast. Finally, two hundred

marks were distributed in smaller sums amongst the inferior minstrels,

_les autres menestraus de la commune_, and some of these seem to have

been of English birth. Below the _roys_ rank two minstrels, Adam le

Boscu and another, who are dignified with the title of _maistre_, which

probably signifies that they were clerks[191]. The other names are

mainly descriptive, ‘Janin le Lutour,’ ‘Gillotin le Sautreour,’ ‘Baudec

le Taboureur,’ and the like; a few are jesting stage names, such as

the inferior performers of our music halls bear to-day[192]. Such are

‘Guillaume sanz Maniere,’ ‘Reginaldus le Menteur,’ ‘le Petit Gauteron,’

‘Parvus Willielmus,’ and those of the attractive comedians Perle in the

Eghe, and Matill’ Makejoye. The last, by the way, is the only woman

performer named. The resources of Edward I could no doubt stand the

strain of rewarding with royal magnificence the entertainers of his

guests. There is plenty of evidence, however, that even on secular

grounds the diatribes of the moralists against the minstrels were often

enough justified. To the lavish and unthrifty of purse they became

blood-suckers. Matilda, the wife of Henry I, is said to have squandered

most of her revenues upon them[193]; while the unfortunate Robert

of Normandy, if no less a chronicler than Ordericus Vitalis may be

believed, was stripped by these rapacious gentry to the very skin[194].

Yet for all the days of honour and all the rich gifts the minstrel life

must have had its darker side. Easily won, easily parted with; and the

lands and laced mantles did not last long, when the elbow itched for

the dice-box. This was the incurable ruin of the minstrel folk[195].

And even that life of the road, so alluring to the fever in the blood,

must have been a hard one in the rigours of an English climate. To

tramp long miles in wind and rain, to stand wet to the skin and hungry

and footsore, making the slow _bourgeois_ laugh while the heart was

bitter within; such must have been the daily fate of many amongst the

humbler minstrels at least[196]. And at the end to die like a dog in

a ditch, under the ban of the Church and with the prospect of eternal

damnation before the soul.

Kings and nobles were not accustomed to depend for their entertainment

merely upon the stray visits of wandering minstrels. Others more or

less domiciled formed a permanent part of the household. These indeed

are the minstrels in the stricter sense of that term--_ministri_,

_ministeriales_. In Domesday Book, as we have seen, one Berdic bears

the title of the _ioculator regis_. Shortly afterwards Henry I had his

_mimus regis_, by name Raherus, who made large sums by his _suavitas

iocularis_, and founded the great priory of St. Bartholomew at

Smithfield[197]. Laying aside his parti-coloured coat, he even became

himself the first prior of the new community. The old spirit remained

with him, however; and it is recorded that the fame of the house was

largely magnified by means of some feigned miracles which Raherus put

forth. Richard I was a noted lover of song, and the names of more than

one minstrel of his are preserved. There was Ambroise, who was present

at Richard’s coronation in 1189 and at the siege of Acre in 1191, and

who wrote a history, still extant, of the third crusade[198]. And there

was that Blondiaux or Blondel de Nesle, the story of whose discovery

of his captive master, apocryphal though it may be, is in all the

history books[199]. Henry III had his _magister Henricus versificator_

in 1251[200], and his _magister Ricardus citharista_ in 1252[201]. A

harper was also amongst the _ministri_ of Prince Edward in the Holy

War[202], and when the prince became Edward I, he still retained one in

his service. He is mentioned as Walter de Stourton, the king’s harper,

in 1290[203], and as the _citharista regis_ in 1300[204]. Edward II had

several minstrels, to one of whom, William de Morlee, known as _Roy de

North_, he made a grant of land[205]. By this time the royal minstrels

seem to have become a regular establishment of no inconsiderable

numbers. Under Edward III they received 7¹⁄₂_d._ a day[206]. A little

later in the reign, between 1344 and 1347, there were nineteen who

received 12_d._ a day in war, when they doubtless formed a military

band, and 20_s._ a year in peace. These included five trumpeters, one

citoler, five pipers, one tabouretter, two clarions, one nakerer,

and one fiddler, together with three additional minstrels, known as

waits[207]. The leader of the minstrels bore the title of _rex_, for in

1387 we find a licence given by Richard II to his _rex ministrallorum_,

John Caumz, permitting him to pass the seas[208]. Henry V had fifteen

minstrels when he invaded France in 1415, and at a later date eighteen,

who received 12_d._ a day apiece[209]. At the end of his reign his

minstrels received 100_s._ a year, and this annuity was continued under

Henry VI, who in 1455 had twelve of them, besides a wait. In the next

year this king issued a commission for the impressing of boys to fill

vacancies in the body[210]. Edward IV had thirteen minstrels and a

wait[211]. By 1469 these had been cut down to eight. At their head was

a chief, who was now called, not as in Richard II’s time _rex_, but

_marescallus_[212]. The eight king’s minstrels and their _marescallus_

can be traced through the reign of Henry VII, and so on into the

sixteenth century[213].

Nor was the royal household singular in the maintenance of a permanent

body of minstrels. The _citharista_ of Margaret, queen of Edward I,

is mentioned in 1300, and her _istrio_ in 1302[214]. Philippa, queen

of Edward III, had her minstrels in 1337[215], and those of Queen

Elizabeth were a regular establishment in the reign of Henry VII[216].

The Scottish court, too, had its recognized troupe, known by the early

years of the sixteenth century as the ‘minstrels of the chekkar[217].’

As with kings and queens so with lesser men. The list of minstrels

at court in 1306 includes the harpers and other musicians of several

lords, both English and foreign[218]. In 1308 the earl of Lancaster had

a body of _menestralli_ and an _armiger menestrallorum_[219]. During

the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries entries of payments to the

minstrels of a vast number of _domini_, small and great, are common in

the account books[220]. Henry, earl of Derby, took minstrels with him

in his expeditions abroad of 1390 and 1392[221]; while the _Household

Book_ of the earl of Northumberland (†1512) shows that he was

accustomed to entertain ‘a Taberett, a Luyte, and a Rebecc,’ as well as

six ‘trompettes[222].’ Minstrels are also found, from the beginning of

the fifteenth century, in the service of the municipal corporations.

London, Coventry, Bristol, Shrewsbury, Norwich, Chester, York,

Beverley, Leicester, Lynn, Canterbury had them, to name no others.

They received fixed fees or dues, wore the town livery and badge of a

silver scutcheon, played at all local celebrations and festivities, and

were commonly known as _waits_[223]. This term we have already found

in use at court, and the ‘Black Book,’ which contains the household

regulations of Edward IV, informs us that the primary duty of a wait

was to ‘pipe the watch,’ summer and winter, at certain fixed hours of

the night[224].

It must not be supposed that established minstrels, whether royal,

noble, or municipal, were always in constant attendance on their lords.

Certain fixed services were required of them, which were not very

serious, except in the case of waits[225]; for the rest of their time

they were free. This same ‘Black Book’ of Edward IV is very explicit on

the point. The minstrels are to receive a yearly fee and a livery[226].

They must attend at court for the five great feasts of the year. At

other times, two or three out of their number, or more if the king

desire it, are to be in waiting. The last regulation on the subject

is curious. The king forbids his minstrels to be too presumptuous or

familiar in asking rewards of any lord of the land; and in support of

this he quotes a similar prohibition by the Emperor Henry II[227].

Doubtless, in the intervals of their services, the household minstrels

travelled, like their unattached brethren of the road, but with the

added advantage of a letter of recommendation from their lord, which

ensured them the hospitality of his friends[228]. Such letters were

indeed often given, both to the minstrels of a man’s own household and

as testimonials to other minstrels who may have especially pleased the

giver. Those interesting collections of mediaeval epistolary formulae,

the _summae dictaminis_, contain many models for them, and judging by

the lavish eulogy which they employ, the minstrels themselves must have

had a hand in drawing them up[229]. Many minstrels probably confined

themselves to short tours in the vicinity of their head quarters;

others, like Widsith, the Anglo-Saxon _scôp_, were far travellers. John

Caumz received a licence from Richard II to cross the seas, and in 1483

we find Richard III entertaining minstrels of the dukes of Austria

and Bavaria[230]. Possibly the object of John Caumz was to visit one

of the _scolae ministrallorum_ in France, where experiences might be

exchanged and new songs learnt. Beauvais, Lyon, Cambrai were famous for

these schools, which were held year by year in Lent, when performances

were stopped; and the wardrobe accounts of Edward III record grants of

licences and expenses to Barbor and Morlan, two bagpipers, to visit the

_scolas ministrallis in partibus trans mare_[231].

From the fourteenth century it is possible to trace the growth of the

household minstrels as a privileged class at the expense of their less

fortunate rivals. The freedom of access enjoyed by the entertainers of

earlier days was obviously open to abuse. We have seen that in 1317

it led to the offering of an insult to Edward II by an emissary clad

as a minstrel at his own table. It was only two years before that a

royal proclamation had considerably restrained the liberty of the

minstrels. In view of the number of idle persons who ‘under colour of

mynstrelsie’ claimed food, drink, and gifts in private houses, it was

ordered ‘that to the houses of prelates earls and barons none resort

to meate and drynke, unless he be a mynstrel, and of these mynstrels

that there come none except it be three or four minstrels of honour

at the most in one day, unlesse he be desired of the lorde of the

house.’ The houses of meaner men are to be altogether exempt, except

at their desire[232]. I think it is probable that by ‘minstrels of

honour’ we must here understand ‘household minstrels[233]’; and that

the severity of the ordinance must have come upon those irresponsible

vagrants who had not the shelter of a great man’s name. With the

Statutes of Labourers in the middle of the fourteenth century begins a

history of legislation against ‘vacabonds and valiant beggars,’ which

put further and serious difficulties in the way of the free movement

of the migratory classes through the country[234]. Minstrels, indeed,

are not specifically declared to be ‘vacabonds’ until this legislation

was codified by William Cecil in 1572[235]; but there is evidence that

they were none the less liable to be treated as such, unless they

had some protection in the shape of livery or licence. At Chester

from the early thirteenth century, and at Tutbury in Staffordshire

from 1380, there existed courts of minstrelsy which claimed to issue

licences to all performers within their purview. It is not probable

that this jurisdiction was very effective. But a step taken by Edward

IV in 1469 had for its avowed object to strengthen the hands of what

may be called official minstrelsy. Representation had been made to the

king that certain rude husbandmen and artificers had usurped the title

and livery of his minstrels, and had thus been enabled to gather an

illegitimate harvest of fees. He therefore created or revived a regular

guild or fraternity of minstrels, putting his own household performers

with their _marescallus_ at the head of it, and giving its officers

a disciplinary authority over the profession throughout the country,

with the exception of Chester. It is not improbable, although it is

not distinctly stated, that admission into the guild was practically

confined to ‘minstrels of honour.’ Certainly one of the later local

guilds which grew up in the sixteenth century, that of Beverley,

limited its membership to such as could claim to be ‘mynstrell to some

man of honour or worship or waite of some towne corporate or other

ancient town, or else of such honestye and conyng as shalbe thought

laudable and pleasant to the hearers[236].’ In any case the whole drift

of social development was to make things difficult for the independent

minstrels and to restrict the area of their wanderings.

The widespread popularity of the minstrels amongst the mediaeval laity,

whether courtiers, burghers, or peasants, needs no further labouring.

It is more curious to find that in spite of the formal anathemas of the

Church upon their art, they were not, as a matter of fact, rigorously

held at arm’s length by the clergy. We find them taking a prominent

part in the holyday festivities of religious guilds[237]; we find

them solacing the slow progress of the pilgrimages with their ready

wit and copious narrative or song[238]; we find them received with

favour by bishops, even upon their visitations[239], and not excluded

from a welcome in the hall of many a monastery. As early as 1180, one

Galfridus, a _citharoedus_, held a ‘corrody,’ or right to a daily

commons of food and drink in the abbey of Hyde at Winchester[240].

And payments for performances are frequent in the accounts of the

Augustinian priories at Canterbury[241], Bicester, and Maxtoke, and

the great Benedictine houses of Durham, Norwich, Thetford, and St.

Swithin’s, Winchester[242], and doubtless in those of many another

cloistered retreat. The Minorite chroniclers relate, how at the time

of the coming of the friars in 1224 two of them were mistaken for

minstrels by the porter of a Benedictine grange near Abingdon, received

by the prior and brethren with unbecoming glee, and when the error was

discovered, turned out with contumely[243]. At such semi-religious

foundations also, as the college of St. Mary at Winchester, or

Waynflete’s great house of St. Mary Magdalen in Oxford, minstrels of

all degrees found, at least by the fifteenth century, ready and liberal

entertainment[244].

How, then, is one to reconcile this discrepancy between the actual

practice of the monasteries and the strict, the uncompromising

prohibition of minstrelsy in rule and canon? An incomplete answer

readily presents itself. The monks being merely human, fell short of

the ideal prescribed for them. We do not now learn for the first time,

that the ambitions of the pious founder, the ecclesiastical law-giver,

the patristic preacher, were one thing; the effective daily life of

churchmen in many respects quite another. Here, as in matters of even

more moment, did mediaeval monasticism ‘dream from deed dissever’--

‘The reule of Seint Maure or of Seint Beneit,

By-cause that it was old and som-del streit

This ilke monk leet olde thinges pace,

And held after the newe world the space.’

True enough, but not the whole truth. It doubtless explains the

behaviour of the Benedictines of Abingdon; but we can hardly suppose

that when Robert de Grosseteste, the sworn enemy of ecclesiastical

abuses, kept his harper’s chamber next his own, he was surreptitiously

allowing himself an illegitimate gratification which he denied to his

clergy. The fact is that the condemnations of the Church, transferred,

as we have seen, wholesale from the _mimi_ and _histriones_ of the

decaying Empire, were honestly not applicable without qualification,

even from the ecclesiastical point of view, to their successors, the

_mimi_ and _histriones_ of the Middle Ages. The traditions of the Roman

stage, its manners, its topics, its ethical code, became indeed a large

part of the direct inheritance of minstrelsy. But, as we have seen,

they were far from being the whole of that inheritance. The Teutonic

as well as the Latin element in the civilization of western Europe

must be taken into account. The minstrel derives from the disreputable

_planipes_; he derives also from the _scôp_, and has not altogether

renounced the very different social and ethical position which the

_scôp_ enjoyed. After all, nine-tenths of the secular music and

literature, something even of the religious literature, of the Middle

Ages had its origin in minstrelsy. Practically, if not theoretically,

the Church had to look facts in the face, and to draw a distinction

between the different elements and tendencies that bore a single name.

The formularies, of course, continued to confound all minstrels under

the common condemnation of _ioculatores_. The Church has never been

good at altering its formularies to suit altered conditions. But it

has generally been good at practical compromises. And in the case of

minstrelsy, a practical compromise, rough enough, was easily arrived at.

The effective conscience of the thirteenth-century Church had clearly

come to recognize degrees in the ethical status of the minstrels.

No more authoritative exponent of the official morals of his day

can be desired than St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Thomas Aquinas is

very far from pronouncing an unqualified condemnation of all secular

entertainment. The profession of an _histrio_, he declares, is by no

means in itself unlawful. It was ordained for the reasonable solace

of humanity, and the _histrio_ who exercises it at a fitting time

and in a fitting manner is not on that account to be regarded as a

sinner[245]. Another contemporary document is still more explicit.

This is the _Penitential_ written at the close of the thirteenth

century by Thomas de Cabham, sub-dean of Salisbury and subsequently

archbishop of Canterbury[246]. In the course of his analysis of human

frailty, Thomas de Cabham makes a careful classification from the

ethical point of view, of minstrels. There are those who wear horrible

masks, or entertain by indecent dance and gesture. There are those

again who follow the courts of the great, and amuse by satire and by

raillery. Both these classes are altogether damnable. Those that remain

are distinguished by their use of musical instruments. Some sing wanton

songs at banquets. These too are damnable, no less than the satirists

and posture-mongers. Others, however, sing of the deeds of princes, and

the lives of the saints. To these it is that the name _ioculatores_

more strictly belongs, and they, on no less an authority than that of

Pope Alexander himself[247], may be tolerated.

Of the three main groups of minstrels distinguished by Thomas de

Cabham, two correspond roughly to the two broad types which, from the

point of view of racial tradition, we have already differentiated. His

musicians correspond to the Teutonic gleemen and their successors;

his posture-mongers and buffoons to the Roman _mimi_ and their

successors. Who then are Thomas de Cabham’s third and intermediate

group, the satirists whose lampoons beset the courts of the great?

Well, raillery and invective, as we have seen, were common features

of minstrelsy; but Gautier may very likely be right when he surmises

that Thomas de Cabham has particularly in mind the _scolares vagantes_,

who brought so much scandal upon the Church during the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries[248]. Some of these were actually out at elbows

and disfrocked clerks; others were scholars drifting from university

to university, and making their living meantime by their wits; most

of them were probably at least in minor orders. But practically they

lived the life of the minstrels, tramping the road with them, sharing

the same temptations of wine, women, and dice, and bringing into the

profession a trained facility of composition, and at least a flavour

of classical learning[249]. They were indeed the main intermediaries

between the learned and the vernacular letters of their day; the spilth

of their wit and wisdom is to be found in the burlesque Latin verse of

such collections as the _Carmina Burana_, riotous lines, by no means

devoid of poetry, with their half-humorous half-pathetic burden,

‘In taberna quando sumus

Non curamus quid sit humus[250].’

And especially they were satirists, satirists mainly of the hypocrisy,

cupidity and evil living of those in the high places of the Church,

for whom they conceived a grotesque expression in Bishop Golias, a

type of materialistic prelate, in whose name they wrote and whose

_pueri_ or _discipuli_ they declared themselves to be[251]. _Goliardi_,

_goliardenses_, their reputation in the eyes of the ecclesiastical

authorities was of the worst, and their ill practices are coupled with

those of the minstrels in many a condemnatory decree[252].

It is not with the _goliardi_ then, that Thomas de Cabham’s relaxation

of the strict ecclesiastical rigours is concerned. Neither is it,

naturally enough, with the lower minstrels of the _mimus_ tradition.

Towards these Thomas de Cabham, like his predecessors, is inexorable.

And even of the higher minstrels the musicians and singers, his

toleration has its limits. He discriminates. In a sense, a social

and professional sense, all these higher minstrels fall into the

same class. But from the ethical point of view there is a very

marked distinction amongst them. Some there are who haunt taverns

and merry-makings with loose songs of love and dalliance. These it

is not to be expected that the holy mother Church should in any way

countenance. Her toleration must be reserved for those more reputable

performers who find material for their verse either in the life

and conversation of the saints and martyrs themselves, or at least

in the noble and inspiring deeds of national heroes and champions.

Legends of the saints and gests of princes: if the minstrels will

confine themselves to the celebration of these, then, secure in

the pronouncement of a pope, they may claim a hearing even from

the devout. It would be rash to assert that even the comparatively

liberal theory of Thomas de Cabham certainly justified in all cases

the practice of the monasteries. But it is at least noteworthy that

in several instances where the subjects of the minstrelsy presented

for the delectation of a cowled audience remain upon record, they do

fall precisely within the twofold definition which he lays down. At

Winchester in 1338 the minstrel Herbert sang the song of Colbrond (or

Guy of Warwick), and the gest of the miraculous deliverance of Queen

Emma; while at Bicester in 1432 it was the legend of the Seven Sleepers

of Ephesus that made the Epiphany entertainment of the assembled canons.

If now we set aside the very special class of ribald _galiardi_, and

if we set aside also the distinction drawn by Thomas de Cabham on

purely ethical grounds between the minstrels of the love-songs and the

minstrels of saintly or heroic gest, the net result is the twofold

classification of higher and lower minstrels already familiar to us.

Roughly--it must always be borne in mind how roughly--it corresponds

on the one hand to the difference between the Teutonic and the Roman

tradition, on the other to the distinction between the established

‘minstrel of honour’ and his unattached rival of the road. And there

is abundant evidence that such a distinction was generally present,

and occasionally became acute, in the consciousness of the minstrels

themselves. The aristocrats of minstrelsy, a Baudouin or a Jean de

Condé, or a Watriquet de Couvin, have very exalted ideas as to the

dignity of their profession. They will not let you, if they can help

it, put the _grans menestreus_ on the same level with every-day

_jangleur_ of poor attainments and still poorer repute[253]. In

the _Dit des Taboureurs_ again it is a whole class, the _joueurs de

vielle_, who arise to vindicate their dignity and to pour scorn upon

the humble and uninstructed drummers[254]. But the most instructive and

curious evidence comes from Provence. It was in 1273, when the amazing

growth of Provençal poetry was approaching its sudden decay, that the

last of the great troubadours, Guiraut de Riquier, addressed a verse

_Supplicatio_ to Alphonso X of Castile on the state of minstrelsy.

He points out the confusion caused by the indiscriminate grouping

of poets, singers, and entertainers of all degrees under the title

of _joglars_, and begs the king, as high patron of letters, to take

order for it. A reply from Alphonso, also in verse, and also, one

may suspect, due to the fertile pen of Guiraut Riquier, is extant.

Herein he establishes or confirms a fourfold hierarchy. At the head

come two classes, the _doctors de trobar_ and the _trobaires_, who are

composers, the former of didactic, the latter of ordinary songs and

melodies. Beneath these are the _joglars_ proper, instrumentalists

and reciters of delightful stories, and beneath these again the

_bufos_, the entertainers of common folk, who have really no claim

to be considered as _joglars_ at all[255]. One of the distinctions

here made is new to us. The difference between _doctor de trobar_ and

_trobaire_ is perhaps negligible. But that between the _trobaire_ or

composer and the _joglar_ or executant of poetry, is an important one.

It is not, however, so far as the Teutonic element in minstrelsy goes,

primitive. The _scôpas_ and the French or Anglo-Norman _ioculatores_

up to the twelfth century composed their verses as a class, and sang

them as well[256]. In Provence, however, the Teutonic element in

minstrelsy must have been of the slightest, and perhaps the Roman

tradition, illustrated by the story of Laberius, of a marked barrier

between composing and executing, had vaguely lingered. At any rate it

is in Provence, in the eleventh century, that the distinction between

_trobaire_ and _joglar_ makes its appearance. It never became a very

complete one. The _trobaire_ was generally, not always, of gentle or

burgess birth; sometimes actually a king or noble. In the latter case

he contented himself with writing his songs, and let the _joglars_

spread them abroad. But the bulk of the _trobaires_ lived by their art.

They wandered from castle to castle, alone with a _vielle_, or with

_joglars_ in their train, and although they mingled with their hosts

on fairly equal terms, they did not disdain to take their rewards of

horse or mantle or jewel, just like any common performer. Moreover,

they confined themselves to lyric poetry, leaving the writing of epic,

so far as epic was abroad in Provence, to the _joglars_[257]. From

Provence, the _trobaire_ spread to other countries, reappearing in

the north of France and England as the _trouvère_. We seem to trace

an early _trouvère_ in Lucas de Barre in the time of Henry I. But

it is Eleanor of Poitiers, daughter of the _trobaire_ count William

of Poitiers, and mother of the _trouvère_ Richard Cœur de Lion,

who appears as the chief intermediary between north and south. The

intrusion of the _trouvère_ was the first step in the degradation of

minstrelsy. Amongst the Anglo-Saxons, even apart from the _cantilenae_

of the folk, the professional singer had no monopoly of song. Hrothgar

and Alfred harped with their _scôpas_. But if there had been a similar

tendency amongst the continental Teutons who merged in the French

and Norman-French, it had been checked by the complete absorption

of all literary energies, outside the minstrel class, in neo-Latin.

It was not until the twelfth century, and as has been said, under

Provençal influence, that secular-minded clerks, and exceptionally

educated nobles, merchants, or officials, began to devote themselves

to the vernacular, and by so doing to develop the _trouvère_ type.

The _trouvère_ had the advantage of the minstrel in learning and

independence, if not in leisure; and though the latter long held his

own by the side of his rival, he was fated in the end to give way,

and to content himself with the humbler task of spreading abroad what

the _trouvère_ wrote[258]. By the second quarter of the fourteenth

century, the conquest of literature by the _bourgeoisie_ was complete.

The interest had shifted from the minstrel on the hall floor to the

burgher or clerk in the _puy_; the prize of a successful poem was no

longer a royal mantle, but a laureate crown or the golden violet of the

_jeux floraux_; and its destiny less to be recited at the banquet, than

read in the bower. In England the completion of the process perhaps

came a little later, and was coincident with the triumph of English,

the tongue of the _bourgeois_, over French, the tongue of the noble.

The full flower of minstrelsy had been the out-at-elbows vagabond,

Rutebeuf. The full flower of the _trouvère_ is the comptroller of the

customs and subsidies of the port of London, Geoffrey Chaucer.

The first distinction, then, made by Guiraut Riquier, that between

_trobaire_ and _joglar_, implies a development from within minstrelsy

itself that was destined one day to overwhelm it. But the second,

that between the _joglar_ and the _bufo_, is precisely the one

already familiar to us, between the minstrels of the _scôp_ and the

minstrels of the _mimus_ tradition. And, as has been said, it is

partly, if not entirely, identical with that which grew up in course

of time between the protected minstrels of the court and of great

men’s houses, and their vagrant brethren of the road. This general

antithesis between the higher and lower mintrelsy may now, perhaps, be

regarded as established. It was the neglect of it, surely, that led to

that curious and barren logomachy between Percy and Ritson, in which

neither of the disputants can be said to have had hold of more than a

bare half of the truth[259]. And it runs through the whole history of

minstrelsy. It became acute, no doubt, with the growth in importance

of the minstrels of honour in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

But it had probably been just as acute, if not more so, at the very

beginning of things, when the clash of Teutonic and Roman civilization

first brought the bard face to face with the serious rivalry of the

mime. Bard and mime merged without ever becoming quite identical; and

even at the moment when this process was most nearly complete, say in

the eleventh century, the _jouglerie seigneuriale_, to use Magnin’s

happy terms, was never quite the same thing as the _jouglerie foraine

et populaire_[260], least of all in a country like England where

differences of tongue went to perpetuate and emphasize the breach.

Nevertheless, the antithesis may easily be pushed too far. After

all, the minstrels were entertainers, and therefore their business

was to entertain. Did the lord yawn over a gest or a saintly legend?

the discreet minstrel would be well advised to drop high art, and

to substitute some less exacting, even if less refined fashion of

passing the time. The instincts of boor and baron were not then, of

course, so far apart as they are nowadays. And as a matter of fact

we find many of the most eminent minstrels boasting of the width

and variety of their accomplishments. Thus of Baudouin II, count of

Guisnes (1169-1206), it is recorded that he might have matched the most

celebrated professionals, not only in _chansons de gestes_ and _romans

d’aventure_ but also in the _fabliaux_ which formed the delight of the

vulgar _bourgeoisie_[261]. Less aristocratic performers descended even

lower than Baudouin de Guisnes. If we study the répertoires of such

_jougleurs_ as the diabolic one in Gautier de Coincy’s miracle[262],

or Daurel in the romance of _Daurel et Beton_[263], or the disputants

who vaunt their respective proficiencies in _Des Deus Bordeors

Ribauz_[264], we shall find that they cover not only every conceivable

form of minstrel literature proper, but also tricks with knives and

strings, sleight of hand, dancing and tumbling. Even in Provence, the

_Enseignamens_ for _joglars_ warn their readers to learn the arts of

imitating birds, throwing knives, leaping through hoops, showing off

performing asses and dogs, and dangling marionettes[265]. So that one

discerns the difference between the lower and the higher minstrels to

have been not so much that the one did not sink so low, as that the

other, for lack of capacity and education, did not rise so high.

The palmy days of minstrelsy were the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth

centuries. The germ of decay, however, which appeared when the

separation grew up between _trouvère_ and _jougleur_, and when men

began to read books instead of listening to recitations, was further

developed by the invention of printing. For then, while the _trouvère_

could adapt himself readily enough to the new order of things, the

_jougleur’s_ occupation was gone. Like Benedick he might still be

talking, but nobody marked him. Eyes cast down over a page of Chaucer

or of Caxton had no further glitter or tear for him to win[266]. The

fifteenth, and still more the sixteenth century, witness the complete

break-up of minstrelsy in its mediaeval form. The mimes of course

endured. They survived the overthrow of mediaevalism, as they had

survived the overthrow of the Empire[267]. The Tudor kings and nobles

had still their jugglers, their bearwards, their domestic buffoons,

jesters or fools[268]. Bearbaiting in Elizabethan London rivalled the

drama in its vogue. Acrobats and miscellaneous entertainers never

ceased to crowd to every fair, and there is applause even to-day

in circus and music-hall for the old jests and the old somersaults

that have already done duty for upwards of twenty centuries. But the

_jougleur_ as the thirteenth century knew him was by the sixteenth

century no more. Professional musicians there were in plenty; ‘Sneak’s

noise’ haunted the taverns of Eastcheap[269], and instrumentalists

and vocalists in royal palaces and noble mansions still kept the name

and style of minstrels. But they were not minstrels in the old sense,

for with the production of literature, except perhaps for a song here

and there, they had no longer anything to do. That had passed into

other hands, and even the lineaments of the _trouvère_ are barely

recognizable in the new types of poets and men of letters whom the

Renaissance produced. The old fashioned minstrel in his style and habit

as he lived, was to be presented before Elizabeth at Kenilworth as an

interesting anachronism[270]. Some of the discarded entertainers, as we

shall see, were absorbed into the growing profession of stage-players;

others sunk to be ballad singers. For to the illiterate the

story-teller still continued to appeal. The ballad indeed, at least on

one side of it, was the _detritus_, as the _lai_ had been the germ, of

romance[271], and at the very moment when Spenser was reviving romance

as a conscious archaism, it was still possible for a blind fiddler with

a ballad to offend the irritable susceptibilities of a Puritan, or to

touch the sensitive heart-strings of a Sidney[272]. But as a social and

literary force, the glory of minstrelsy had departed[273].

CHAPTER IV

THE MINSTREL REPERTORY

The floor of a mediaeval court, thronged with minstrels of every

degree, provided at least as various an entertainment as the Roman

stage itself[274]. The performances of the mimes, to the accompaniment

of their despised tabor or wry-necked fife, undoubtedly made up in

versatility for what they lacked in decorum. There were the _tombeors_,

_tombesteres_ or _tumbleres_, acrobats and contortionists, who

twisted themselves into incredible attitudes, leapt through hoops,

turned somersaults, walked on their heads, balanced themselves in

perilous positions. Female tumblers, _tornatrices_, took part in these

feats, and several districts had their own characteristic modes of

tumbling, such as _le tour français_, _le tour romain_, _le tour de

Champenois_[275]. Amongst the _tombeors_ must be reckoned the rarer

_funambuli_ or rope-walkers, such as he whom the Corvei annals record

to have met with a sorry accident in the twelfth century[276], or he

who created such a _furore_ in the thirteenth by his aerial descent

from the cathedral at Basle[277]. Nor are they very distinct from the

crowd of dancers, male and female, who are variously designated as

_saltatores_ and _saltatrices_, ‘sautours,’ ‘sailyours,’ ‘hoppesteres.’

Indeed, in many mediaeval miniatures, the daughter of Herodias, dancing

before Herod, is represented rather as tumbling or standing on her head

than in any more subtle pose[278]. A second group includes the jugglers

in the narrower sense, the _jouers des costeax_ who tossed and caught

knives and balls[279], and the practitioners of sleight of hand, who

generally claimed to proceed by _nigremance_ or sorcery[280]. The two

seem to have shared the names of _prestigiatores_ or _tregetours_[281].

Other mimes, the _bastaxi_, or _jouers des basteax_, brought round,

like the Punch and Judy men of our own day, little wooden performing

puppets or marionettes[282]. Others, to whom Thomas de Cabham more

particularly refers, came in masked as animals, and played the dog, the

ass or the bird with appropriate noises and behaviour[283]. Others,

again, led round real animals; generally bears or apes, occasionally

also horses, cocks, hares, dogs, camels and even lions[284]. Sometimes

these beasts did tricks; too often they were baited[285], and from

time to time a man, lineal descendant of the imperial gladiators,

would step forward to fight with them[286]. To the gladiatorial shows

may perhaps also be traced the fight with wooden swords which often

formed a part of the fun[287]. And, finally, whatever the staple of

the performance, there was the _parade_ or preliminary patter to call

the audience together, and throughout the ‘carping,’ a continuous

flow of rough witticism and repartee, such as one is accustomed to

hear Joey, the clown, in the pauses of a circus, pass off on Mr.

Harris, the ring-master[288]. Here came in the especial talents of the

_scurra_, _bordeor_ or _japere_, to whom the moralists took such marked

exception. ‘_L’uns fet l’ivre, l’autre le sot_’ says the _fabliau_; and

indeed we do not need the testimony of Thomas de Cabham or of John of

Salisbury to conclude that such buffoonery was likely to be of a ribald

type[289].

Even in the high places of minstrelsy there was some measure of

variety. A glance at the pay-sheet of Edward I’s Whitsuntide feast

will show that the minstrels who aspired to be musicians were

habitually distinguished by the name of the musical instrument on which

they played. They are _vidulatores_, _citharistae_, _trumpatores_,

_vilours_, _gigours_, _crouderes_, _harpours_, _citolers_, _lutours_,

_trumpours_, _taboreurs_ and the like. The harp (_cithara_), played

by twitching the strings, had been the old instrument of the Teutons,

but in the Middle Ages it came second in popularity to the _vielle_

(_vidula_), which was also a string instrument, but, like the modern

fiddle, was played with a bow. The drum (_tympanum_, _tabour_) was,

as we have seen, somewhat despised, and relegated to the mimes. The

trumpeters appear less often singly than in twos and threes, and it

is possible that their performances may have been mainly ceremonial

and of a purely instrumental order. But the use of music otherwise

than to accompany the voice does not seem to have gone, before the

end of the thirteenth century, much beyond the signals, flourishes

and fanfares required for wars, triumphs and processions. Concerted

instrumental music was a later development[290]. The ordinary function

of the harp or _vielle_ in minstrelsy was to assist the voice of

the minstrel in one of the many forms of poetry which the middle

ages knew. These were both lyric and narrative. The distinction is

roughly parallel to that made by Thomas de Cabham when he subdivides

his highest grades of minstrels into those who sing wanton songs at

taverns, and those more properly called _ioculatores_ who solace the

hearts of men with reciting the deeds of the heroes and the lives

of the saints. The themes of mediaeval lyric, as of all lyric, are

largely wantonness and wine; but it must be borne in mind that Thomas

de Cabham’s classification is primarily an ethical one, and does not

necessarily imply any marked difference of professional status between

the two classes. The haunters of taverns and the solacers of the

virtuous were after all the same minstrels, or at least minstrels of

the same order. That the _chansons_, in their innumerable varieties,

caught up from folk-song, or devised by Provençal ingenuity, were

largely in the mouths of the minstrels, may be taken for granted. It

was here, however, that the competition of _trobaire_ and _trouvère_

began earliest, and proved most triumphant, and the supreme minstrel

_genre_ was undoubtedly the narrative. This was, in a sense, their

creation, and in it they held their own, until the laity learned to

read and the _trouvères_ became able to eke out the shortness of their

memories by writing down or printing their stories. With narrative,

no doubt, the minstrels of highest repute mainly occupied themselves.

Harp or _vielle_ in hand they beguiled many a long hour for knight

and _châtelaine_ with the interminable _chansons de gestes_ in honour

of Charlemagne and his heroic band[291], or, when the vogue of these

waned, as in time it did, with the less primitive _romans d’aventure_,

of which those that clustered round the Keltic Arthur were the widest

famed. Even so their repertory was not exhausted. They had _lais_,

_dits_ and _contes_ of every kind; the devout _contes_ that Thomas de

Cabham loved, historical _contes_, romantic _contes_ of less alarming

proportions than the genuine _romans_. And for the _bourgeoisie_ they

had those improper, witty _fabliaux_, so racy of the French soil, in

which the _esprit gaulois_, as we know it, found its first and not its

least characteristic expression. In most of these types the music of

the instrument bore its part. The shorter _lais_ were often accompanied

musically throughout[292]. The longer poems were delivered in a chant

or recitative, the monotony of which was broken at intervals by a

phrase or two of intercalated melody, while during the rest of the

performance a few perfunctory notes served to sustain the voice[293].

And at times, especially in the later days of minstrelsy, the harp

or _vielle_ was laid aside altogether, and the singer became a mere

story-teller. The antithesis, no infrequent one, between minstrel,

and _fabulator_, _narrator_, _fableor_, _conteor, estour_, _disour_,

_segger_, though all these are themselves elsewhere classed as

minstrels, sufficiently suggests this[294]. It was principally, one may

surmise, the _dits_ and _fabliaux_ that lent themselves to unmusical

narration; and when prose crept in, as in time it did, even before

reading became universal, it can hardly have been sung. An interesting

example is afforded by _Aucassin et Nicolete_, which is what is known

as a _cantefable_. That is to say, it is written in alternate sections

of verse and prose. The former have, in the Paris manuscript, a musical

accompaniment, and are introduced with the words ‘_Or se cante_’; the

latter have no music, and the introduction ‘_Or content et dient et

fablent_.’

A further differentiation amongst minstrels was of linguistic origin.

This was especially apparent in England. The mime is essentially

cosmopolitan. In whatever land he finds himself the few sentences of

patter needful to introduce his _tour_ or his _nigremance_ are readily

picked up. It is not so with any entertainer whose performances claim

to rank, however humbly, as literature. And the Conquest in England

brought into existence a class of minstrels who, though they were by

no means mimes, were yet obliged to compete with mimes, making their

appeal solely to the _bourgeoisie_ and the peasants, because their

speech was not that of the Anglo-Norman lords and ladies who formed the

more profitable audiences of the castles. The native English gleemen

were eclipsed at courts by the Taillefers and Raheres of the invading

host. But they still held the road side by side with their rivals,

shorn of their dignities, and winning a precarious livelihood from

the shrunken purses of those of their own blood and tongue[295]. It

was they who sang the unavailing heroisms of Hereward, and, if we may

judge by the scanty fragments and records that have come down to us,

they remained for long the natural focus and mouthpiece of popular

discontent and anti-court sentiment. In the reign of Edward III a

gleeman of this type, Laurence Minot, comes to the front, voicing the

spirit of an England united in its nationalism by the war against

France; the rest are, for the most part, nameless[296]. Naturally the

English gleemen did not remain for ever a proscribed and isolated folk.

One may suspect that at the outset many of them became bilingual. At

any rate they learnt to mingle with their Anglo-Norman _confrères_:

they borrowed the themes of continental minstrelsy; translating

_roman_, _fabliau_ and _chanson_ into the metres and dialects of the

vernacular; and had their share in that gradual fusion of the racial

elements of the land, whose completion was the preparation for Chaucer.

Besides the Saxons, there were the Kelts. In the provinces of France

that bordered on Armorica, in the English counties that marched

with Wales, the Keltic harper is no unusual or negligible figure.

Whether such minstrels ranked very high in the bardic hierarchy of

their own peoples may be doubted; but amid alien folk they achieved

popularity[297]. Both Giraldus Cambrensis and Thomas the author

of _Tristan_ speak of a certain _famosus fabulator_ of this class,

Bledhericus or Breri by name[298]. Through Breri and his like the

Keltic traditions filtered into Romance literature, and an important

body of scholars are prepared to find in _lais_ sung to a Welsh or

Breton harp the _origines_ of Arthurian romance[299]. In England the

Welsh, like the English-speaking minstrels, had a political, as well

as a literary significance. They were the means by which the spirit

of Welsh disaffection under English rule was kept alive, and at times

fanned into a blaze. The fable of the massacre of the bards by Edward

I is now discredited, but an ordinance of his against Keltic ‘bards

and rhymers’ is upon record, and was subsequently repeated under Henry

IV[300].

An important question now presents itself. How far, in this

heterogeneous welter of mediaeval minstrelsy, is it possible to

distinguish any elements which can properly be called dramatic? The

minstrels were entertainers in many _genres_. Were they also actors?

An answer may be sought first of all in their literary remains. The

first condition of drama is dialogue, and dialogue is found both in

lyric and in narrative minstrelsy. Naturally, it is scantiest in lyric.

But there is a group of _chansons_ common to northern France and to

southern France or Provence, which at least tended to develop in this

direction. There are the _chansons à danser_, which are frequently

a semi-dialogue between a soloist and a chorus, the one singing the

verses, the other breaking into a burden or refrain. There are the

_chansons à personnages_ or _chansons de mal mariée_, complaints of

unhappy wives, which often take the form of a dialogue between the

woman and her husband, her friend or, it may be, the poet, occasionally

that of a discussion on courtly love in general. There are the _aubes_,

of which the type is the morning dialogue between woman and lover

adapted by Shakespeare with such splendid effect in the third act of

_Romeo and Juliet_. And finally there are the _pastourelles_, which are

generally dialogues between a knight and a shepherdess, in which the

knight makes love and, successful or repulsed, rides away. All these

_chansons_, like the _chansons d’histoire_ or _de toile_, which did

not develop into dialogues, are, in the form in which we have them, of

minstrel origin. But behind them are probably folk-songs of similar

character, and M. Gaston Paris is perhaps right in tracing them to the

_fêtes du mai_, those agricultural festivals of immemorial antiquity

in which women traditionally took so large a part. A further word will

have to be said of their ultimate contribution to drama in a future

chapter[301].

Other lyrical dialogues of very different type found their way into

the literature of northern France from that of Provence. These were

the elaborate disputes about abstract questions, generally of love,

so dear to the artistic and scholastic mind of the _trobaire_. There

was the _tenson_ (Fr. _tençon_) in which two speakers freely discussed

a given subject, each taking the point of view which seems good to

him. And there was the _joc-partitz_ or _partimen_ (Fr. _jeu-parti_

or _parture_), in which the challenger proposed a theme, indicated

two opposed attitudes towards it, and gave his opponent his choice

to maintain one or other[302]. Originally, no doubt the _tensons_

and the _jocs-partitz_ were, as they professed to be, improvised

verbal tournaments: afterwards they became little more than academic

exercises[303]. To the drama they have nothing to say.

The dialogue elements in lyric minstrelsy thus exhausted, we turn to

the wider field of narrative. But over the greater space of this field

we look in vain. If there is anything of dialogue in the _chansons de

gestes_ and the _romans_ it is merely reported dialogue such as every

form of narrative poetry contains, and is not to the purpose. It is not

until we come to the humbler branches of narrative, the unimportant

_contes_ and _dits_, that we find ourselves in the presence of dialogue

proper. _Dits_ and _fabliaux dialogués_ are not rare[304]. There is the

already quoted _Deus Bordeors Ribauz_ in which two _jougleurs_ meet

and vaunt in turn their rival proficiencies in the various branches of

their common art[305]. There is Rutebeuf’s _Charlot et le Barbier_,

a similar ‘flyting’ between two gentlemen of the road[306]. There is

_Courtois d’Arras_, a version of the Prodigal Son story[307]. There

is _Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jongleur d’Ely_, a specimen of witty

minstrel repartee, of which more will be said immediately. These

dialogues naturally tend to become of the nature of disputes, and they

merge into that special kind of _dit_, the _débat_ or _disputoison_

proper. The _débat_ is a kind of poetical controversy put into the

mouths of two types or two personified abstractions, each of which

pleads the cause of its own superiority, while in the end the decision

is not infrequently referred to an umpire in the fashion familiar in

the eclogues of Theocritus[308]. The _débats_ thus bear a strong

resemblance to the lyric _tençons_ and _jeux-partis_ already mentioned.

Like the _chansons_, they probably owe something to the folk festivals

with their ‘flytings’ and seasonal songs. In any case they are common

ground to minstrelsy and to the clerkly literature of the Middle Ages.

Many of the most famous of them, such as the _Débat de l’Hiver et de

l’Été_, the _Débat du Vin et de l’Eau_, the _Débat du Corps et de

l’Âme_, exist in neo-Latin forms, the intermediaries being naturally

enough those _vagantes_ or wandering scholars, to whom so much of the

interaction of learned and of popular literature must be due[309]. And

in their turn many of the _débats_ were translated sooner or later into

English. English literature, indeed, had had from Anglo-Saxon days a

natural affinity for the dialogue form[310], and presents side by

side with the translated _débats_ others--_strifs_ or _estrifs_ is the

English term--of native origin[311]. The thirteenth-century _Harrowing

of Hell_ is an _estrif_ on a subject familiar in the miracle plays:

and for an early miracle play it has sometimes been mistaken[312]. Two

or three other _estrifs_ of English origin are remarkable, because the

interlocutors are not exactly abstractions, but species of birds and

animals[313].

Dialogue then, in one shape or another, was part of the minstrel’s

regular stock-in-trade. But dialogue by itself is not drama. The notion

of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular

stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles

between at least two performers. Is there anything to be traced in

minstrelsy that satisfies these conditions? So far as impersonation is

concerned, there are several scattered notices which seem to show that

it was not altogether unknown. In the twelfth century for instance,

Ælred, abbot of Rievaulx, commenting on certain unpleasing innovations

in the church services of the day, complains that the singers use

gestures just like those of _histriones_, fit rather for a _theatrum_

than for a house of prayer[314]. The word _theatrum_ is, however, a

little suspicious, for an actual theatre in the twelfth century is

hardly thinkable, and with a learned ecclesiastic one can never be sure

that he is not drawing his illustrations rather from his knowledge of

classical literature than from the real life around him. It is more

conclusive, perhaps, when _fabliaux_ or _contes_ speak of minstrels as

‘doing’ _l’ivre_, or _le cat_, or _le sot_[315]; or when it appears

from contemporary accounts that at a performance in Savoy the manners

of England and Brittany were mimicked[316]. In Provence _contrafazedor_

seems to have been a regular name for a minstrel[317]; and the facts

that the minstrels wore masks ‘with intent to deceive’[318], and were

forbidden to wear ecclesiastical dresses[319], also point to something

in the way of rudimentary impersonation.

As for the distribution of rôles, all that can be said, so far as the

_débats_ and _dits dialogués_ go, is, that while some of them may

conceivably have been represented by more than one performer, none

of them need necessarily have been so, and some of them certainly

were not. There is generally a narrative introduction and often a

sprinkling of narrative interspersed amongst the dialogue. These parts

may have been pronounced by an _auctor_ or by one of the interlocutors

acting as _auctor_, and some such device must have been occasionally

necessitated in the religious drama. But there is really no difficulty

in supposing the whole of these pieces to have been recited by a single

minstrel with appropriate changes of gesture and intonation, and in

_The Harrowing of Hell_, which begins ‘A strif will I tellen of,’ this

was clearly the case. The evidences of impersonation given above are of

course quite consistent with such an arrangement; or, for the matter of

that, with sheer monologue. The minstrel who recited Rutebeuf’s _Dit

de l’Erberie_ may readily be supposed to have got himself up in the

character of a quack[320].

But the possibilities of secular mediaeval drama are not quite

exhausted by the _débats_ and _dits dialogués_. For after all, the

written literature which the minstrels have left us belongs almost

entirely to those higher _strata_ of their complex fraternity which

derived from the thoroughly undramatic Teutonic _scôp_. But if

mediaeval farce there were, it would not be here that we should look

for it. It would belong to the inheritance, not of the _scôp_, but of

the _mimus_. The Roman _mimus_ was essentially a player of farces;

that and little else. It is of course open to any one to suppose that

the _mimus_ went down in the seventh century playing farces, and that

his like appeared in the fifteenth century playing farces, and that

not a farce was played between. But is it not more probable on the

whole that, while occupying himself largely with other matters, he

preserved at least the rudiments of the art of acting, and that when

the appointed time came, the despised and forgotten farce, under the

stimulus of new conditions, blossomed forth once more as a vital and

effective form of literature? In the absence of data we are reduced

to conjecture. But the mere absence of data itself does not render

the conjecture untenable. For if such rudimentary, or, if you please,

degenerate farces as I have in mind, ever existed in the Middle Ages,

the chances were all against their literary survival. They were

assuredly very brief, very crude, often improvised, and rarely, if

ever, written down. They belonged to an order of minstrels far below

that which made literature[321]. And one little bit of evidence which

has not yet been brought forward seems to point to the existence of

something in the way of a secular as well as a religious mediaeval

drama. In the well-known Wyclifite sermon against miracle plays, an

imaginary opponent of the preacher’s argument is made to say that after

all it is ‘lesse yvels that thei have thyre recreaceon by pleyinge of

myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis’; and again that ‘to pley in

rebaudye’ is worse than ‘to pley in myriclis[322].’ Now, there is of

course no necessary dramatic connotation either in the word ‘pley’ or

in the word ‘japis,’ which, like ‘bourde’ or ‘gab’ is frequently used

of any kind of rowdy merriment, or of the lower types of minstrelsy in

general[323]. But on the other hand the whole tone of the passage seems

to draw a very close parallel between the ‘japis’ and the undeniably

dramatic ‘myriclis,’ and to imply something in the former a little

beyond the mere recitation, even with the help of impersonation, of a

solitary mime.

Such rude farces or ‘japis’ as we are considering, if they formed

part of the travelling equipment of the humbler mimes, could only

get into literature by an accident; in the event, that is to say, of

some minstrel of a higher class taking it into his head to experiment

in the form or to adapt it to the purposes of his own art. And this

is precisely what appears to have happened. A very natural use of

the farce would be in the _parade_ or preliminary patter, merely

about himself and his proficiency, which at all times has served the

itinerant entertainer as a means whereby to attract his audiences.

And just as the very similar _boniment_ or patter of the mountebank

charlatan at a fair became the model for Rutebeuf’s _Dit de l’Erberie_,

so the _parade_ may be traced as the underlying motive of other _dits_

or _fabliaux_. The _Deus Bordeors Ribauz_ is itself little other than a

glorified _parade_, and another, very slightly disguised, may be found

in the discomfiture of the king by the characteristic repartees of the

wandering minstrel in _Le Roi d’Angleterre et le Jougleur d’Ely_[324].

The _parade_, also, seems to be the origin of a certain familiar type

of dramatic prologue in which the author or the presenters of a play

appear in their own persons. The earliest example of this is perhaps

that enigmatic _Terentius et Delusor_ piece which some have thought to

point to a representation of Terence somewhere in the dark ages between

the seventh and the eleventh century[325]. And there is a later one in

the _Jeu du Pèlerin_ which was written about 1288 to precede Adan de la

Hale’s _Jeu de Robin et Marion_.

The renascence of farce in the fifteenth century will call for

consideration in a later chapter. It is possible that, as is here

suggested, that renascence was but the coming to light again of an

earth-bourne of dramatic tradition that had worked its way beneath

the ground ever since the theatres of the Empire fell. In any case,

rare documents of earlier date survive to show that it was at least

no absolutely sudden and unprecedented thing. The _jeux_ of Adan de

la Hale, indeed, are somewhat irrelevant here. They were not farces,

and will fall to be dealt with in the discussion of the popular

_fêtes_ from which they derive their origin[326]. But the French

farce of _Le Garçon et l’Aveugle_, ascribed to the second half of the

thirteenth century, is over a hundred years older than any of its

extant successors[327]. And even more interesting to us, because it is

of English _provenance_ and in the English tongue, is a fragment found

in an early fourteenth-century manuscript of a dramatic version of the

popular mediaeval tale of Dame Siriz[328]. This bears the heading _Hic

incipit interludium de Clerico et Puella_. But the significance of this

fateful word _interludium_ must be left for study at a later period,

when the history of the secular drama is resumed from the point at

which it must now be dropped.

BOOK II

FOLK DRAMA

Stultorum infinitus est numerus.

ECCLESIASTES.