_THE STAGE._
I.
Dramatic art, in which the English people was to find one of the most
brilliant of its literary glories, was evolved slowly from distant and
obscure origins.
In England, as in the rest of Europe, the sources of modern drama were
of two sorts: there were civil and religious sources.
The desire for amusement and the craving for laughable things never
disappeared entirely, even in the darkest days; the sources of the lay
drama began to spring and flow, owing to no other cause. The means
formerly employed to amuse and raise a laugh cannot be expected to have
shown much refinement. No refinement was to be found in them, and all
means were considered good which ensured success; kicks were among the
simplest and oftenest resorted to, but not at all among the grossest;
others were worse, and were much more popular. Let us not wonder
overmuch: some of them have recovered again, quite recently, a part of
their pristine popularity. They were used by jugglers or players,
"joculatores," nomadic sometimes, and sometimes belonging to the
household of the great. The existence of such men is testified to from
century to century, during the whole of the Middle Ages, mainly by the
blame and condemnation they constantly incurred: and so it is that the
best information concerning these men is not to be sought for in the
monuments of the gay literature, but rather in pious treatises and in
the acts of Councils.
Treatises and Councils, however, might to our advantage have been even
more circumstantial; the pity is that they, naturally enough, consider
it below their dignity to descend to very minute particulars; it is
enough for them to give an enumeration, and to condemn in one phrase all
the mimes, tumblers, histrions, wrestlers, and the rest of the juggling
troup. Sometimes, however, a few particulars are added; the peculiar
tricks and the scandalous practices of the ill-famed race are mentioned;
and an idea can thus be formed of our ancestors' amusements. John of
Salisbury in the twelfth century alludes to a variety of pastimes, and
while protesting against the means used to produce laughter, places them
on record: a heavy laughter indeed, noisy and tumultuous, Rabelais'
laughter before Rabelais. Of course, "such a modest hilarity as an
honest man would allow himself" is not to be reproved, and John did not
forbear to use this moderate way of enjoyment; but the case is different
with the jugglers and tumblers: "much better it would be for them to do
nothing than to act so wickedly."[742]
No doubt was possible. The jesters did not care in the least to keep
within the bounds of "a modest hilarity"; nor did their audience, for in
the fourteenth century we find these men described in the poem of
Langland, and they have not altered in any way[743]; their tricks are
the same, the same shameful exhibitions take place with the same
success; for two hundred years they have been laughed at without
intermission. Many things have come and gone; the nation has got tired
of John's tyranny, of Henry the Third's weakness, of the Pope's
supremacy, but the histrions continue to tumble and jump; "their points
being broken, down fall their hose," (to use Shakespeare's words), and
the great at Court are convulsed with laughter on their benches.
Besides their horseplay, jugglers and histrions had, to please their
audience, retorts, funny answers, witticisms, merry tales, which they
acted rather than told, for gestures accompanied the delivery. This part
of the amusement, which came nearest the drama, sharp repartees,
impromptu dialogues, is the one we know least about. Voices have long
been silent, and the great halls which heard them are now but ivy-clad
ruins, yielding no echo. Some idea, however, can be formed of what took
place.
First we know from innumerable testimonies that those histrions spoke
and told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached with
it for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there is
superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle
Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at
the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a
spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his
clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them
were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them;
clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections
of _exempla_. They afforded amusement for a king, an amusement of a
mixed sort, sometimes:
--Why, says the king, are there no longer any Rolands?--Because, the
fool answers, there are no longer any Charlemagnes.[744]
Walter Map, as we saw, was so fond of happy answers that he formed a
book of all those he heard, knew, or made in his day. The fabliau of the
"Jongleur d'Ely," written in England in the thirteenth century, is a
good specimen of the word-fencing at which itinerant amusers were
expert. The king is unable to draw from the jongleur any answer to any
purpose: What is his name?--The name of his father.--Whom does he belong
to?--To his lord.--How is this river called?--No need to call it; it
comes of its own accord.--Does the jongleur's horse eat
well?--"Certainly yes, my sweet good lord, he can eat more oats in a day
than you would do in a whole week."[745]
This is a mere sample of an art that lent itself to many uses, and to
which belonged debates, "estrifs," "disputoisons," "jeux-partis,"
equally popular in England and in France. Some specimens of it are as
old as the time of the Anglo-Saxons, such as the "Dialogue of Salomon
and Saturnus."[746] There are found in the English language debates or
dialogues between the Owl and Nightingale, thirteenth century; the
Thrush and Nightingale; the Fox and Wolf, time of Edward I.; the
Carpenter's Tools, and others.[747] Collections of silly answers were
also made in England; one of them was composed to the confusion of the
inhabitants of Norfolk; another in their honour and for their
defence.[748] The influence of those estrifs, or debates, on the
development of the drama cannot be doubted; the oldest dramatic fragment
in the English language is nothing but an estrif between Christ and
Satan. The author acknowledges it himself:
A strif will I tellen on,
says he in his prologue.[749]
Debates enjoyed great favour in castle halls; impromptu ones which, as
Cathos and Madelon said, centuries later, "exercaient les esprits de
l'assemblee," were greatly liked; they constituted a sort of society
game, one of the oldest on record. A person among those present was
chosen to answer questions, and the amusement consisted in putting or
returning questions and answers of the most unexpected or puzzling
character. This was called the game of the "King who does not lie," or
the game of the "King and Queen."[750] By a phenomenon which has been
observed in less remote periods, after-dinner conversations often took a
licentious turn; in those games love was the subject most willingly
discussed, and it was not as a rule treated from a very ethereal point
of view; young men and young ladies exchanged on those occasions
observations the liberty of which gave umbrage to the Church, who tried
to interfere; bishops in their Constitutions mentioned those amusements,
and forbade to their flock such unbecoming games as "ludos de Rege et
Regina;" Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester, did so in 1240.[751]
Some of that freedom of speech survived, however, through the Middle
Ages up to the time of Shakespeare; while listening to the dialogues of
Beatrix and Benedick one wonders sometimes whether they are not playing
the game "de Rege et Regina."
Parody also helped in its way to the formation of the drama. There was a
taste for masking, for the imitation of other people; for the
caricaturing of some grave person or of some imposing ceremony, mass
for example, for the reproduction of the song of birds or the noise of a
storm, gestures being added to the noise, the song, or the words. Some
jugglers excelled in this; they were live gargoyles and were paid "the
one to play the drunkard, another the fool, a third to imitate the cat."
The great minstrels, "grans menestreus," had a horror of those
gargoyles, the shame of their profession;[752] noblemen, however, did
not share these refined, if not disinterested, feelings, and asked to
their castles and freely rewarded the members of the wandering tribe who
knew how to imitate the drunkard, the fool, or the cat.
On histrionic liberties introduced even into church services, Aelred,
abbot of Rievaulx in the twelfth century, gives some unexpected
particulars. He describes the movements and attitudes of certain
chanters by which they "resembled actors": so that we thus get
information on both at the same time. Chanters are found in various
churches, he says, who with inflated cheeks imitate the noise of
thunder, and then murmur, whisper, allow their voice to expire, keeping
their mouth open, and think that they give thus an idea of the death or
ecstasy of martyrs. Now you would think you hear the neighing of horses,
now the voice of a woman. With this "all their body is agitated by
histrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers are
twisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit their
delivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at those
inordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems to
them they are at the play and not at church, and that they have only to
look and not to pray."[753]
The transition from these various performances to little dramas or
interludes, which were at first nothing but tales turned into dialogues,
was so natural that it could scarcely attract any notice. Few specimens
have survived; one English one, however, is extant, dating from the time
of Edward I., and shows that this transition had then taken place. It
consists in the dramatising of one of the most absurd and most popular
tales told by wandering minstrels, the story, namely, of the Weeping
Bitch. A woman or maid rejects the love of a clerk; an old woman (Dame
Siriz in the English prose text) calls upon the proud one, having in her
hands a little bitch whom she has fed with mustard, and whose eyes
accordingly weep. The bitch, she says, is her own daughter, so
transformed by a clerk who had failed to touch her heart; the young
woman at once yields to her lover, fearing a similar fate. There exist
French, Latin, and English versions of this tale, one of the few which
are of undoubted Hindu origin. The English version seems to belong to
the thirteenth century.[754]
The turning of it into a drama took place a few years later. Nothing was
easier; this fabliau, like many others, was nearly all in dialogues; to
make a play of it, the jongleur had but to suppress some few lines of
narrative; we thus have a drama, in rudimentary shape, where a deep
study of human feelings must not be sought for.[755] Here is the
conversation between the young man and the young maid when they meet:
_Clericus._ Damishel, reste wel.
_Puella._ Sir, welcum, by Saynt Michel!
_Clericus._ Wer esty (is thy) sire, wer esty dame?
_Puella._ By Gode, es noner her at hame.
_Clericus._ Wel wor suile (such) a man to life
That suile a may (maid) mihte have to wyfe!
_Puella._ Do way, by Crist and Leonard....
Go forth thi way, god sire,
For her hastu losye al thi wile.
After some more supplications, the clerk, who is a student at the
University, goes to old Helwis (Siriz in the prose tale) and then the
author, more accustomed, it seems, to such persons than to the company
of young maidens, describes with some art the hypocrisy of the matron.
Helwis will not; she leads a holy life, and what is asked of her will
disturb her from her pious observances. Her dignified scruples are
removed at length by the plain offer of a reward.
In this way, some time before Chaucer's birth, the lay drama came into
existence in Shakespeare's country.
Other stories of the same sort were also turned into plays; we have none
of them, but we know that they existed. An Englishman of the fourteenth
century calls the performance of them "pleyinge of japis,"[756] by
opposition to the performance of religious dramas.
Other amusements again, of a strange kind, helped in the same early
period to the formation of the drama. A particularly keen pleasure was
afforded during the Middle Ages by songs, dances, and carols, when
performed in consecrated places, such as cemeteries, cloisters,
churches. A preference for such places may seem scarcely credible; still
it cannot be doubted, and is besides easily explainable. To the
unbridled instincts of men as yet half tamed, the Church had opposed
rigorous prescriptions which were enforced wholesale. To resist
excessive independence, excessive severity was needful; buttresses had
to be raised equal in strength to the weight of the wall. But from time
to time a cleft was formed, and the loosened passions burst forth with
violence. Escaped from the bondage of discipline, men found
inexpressible delight in violating all prohibitions at once; the day
for the beast had come, and it challenged the angel in its turn.
The propelling power of passions so repressed was even increased by
certain weird tastes very common at that period, and by the merry
reactions they caused. Now oppressed by, and now in revolt against, the
idea of death, the faithful would at times answer threats with sneers;
they found a particular pleasure in evolving bacchanalian processions
among the tombs of churchyards, not only because it was forbidden, but
also on account of the awful character of the place. The watching of the
dead was also an occasion for orgies and laughter. At the University,
even, these same amusements were greatly liked; students delighted in
singing licentious songs, wearing wreaths, carolling and deep drinking
in the midst of churchyards. Councils, popes, and bishops never tired of
protesting, nor the faithful of dancing. Be it forbidden, says Innocent
III. at the beginning of the thirteenth century, to perform "theatrical
games" in churches. Be this prohibition enforced, says Gregory IX. a
little later.[757] Be it forbidden, says Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of
Worcester, to perform "dishonest games" in cemeteries and churches,
especially on feast days and on the vigils of saints.[758] Be it
forbidden, says the provincial council of Scotland in 1225, "to carol
and sing songs at the funeral of the dead; the tears of others ought not
to be an occasion for laughter."[759] Be it forbidden, the University
of Oxford decrees in the same century, to dance and sing in churches,
and wear there disguises and wreaths of flowers and leaves.[760]
The year was divided by feasts; and those feasts, the importance of
which in everybody's eyes has dwindled much, were then great events;
people thought of them long before, saw them in the distance, towering
above the common level of days, as cathedrals above houses Everyday life
was arrested, and it was a time for rejoicings, of a religious, and
sometimes of an impious, character: both kinds helped the formation of
drama, and they were at times closely united On such great occasions,
more than ever, the caricature and derision of holy things increased the
amusement. Christmas-time had inherited the licence as well as it
occupied the date of the ancient Roman saturnalia; and whatever be the
period considered, be it early or late in the Middle Ages, it will be
found that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, by
sneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other;
people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but did
not doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him.
"Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons," says the Pope, are bold enough, on
those mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presence
of the people, whom they ought rather to edify by preaching the Word of
God."[761] In those bacchanals parodies of the Church prayers were
introduced; a Latin hymn on the Nativity was transposed line for line,
and became a song in honour of the good ale. Here, as a sample, are two
stanzas, both of the original and of the parody, this last having, as it
seems, been composed in England:
Letabundus
Exultet fidelis chorus,
Alleluia!
Regem Regum
Intacte perfundit thorus:
Res miranda!
Angelus consilii
Natus est de Virgine,
Sol de Stella,
Sol occasum nesciens,
Stella semper rutilans,
Semper clara.
Or i parra:
La Cerveise nos chantera
_Alleluia!_
Qui que en beit,
Se tele seit com estre deit,
_Res miranda!_
Bevez quant l'avez en poing;
Bien est droit, car mout est loing
_Sol de Stella_;
Bevez bien et bevez bel,
El vos vendra del tonel
_Semper clara_.
"You will see; the ale will make us sing, Alleluia! all of us, if the
ale is as it should be, a wonderful thing! (Res miranda). Drink of it
when you hold the jug; 'tis a most proper thing, for it is a good long
way from sun to star (Sol de Stella); drink well! drink deep! it will
flow for you from the tun, ever clear! (Semper clara)."[762]
So rose from earth at Christmastide, borne on the same winds, angels
and demons, and the ancient feast of Saturn was commemorated at the same
time as Christ's. In the same way, again, the scandalous feasts of the
Fools, of the Innocents, and of the Ass, were made the merrier with
grotesque parodies of pious ceremonies; they were celebrated in the
church itself, thus transformed, says the bishop of Lincoln, Robert
Grosseteste, into a place for pleasure, amusement, and folly: God's
house was defiled by the devil's inventions. He forbade, in consequence,
the celebration of the feast of Fools, "festum Stultorum," on the day of
Circumcision in his cathedral, and then in the whole diocese.[763]
The feast of the Innocents was even more popular in England. The
performers had at their head a "boy bishop," and this diminutive prelate
presided, with mitre on his head, over the frolics of his madcap
companions. The king would take an interest in the ceremony; he would
order the little dignitary to be brought before him, and give him a
present. Edward II. gave six shillings and eight pence to the young
John, son of Allan Scroby, who had played the part of the "boy bishop"
in the royal chapel; another time he gave ten shillings; Richard II.,
more liberal, gave a pound.[764] Nuns even were known to forget on
certain occasions their own character, and to carol with laymen on the
day of the Innocents, or on the day of Mary Magdalen, to commemorate the
life of their patroness, in its first part as it seems.[765]
The passion for sightseeing, which was then very keen, and which was to
be fed, later, mainly on theatrical entertainments, was indulged in
during the Middle Ages in various other ways. Processions were one of
them; occasions were numerous, and causes for them were not difficult to
find. Had the _Pui_ of London awarded the crown to the writer of the
best _chanson_, a procession was formed in the streets in honour of the
event. A marriage, a pilgrimage to Palestine, a patronal feast, were
sufficient motives; gilds and associations donned their liveries, drew
their insignia from their chest, and paraded the streets, including in
the "pageant," when the circumstance allowed of it, a medley of giants
and dwarfs, monsters, gilt fishes, and animals of all sorts. On grand
days the town itself was transformed; with its flower-decked houses, its
tapestries and hangings, it gave, with some more realism about it, the
impression we receive from the painted scenery of an opera.
The town at such times was swept with extraordinary care; even
"insignificant filth" was removed, Matthew Paris notes with wondering
pen in 1236.[766] The procession moved forward, men on horseback and on
foot, with unfurled banners, along the decorated streets, to the sound
of bells ringing in the steeples. At road-crossings the procession
stopped; after having been a sight, the members of it became in their
turn sightseers. Wonders had been prepared to please them: here a forest
with wild beasts and St. John the Baptist; elsewhere scenes from the
Bible, or from knightly romances, the "pas de Saladin," for example,
where the champion of England, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, fought the
champion of Islam. At times it was a dumb-show, a sort of _tableau
vivant_, at others actors moved but did not speak; at others again they
did both, and complimented the king. A day came when the compliments
were cut into dialogues; such practice was frequent in the fifteenth
century, and it approached very near to the real drama.
In 1236, Henry III. of England having married Alienor of Provence made
his solemn entry into his capital. On this occasion were gathered
together "so many nobles, so many ecclesiastics, such a concourse of
people, such a quantity of histrions, that the town of London could
scarcely hold them in her ample bosom--_sinu suo capace_.--All the town
was adorned with silk banners, wreaths, hangings, candles and lamps,
mechanisms and inventions of extraordinary kinds."[767]
The same town, fond above all others of such exhibitions, and one of the
last to preserve vestiges of them in her Lord Mayor's Show, outdid all
that had been seen before when, on the 29th of August, 1393, Richard II.
made his entry in state, after having consented to receive the citizens
again into his favour.[768] The streets were lined with cloth of gold
and purple; "sweet smelling flowers" perfumed the air; tapestries with
figures hung from the windows; the king was coming forth, splendid to
look at, very proud of his good looks, "much like Troilus;" queen Anne
took part also in the procession. A variety of scenes stop the progress
and delight the onlookers; one had an unforeseen character. The queen
was nearing the gate of the bridge, the old bridge with defensive towers
and gates, and two cars full of ladies were following her, when one of
the cars, "of Phaetonic make" says the classical-minded narrator,
suddenly broke. Grave as saints, beautiful as angels, the ladies, losing
their balance, fell head downwards; and the crowd, while full of
admiration for what they saw, "could not suppress their laughter." The
author of the description calls it, as Fragonard would have done, "a
lucky chance," _sors bona_; but there was nothing of Fragonard in him
except this word: he was a Carmelite and Doctor of Divinity.
Things having been set right again, the procession entered Cheapside,
and there was seen an "admirable tower"; a young man and a young maiden
came out of it, addressed Richard and Anne, and offered them crowns; at
the Gate of St. Paul's a concert of music was heard; at Temple Bar,
"barram Templi," a forest had been arranged on the gate, with animals of
all sorts, serpents, lions, a bear, a unicorn, an elephant, a beaver, a
monkey, a tiger, a bear, "all of which were there, running about, biting
each other, fighting, jumping." Forests and beasts were supposed to
represent the desert where St. John the Baptist had lived. An angel was
let down from the roof, and offered the king and queen a little diptych
in gold, with stones and enamel representing the Crucifixion; he made
also a speech. At length the queen, who had an active part to play in
this opera, came forward, and, owing to her intercession, the king, with
due ceremony, consented to bestow his pardon on the citizens.
Many other examples might be adduced; feasts were numerous, and for a
time caused pains to be forgotten: "oubliance etait au voir," as
Froissart says so well on an occasion of this sort.[769] There were also
for the people the May celebrations with their dances and songs, the
impersonation of Robin Hood, later the performance of short plays of
which he was the hero[770]; and again those chimes, falling from the
steeples, filling the air with their joyous peals. At Court there were
the "masks" or "ballets" in which the great took part, wrapped in starry
draperies, disguised with gold beards, dressed in skins or feathers, as
were at Paris King Charles VI. and his friends on the 29th of January,
1392, in the famous Ballet of Wild Men, since called, from the
catastrophe which happened, "Ballet des Ardents" (of men in fire). The
taste for ballets and Masks was one of long duration; the Tudors and
Stuarts were as fond of them as the Plantagenets, so much so that a
branch apart in dramatic literature was created on this account, and it
includes in England such graceful and touching masterpieces as the "Sad
Shepherd" of Ben Jonson and the "Comus" of Milton.
II.
While histrions and amusers give a foretaste of farce and comedy in
castle halls, while romantic drama is foreshadowed in the "pas de
Saladin" and the "Taking of Troy," and the pastoral drama begins with
May games, other sources of the modern dramatic art were springing up in
the shadow of the cloister and under the naves of churches.
The imitation of any action is a step towards drama. Conventional,
liturgical, ritualistic as the imitation was, still there was an
imitation in the ceremony of mass; and mass led to the religious drama,
which was therefore, at starting, as conventional, liturgical, and
ritualistic as could be. Its early beginning is to be sought for in the
antiphoned parts of the service, and then it makes one with the service
itself. In a similar manner, outside the Church lay drama had begun with
the alternate _chansons_, debates, poetical altercations of the singers
of facetious or love-songs. A great step was made when, at the principal
feasts of the year, Easter and Christmas, the chanters, instead of
giving their responses from their stalls, moved in the Church to recall
the action commemorated on that day; additions were introduced into the
received text of the service; religious drama begins then to have an
existence of its own.
"'Tell us, shepherds, whom do you seek in this stable?--They will
answer: 'Christ the Saviour, our Lord.'"[771]
Such is the starting-point; it dates from the tenth century; from this
is derived the play of Shepherds, of which many versions have come down
to us. One of them, followed in the cathedral of Rouen, gives a minute
account of the performance as it was then acted in the midst of the
religious service: "Be the crib established behind the altar, and be the
image of the Blessed Mary placed there. First a child, from before the
choir and on a raised platform, representing an angel, will announce the
birth of the Saviour to five canons or their vicars of the second rank;
the shepherds must come in by the great gate of the choir.... As they
near the crib they sing the prose _Pax in terris_. Two priests of the
first rank, wearing a dalmatic, will represent the midwives and stand by
the crib."[772]
These adventitious ornaments were greatly appreciated, and from year to
year they were increased and perfected. Verse replaced prose; the
vulgar idiom replaced Latin; open air and the public square replaced the
church nave and its subdued light. It was no longer necessary to have
recourse to priests wearing a dalmatic in order to represent midwives;
the feminine parts were performed by young boys dressed as women: this
was coming much nearer nature, as near in fact as Shakespeare did, for
he never saw any but boys play the part of his Juliet. There were even
cases in which actual women were seen on the mediaeval stage. Those
ameliorations, so simple and obvious, summed up in a phrase, were the
work of centuries, but the tide when once on the flow was the stronger
for waiting. The drama left the church, because its increased importance
had made it cumbersome there, because it was badly seen, and because
having power it wanted freedom.
Easter was the occasion for ornaments and additions similar to those
introduced into the Christmas service.[773] The ceremonies of Holy Week,
which reproduced each incident in the drama of the Passion, lent
themselves admirably to it. Additions following additions, the whole of
the Old Testament ended by being grouped round and tied to the Christmas
feast, and the whole of the New Testament round Easter. Both were
closely connected, the scenes in the one being interpreted as symbols of
the scenes in the other; complete cycles were thus formed, representing
in two divisions the religious history of mankind from the Creation to
Doomsday. Once severed from the church, these groups of plays often got
also separated from the feast to which they owed their birth, and were
represented at Whitsuntide, on Corpus Christi day, or on the occasion
of some solemnity or other.
As the taste for such dramas was spreading, a variety of tragical
subjects, not from the Bible, were turned into dialogues: first lives of
saints, later, in France, some few subjects borrowed from history or
romance: the story of Griselda, the raising of the siege at Orleans by
Joan of Arc, &c.[774] The English adhered more exclusively to the Bible.
Dramas drawn from the lives of saints were usually called Miracles;
those derived from the Bible, Mysteries; but these appellations had
nothing very definite about them, and were often used one for the other.
The religious drama was on the way to lose its purely liturgical
character when the conquest of England had taken place. Under the reign
of the Norman and Angevin kings, the taste for dramatic performances
increased considerably; within the first century after Hastings we find
them numerous and largely attended.
The oldest representation the memory of which has come down to us took
place at the beginning of the twelfth century, and had for its subject
the story of that St. Catherine of Alexandria whom the Emperor Maximinus
caused to be beheaded after she had converted the fifty orators
entrusted with the care of bringing her back to paganism by dint of
their eloquence. The fifty orators received baptism, and were burnt
alive.[775] The representation was managed by a Mancel of good family
called Geoffrey, whom Richard, abbot of St. Albans, had asked to come
from France to be the master of the Abbey school. But as he was late in
starting, he found on his coming that the school had been given to
another; in his leisure he caused to be represented at Dunstable a play,
or miracle, of St. Catherine, "quendam ludum de Sancta Katerina quem
miracula vulgariter appellamus." He borrowed from the sacristan at St.
Albans the Abbey copes to dress his actors in; but the night following
upon the performance, the fire consumed his house; all his books were
burnt, and the copes too: "Wherefore, not knowing how to indemnify God
and St. Albans, he offered his own person as a holocaust and took the
habit in the monastery. This explains the zeal with which, having become
abbot, he strove to enrich the convent with precious copes." For he
became abbot, and died in 1146, after a reign of twenty-six years,[776]
and Matthew Paris, to whom we owe those details, and whose taste for
works of art is well known, gives a full enumeration of the splendid
purple and gold vestments, adorned with precious stones, with which the
Mancel Geoffrey enriched the treasury of the Abbey.[777]
A little later in the same century, Fitzstephen, who wrote under Henry
II., mentions as a common occurrence the "representations of miracles"
held in London.[778] In the following century, under Henry III., some
were written in the English language.[779] During the fourteenth
century, in the time of Chaucer, mysteries were at the height of their
popularity; their heroes were familiar to all, and the sayings of the
same became proverbs. Kings themselves journeyed in order to be present
at the representations; Chaucer had seen them often, and the characters
in his tales make frequent allusions to them; his drunken miller cries
"in Pilates vois"; "Jolif Absolon" played the part of "king Herodes,"
and is it to be expected that an Alisoun could resist king Herodes? The
Wife of Bath, dressed in her best garments, goes "to pleyes of
miracles," and there tries to make acquaintances that may be turned into
husbands when she wants them. "Hendy Nicholas" quotes to the credulous
carpenter the example of Noah, whose wife would not go on board, and who
regretted that he had not built a separate ship for "hir-self allone."
A treatise, written in English at this period, against such
representations, shows the extreme favour in which they stood with all
classes of society.[780] The enthusiasm was so general and boundless
that it seems to the author indispensable to take the field and retort
(for the question was keenly disputed) the arguments put forward to
justify the performance of mysteries. The works and miracles of Christ,
he observes, were not done for play; He did them "ernystfully," and we
use them "in bourde and pleye!" It is treating with great familiarity
the Almighty, who may well say: "Pley not with me, but pley with thi
pere." Let us beware of His revenge; it well may happen that "God takith
more venjaunce on us than a lord that sodaynly sleeth his servaunt for
he pleyide to homely with hym;" and yet the lord's vengeance cannot be
considered a trifling one.
What do the abettors of mysteries answer to this? They answer that "thei
pleyen these myraclis in the worschip of God"; they lead men to think
and meditate; devils are seen there carrying the wicked away to hell;
the sufferings of Christ are represented, and the hardest are touched,
they are seen weeping for pity; for people wept and laughed at the
representations, openly and noisily, "wepynge bitere teris." Besides,
there are men of different sorts, and some are so made that they cannot
be converted but by mirthful means, "by gamen and pley"; and such
performances do them much good. Must not, on the other hand, all men
have "summe recreatioun"? Better it is, "or lesse yvele, that thei han
thyre recreacoun by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other
japis." And one more very sensible reason is given: "Sithen it is
leveful to han the myraclis of God peyntid, why is not as wel leveful to
han the myraclis of God pleyed ... and betere thei ben holden in mennus
mynde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peyntynge,
for this is a deed bok, the tother a quick."
To those reasons, which he does not try to conceal, but on the contrary
presents very forcibly, the fair-minded author answers his best. These
representations are too amusing; after such enjoyments, everyday life
seems plain and dull; women of "yvil continaunse," Wives of Bath maybe,
or worse, flock there and do not remain idle. The fact that they come
does not prevent the priests from going too; yet it is "uttirly"
forbidden them "not onely to been myracle pleyere but also to heren or
to seen myraclis pleyinge." But they set the decree at nought and "pleyn
in entirlodies," and go and see them: "The prestis that seyn hemsilf
holy, and besien hem aboute siche pleyis, ben verry ypocritis and
lyeris." All bounds have been overstepped; it is no longer a taste, but
a passion; men are carried away by it; citizens become avaricious and
grasping to get money in view of the representations and the amusements
which follow: "To peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche,
and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothinge grucche."
Merchants and tradesmen "bygilen ther neghbors, in byinge and sellyng,"
that is "hideous coveytise," that is "maumetrie"; and they do it "to han
to spenden on these miraclis."
Many documents corroborate these statements and show the accuracy of the
description. The fondness of priests for plays and similar pastimes is
descanted upon by the Council of London in 1391.[781] A hundred years
earlier an Englishman, in a poem which he wrote in French, had pointed
out exactly the same abuses: from which can be perceived how deeply
rooted they were. Another folly, William de Wadington[782] had said, has
been invented by mad clerks; it consists in what is called Miracles; in
spite of decrees they disguise themselves with masks, "li forsene!"[783]
Purely liturgical drama, of course, is permissible (an additional proof
of its existence in England); certain representations can be held,
"provided they be chastely set up and included in the Church service,"
as is done when the burial of Christ or the Resurrection is represented
"to increase devotion."[784] But to have "those mad gatherings in the
streets of towns, or in the cemeteries, after dinner," to prepare for
the idle such meeting-places, is a quite different thing; if they tell
you that they do it with good intent and to the honour of God, do not
believe them; it is all "for the devil." If players ask you to lend them
horses, equipments, dresses, and ornaments of all sorts, don't fail to
refuse. For the stage continued to live upon loans, and the example of
the copes of St. Albans destroyed by fire had not deterred convents from
continuing to lend sacred vestments to actors.[785] In the case of
sacred vestments, says William, "the sin is much greater." In all this,
as well as in all sorts of dances and frolics, a heavy responsibility
rests with the minstrels; they ply a dangerous trade, a "trop perilus
mester"; they cause God to be forgotten, and the vanity of the world to
be cherished.
Not a few among these English dramas, so popular in former days, have
come down to us. Besides separate pieces, histories of saints (very
scarce in England), or fragments of old series, several collections have
survived, the property whilom of gilds or municipalities. A number of
towns kept up those shows, which attracted visitors, and were at the
same time edifying, profitable, and amusing. From the fourteenth century
the performances were in most cases intrusted to the gilds, each craft
having as much as possible to represent a play in accordance with its
particular trade. Shipwrights represented the building of the ark;
fishermen, the Flood; goldsmiths, the coming of the three kings with
their golden crowns; wine merchants, the marriage at Cana, where a
miracle took place very much in their line. In other cases the plays
were performed by gilds founded especially for that purpose: gild of
Corpus Christi, of the Pater Noster, &c. This last had been created
because "once on a time, a play setting forth the goodness of the Lord's
Prayer was played in the city of York, in which play all manner of vices
and sins were held up to scorn and the virtues were held up to praise.
This play met with such favour that many said: 'Would that this play
could be kept in this city, for the health of souls and for the comfort
of citizens and neighbours!' Hence the keeping up of that play in times
to come" (year 1389).[786]
In a more or less complete state, the collections of the Mysteries
performed at Chester, Coventry, Woodkirk, and York have been preserved,
without speaking of fragments of other series. Most of those texts
belong to the fourteenth century, but have been retouched at a later
date.[787] Old Mysteries did not escape the hand of the improvers, any
more than old churches, where any one who pleased added paintings,
porches, and tracery, according to the fashion of the day.
These dramatic entertainments, which thrilled a whole town, to which
flocked, with equal zeal, peasants and craftsmen, citizens, noblemen,
kings and queens, which the Reformation succeeded in killing only after
half a century's fight, enlivened with incomparable glow the monotonous
course of days and weeks. The occasion was a solemn one; preparation was
begun long beforehand; it was an important affair, an affair of State.
Gilds taxed their members to secure a fair representation of the play
assigned to them; they were fined by the municipal authority in case
they proved careless and inefficient, or were behind their time to
begin.
Read as they are, without going back in our minds to times past and
taking into account the circumstances of their composition, Mysteries
may well be judged a gross, childish, and barbarous production. Still,
they are worthy of great attention, as showing a side of the soul of our
ancestors, who in all this did _their very best_: for those performances
were not got up anyhow: they were the result of prolonged care and
attention. Not any man who wished was accepted as an actor; some
experience of the art was expected; and in some towns even examinations
took place. At York a decree of the Town Council ordains that long
before the appointed day, "in the tyme of lentyn" (while the performance
itself took place in summer, at the Corpus Christi celebration) "there
shall be called afore the maire for the tyme beyng four of the moste
connyng discrete and able players within this Citie, to serche, here and
examen all the plaiers and plaies and pagentes thrughoute all the
artificers belonging to Corpus Christi plaie. And all suche as thay
shall fynde sufficiant in personne and connyng, to the honour of the
Citie and worship of the saide craftes, for to admitte and able; and all
other insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice, or personne to
discharge, ammove and avoide." All crafts were bound to bring "furthe
ther pageantez in order and course by good players, well arayed and
openly spekyng, upon payn of lesying 100 s. to be paide to the chambre
without any pardon."[788] These texts belong to the fifteenth century,
but there are older ones; and they show that from the beginning the
difference between good and bad actors was appreciated and great
importance was attached to the gestures and delivery. The Mystery of
"Adam" (in French, the work, it seems, of a Norman), which belongs to
the twelfth century, commences with recommendations to players: "Be Adam
well trained so as to answer at the appropriate time without any
slackness or haste. The same with the other actors; let them speak in
sedate fashion, with gestures fitting the words; be they mindful not to
add or suppress a syllable in the verses; and be their pronunciation
constantly clear."[789] The amusement afforded by such exhibitions, the
personal fame acquired by good actors, suddenly drawn from the shadow in
which their working lives had been spent till then, acted so powerfully
on craftsmen that some would not go back to the shop, and, leaving their
tools behind them, became professional actors; thus showing that there
was some wisdom in the reproof set forth in the "Tretise of Miraclis
pleyinge."
Once emerged from the Church, the drama had the whole town in which to
display itself; and it filled the whole town. On these days the city
belonged to dramatic art; each company had its cars or scaffolds,
_pageants_ (placed on wheels in some towns), each car being meant to
represent one of the places where the events in the play happened. The
complete series of scenes was exhibited at the main crossings, or on the
principal squares or open spaces in the town. The inhabitants of
neighbouring houses sat thus as in a front row, and enjoyed a most
enviable privilege, so enviable that it was indeed envied, and at York,
for example, they had to pay for it. After 1417 the choosing of the
places for the representations was regulated by auction, and the plays
were performed under the windows of the highest bidders. In other cases
the scaffolds were fixed; so that the representation was performed only
at one place.
The form of the scaffolds varied from town to town. At Chester "these
pagiantes or cariage was a highe place made like a house with two rowmes
beinge open on ye tope: the lower rowme they apparrelled and dressed
them selves; and in the higher rowme they played: and they stoode upon
six wheeles. And when they had done with one cariage in one place, they
wheeled the same from one streete to an other."[790] In some cases the
scaffolds were not so high, and boards made a communication between the
raised platform and the ground; a horseman could thus ride up the
scaffold: "Here Erode ragis in the pagond and in the strete also."[791]
Sometimes the upper room did not remain open, but a curtain was drawn,
according to the necessity of the action. The heroes of the play moved
about the place, and went from one scaffold to another; dialogue then
took place between players on the ground and players on the boards:
"Here thei take Jhesu and lede hym in gret hast to Herowde; and the
Herowdys scaffald xal unclose, shewyng Herowdes in astat, alle the Jewys
knelyng except Annas and Cayaphas."[792] Chaucer speaks of the "scaffold
hye" on which jolif Absolon played Herod; king Herod in fact was always
enthroned high above the common rabble.
The arrangements adopted in England differed little, as we see, from the
French ones; and it could scarcely be otherwise, as the taste for these
dramas had been imported by the Normans and Angevins. Neither in
England nor in France were there ever any of those six-storied theatres
described by the brothers Parfait, each story being supposed to
represent a different place or country. To keep to truth, we should, on
the contrary, picture to ourselves those famous buildings stretched all
along on the ground, with their different compartments scattered round
the public square.
But we have better than words and descriptions to give us an idea of the
sight; we have actual pictures, offering to view all the details of the
performances. An exquisite miniature of Jean Fouquet, preserved at
Chantilly, which has never been studied as it ought to be with reference
to this question, has for its subject the life of St. Apollinia. Instead
of painting a fancy picture, Fouquet has chosen to represent the
martyrdom of the saint as it was acted in a miracle play.[793] The main
action takes place on the ground; Apollinia is there, in the middle of
the executioners. Round the place are scaffolds with a lower room and
an upper room, as at Chester, and there are curtains to close them. One
of those boxes represents Paradise; angels with folded arms, quietly
seated on the wooden steps of their stairs, await the moment when they
must speak; another is filled with musicians playing the organ and other
instruments; a third contains the throne of the king. The throne is
empty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with
_fleurs-de-lys_, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part in
the main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, with
opening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the better
accommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama,
and to keep the interest of the crowd alive, by running suddenly through
it, with their feathers and animals' skins, howling and grinning; "to
the great terror of little children," says Rabelais, who, like Chaucer,
had often been present at such dramas. Several devils are to be seen in
the miniature; they have cloven feet, and stand outside the hell-mouth;
a buffoon also is to be seen, who raises a laugh among the audience and
shows his scorn for the martyr by the means described three centuries
earlier in John of Salisbury's book, exhibiting his person in a way
"quam erubescat videre vel cynicus."
Besides the scaffolds, boxes or "estableis" meant for actors, others are
reserved for spectators of importance, or those who paid best. This
commingling of actors and spectators would seem to us somewhat
confusing; but people were not then very exacting; with them illusion
was easily caused, and never broken. This magnificent part of the
audience, besides, with its rich garments, was itself a sight; and so
little objection was made to the presence of beholders of that sort that
we shall find them seated on the Shakesperean stage as well as on the
stage of Corneille and of Moliere. "I was on the stage, meaning to
listen to the play ..." says the Eraste of "Les Facheux." In the time
of Shakespeare the custom followed was even more against theatrical
illusion, as there were gentlemen not only on the sides of the scene,
but also behind the actors; they filled a vast box fronting the pit.
The dresses were rich: this is the best that can be said of them. Saints
enwreathed their chins with curling beards of gold; God the Father was
dressed as a pope or a bishop. For good reasons the audience did not ask
much in the way of historical accuracy; all it wanted was _signs_. Copes
and tiaras were in its eyes religious signs by excellence, and in the
wearer of such they recognised God without hesitation. The turban of the
Saracens, Mahomet the prophet of the infidels, were known to the mob,
which saw in them the signs and symbols of irreligiousness and impiety.
Herod, for this cause, wore a turban, and swore premature oaths by
"Mahound." People were familiar with symbols, and the use of them was
continued; the painters at the Renaissance represented St. Stephen with
a stone in his hand and St. Paul with a sword, which stone and sword
stood for symbols, and the sight of them evoked all the doleful tale of
their sufferings and death.
The authors of Mysteries did not pay, as we may well believe, great
attention to the rule of the three Unities. The events included in the
French Mystery of the "Vieil Testament" did not take place in one day,
but in four thousand years. The most distant localities were represented
next to each other: Rome, Jerusalem, Marseilles. The scaffolds huddled
close together scarcely gave an idea of geographical realities; the
imagination of the beholders was expected to supply what was wanting:
and so it did. A few square yards of ground (sometimes, it must be
acknowledged, of water) were supposed to be the Mediterranean;
Marseilles was at one end, and Jaffa at the other. A few minutes did
duty for months, years, or centuries. Herod sends a messenger to
Tiberius; the tetrarch has scarcely finished his speech when his man is
already at Rome, and delivers his message to the emperor. Noah gets into
his ark and shuts his window; here a silence lasting a minute or so; the
window opens, and Noah declares that the forty days are past ("Chester
Plays").
To render, however, his task easier to the public, some precautions were
taken to let them perceive where they were. Sometimes the name of the
place was written on a piece of wood or canvas, a clear and honest
means.[794] It worked so successfully that it was still resorted to in
Elizabethan times; we see "Thebes written in great letters upon an olde
doore," says Sir Philip Sidney, and without asking for more we are bound
"to beleeve that it is Thebes." In other cases the actor followed the
sneering advice Boileau was to express later, and in very simple fashion
declared who he was: I am Herod! I am Tiberius! Or again, when they
moved from one place to another, they named both: now we are arrived, I
recognise Marseilles; "her is the lond of Mercylle."[795] Most of those
inventions were long found to answer, and very often Shakespeare had no
better ones to use. The same necessities caused him to make up for the
deficiency of the scenery by his wonderful descriptions of landscapes,
castles, and wild moors. All that poetry would have been lost had he had
painted scenery at his disposal.
Some attempts at painted scenery were made, it is true, but so plain and
primitive that the thing again acted as a symbol rather than as the
representation of a place. A throne meant the palace of the king. God
divides light from darkness: "Now must be exhibited a sheet painted,
know you, one half all white and the other half all black." The creation
of animals comes nearer the real truth: "Now must be let loose little
birds that will fly in the air, and must be placed on the ground, ducks,
swans, geese ... with as many strange beasts as it will have been
possible to secure." But truth absolute was observed when the state of
innocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look
round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless
returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical
recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple:
"Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The
proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals
"out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be
ashamed. The woman must also be seized with shame, and cover herself
with her hands."[798]
If painted scenery was greatly neglected, machinery received more
attention. That characteristic of modern times, yeast through which the
old world has been transformed, the hankering after the unattainable,
which caused so many great deeds, had also smaller results; it affected
these humble details. Painted canvas was neglected, but people laboured
at the inventing of machinery. While a sheet half white and half black
was hung to represent light and chaos, in the drama of "Adam," so early
as the twelfth century, a self-moving serpent, "serpens artificiose
compositus," tempted the woman in Paradise. Wondering Eve offered but
small resistance. Elsewhere an angel carried Enoch "by a subtile engine"
into Paradise. In the Doomesday play of the Chester Mysteries, "Jesus
was to come down as on a cloud, if that could be managed." But sometimes
it could not; in Fouquet's miniature the angels have no other machinery
but a ladder to allow them to descend from heaven to earth. In the "Mary
Magdalene" of the Digby Mysteries a boat appeared with mast and sail,
and carried to Palestine the King of Marseilles.
Hell was in all times most carefully arranged, and it had the best
machinery. The mouth opened and closed, threw flames from its nostrils,
and let loose upon the crowd devils armed with hooks and emitting awful
yells. From the back of the mouth appalling noises were heard, being
meant for the moans of the damned. These moans were produced by a simple
process: pots and frying-pans were knocked against each other. In
"Adam," the heroes of the play are taken to hell, there to await the
coming of Christ; and the scene, according to the stage direction in the
manuscript, was to be represented thus: "Then the Devil will come and
three or four devils with him with chains in their hands and iron rings
which they will put round the neck of Adam and Eve. Some push them and
others draw them toward hell. Other devils awaiting them by the entrance
jump and tumble as a sign of their joy for the event." After Adam has
been received within the precincts of hell, "the devils will cause a
great smoke to rise; they will emit merry vociferations, and knock
together their pans and caldrons so as to be heard from the outside.
After a while, some devils will come out and run about the place." Pans
were of frequent use; Abel had one under his tunic, and Cain, knocking
on it, drew forth lugubrious sounds, which went to the heart of the
audience.
The machinery became more and more complicated toward the time of the
Renaissance; but much money was needed, and for long the Court or the
municipalities could alone use them. In England fixed or movable scenery
reaches great perfection at Court: Inigo Jones shows a genius in
arranging elegant decorations; some of his sketches have been
preserved.[799] But such splendid inventions were too costly to be
transferred to the stages for which Shakespeare wrote; and he never used
any other magic but that of his poetry. Inigo Jones had fine
scene-shiftings with the help of his machinists, and Shakespeare with
the help of his verses; these last have this advantage, that they have
not faded, and can still be seen.
III.
Whatever may be thought of so much simplicity, childishness, or
barbarity of those ivy-clad ruins, the forms of which can scarcely be
discerned, they must be subjected to a closer inspection; and if there
were no other, this one consideration would be enough to incline us to
it: while in the theatre of Bacchus the tragedies of Sophocles were
played once and no more, the Christian drama, remodelled from century to
century, was represented for four hundred years before immense
multitudes; and this is a unique phenomenon in the history of
literature.
The fact may be ascribed to several causes, some of which have already
been pointed out. The desire to see was extremely keen, and there was
seen all that could be wished: the unattainable, the unperceivable,
miracles, the king's Court, earthly paradise, all that had been heard of
or dreamt about. Means of realisation were rude, but the public held
them satisfactory.
What feasts were in the year, sacraments were in the existence of men;
they marked the great memorable stages of life. A complete net of
observances and religious obligations surrounded the months and seasons;
bells never remained long silent; they rang less discreetly than now,
and were not afraid to disturb conversations by their noise. At each
period of the day they recalled that there were prayers to say, and to
those even who did not pray they recalled the importance of religion.
Existences were thus impregnated with religion; and religion was in its
entirety explained, made accessible and visible, in the Mysteries.
The verses spoken by the actors did not much resemble those in
Shakespeare; they were, in most cases, mere tattle, scarcely verses;
rhyme and alliteration were sometimes used both together, and both
anyhow. And yet the emotion was deep; in the state of mind with which
the spectators came, nothing would have prevented their being touched by
the affecting scenes, neither the lame verse nor the clumsy machinery;
the cause of the emotion was the subject, and not the manner in which
the subject was represented. All the past of humanity and its eternal
future were at stake; players, therefore, were sometimes interrupted by
the passionate exclamations of the crowd. At a drama lately represented
on the stage of the Comedie Francaise, one of the audience astonished
his neighbours by crying: "Mais signe donc! Est-elle bete!..." In the
open air of the public place, at a time when manners were less polished,
many such interjections interrupted the performance; many insulting
apostrophes were addressed to Eve when she listened to the serpent; and
the serpent spoke (in the Norman drama of "Adam") a language easy to
understand, the language of everyday life:
"_Diabolus._--I saw Adam; he is an ass."
"_Eva._--He is a little hard."
"_Diabolus._--We shall melt him; but at present he is harder than iron."
But thou, Eve, thou art a superior being, a delicate one, a delight for
the eyes. "Thou art a little tender thing, fresher than the rose, whiter
than crystal, or snow falling on the ice in a dale. The Creator has
badly matched the couple; thou art too sweet; man is too hard.... For
which it is very pleasant to draw close to thee. Let me have a talk with
thee."[800]
And for such cajolery, for such folly, thought the crowd, for this sin
of our common mother, we sweat and we suffer, we observe Lent, we
experience temptations, and under our feet this awful hell-mouth opens,
in which, maybe, we shall some day fall. Eve, turn away from the
serpent!
Greater even was the emotion caused by the drama of the Passion, the
sufferings of the Redeemer, all the details of which were familiar to
everybody. The indignation was so keen that the executioners had
difficulty sometimes in escaping the fury of the multitude.
The Middle Ages were the age of contrasts; what measure meant was then
unknown. This has already been noticed _a propos_ of Chaucer; the
cleverest _compensated_, as Chaucer did, their Miller's tales with
stories of Griselda. When they intend to be tender the authors of
Mysteries fall in most cases into that mawkish sentimentality by which
the man of the people or the barbarian is often detected. A feeling for
measure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it.
Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-paths
always represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetness
unspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, in
the middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound of
his horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape,
with a blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected in
Dickens, many also in the Mysteries. After a truly touching scene
between Abraham and his son, the pretty things Isaac does and says, his
prayer not to see the sword so keen, cease to touch, and come very near
making us laugh. The contrast between the fury of Herod and the
sweetness of Joseph and Mary is similarly carried to an extreme. This
same Joseph who a minute ago insulted his wife in words impossible to
quote, has now become such a sweet and gentle saint that one can
scarcely believe the same man addresses us. He is packing before his
journey to Egypt; he will take his tools with him, his "_smale_
instrumentes."[801] Is there anything more touching? Nothing, except
perhaps the appeal of the street painter, calling our attention to the
fact that he draws "on the _rude_ stone." How could the passer-by not be
touched by the idea that the stone is so hard? In the Middle Ages people
melted at this, they were moved, they wept; and all at once they were in
a mood to enjoy the most enormous buffooneries. These fill a large place
in the Mysteries, and beside them shine scenes of real comedy, evincing
great accuracy of observation.
The personages worst treated in Mysteries are always kings; they are
mostly represented as being grotesque and mischievous. The playwrights
might have given as their excuse that their kings are miscreants, and
that black is not dark enough to paint such faces. But to this
commendable motive was added a sly pleasure felt in caricaturing those
great men, not only because they were heathens, but also because they
were kings; for when Christian princes and lords appear on the stage,
the satire is often continued. Thus Lancelot of the Lake appears
unexpectedly at the Court of king Herod, and after much rant the lover
of queen Guinevere draws his invincible sword and massacres the
Innocents ("Chester Plays").
Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Pharaoh, the King of Marseilles,
always open the scenes where they figure with a speech, in which they
sound their own praise. It was an established tradition; in the same way
as God the Father delivered a sermon, these personages made what the
manuscripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the
universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and
curse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about,
proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French,
French being there again a token of power and authority. The English
Herod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects of
Angevin monarchs would have shrugged their shoulders at the
representation of a prince who did not speak French. It was for them the
sign of princeship, as a tiara was the sign of godhead. Herod therefore
spoke French, a very mean sort of French, it is true, and the Parliament
of Paris which was to express later its indignation at the faulty
grammar of the "Confreres de la Passion" would have suffered much if it
had seen what became of the noble language of France on the scaffolds at
Chester. But it did not matter; any words were enough, in the same way
as any sword would do as an emblem for St. Paul.
One of the duties of these strutting heroes was to maintain silence. It
seemed as if they had a privilege for noise making, and they repressed
encroachments; their task was not an easy one. Be still, "beshers,"
cries Augustus; "beshers" means "beaux sires" in the kingly French of
the Mysteries:
Be stylle, beshers, I commawnd you,
That no man speke a word here now
Bot I my self alon.
And if ye do, I make a vow,
Thys brand abowte youre nekys shalle bow,
For-thy by stylle as ston.[802]
Silence! cries Tiberius. Silence! cries Herod:
Styr not bot ye have lefe,
For if ye do I clefe
You smalle as flesh to pott.[803]
Tiberius knows Latin, and does not conceal it from the audience:
Stynt, I say, gyf men place, quia sum dominus dominorum,
He that agans me says rapietur lux oculorum.[804]
And each of them hereupon moves about his scaffold, and gives the best
idea he can of the magnitude of his power:
Above all kynges under the cloudys crystall,
Royally I reigne in welthe without woo ...
I am Kyng Herowdes.[805]
Be it known, says another:
That of heven and hell chyff rewlar am I,
To wos magnyfycens non stondyt egall,
For I am soveren of al soverens.[806]
Make room, says a third:
A-wantt, a-want the, on-worthy wrecchesse!
Why lowtt ye nat low to my lawdabyll presens?...
I am a sofereyn semely, that ye se butt seyld;
Non swyche onder sonne, the sothe for to say ...
I am kyng of Marcylle![807]
Such princes fear nothing, and are never abashed; they are on familiar
terms with the audience, and interpellate the bystanders, which was a
sure cause of merriment, but not of good order. Octavian, being well
pleased with the services of one of his men, tells him:
Boye, their be ladyes many a one,
Amonge them all chouse thee one,
Take the faierest, or elles non,
And freely I geve her thee.[808]
Every lord bows to my law, observes Tiberius:
Is it nat so? Sey yow all with on showte.
and a note in the manuscript has: "Here answerryt all the pepul at
ons,'Ya, my lord, ya.'"[809] All this was performed with appropriate
gesture, that is, as wild as the words they went with, a tradition that
long survived. Shakespeare complained, as we know, of the delivery of
those actors who "out-heroded Herod."
The authors of English Mysteries had no great experience of Courts; they
drew their caricatures somewhat haphazard. They were neither very
learned nor very careful; anachronisms and mistakes swarm under their
pen. While Herod sacrifices to Mahomet, Noah invokes the Blessed Virgin,
and the Christmas shepherds swear by "the death of Christ," whose birth
is announced to them at the end of the play.
The psychology of these dramas is not very deep, especially when the
question is of personages of rank, and of feelings of a refined sort.
The authors of Mysteries speak then at random and describe by hearsay;
they have seen their models only from afar, and are not familiar with
them. When they have to show how it is that young Mary Magdalen, as
virtuous as she was beautiful, consents to sin for the first time, they
do it in the plainest fashion. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her that
he finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir," the young lady
replies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prostitute)?" Not at all, says
the other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall we
drink something?
Soppes in wyne, how love ye?
Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers:
As ye dou, so doth me;
I am ryth glad that met be we;
My love in yow gynnyt to close.
Then, "derlyng dere," let us go, says the "galaunt."
_Mary._ Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng!
Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd,
I wol never from yow wynd (turn).[810]
Clarissa Harlowe will require more forms and more time; here twenty-five
verses have been enough. A century and a half divides "Mary Magdalene"
from the dramatised story of the "Weeping Bitch"; the interpretation of
the movements of the feminine heart has not greatly improved, and we are
very far as yet from Richardson and Shakespeare.
But truth was more closely observed when the authors spoke of what they
knew by personal experience, and described men of the poorer sort with
whom they were familiar. In this lies the main literary merit of the
Mysteries; there may be found the earliest scenes of real comedy in the
history of the English stage.
This comedy of course is very near farce: in everything people then went
to extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod,
and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The
strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife,
Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were among the most
popular.
In all the collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed
shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being
ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders somewhat at first:
A! worthy lorde, wolde thou take heede,
I am full olde and oute of qwarte.
He sets to work, however; rain begins; the time for sailing has arrived:
Noah calls his wife; she does not come. Get into the ark and "leve the
harde lande?" This she will not do. She meant to go this very day to
town, and she will:
Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne.
She does not fear the flood; Noah remarks that the rain has been
terrific of late, and has lasted many days, and that her idea of going
just then to town is not very wise. The lady is not a whit pacified; why
have made a secret of all this to her? Why had he not consulted her? It
turns out that her husband had been working at the ark for a hundred
years, and she did not know of it! Life in a boat is not at all
pleasant; anyhow she will want time to pack; also she must take her
gossips with her, to have some one to talk to during the voyage. Noah,
who in building his boat has given some proof of his patience, does not
lose courage; he receives a box on the ear; he is content with saying:
I pray the, dame, be stille.
The wife at length gets in, and, as we may believe, stormy days in more
senses than one are in store for the patriarch.[811]
St. Joseph is a poor craftsman, described from nature, using the
language of craftsmen, having their manners, their ignorances, their
aspirations. Few works in the whole range of mediaeval literature
contain better descriptions of the workman of that time than the
Mysteries in which St. Joseph figures; some of his speeches ought to
have a place in the collections of Political Songs. The Emperor Augustus
has availed himself of the occasion afforded by the census to establish
a new tax: "A! lorde," says the poor Joseph,
what doth this man nowe heare!
Poore mens weale is ever in were (doubt),
I wotte by this bolsters beare
That tribute I muste paye;
And for greate age and no power
I wan no good this seven yeaire;
Nowe comes the kinges messingere,
To gette all that he maye.
With this axe that I beare,
This perscer and this nagere,
A hamer all in feare,
I have wonnen my meate.
Castill, tower ne manere
Had I never in my power;
But as a simple carpentere
With these what I mighte gette.
Yf I have store nowe anye thing,
That I must paye unto the kinge.[812]
Only an ox is left him; he will go and sell it. It is easy to fancy
that, in the century which saw the Statutes of Labourers and the rising
of the peasants, such words found a ready echo in the audience.
As soon as men of the people appear on the scene, nearly always the
dialogue becomes lively; real men and women stand and talk before us.
Beside the workmen represented by St. Joseph, peasants appear,
represented by the shepherds of Christmas night. They are true English
shepherds; if they swear, somewhat before due time, by Christ, all
surprise disappears when we hear them name the places where they live:
Lancashire, the Clyde valley, Boughton near Chester, Norbury near
Wakefield. Of all possible ales, Ely's is the one they prefer. They talk
together of the weather, the time of the day, the mean salaries they
get, the stray sheep they have been seeking; they eat their meals under
the hedge, sing merry songs, exchange a few blows, in fact behave as
true shepherds of real life. Quite at the end only, when the "Gloria" is
heard, they will assume the sober attitude befitting Christmas Day.
In the Mysteries performed at Woodkirk, the visit to the new-born Child
was preceded by a comedy worthy to be compared with the famous farce of
"Pathelin," and which has nothing to do with Christmas.[813] It is
night; the shepherds talk; the time for sleeping comes. One among them,
Mak, has a bad repute, and is suspected of being a thief; they ask him
to sleep in the midst of the others: "Com heder, betwene shalle thou lyg
downe." But Mak rises during the night without being observed. How hard
they sleep! he says, and he carries away a "fatt shepe," and takes it to
his wife.
_Wife._ It were a fowlle blotte to be hanged for the case.
_Mak._ I have skapyd, Gelott, oft as hard as glase.
_Wife._ Bot so long goys the pott to the water, men says,
At last
Comys it home broken.
I remember it well, says Mak, but it is not a time for proverbs and
talk; let us do for the best. The shepherds know Mak too well not to
come straight to his house; and so they do. Moans are heard; the cause
being, they learn, that Mak's wife has just given birth to a child. As
the shepherds walk in, Mak meets them with a cheerful countenance, and
welcomes them heartily:
Bot ar ye in this towne to-day?
Now how fare ye?
Ye have ryn in the myre, and ar weytt yit;
I shalle make you a fyre, if ye wille syt.
His offers are coldly received, and the visitors explain what has
happened.
Nowe if you have suspowse, to Gille or to me,
Com and rype oure howse!
The woman moans more pitifully than ever:
_Wife._ Outt, thefys, fro my barne! negh hym not thore.
_Mak._ Wyst ye how she had farne, youre hartys wold be sore.
Ye do wrang, I you warne, that thus commys before
To a woman that has farne, bot I say no more.
_Wife._ A my medylle!
I pray God so mylde,
If ever I you begyld,
That I ete this chylde
That lyges in this credylle.
The shepherds, deafened by the noise, look none the less about the
house, but find nothing. Their host is not yet, however, at the end of
his trouble.
_Tertius Pastor._ Mak, with youre lefe, let me gyf youre barne
Bot six pence.
_Mak._ Nay, do way, he slepys.
_Pastor._ Me thynk he pepys.
_Mak._ When he wakyns he wepys;
I pray you go hence.
_Pastor._ Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowth.
What the deville is this? he has a long snowte!
And the fraud is discovered; it was the sheep. From oaths they were
coming to blows, when on a sudden, amid the stars, angels are seen, and
their song is heard in the night: Glory to God, peace to earth! the
world is rejuvenated.... Anger disappears, hatreds are effaced, and the
rough shepherds of England take, with penitent heart, the road to
Bethlehem.
IV.
The fourteenth century saw the religious drama at its height in England;
the fifteenth saw its decay; the sixteenth its death. The form under
which it was best liked was the form of Mysteries, based upon the Bible.
The dramatising of the lives of saints and miracles of the Virgin was
much less popular in England than in France. In the latter country
enormous collections of such plays have been preserved[814]; in the
other the examples of this kind are very few; the Bible was the main
source from which the English dramatists drew their inspiration. As we
have seen, however, they did not forbear from adding scenes and
characters with nothing evangelical in them; these scenes contributed,
with the interludes and the facetious dialogues of the jongleurs, to the
formation of comedy. Little by little, comedy took shape, and it will be
found existing as a separate branch of dramatic art at the time of the
Renaissance.
In the same period another sort of drama was to flourish, the origin of
which was as old as the fourteenth century, namely, _Moralities_. These
plays consisted in pious treatises and ethical books turned into dramas,
as Mysteries offered a dramatisation of Scriptures. Psychology was there
carried to the extreme, a peculiar sort of psychology, elementary and
excessive at the same time, and very different from the delicate art in
favour to-day. Individuals disappeared; they were replaced by
abstractions, and these abstractions represented only a single quality
or defect. Sins and virtues fought together and tried to draw mankind to
them, which stood doubtful, as Hercules "at the starting point of a
double road;" in this way, again, was manifested the fondness felt in
the Middle Ages for allegories and symbols. The "Roman de la Rose" in
France, "Piers Plowman" in England, the immense popularity in all Europe
of the Consolation of Boethius, had already been manifestations of those
same tendencies. In these works, already, dialogue was abundant, in the
"Roman de la Rose" especially, where an immense space is occupied by
conversations between the Lover and Fals-Semblant.[815] The names of the
speakers are inscribed in the margin, as if it were a real play. When he
admitted into his collection of tales the dialogued story of Melibeus
and Prudence, Chaucer came very near to Moralities, for the work he
produced was neither a treatise nor a tale, nor a drama, but had
something of the three; a few changes would have been enough to make of
it a Morality, which might have been called the Debate of Wisdom and
Mankind.
Abstractions had been allowed a place in the Mysteries so far back as
the fourteenth century; death figures in the Woodkirk collection; in
"Mary Magdalene" (fifteenth century) many abstract personages are mixed
with the others: the Seven Deadly Sins, Mundus, the King of the Flesh,
Sensuality, &c.; the same thing happens in the so-called Coventry
collection.
This sort of drama, for us unendurable, gradually separated from
Mysteries; it reached its greatest development under the early Tudors.
The authors of Moralities strove to write plays not merely amusing, as
farces, then also in great favour, but plays with a useful and practical
aim. By means of now unreadable dramas, virtues, religion, morals,
sciences were taught: the Catholic faith was derided by Protestants,
and the Reformation by Catholics.[816] The discovery, then quite new, of
America was discoursed about, and great regret was expressed at its
being not due to an Englishman:
O what a thynge had be than,
If they that be Englyshemen
Myght have ben furst of all
That there shuld have take possessyon![817]
Death, as might be expected, is placed upon the stage with a particular
zeal and care, and meditations are dedicated to the dark future of man,
and to the gnawing worm of the charnel house.[818]
Fearing the audience might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the science
and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by
tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called
Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is
human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad
pranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in the
play, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor.
Shakespeare had seen Vice still alive, and he commemorated his deeds in
a song:
I am gone, sir,
And anon, sir,
I'll be with you again,
In a trice,
Like to the old Vice,
Your need to sustain,
Who, with dagger of lath,
In his rage and his wrath,
Cries, ah ha! to the devil.[819]
This character also found place on the French stage, where it was called
the "Badin." Rabelais had the "Badin" in great esteem: "In this manner
we see, among the jongleurs, when they arrange between them the cast of
a play, the part of the Sot, or Badin, to be attributed to the cleverest
and most experienced in their company."[820]
In the meanwhile, common ancestors of the various dramatic tribes,
source and origin of many sorts of plays, the Mysteries, which had
contributed to the formation of the tragical, romantic, allegorical,
pastoral, and comic drama, were still in existence. Reformation had
come, the people had adopted the new belief, but they could not give up
the Mysteries. They continued to like Herod, Noah and his wife, and the
tumultuous troup of devils, great and small, inhabiting hell-mouth.
Prologues had been written in which excuses were offered on account of
the traces of superstition to be detected in the plays, but conscience
being thus set at rest, the plays were performed as before. The
Protestant bishop of Chester prohibited the representation in 1572, but
it took place all the same. The archbishop of York renewed the
prohibition in 1575, but the Mysteries were performed again for four
days; and some representations of them took place even later.[821] At
York the inhabitants had no less reluctance about giving up their old
drama; they were sorry to think that religious differences now existed
between the town and its beloved tragedies. Converted to the new faith,
the citizens would have liked to convert the plays too, and the margins
of the manuscript bear witness to their efforts. But the task was a
difficult one; they were at their wits' end, and appealed to men more
learned than they. They decided that "the booke shalbe carried to my
Lord Archebisshop and Mr. Deane to correcte, if that my Lord
Archebisshop do well like theron," 1579.[822] My Lord Archbishop, wise
and prudent, settled the question according to administrative precedent;
he stored the book away somewhere, and the inhabitants were simply
informed that the prohibition was maintained. The York plays thus died.
In France the Mysteries survived quite as late; but, on account of the
radical effects of the Renaissance there, they had not the same
influence on the future development of the drama. They continued to be
represented in the sixteenth century, and the Parliament of Paris
complained in 1542 of their too great popularity: parish priests, and
even the chanters of the Holy Chapel, sang vespers at noon, a most
unbecoming hour, and sang them "post haste," to see the sight. Six years
later the performance of Mysteries was forbidden at Paris; but the cross
and ladder, emblems of the "Confreres de la Passion," continued to be
seen above the gates of the "Hotel de Bourgogne," and the privilege of
the Confreres, which dated three centuries back, was definitely
abolished in the reign of Louis XIV., in December, 1676.[823] Moliere
had then been dead for three years.
In England, at the date when my Lord Archbishop stopped the
representation at York,[824] the old religious dramas had produced all
their fruit: they had kept alive the taste for stage plays, they left
behind them authors, a public, and companies of players. Then was
growing in years, in a little town by the side of the river Avon, the
child who was to reach the highest summits of art. He followed on
week-days the teaching of the grammar school; he saw on Sundays, painted
on the wall of the Holy Cross Chapel, a paradise and hell similar to
those in the Mysteries, angels of gold and black devils, and that
immense mouth where the damned are parboiled, "ou damnes sont boulus,"
as the poor old mother of Villon says in a ballad of her son's.[825]
At the date of the York prohibition, William Shakespeare was fifteen.
FOOTNOTES:
[742] "Nostra aetas prolapsa ad fabulas et quaevis inania, non modo sures
et cor prostituit vanitati, sed oculorum et aurium voluptate suam mulcet
desidiam.... Nonne piger desidiam instruit et somnos provocat
instrumentorum suavitate, aut vocum modulis, hilaritate canentium aut
fabulantium gratia, sive quod turpius est ebrietate vel crapula?...
Admissa sunt ergo spectacula et infinita tyrocinia vanitatis, quibus qui
omnino otiari non possunt perniciosius occupentur. Satius enim fuerat
otiari quam turpiter occupari. Hinc mimi, salii vel saliares, balatrones
aemiliani, gladiatores, palaestritae, gignadii, praestigiatores, malefici
quoque multi et tota joculatorum scena procedit. Quorum adeo error
invaluit, ut a praeclaris domibus non arceantur, etiam illi qui obscenis
partibus corporis oculis omnium eam ingerunt turpitudinem, quam
erubescat videre vel cynicus. Quodque magis mirere, nec tunc ejiciuntur,
quando tumultuantes inferius crebro sonitu aerem foedant, et turpiter
inclusum turpius produnt.... Jucundum quidem est et ab honeste non
recedit virum probum quandoque modesta hilaritate mulcere."
"Policraticus," Book i. chap. viii., in "Opera Omnia," ed. Giles,
Oxford, 1848, vol. iii. p. 42.
[743] C., xvi. 205.
[744] "De Mimo et Rege Francorum," in Wright, "Latin Stories," 1842, No.
cxxxvii.
[745]
Le roi demaund par amour:
Ou qy estes vus, sire Joglour?
E il respount sauntz pour:
Sire, je su ou mon seignour.
Quy est toun seignour? fet le Roy.
Le baroun ma dame, par ma foy....
Quei est le eve apele, par amours?
L'em ne l'apele pas, eynz vint tous jours.
Concerning the horse:
Mange il bien, ce savez dire.
Oil certes, bel douz sire;
Yl mangereit plus un jour d'aveyne
Que vus ne frez pas tote la semeyne.
Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil general des Fabliaux," vol. ii. p. 243.
[746] "Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus," in prose, ed. Kemble, AElfric
Society, 1848, 8vo. See also the "estrif" between Joseph and Mary in
"Cynewulf's Christ," ed. Gollancz, 1892, p. 17; above, p. 75.
[747] "The Owl and the Nightingale," ed. J. Stevenson, Roxburghe Club,
1838, 4to. "The Thrush and the Nightingale"; "Of the Vox and the Wolf"
(see above, p. 228); "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools," in Hazlitt,
"Remains of the early Popular Poetry of England," 1864, 4 vols. 8vo,
vol. i. pp. 50, 58, 79.
[748] "Anonymi Petroburgensis Descriptio Norfolcensicum" (end of the
twelfth century); "Norfolchiae Descriptionis Impugnatio," in Latin verse,
with some phrases in English, in Th. Wright, "Early Mysteries and other
Latin Poems of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries," London, 1838, 8vo.
[749] "Harrowing of Hell." This work consists in a dramatic dialogue or
scene, but it was not meant to be represented. Time of Henry III.; text
in Pollard, "English Miracle Plays," Oxford, 1890, p. 166.
[750] This game is described in the (very coarse) fabliau of the
"Sentier batu" by Jean de Conde, fourteenth century:
De plusieurs deduis s'entremistrent
Et tant c'une royne fistrent
Pour jouer au Roy qui ne ment.
Ele s'en savoit finement
Entremettre de commander
Et de demandes demander.
Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil general des Fabliaux," vol. iii. p.
248.
[751] "Prohibemus etiam clericis ne intersint ludis inhonestis, vel
choreis, vel ludant ad aleas, vel taxillos; nec sustineant ludos fieri
de Rege et Regina," &c. "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo,
Wigorniensis episcopi ... promulgatae ... A.D. 1240," art. xxxviii., in
Labbe, "Sacrorum conciliorum ... Collectio," l. xxiii. col. 538.
[752] The two sorts are well described by Baudouin de Conde in his
"Contes des Hiraus," thirteenth century. The author meets a servant and
asks him questions about his master.
Dis-moi, par l'ame de ton pere,
Voit-il volentiers menestreus?
--Oil voir, biau frere, et estre eus
En son hostel a giant solas....
... Et quant avient
C'aucuns grans menestreus la vient,
Maistres en sa menestrandie,
Que bien viele ou ki bien die
De bouce, mesires l'ascoute
Volenticis....
Mais peu souvent i vient de teus
Mais des felons et des honteus,
who speak but nonsense and know nothing, and who, however, receive
bread, meat, and wine,
... l'un por faire l'ivre,
L'autre le cat, le tiers le sot;
Li quars, ki onques rien ne sot
D'armes s'en parole et raconte
De ce preu due, de ce preu conte.
"Dits et Contes de Baudouin de Conde," ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1866, 3
vols. 8vo, vol. i. p 154.
[753] "Ad quid illa vocis contractio et infractio? Hic succinit, ille
discinit.... Aliquando, quod pudet dicere, in equinos hinnitus cogitur;
aliquando virili vigore deposito in femineae vocis gracilitates
acuitur.... Videas aliquando hominem aperto ore quasi intercluso habitu
expirare, non cantare, ac ridiculosa quadam vocis interceptione quasi
minitari silentium; nunc agones morientium, vel extasim patientium
imitari. Interim histrionicis quibusdam gestibus totum corpus agitatur,
torquentur labia, rotant, ludunt humeri; et ad singulas quasque notas
digitorum flexus respondet. Et haec ridiculosa dissolutio vocatur
religio!.... Vulgus ... miratur ... sed lascivas cantantium
gesticulationes, meretricias vocum alternationes et infractiones, non
sine cachinno risuque intuetur, ut eos non ad oratorium sed ad theatrum,
nec ad orandum sed ad spectandum aestimes convenisse." "Speculum
Chantatis," Book ii. chap. 23, in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. cxcv. col.
571.
[754] Latin text in "The Exempla ... of Jacques de Vitry," thirteenth
century, ed. T. F. Crane, London, 1890, 8vo, p. 105 (No. ccl.), and in
Th. Wright, "A Selection of Latin Stories," 1842, Percy Society, p. 16:
"De Dolo et Arte Vetularum." French text in Barbazan and Meon,
"Fabliaux," vol. ii., included into the "Castoiement d'un pere a son
fils," thirteenth century. English text in Th. Wright, "Anecdota
Literaria," London, 1844, 8vo, p. 1; the title is in French: "Ci
commence le fables et le cointise de dame Siriz."
[755] Text in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," London, 1841, 2
vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 145. "Hic incipit interludiam de Clerico and
Puella."
[756] "Here bigynnis a tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge," end of fourteenth
century, in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," vol. ii. p. 46.
Elsewhere in the same treatise, "to pley in rebaudye" is opposed to
"pley in myriclis," p. 49.
[757] "Ludi theatrales, etiam praetextu consuetudinis in ecclesiis vel
per clericos fieri non debent." Decretal of Innocent III., year 1207,
included by Gregory IX. in his "Compilatio." Richter and Friedberg,
"Corpus Juris Canonici," Leipzig, 1879, vol. ii. p. 453.
[758] "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo, A.D. 1240," in Labbe's
"Sacrorum Conciliorum ... Collectio," vol. xxiii. col. 526.
[759] Wilkins, "Concilia Magnae Britanniae," London, 1737, 4 vols. fol.,
vol. i. p. 617, Nos. lxxiv., lxxv. The same prohibition is made by
Walter de Chanteloup, _ut supra_, art. lv. The custom was a very old
one, and existed already in Anglo-Saxon times; see "AElfric's Lives of
Saints," 1881, E.E.T.S., p. 461.
[760] "... Ne quis choreas cum larvis seu strepitu aliquo in ecclesiis
vel plateis ducat, vel sertatus, vel coronatus corona ex folus arborum,
vel florum vel aliunde composita, alicubi incedat ... prohibemus,"
thirteenth century, "Munimenta Academica," ed. Anstey, Rolls, 1868, p.
18.
[761] Decretal of Innocent III., reissued by Gregory IX. "In aliquibus
anni festivitalibus, quae continue natalem Christi sequuntur, diaconi,
presbyteri ac subdiaconi vicissim insaniae suae ludibria exercere
praesumunt, per gesticulationum suarum debacchationes obscoenas in
conspectu populi decus faciunt clericale vilescere, quem potius illo
tempore verbi Dei deberent praedicatione mulcere." Richter and Friedberg,
"Corpus Juris Canonici," vol. ii. p. 453.
[762] Thirteenth century. See Gaston Paris, "Romania," vol. xxi. p. 262.
Songs of a much worse character were also sung at Christmas. To deter
his readers from listening to any such Gascoigne writes (first half of
the fifteenth century): "Cavete et fugite in hoc sacro festo viciosa et
turpia, et praecipue cantus inhonestos et turpes qui libidinem excitant
et provocant ... et ymagines imprimunt in mente quas expellere
difficillimum est. Novi ego, scilicet Gascoigne, doctor sacrae paginae qui
haec scripsi, unum magnum et notabilem virum talem cantum turpem in festo
Natalis audivisse." He could never forget the shameful things he had
heard, and fell on that account into melancholy, by which he was driven
to death. "Loci e libro veritatum ... passages selected from Gascoigne's
Theological Dictionary," ed. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, 4to. On the
Christmas festivities at the University and on the "Rex Natalicius"
(sixteenth century and before), see C. R. L. Fletcher, "Collectanea,"
Oxford, 1885, 8vo, p. 39.
[763] "Cum domus Dei, testaute propheta Filioque Dei, domus sit
orationis, nefandum est eam in domum jocationis, scurrilitatis et
nugacilatis convertere, locumque Deo dicatum diabolicis adinventionibus
execrare; cumque circumcisio Domini nostri Jesu Christi prima fuerit nec
modicum acerba ejusdem passio, signum quoque sit circumcisionis
spiritualis qua cordium praeputia tolluntur ... execrabile est
circumcisionis Domini venerandam solemnitatem libidinosarum voluptatum
sordibus prophanare: quapropter vobis mandamus in virtute obedientiae
firmiter injungentes, quatenus Festum Stultorum cum sit vanitate plenum
et voluptatibus spurcum, Deo odibile et daemonibus amabile, ne de caetero
in ecclesia Lincolniensi, die venciandae solemnitatis circumcisionis
Domini permittatis fieri." "Epistolae," ed. Luard, Rolls, 1861, p. 118,
year 1236(?). Same defence for the whole diocese, p. 161.
[764] "Wardrobe Accounts," in "Archaeologia," vol. xxvi. p. 342; "Issue
Roll of Thomas de Brantingham," ed. Devon, 1835, p. xlvi; "Issues of the
Exchequer," ed. Devon, p. 222, 6 Rich. II.
[765] "Inhibemus ne de cetero in festis Innocentium et Beate Marie
Magdalene ludibria exerceatis consueta, induendo vos scilicet vestis
secularium aut inter vos, sed cum secularibus, choreas ducendo, nec
extra refectorium comedatis," &c. Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, to
the nuns of Villarciaux, thirteenth century. "Registrum Visitationum"
ed. Bonnin, 1842, 4to, p. 44.
[766] "Historia Major," Rolls, vol. iii. p. 336.
[767] Matthew Paris, _ibid._
[768] Described by Richard of Maidstone (d. 1396) in a Latin poem:
"Richardi Maydiston de Concordia inter Regem Ricardum II. et civitatem
London," in the "Political Poems and Songs" of Wright, Rolls, vol. i. p.
282.
[769] Entry of Isabeau of Bavaria into Paris, in 1384.
[770] On the popularity of Robin Hood in the fourteenth century, see
above, p. 224. In the fifteenth century he was the hero of plays
performed during the May festivities: "Reced for the gathering of the
May-play called Robin Hood, on the fair day, 19s." Accounts of the
church of St. Lawrence at Reading, year 1499, in the _Academy_, October
6, 1883, p. 231.
[771] "Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores? Respondent: Salvatorem
Christum Dominum." Petit de Julleville, "Histoire du Theatre en
France.--Les Mysteres," 1880, vol. i. p. 25.
[772] Petit de Julleville, _ibid._, vol. i. p. 26.
[773] Same beginning and same gradual development: "Quem queritis in
sepulchro o Christicole?--Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum o celicole.--Non
est hic, surrexit sicut predixerat; ite nunciate quia surrexit.
Alleluia." In use at Limoges, eleventh century. "Die lateinischen
Osterfeiern, untersuchungen ueber den Ursprung und die Entwicklung der
liturgisch-dramatischen Auferstehungsfeier," by Carl Lange, Munich,
1887, 8vo, p. 22.
[774] "Ci comence l'estoire de Griselidis;" MS. fi. 2203, in the
National Library, Paris, dated 1395, outline drawings (privately
printed, Paris, 1832, 4to).--"Le Mistere du siege d'Orleans," ed.
Guessard and Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to (Documents inedits).
[775] This story was very popular during the Middle Ages, in France and
in England. It was, _e.g._, the subject of a poem in English verse,
thirteenth century: "The Life of St. Katherine," ed. Einenkel, Early
English Text Society, 1884, 8vo.
[776] "Vitae ... viginti trium abbatum Sancti Albani," in "Matthaei Paris
monachi Albanensis [Opera]," London, 1639-40, 2 vols. fol., vol. ii. p.
56 "Gaufridus decimus sextus [abbas]."
[777] _Ibid._, p. 64.
[778] He writes, twelfth century: "Londonia pro spectaculis
theatralibus, pro ludis scenicis, ludos habet sanctiores,
representationes miraculorum...." "Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis
Londoniae," printed with Stow's "Survey of London," 1599, 4to
[779] This can be inferred from the existence of that "estrif" the
"Harrowing of Hell," written in the style of mysteries, which has come
down to us, and belongs to that period. See above, p. 443. Religious
dramas were written in Latin by subjects of the kings of England, and,
among others, by Hilary, a disciple of Abelard, twelfth century, who
seems to have been an Anglo-Norman; "Hilarii versus et Ludi," ed.
Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1838. A few lines in French are mixed with
his Latin.
[780] "Here bigynnis a tretise of miraclis pleyinge," in Wright and
Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," London, 1842, vol. ii. p. 42; end of
fourteenth century.
[781] "Item quod tabernas, spectacula aut alia loca inhonesta, seu ludos
noxios at illicitos non frequentent, sed more sacerdotali se habeant et
in gestu, ne ipsorum ministerium, quod absit, vituperio, scandalo vel
despectui habeatur." Labbe, vol. xxvi. col. 767. The inhibition is meant
for priests of all sorts: "presbyteri stipendarii aut alii sacerdotes,
propriis sumptibus seu alias sustentati." Innocent III. and Gregory IX.
had vainly denounced the same abuses, and tried to stop them: "Clerici
officia vel commercia saecularia non exerceant, maxime inhonesta. Mimis,
joculatoribus et histrionibus non intendant. Et tabernas prorsus
evitent, nisi forte causa necessitatis in itinere constituti." Richter
and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici," ii. p. 454.
[782] "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne (written A.D. 1303), with the
French treatise on which it is founded, 'Le Manuel des Pechiez,' by
William de Wadington," ed. Furnivall, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, pp. 146
ff.
[783]
Un autre folie apert
Unt les fols clercs controve,
Qe "miracles" sunt apele;
Lur faces unt la deguise
Par visers, li forsene.
[784]
Fere poent representement,
Mes qe ceo seit chastement
En office de seint eglise
Quant hom fet la Deu servise,
Cum Jesu Crist le fiz Dee
En sepulcre esteit pose,
Et la resurrectiun
Pur plus aver devociun.
[785]
Ki en lur jus se delitera,
Chivals on harneis les aprestera.
Vesture ou autre ournement,
Sachez il fet folement.
Si vestemens seient dediez,
Plus grant d'assez est le pechez;
Si prestre ou clerc les ust preste
Bien dust estre chaustie.
[786] Toulmin Smith, "English Gilds," London, 1870, E.E.T.S., p. 139.
[787] The principal monuments of the English religious stage are the
following: "Chester Plays," ed. Th. Wright, Shakespeare Society, 1843-7,
2 vols., 8vo (seem to have been adapted from the French, perhaps from an
Anglo-Norman original, not recovered yet).
"The Pageant of the Company of Sheremen and Taylors in Coventry ...
together with other Pageants," ed. Th. Sharp, Coventry, 1817, 4to. By
the same: "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries
anciently performed at Coventry ... to which are added the Pageant of
the Shearmen and Taylors Company," Coventry, 1825, 4to (illustrated).
"Ludus Coventriae," ed. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1841, 8vo (the
referring of this collection to the town of Coventry is probably wrong).
"Towneley Mysteries" (a collection of plays performed at Woodkirk,
formerly Widkirk, near Wakefield; see Skeat's note in _Athenaeum_, Dec.
3; 1893) ed. Raine, Surtees Society, Newcastle, 1836, 8vo.
"York Plays, the plays performed by the crafts or mysteries of York on
the day of Corpus Christi, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries," ed.
Lucy Toulmin Smith, Oxford, 1885, 8vo.
"The Digby Mysteries," ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere Society, 1882, 8vo.
"Play of Abraham and Isaac" (fourteenth century), in the "Boke of Brome,
a commonplace book of the xvth century," ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith. 1886,
8vo.--"Play of the Sacrament" (story of a miracle, a play of a type
scarce in England), ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society
Transactions, Berlin, 1860-61, 8vo, p. 101.--"A Mystery of the Burial of
Christ"; "A Mystery of the Resurrection": "This is a play to be played
on part on gudfriday afternone, and the other part opon Esterday
afternone," in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," 1841-3, vol.
ii. pp. 124 ff., from a MS. of the beginning of the sixteenth
century.--See also "The ancient Cornish Drama," three mysteries in
Cornish, fifteenth century, ed. Norris, Oxford, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo (with
a translation).--For extracts, see A. W. Pollard, "English Miracle
Plays, Moralities and Interludes," Oxford, 1890, 8vo.
On the question of the formation of the various cycles of English
mysteries and the way in which they are connected, see A. Hohlfield,
"Die altenglischen kollektivmisterien," in "Anglia," xi. p. 219, and Ch.
Davidson, "Studies in the English Mystery Plays, a thesis," Yale
University, 1892, 8vo.
[788] "York Plays," pp. xxxiv, xxxvii.
[789] This preliminary note is in Latin: "Sit ipse Adam bene instructus
quando respondere debeat, ne ad respondendum nimis sit velox aut nimis
tardus, nec solum ipse, sed omnes persone sint. Instruantur ut composite
loquentur; et gestum faciant convenientem rei de qua loquuntur, et, in
rithmis nec sillabam addant nec demant, sed omnes firmiter pronuncient."
"Adam, Mystere du XIIe. Siecle," ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877, 8vo.
[790] "Digby Mysteries," p. xix.
[791] "The Pageants ... of Coventry," ed. Sharp.
[792] [So called] "Coventry Mysteries," Trial of Christ.
[793] The French drama written on this subject is lost (it is, however,
mentioned in the catalogue of a bookseller of the fifteenth century; see
"Les Mysteres," by Petit de Julleville, vol. ii. chap, xxiii., "Mysteres
perdus"); but the precision of details in the miniature is such that I
had no difficulty in identifying the particular version of the story
followed by the dramatist. It is an apocryphal life of Apollinia, in
which is explained how she is the saint to be applied to when suffering
toothache. This episode is the one Fouquet has represented. Asked to
renounce Christ, she answers: "'Quamdiu vivero in hac fragili vita,
lingua mea et os meum non cessabunt pronuntiare laudem et honorem
omnipotentis Dei.' Quo audito jussit [imperator] durissimos stipites
parari et in igne duros fieri et praeacutos ut sic dentes ejus et per
tales stipites laederent, radices dentium cum forcipe everentur
radicitus. In illa hora oravit S. Apollinia dicens: 'Domine Jesu
Christe, precor te ut quicumque diem passionis meae devote peregerint ...
dolorem dentium aut capitis nunquam sentiant passiones.'" The angels
thereupon (seated on wooden stairs, in Fouquet's miniature) come down
and tell her that her prayer has been granted. "Acta ut videntur
apocrypha S. Apolloniae," in Bollandus, "Acta Sanctorum," Antwerp, vol.
ii. p. 280, under the 9th February.
See also the miniatures of a later date (sixteenth century) in the MS.
of the Valenciennes Passion, MS. fi. 15,236 in the National Library, and
the model made after one of them, exhibited in the Opera Museum, Paris.
[794] What the place is--
... Vous le povez congnoistre
Par l'escritel que dessus voyez estre.
Prologue of a play of the Nativity, performed at Rouen, 1474; Petit de
Julleville, "Les Mysteres," vol. i. p. 397.
[795] "Digby Mysteries," ed. Furnivall, p. 127.
[796] "Mystere du vieil Testament," Paris, 1542, with curious cuts,
"pour plus facile intelligence." Many other editions; one modern one by
Baron J. de Rothschild, Societe des Anciens Textes Francais, 1878 ff.
[797] "Chester Plays," ii.
[798] "Adoncques doit Adam couvrir son humanite, faignant avoir honte.
Icy se doit semblablement vergongner la femme et se musser de sa main."
"Mystere du vieil Testament."
[799] Reproduced by Mr. R. T. Blomfield, in the _Portfolio_, May, June,
July, 1889.
[800]
_Diabolus._ Jo vis Adam, mais trop est fols.
_Eva._ Un poi est durs.
_Diabolus._ Il serra mols;
Il est plus durs que n'est un fers ...
Tu es fieblette et tendre chose,
Et es plus fresche que n'est rose;
Tu es plus blanche que cristal,
Que nief qui chiet sor glace en val.
Mal cuple en fist le criatur;
Tu es trop tendre et il trop dur ...
Por co fait bon se treire a tei;
Parler te voil.
[801]
All my smale instrumentes is putt in my pakke.
("Digby Mysteries," p. 11.)
[802] "Towneley Mysteries."
[803] _Ibid._--Magnus Herodes.
[804] "Towneley Mysteries."--Processus Talentorum.
[805] "Digby Mysteries."--Candlemas Day, p. 3.
[806] "Digby Mysteries."--Mary Magdalen, p. 55.
[807] _Ibid._, p. 90.
[808] "Chester Plays."--Salutation and Nativity.
[809] "Digby Mysteries," p. 56.
[810] "Digby Mysteries," pp. 74, 75. After living wickedly Mary
Magdalen repents, comes to Marseilles, converts the local king
and performs miracles. This legend was extremely popular; it was
told several times in French verse during the thirteenth century;
see A. Schmidt, "Guillaume, le Clerc de Normandie, insbesondere seine
Magdalenenlegende," in "Romanische Studien" vol. iv. p. 493; Doncieux,
"Fragment d'un Miracle de Sainte Madeleine, texte restitue," in
"Romania," 1893, p. 265. There was also a drama in French based on the
same story: "La Vie de Marie Magdaleine ... Est a xxii. personages,"
Lyon, 1605, 12mo (belongs to the fifteenth century).
[811] "York Plays," viii., ix. See also, _e.g._, as specimens of comical
scenes, the discussions between the quack and his man in the "Play of
the Sacrament": "Ye play of ye conversyon of ser Jonathas ye Jewe by
myracle of ye blyssed sacrament." Master Brundyche addresses the
audience as if he were in front of his booth at a fair. He will cure the
diseases of all present. Be sure of that, his man Colle observes,
What dysease or syknesse yt ever ye have,
He wyll never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave.
Ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society, Berlin, 1860-61, p. 127
(fifteenth century).
[812] "Chester Plays."--Salutation and Nativity.
[813] "Towneley Mysteries."--Secunda Pastorum.
[814] See, for instance, "Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages," ed.
G. Paris and U. Robert, Societe des Anciens Textes, 1876-91, 6 vols.
8vo.
[815] In Meon's edition, Paris, 1813, vol. ii. pp. 326 ff.
[816] Plays of this kind were written (without speaking of many anonyms)
by Medwall: "A goodly Enterlude of Nature," 1538, fol.; by Skelton,
"Magnyfycence," 1531, fol.; by Ingelend, "A pretie Enterlude called the
Disobedient Child," printed about 1550: by John Bale, "A comedye
concernynge thie Lawes," London, 1538, 8vo (against the Catholics); all
of them lived under Henry VIII., &c. The two earliest English moralities
extant are "The Pride of Life" (in the "Account Roll of the priory of
the Holy Trinity," Dublin, ed. J. Mills, Dublin, 1891, 8vo), and the
"Castle of Perseverance" (an edition is being prepared, 1894, by Mr.
Pollard for the Early English Text Society), both of the fifteenth
century; a rough sketch showing the arrangement of the representation of
the "Castle" has been published by Sharp, "A Dissertation on the
Pageants at Coventry," plate 2.
[817] "Interlude of the four Elements," London, 1510(?), 8vo.
[818] See, for example, the mournful passages in the "Disobedient
Child," the "Triall of Treasure," London, 1567, 4to, and especially in
"Everyman," ed. Goedeke, Hanover, 1865, 8vo, written at the beginning of
the reign of Henry VIII.
[819] Song of the Clown in "Twelfth Night," iv. 3.
[820] "Pantagruel," iii. 37.
[821] Furnivall, "Digby Mysteries," p. xxvii.
[822] "York Plays," p. xvi.
[823] Petit de Julleville, "Les Mysteres," 1880, vol. i. pp. 423 ff.
[824] They continued later in some towns, at Newcastle, for example,
where they survived till 1598. At this date "Romeo" and the "Merchant of
Venice" had already appeared. There were even some performances at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.
[825] A drawing of this fresco, now destroyed, has been published
by Sharp: "Hell-mouth and interior, from the chapel at
Stratford-upon-Avon"; "A Dissertation on the pageants ... at
Coventry," 1825, plate 6.