A Short History of French Literature Part 14

Ed. Fournier's _Theatre avant la Renaissance_[128] contains ample materials for judgment. In all, we possess about a hundred farces, most of which are probably the composition of the fifteenth century, though it is possible that some of them may date from the end of the fourteenth. The most famous of all early French farces, that of _Pathelin_, belongs, it is believed, to the middle or earlier part of the fifteenth, and speaking generally, this century is the most productive of theatrical work, at least of such as remains to us. The subjects of these farces are of the widest possible diversity. In their general character they at once recall the Fabliaux, and no one who reads many of them can doubt that the one _genre_ is the immediate successor of the other. The farce, like the Fabliau, deals with an actual or possible incident of ordinary life to which a comic complexion is given by the treatment. The length of these compositions is very variable, but the average is perhaps about five hundred lines. Their versification is always octosyllabic and regular. But a curious peculiarity is found in most of them as well as in a few contemporary dramas of the serious kind. From time to time the speeches of the characters are dovetailed into one another so as to make up the Triolet (or rondeau of eight lines with triple repet.i.tion of the first and double repet.i.tion of the second), a form which in the fifteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries has been a favourite with French poets of the lighter kind.

The number of personages is never large; it sometimes falls as low as two (in which case the farce might in strictness be called, as it sometimes is, a _debat_ or dialogue), and rarely, if ever, rises above four or five. From what has already been said it will be seen that it is not easy to give any general summary of the subjects of this curious composition. Conjugal differences of one kind and another make up a very large part of them, but by no means the whole, and there are few aspects of contemporary bourgeois life which do not come in for treatment. As an example we may take the _Farce du Paste de la Tarte_[129]. The characters are two thieves, a pastry-cook, and his wife. The farce opens with a lamentable Triolet, in which the two thieves bewail their unhappy state. Immediately afterwards, the pastry-cook, in front of whose shop the scene is laid, calls to his wife and tells her that an eel-pie is to be kept for him, and that he will send for it later, as he intends to dine abroad. The two thieves overhear the conversation, and the token which is to be given by the messenger, and after trying in vain to beg a dinner, determine to filch one. Thief the second goes to the pastry-cook's wife, gives the appointed token, and easily obtains the pie, upon which both feast. Unluckily, however, this does not satisfy them, and the successful thief, remembering a fine tart which he has seen in the shop, decides that the possession of it would much improve their dinner. He persuades his companion to try and secure it.

Meanwhile, however, the enraged pastry-cook has come home hungry and demands his eel-pie. His wife in vain a.s.sures him that she has sent it by the messenger who brought his token. Her husband disbelieves her; words run high, and are followed by blows. At this juncture the first thief appears and demands the tart, whereupon the irate pastry-cook turns his rage upon him. The stick makes him confess the device, and smarting under the blows, he is easily induced to make his companion a sharer in his own sorrows. This is effected by an obvious stratagem. The pastry-cook thus avenges himself of both his enemies, who however, with some philosophy, console themselves with the fact that, after all, they have had an excellent dinner without paying for it.

This piece serves as a fair example of the more miscellaneous farces, in almost all of which the stick plays a prominent part, a part which it may be observed retained its prominence at least till the time of Moliere. Of the farces dealing with conjugal matters, one of the most decent, and perhaps the most amusing of all, is the _Farce du Cuvier_, which has nothing to do with the story under the same t.i.tle which may be found (possibly taken from Apuleius) in Boccaccio, and in the Fabliaux.

In the farce a hen-pecked husband is obliged by his wife to accept a long list of duties which he is to perform. Soon afterwards she by accident falls into the was.h.i.+ng-tub, and to all her cries for help he replies 'cela n'est point a mon rollet' (schedule). Not a few also are directed against the clergy, and these as a rule are the most licentious of all. It is, however, rare to find any one which is not more or less amusing; and students of Moliere in particular will find a.n.a.logies and resemblances of the most striking kind to many of his motives. It is, indeed, pretty certain that these pieces did not go out of fas.h.i.+on until Moliere's own time. The t.i.tles of some of the early and now lost pieces which his company for so many years played in the provinces are immediately suggestive of the old farces to any one who knows the latter. The farce was moreover a very far-reaching kind of composition.

As a rule the satire which it contains is directed against cla.s.ses, such as women, the clergy, pedants, and so forth, who had nothing directly to do with politics, and it is thus, more or less directly, the ancestor of the comedy of manners. It is never, properly speaking, political, even indirect allusions to politics being excluded from it. It relies wholly upon domestic and personal interests. Not a few farces, such as that of which we have given a sketch, turn upon the same subject as the _Repues Franches_ attributed to Villon, and deal with the ingenious methods adopted by persons who hang loose upon society for securing their daily bread. Others attack the fertile subject of domestic service, and furnish not a few parallels to Swift's _Directions_. Every now and then however we come across a farce, or at least a piece bearing the t.i.tle, in which a more allegorical style of treatment is attempted. Such is the farce of _Folle Bobance_, in which the tendency of various cla.s.ses to loose and light living is satirised amusingly enough. A gentleman, a merchant, a farmer, are all caught by the seductive offers of Folle Bobance, and are not long before they repent it. Such again is the _Farce des Theologastres_, in which the students of the Paris theological colleges are ridiculed, the _Farce de la Pippee,_ and many others.

[Sidenote: Moralities.]

In strictness, however, those pieces where allegorical personages make their appearance are not farces but moralities. These compositions were exceedingly popular in the later middle ages, and their popularity was a natural sequence of the rage for allegorising which had made itself evident in very early times, and had in the _Roman de la Rose_ dominated almost all other literary tastes. The taste for personification and abstraction has always lent itself easily enough to satire, and in the fifteenth century pieces under the designation of moralities became very common. We do not possess nearly as many specimens of the morality as of the farce, but, on the other hand, the morality is often, though not always, a much longer composition than the farce. The subjects of moralities include not merely private vices and follies, but almost all actual and possible defects of Church and State, and occasionally the term is applied to pieces, the characters of which are not abstractions, but which tell a story with a more or less moral turn. Sometimes these pieces ran to a very great length, and one is quoted, _L'Homme Juste et l'Homme Mondain_, which contains 36,000 lines, and must, like the longer mysteries, have occupied days or even weeks in acting. A morality however, on the average, consisted of about 2000 lines, and its personages were proportionally more numerous than those of the farce.

Thus the _Moralite des Enfans de Maintenant_ contains thirteen characters who are indifferently abstract and concrete; Maintenant, Mignotte, Bon Advis, Instruction, Finet, Malduit, Discipline, Jabien, Luxure, Bonte, Desespoir, Perdition, and the Fool. This list almost sufficiently explains the plot, which simply recounts the persistence of one child in evil and his bad end, with the repentance of the other. The moralities have the widest diversity of subject, but most of them are tolerably clearly explained by their t.i.tles. _La Cond.a.m.nation de Banquet_ is a rather spirited satire on gluttony and open housekeeping.

_Marchebeau_ attacks the disbanded soldiery of the middle of the fifteenth century. _Charite_ points out the evils which have come into the world for lack of charity. _La Moralite d'une Femme qui avait voulu trahir la Cite de Romme_ is built on the lines of a miracle-play.

_Science et Asnerye_ is a very lively satire representing the superior chances which the followers of _Asnerye_--ignorance--have of obtaining benefices and posts of honour and profit as compared with those of learning. _Mundus, caro, daemonia_, again tells its own tale. _Les Blasphemateurs_, which is very well spoken of, but has not been reprinted, rests on the popular legend upon which _Don Juan_ is also based. In short, unless a complete catalogue were given, there is no means of fully describing the numerous works of this cla.s.s.

[Sidenote: Soties.]

The Sotie is a cla.s.s of much more idiosyncrasy. Although we have very few Soties (not at present more than a dozen accessible to the student), although the contents of this cla.s.s are as a rule duller even than those of the moralities, and infinitely inferior in attraction to those of the farces, yet the Sotie has the merit of possessing a much more distinct and peculiar form. It is essentially political comedy, and it has the peculiarity of being played by stock personages, like an Italian comedy of the early kind. The Sotie, at least in its purely political form, was, as might be expected, not very long lived. Its most celebrated author was Gringore, and his Sotie, which forms part of _Le Jeu du Prince des Sots et Mere Sotte_, is still the typical example of the kind. Besides these two characters (who represent, roughly speaking, the temporal and spiritual powers), we have in this piece, Sotte Commune, the common people; Sotte Fiance, false confidence; Sotte Occasion, who explains herself; and a good many other allegorical personages, such as the Seigneur de Gayete, etc. These pieces, however, are for the most part so entirely occasional that their chief literary interest lies in their curious stock personages. It should, however, be observed that of the few Soties which we possess by no means all correspond to this description, some of them being indistinguishable from moralities. A curious detail is that the various pieces we have been mentioning were sometimes, in representation, combined after the fas.h.i.+on of a regular tetralogy. First came a monologue or _cry_ containing a kind of proclamation. This was followed by the Sotie itself; then followed the morality, and lastly a farce. The work of Gringore, just noticed, forms part of such a tetralogy.

[Sidenote: Profane Mysteries.]

The profane mysteries may be briefly despatched. They were the natural result of the vogue of the mysteries proper, with which they vie in prolixity. Some of them were based on history or romance, such as, for instance, the Mystery of _Troy_. Others corresponded pretty nearly to the history plays of our own dramatists at a later period. Such is the Mystery of the _Siege of Orleans_ which versifies and dramatises, at a date very shortly subsequent to the actual events, the account of them already made public in different chronicles.

[Sidenote: Societies of Actors.]

Of considerable interest and importance in connection with these early forms of drama is the subject of the persons and societies by whom they were represented, a subject upon which it is necessary to say a few words. At first, as we have seen, the actors were members or dependents of the clergy. As the mysteries increased in bulk and demanded larger companies, their representation fell more and more into the hands of the laity, even women in not a few cases acting parts, though this was rather the exception than the rule. It became not unusual for the guilds, which play such an important part in the social history of the middle ages, to undertake the task, and at last regular societies of actors were formed. The most famous of these, the _Confrerie de la Pa.s.sion_ (whose first object was to play the mystery, or rather cycle of mysteries, known by that name), was licensed in 1402, and in the course of the fifteenth century a very large number of rival bodies were more or less formally const.i.tuted. The clerks of the Bazoche, or Palace of Justice, had long been dramatically inclined, but it was not till this time that they were recognised as, so to speak, the patentees of a peculiar form of drama which in their case was the morality. The _Enfants sans Souci_, young men of good families in the city, devoted themselves rather to the Sotie, and the stock personages of that curious form correspond to the official t.i.tles of the officers of their guild.

Besides these, many other similar but less durable and regularly const.i.tuted societies arose, whose heads took fantastic t.i.tles, such as Empereur de Galilee, Roi de l'Epinette, Prince de l'Etrille, and so forth. No one of these, however, attained the importance of the Confraternity of the Pa.s.sion. This was chiefly composed of tradesmen and citizens of Paris, and for a hundred and fifty years it continued to play for the most part mysteries, sacred and profane alike, but the latter, according to its name and profession, less commonly. In 1548 a curious example of the change of times and manners took place, owing in all probability to the influence, direct or indirect, of the Reformation. The Confraternity had its charter renewed, but it was expressly forbidden to play the sacred dramas which it had been originally const.i.tuted to perform. Thenceforward secular plays only were lawful in Paris, but the older dramas continued for a long time to be performed in the provinces, and in Britanny have been acted within the last half century. The Confraternity became regular actors of ordinary farces, and as time went on were known under the t.i.tle of the Comedians of the Hotel de Bourgogne, a name which brings us at once into the presence of Moliere. In these last sentences we have a little outstripped the mediaeval period proper, but in dramatic matters there is no gap between the ancient and modern theatre until we arrive at the Pleiade.

It is not very easy to ill.u.s.trate the manner of the ancient French drama by citations within ordinary compa.s.s; but the following pa.s.sages, the first from the Mystery of the _Pa.s.sion_, the second from the original form of _Pathelin_, may serve the purpose:--

_Ici deschargent Jesus de la croix._

_Simon._ or avant donc, puis que ainsi va.

je ferai vostre voulente; mais il me poise en verite de la honte que vous me faictes.

o Jesus, de tous les prophettes le plus sainct et le plus begnin, vous venes a piteuse fin, veue vostre vie vertueuse quant vostre croix dure et honteuse pour vostre mort fault que je porte.

se c'est a tort, je m'en rapporte a ceulx qui vous ont forjuge.

_Ici charge la croix a Simon._

_Nembroth._ Messeigneurs, il est bien charge; cheminons, depeschons la voie.

_Salmanazar._ j'ai grant desir que je le voie fiche en ce hault tabernacle, a scavoir s'il fera miracle, quant il sera cloue dessus.

_Jeroboam._ seigneurs, hastes moi ce Jesus et ces deux larrons aux coustes.

s'ilz ne vuellent, si les battez si bien qu'il n'y ait que redire.

_Claquedent._ a cela ne tiendra pas, sire.

nos en ferons nostre povoir.

_Ici porte Simon une partie de la croix et Jesus l'autre et le battent les sergens._

_Dieu le pere._ Pitie doit tout cueur esmouvoir en lamenter piteus.e.m.e.nt le martyre et le gref tourment que Jesus, mon chier filz, endure.

il porte detresse tant dure, que, puis que le monde dura, homme si dure n'endura, laquelle ne peult plus durer sans la mort honteuse endurer, et n'aura son sainct corps duree tant qu'il ait la mort enduree, il appert, car plus va durant, et plus est tourment endurant, sans quelque confort qui l'alege.

si convient que la mort abrege et de l'executer s'apreste, pour satiffaire a la requeste de dame Justice severe, qui pour requeste ne prere ne veult rien de ses drois quitter.

Michel, alles donc conforter en ceste amere pa.s.son mon filz, plain de dilecton, qui veult dure mort en gre predre et va sa doulce chair estrandre ou puissant arbre de la croix.

_Sainct Michel._ pere du ciel et roi des rois, humblement a chere a.s.simplie sera parfaicte et acomplie vostre voulente juste et bonne.

_Ici descendent les anges de paradis._

_Path._ ce bergier ne peut nullement respondre aux fais que l'on propose, s'il n'a du conseil; et il n'ose ou il ne scet en demander.

s'il vous plaisoit moy commander que je fusse a luy, je y seroye.

_Juge._ avecques luy? je cuideroye que ce fust trestoute froidure: c'est peu d'acquest. _Path._ mais je vous jure qu'aussi n'en veuil rien avoir: pour dieu soit. or je voys scavoir au pauvret qu'il voudra me dire, et s'il me scaura point instruire pour respondre aux fais de partie.

il auroit dure departie de ce, qui ne le secourroit.

vien ca, mon amy. qui pourroit trouver? entens. _Berg._ bee. _Path._ quel bee, dea!

par le sainct sang que dieu crea, es tu fol? dy moy ton affaire.

_Berg._ bee. _Path._ quel bee! oys tu tes brebis braire?

c'est pour ton prouffit; entens y.

_Berg._ bee. _Path._ et dy ou ou nenny, c'est bien faict. dy tousjours, feras?

_Berg._ bee. _Path._ plus haut, ou tu t'en trouveras en grans depens, ou je m'en doubte.

_Berg._ bee. _Path._ or est plus fol cil qui boute tel fol naturel en proces.

ha, sire, renvoyez l'en a ses brebis; il est fol de nature.

_Drapp._ est il fol? sainct sauveur d'Esture!

il est plus saige que vous n'estes.

_Path._ envoyez le garder ses bestes, sans jour que jamais ne retourne.

que maudit soit il qui adjourne tels folz que ne fault adjourner.

_Drapp._ et l'en fera l'en retourner avant que je puisse estre ou?

_Path._ m'aist dieu, puis qu'il est foul, ou.

pour quoy ne fera? _Drapp._ he dea, sire, au moins laissez moy avant dire et faire mes conclusons.

ce ne sont pas abusons que je vous dy ne mocqueries.

_Juge._ ce sont toutes tribouilleries que de plaider a folz ne a folles.

escoutez, a moins de parolles la court n'en sera plus tenue.

_Drapp._ s'en iront ilz sans retenue de plus revenir? _Juge._ et quoy doncques?

_Path._ revenir? vous ne veistes oncques plus fol ne en faict ne en response: et cil ne vault pas mieulx une once.

tous deux sont folz et sans cervelle: par saincte Marie la belle, eux deux n'en ont pas un quarat[130].

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