Chapter VI: The Stage (1)

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]