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THE sacred plays of the Middle Ages
often contained farcical, irreverent, and even lewd situations,
while the so-called secular plays frequently carried with them
some degree of sermonizing. The distinction between comedy and
tragedy, so marked in classical plays, was forgotten. In the
day of Hans
Sachs if a play had a fight in it, it was a tragedy. No fight,
no tragedy.
The morality. The play nearest the mystery in manner
of production, costumes, and general tone was the morality, which
might almost be classed as a religious play. In the age-long
attempt to portray the dual nature of Man, in whom good and evil
perpetually fight for supremacy, the playwrights lighted on the
allegorical method. They conceived the different desires and
appetites of Man as personalities, named them Greed, Pride, Vanity,
Good Will, Patience, and the like, and caused them to weave their
plots so as to capture the soul of the hero, who was called Everyman,
Humanum Genus, or Man. Besides the personified desires, there
were also in most plays other characters such as the Doctor,
the Priest, or a public officer. God and the Devil were usually
present.
The first English morality of which there is record was on
the subject of the Lord's Prayer, and was given at York sometime
during the fourteenth century. It is now lost, but it made so
profound an impression upon the spectators that a company was
immediately formed for the purpose of providing frequent and
regular performances. At the end of the fourteenth century the
company numbered one hundred members and their wives.
The earliest extant morality in English is The Castle of
Perseverance, which belongs to the fifteenth century. In
it the whole life of Man, called Humanum Genus, is portrayed
from birth to death. There are two other very early English moralities,
one entitled Spirit, Will and Understanding, the other
Humanity. By their very nature, the moralities were all
obliged to use the same or similar abstractions for their allegories;
but a French writer, Nicolas de la Chesnaye, was inventive enough
to make a slight variation. His play is called The Condemnation
of Banquets, and is nothing less than a tract on temperance
in both eating and drinking. It is very long, having more than
3,600 lines and employing thirty-nine characters. By far the
most interesting extant morality is Everyman,
ascribed by many scholars to the Dutch Dorlandus. It appeared
in English translation four times between 1493 and 1530, and
opens with these lines: "Here beginneth a treatise how the
High Father of Heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature
to come and give an account of their lives in this world, and
is in manner of a moral play."
Even from the first, the morality was nearly always sprawling
in construction and long-winded. Moreover, all advance in dramatic
conception has been towards the concrete rather than the abstract;
so it would seem that the allegorical manner was a turn in the
wrong direction. On the other hand, such fables were popular
and quickly understood; and the abstract qualities, personified
by living actors, took upon themselves something of the nature
of reality. Furthermore, the moralities mark the end of the biblical
cycle of drama, and, with the interludes, form the link between
the medieval and the modern play. In them can be recognized the
seeds of the romantic and later schools. The habit of using qualities
for names is a stock device of comedy, and has long persisted,
the Mrs. Sneerwell and Mrs. Backbite of Sheridan being a direct
continuation of the tribe of Greed and Vanity.
Varieties of medieval secular plays. Coexistent with
biblical plays and the moralities, there grew up during the late
Middle Ages several kinds of plays of a more or less secular
nature. In a rough classification we discover the following branches:
- Carnival or Shrovetide plays
- Interludes
- Farces
- Puppet shows
- "Feasts" of various sorts, being travesties of
Church rituals
Some of these types are as ancient as the sacred play, while
others developed from it. There are naturally no hard and fast
lines between these groups; but the existence of such a variety
of forms proves anew the enormous appetite for theatrical entertainment
in the late Middle Ages.
In these secular plays there were, generally speaking, four
classes of performers: strolling players (successors of the ancient
mimes and pantomimic actors); roystering citizens out for revel;
the Fool companies; and people connected with the schools and
universities. The first of these were what might be called professional
performers. They belonged to the lowest stratum of society and
were classed as vagabonds. Besides keeping alive the ancient
Roman skits, they probably picked up for their own use such contemporaneous
pieces as served their purpose. They were often jugglers, acrobats,
minstrels and magicians as well as actors. No doubt it is due
to this class that certain stock comic situations and "business"
have been handed down in an unbroken tradition from early Roman
days.
The second group of actors was composed of ordinary citizens,
merchants, petty officers, journeymen and the like, who banded
themselves together during carnival season for purposes of revelry
and mumming. The third class, the Fool companies, consisted of
bands of youths--a sort of under-ground clique--sometimes organized
under a secret code, whose chief business it was to play gross
comedies and to execute nonsensical and often ribald travesties
on the Mass. These companies existed all over Europe and England,
and gained immunity for their ribaldry by their popularity, their
anonymity, and their audacity. Mantzius says: "They satirized
the Mass, turned the church into a ballroom, and the altar into
a bar." These boisterous "Feasts" antedate most
of the mysteries, and may have been reverent in their origin.
Remnants of pagan ceremonies seem to be embedded in their rites.
Theophylact, Patriarch of Constantinople in 990, ordered the
Feast of Fools and the Feast of the Ass, with other
"religious farces," to be played in the Greek Church.
In France one group of these youthful mummers was called Enfants
sans souci, another the Société des
Sottes, still another La Bazoche du Palais. The fourth
group was composed of school and choir boys, with an admixture
of university men. These would naturally give their attention
to plays of a more scholarly nature, imitations of Seneca
and Terence, dramatic exercises in
Latin, and adaptations more closely allied to the classic stage.
Shrovetide plays. It is likely that the Shrovetide
or carnival mummers were in many cases the same people who participated
in the mysteries. Sometimes the same stage was used both for
the sacred play and the farce, which were often given in immediate
succession, with the same audience sitting through both performances.
The Shrovetide plays--also called interludes, sotties, Fastnachtsspiele--for
some centuries made a specialty not only of the comic, but of
the indecent aspects of society. The fables, found upon the lips
of the Crusaders and Spanish Moors, in the pages of French fabliaux,
in the novelle of the Italian Renaissance--had become
current throughout Europe. We must allow, of course, for a difference
of standard in language and manners; but even granting all that,
one can but grimace at the nastiness of many of these so-called
comic plays.
Sex and digestion were the two subjects which particularly
excited the mirth of these lovers of medieval farces. In plays
on the first topic, the joke usually turned on the deceived husband,
who, to the medieval mind, was always a ludicrous object. The
other unfailing source of comedy was even more intimate--the
vicissitudes, distresses, and experiences accompanying digestion.
Mantzius says that the subject of sex was peculiarly Gallic,
while that pertaining to digestion was typically Teutonic. Both
themes were bandied about all over Europe to the last shred of
vulgarity.
At its best, however, the humor of the secular plays is naive
and diverting. The farce of Mak the Sheep Stealer may
have been taken from the French; but as we have it, it forms
an interlude in the second Shepherd play of the Towneley cycle.
The French farce of The Wash Tub introduces the henpecked
husband whose wit, combined with his wife's misfortunes, restores
him to his masculine prestige. The most famous of all the medieval
farces, Pierre Pathelin, is entirely innocent, without
vulgarity of any sort, and has a well rounded plot. It is fairly
long, consisting of about 1600 lines; and like all medieval pieces
was played through without intermission. Its author is unknown;
but it is of French origin, and was played by the Fraternity
of the Bazoche in 1480. It was immensely popular in its day,
going through six different editions in the fifteenth century,
and no less than twenty-four in the sixteenth. In the eighteenth
century it was adapted for use in the repertory of the Théâtre
Français, and restored to a form much nearer the original
in 1872. It was also used as the libretto for a comic opera by
Bazin.
These farces picture authentic types of character, and have
comedy situations which were native to the participants, not
borrowed from Greece or Rome. They smack of the soil and carry
on the true dramatic tradition. The Brotherhood of the Passion
gave a play in the fifteenth century on the subject of Griselda,
a story which came through the Moors from Spain, was part of
the Italian stock of tales, and was used by Chaucer and Spenser.
An English sixteenth century play is still in existence, with
Friar Tuck, Little John, and all the other characters of the
immortal Robin Hood legend. The story goes that Bishop Latimer's
own church was closed on a festal day, because all the congregation
had gone to see Robin Hood.
Hans Sachs. 1494-1576. The name of Hans Sachs should
be placed in an honorable niche with the writers of early secular
plays. He touched upon more subjects, had more wit and charm,
and developed a better technique than any other play-maker of
his time. He lived as an honored and distinguished citizen of
Nuremberg, following the trade of shoemaker and at the same time
producing plays, songs, poems and other works to the number of
more than six thousand separate pieces. Of these, about two hundred
are in dramatic form--tragedies, comedies, Shrovetide pieces,
or simple dialogues to which he gave no name. He was at his best
in the Shrovetide piece which, under his hand, changed from a
formless dialogue to an entertaining, well-constructed, merry
and wholesome little play. It was seldom more than four hundred
lines, and nearly always inculcated some lesson in morals or
manners.
The interlude. The interlude
was usually a short, humorous piece, suited for two or three,
scarcely ever more than four, actors; and it was, par excellence,
the banquet entertainment. Occasionally it was used as a comic
diversion between the more serious parts of a sacred play; or
as one of the features of medieval vaudeville in a program of
juggling acts, necromancy, and wrestling. Gradually the interlude
acquired a courtly character; but it was also employed, during
the period of religious strife, as a means of propaganda. It
was essentially witty and full of action. A fragment of a very
early interlude exists, called Interlude de Clerico et Puella,
probably belonging to the reign of the first Edward. It is written
in dialect, and requires three actors and a puppy. There is no
prologue or explanation; but the characters begin at once, Clericus
making immediate love to Puella. In the fourteenth century the
Society of Parish Clerks, which enjoyed considerable renown in
medieval London, played interludes before King Richard, his queen
and court. Nicholas Udall and John Bale, both of whom belong
to the sixteenth century, wrote religious and political interludes.
The most famous of all the writers of this species of play is
John
Heywood (1497-1580) under whose hand the form became satirical
and entertaining. He discarded rustic and biblical subjects,
also subjects of controversy, and turned towards Chaucer and
the French fables for his themes. With him the medieval secular
play changed almost imperceptibly into the English realistic
comedy of the Elizabethan age.
Historical, legendary, and puppet plays. There are
a few extant plays, generally called mysteries, which are based
on non-biblical stories. Two of these are French and have for
themes, respectively, the Fall of Troy and the story of Joan
of Arc. They were evidently meant for gigantic spectacles, and
seem to foreshadow the chronicle play. It is recorded that, in
these plays, from three hundred to five hundred people were on
the stage at one time.
The puppet show (also called "motions") developed
in its humble way side by side with the more pretentious types
of drama. Dumb shows, which were pantomimic performances
with either living actors or puppets, were performed in Florence
early in the fourteenth century, and spread over Europe and into
England in the fifteenth. Old stories of cheating merchants,
devils in disguise, and of Noah's Ark, were standbys in the way
of fables. A letter from Bath, mentioned in the Tatler,
relates the appearance of a puppet show featuring Alexander the
Great as hero. At Bartholomew Fair in the reign of Queen Anne,
a performance of the Creation and Flood was followed by
a puppet show called Punch and Sir John Spendall. In it
Punch beat his wife, insulted the priest, was frightened by a
ghost and was finally carried off to hell.
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