Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/680

 FRANCE [LITERATURE. in character, the most celebrated of which is the Roman des Sept Sages, which, under that title and the variant of Dolopathos, received repeated treatment from French writers both in prose and verse. The ./Esopic fable, a similar mix ture of instruction and amusement, had many cultivators, of whom Marie de France is the most remarkable. Art, too, soon demanded exposition in verse, as well as science. The favourite pastime of the chase was repeatedly dealt with, notably in the Roi Modus, 1325, mixed prose and verse; the Deduits de la Chasse of Gaston de Foix, 1387, prose ; and the Tresor de Venerie of Hardouin, 1394, verse! Very soon didactic verse extended itself to all the arts and sciences. Vegetius and his military precepts had found a home in French octosyllables as early as the 12th century ; the end of the same age saw the ceremonies of knighthood solemnly versified, and napes (maps) du monde also soon appeared. Finally, in 1245, Gautier of Metz translated from various Latin works into French verse a sort of encyclo paedia. Profane knowledge was not the only subject which exercised didactic poets at this time. Religious handbooks and commentaries on the scriptures were common in the 13th and following centuries, and, under the title of Castoie- ments, Enseignements, and Doctrinaux, moral treatises became common. In the 14th century the influence of the Roman de la Rose helped to render moral verse frequent and popu lar. The same century, moreover, which witnessed these developments of well-intentioned if not always judicious erudition witnessed also a considerable change in lyrical poetry. Hitherto such poetry had chiefly been composed in the melodious but unconstrained forms of the romance Artificial and the pastourelle. Advancing taste, and possibly some forms of echo of the refinements of the troubadours, induced the ree&amp;lt; writers of northern France in the 14th century to subject themselves to severer rules, which, however, present no trace of being directly borrowed from the south. In this age arose the forms which for so long a time were to occupy French singers, the ballade, the rondeau, the rondel, the triolet, the chant royal, and others. These received con siderable alterations as time went on. We possess not a few Artes Poetica*, such as those of Eustachc Deschamps at the end of the 14th century, of Henri de Croy at the end of the 15th, and of Thomas Sibilet in the 16th, giving particulars of them, and these particulars show considerable changes. Thus the term rondeau, which since Villon has been chiefly limited to a poem of 15 lines, in which the 9th and 15th repeat the first words of the first, was originally applied both to the rondel, a poem of 13 or 14 lines, where the first two are twice repeated integrally, and to the triolet, one of 8 only, where the first line occurs three times and the second twice. The last is an especially popular metre, and is found where we should least expect it, in the dialogue of the early farces, the speakers making up triolets between them. As these three forms are closely connected, so are the ballade and the chant royal, the latter being an extended and more stately and difficult version of the former, and the characteristic of both being the identity of rhyme and refrain in the several stanzas. It is quite uncer tain at what time these fashions were first cultivated, but the earliest poets who appear to have practised them exten sively were born at the close of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century. Of these Guillaume Machaut (1282 or 1 295-1 380) is the oldest. He has left us 80,000 verses, few of which have ever been printed. Eustache Deschamps (1328-1415) was nearly as prolific, but more fortunate and more meritorious, though a complete edition of him is only now promised. Froissart the historian (1333-1410) was also an agreeable poet. Deschamps, the most famous as a poet of the three, has left us nearly 1200 ballades and nearly 200 rondcaux, besides much other verse all manifest ing very considerable poetical powers. Less known but not less noteworthy is Jehannot de Lcscurel, most of whose works are lost, but whose fragments are full of grace. Froissart appears to have had many countrymen in Hainault and Brabant who devoted themselves to the art of versifica tion; and the Livre des cent Ballades of the Marshal Bouci- cault and his friends dr. 1390 shows that the French gentleman of the 14th century was as apt at the ballade as his Elizabethan peer in England was at the sonnet. Early Drama. Before passing to the prose writers of the Middle Ages, we have to take some notice of the dramatic productions of those times, productions of an extremely interesting character, but, like the immense majority of mediaeval literature, poetic in form. The origin or the re vival of dramatic composition in France has been hotly de bated, and it has been sometimes contended that the tradi tion of Latin comedy was never entirely lost, but was handed on chiefly in the convents by adaptations of the Terentian plays, such as those of the nun Hroswitha, There is no doubt that the mysteries (subjects taken from the sacred writings) and miracle plays (subjects taken t from the legends of the saints and the Virgin) are of very early date. The mystery of the Foolish Virgins (partly French partly : Latin), that of Adam, of Saint Nicolas, and perhaps others, a are of the 12th century. But the later moralities, sotics, and farces seem to be also in part a very probable develop ment of the simpler and earlier forms of the fabliau and of the tenson or jeu-parti, a poem in simple dialogue much used by both troubadours and trouveres. The fabliau has been sufficiently dealt with already. It chiefly supplied the subject; and some miracle-plays and farces are little more than fabliaux thrown into dialogue. Of the jeux- partis there are many examples, varying from very simple questions and answers to something like regular dramatic dialogue ; even short romances, such as Aucassin et Nicolette, were easily susceptible of dramatization. But the Jeu de la Feuillie of Adam de la Halle seems to be the earliest piece, profane in subject, containing something more than mere dialogue. The poet has not indeed gone far for his subject, for he brings in his own wife, father, and friends, the interest being complicated by the introduction of stock characters (the doctor, the monk, the fool), and of certain fairies personages already popular from the later romances of chivalry. Another piece of Adam s, Le Jcu de Robin et Marion, also already alluded to, is little more than a simple throwing into action of an ordinary pastourelle. Nevertheless later criticism has seen, and not unreasonably, in these two pieces the origin in the one case of farce, and thus indirectly of comedy proper, in the other of comic opera. For a long time, however, the mystery and miracle-plays remained the staple of theatrical performance, and until the 13th century actors as well as performers were more or less taken from the clergy. It has, indeed, been well pointed out that the offices of the church were themselves dramatic performances, and required little more than development at the hands of the mystery writers. The occasional festive out bursts, such as the Feast of Fools, that of the Boy Bishop, and the rest, helped on the development. The variety of mysteries and miracles was very great. A single manu script, now in course of publication, contains forty miracles of the Virgin, averaging from 1200 to 1500 lines each, written in octosyllabic couplets, and at least as old as the 14th century, most of them perhaps much earlier. The mysteries proper, or plays taken from the scriptures, are older still. Many of these are exceedingly long. There is a Mystere de I Ancien Testament, which extends to many volumes, and must have taken weeks to act in its entirety. The Mystere de la Passion, though not quite so Ion&quot;, took several days, and recounts the whole history of the gospels. But these performances, though they held