Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/681

 EA.RLY DRAMA.] FRANCE 645 their ground until the middle of the IGth century, were soon rivalled by the more profane performances of the moralities, the farces, and the soties. The palmy time of all these three kinds is the 15th century, while the Confrerie do la Passion itself, the special performers of the sacred drama, only obtained the licence constituting it by an ordinance of Charles VI. in 1402. In order, however, to take in the whole of the mediaeval theatre at a glance, we may anticipate a little. The Confraternity was not itself the author or performer of the profaner kind of dramatic performance. This latter was due to two other bodies, the clerks of the Bazochc and the Enfaus sans Souci. As the Confraternity was chiefly composed of tradesmen and persons very similar to Peter Quince and his associates, so the clerks of the Bazoche were members of the legal pro fession of Paris, and the Enfaus sans Souci were mostly young men of family. The morality was the special pro perty of the first, the sotie of the second. But as the moralities were sometimes decidedly tedious plays, though by no means brief, they were varied by the introduction of farces, of which the jeux already mentioned were the early germ, and of which L Avocat Patelin, 200 years subse quent to Adam de In Halle, is the most famous exampla The morality was on the stage the natural result of the immense literary popularity of allegory in the Roman de la Rose and its imitations. There is hardly an abstraction, a virtue, a vice, a disease, or anything else of the kind, which does not figure in these compositions. There is Bien AdvistS and Mai Advise^ the good boy and the bad boy of nursery stories, who fall in respectively with Faith, Reason, and Humility, and with Rashness, Luxury, and Folly. There is the hero Mange-Tout, who is invited to dinner by Banquet, and meets after dinner very unpleasant company in Coliquc, Goutte, and Hydropisie. It is even said that Cheese and Tart figured among the dramatis /jerscwcc, while Honte-de-dire-ses-Peches seems an anticipation of Puritan nomenclature. Some of these moralities possess distinct dramatic merit ; among these is mentioned Les Blasphemateurs, an early and remarkable presentation of the Don Juan story. But their general character appears to be gravity, not to say dulness. The Enfans sans Souci, on the other hand, were definitely satirical, and nothing if not amusing. The chief of the society was entitled Prince des Sots, and his crown was a hood decorated with asses ears. The sotie was directly satirical, and only assumed the guise of folly as a stalking-horse for shooting wit. It was more Aristophanic than any other modern form of comedy, and. like its predecessor, it perished as a result of its political application. Encouraged for a moment as a political engine at the beginning of the 16th. century, it was soon absolutely forbidden and put down, and had to give place in one direction to the lampoon and the prose pamphlet, in another to forms of comic satire more general and vague in their scope. The farce, on the other hand, having neither moral purpose nor political intention, was a purer work of art, enjoyed a wider range of subject, and was in no danger of any permanent extinction. Farcical interludes were interpolated in the mysteries themselves; short farces introduced and rendered palatable the moral ities, while the sotie was itself but a variety of farce. It was a short composition, 500 verses being considered suf ficient, while the morality might run to at least 1000 verses, the miracle-play to nearly double that number, and the mystery to some 40,000 or 50,000, or indeed to any length that the author could find in his heart to bestow upon the audience, or the audience in their patience to suffer from the author. The number of persons and societies who acted these performances grew to be very large, being estimated fit more than 5000 towards the end of the 15th century. Many fantastic personages came to join the Prince des Sots, such as the Emperenr de Galilee, the Princes de 1 Etrille, and des Nouveaux Marios, the Roi de 1 Epiuette, the Recteur des Fous. Of the pieces which these societies represented one only, that of Maitre Patdin, is now much known; but many are almost equally amusing. Patelin itself has an immense number of versions and editions. Other farces are too numerous to attempt to classify; they bear, however, in their subjects, as in their manner, a remarkable resemblance to the fabliaux, their source. Conjugal disagreements, tho unpleasantness of mothers-in-law, the shifty or, in the earlier stages, clumsy valet and chambermaid, the mishaps of too loosely given ecclesiastics, the abuses of relics and pardons, the extortion, violence, and sometimes cowardice of the seigneur and the soldiery, the corruption of justice, its delays, and its pompous apparatus, supply the subjects. The treatment is rather narrative than dramatic in most cases, as might be expected, but makes up by the liveliness of the dialogue for the deficiency of elaborately planned action and interest. All these forms, it will be observed, are directly or indirectly comic. Tragedy in the Middle Ages is represented only by the religious drama, except for a brief period towards the decline of that form, when what were called profane mysteries, such as those of the Sieye of Troy and the Sieye of Orleans, came to be represented. These were, however, rather histories, in the Elizabethan sense, than tragedies proper. Prose History. In France, as in all other countries of whose literary developments we have any record, literature in prose is considerably later than literature in verse. We have certain glosses or vocabularies possibly dating as far back as the 8th or even the 7tb century; we have the Strasburg oaths, already described, of the 9th, and a commentary on the prophet Jonas which is probably as early. In the 1 Oth century there are some charters and muniments in the ver nacular ; of the llth the laws of William the Conqueror are the most important document ; while the Assists de Jeru salem of Godfrey of Bouillon date, though not in the form in which we now possess them, from the same age. The 12th century gives us certain translations of the Scriptures, and the remarkable Arthurian romances already alluded to ; and thenceforward French prose, though long less favoured than verse, begins to grow in importance. History, as is natural, was the first subject which gave it a really satisfac tory opportunity of developing its powers. For a time the French chroniclers contented themselves with Latin prose or with French verse, after the fashion of Wace and Philippe Mouske&quot;G. But soon chronicles, first translated Early then original, became common ; the earliest of all is said to chron- have been that of the Pseudo-Turpin, which thus recovered Icles &quot; in prose the language which had originally clothed it in verse, and which to gain a false appearance of authenticity it had exchanged for Latin. Then came French selections and versions from the great series of historical compositions undertaken by the monks of St Denys, the so-called Grandes Chroniques de France. But the first really remarkable author who used French prose, as a vehicle of historical ex pression is Geoffroi de Villehardouin, marshal of Cham pagne, who was born towards the middle of the 12th cen tury, and died in Greece in 1213. Under the title of Villehar- Conquete de Constantinoble Villehardouin has left us a his- douiu. tory of the fourth crusade, which has been accepted by all. competent judges as the best picture extant of feudal chivalry in its prime. The Conquete de Constantinoble has been well called a chanson de geste in prose, and indeed the surprising nature of the feats it celebrates, the abund ance of detail, and the vivid and picturesque poetry of tho narration, equal the very best of the chansons. Even the repetition of the same phrases which is characteristic of epic poetry repeats itself in this epic prose ; and as in the chansons so in Villehardouin, few motives appear but religi-