Mysteries are to be distinguished from Moralities, and Farces, and Sotties. Moralities are dialogues where the interlocutors represented feigned or allegorical personages. Farces were more exactly what their title indicates—obscene, gross, and dissolute representations, where both the actions and words are alike reprehensible.
The Sotties were more farcical than farce, and frequently had the licentiousness of pasquinades. I shall give an ingenious specimen of one of the Moralities. This Morality is entitled, "The Condemnation of Feasts, to the Praise of Diet and Sobriety for the Benefit of the Human Body."
The perils of gormandising form the present subject. Towards the close is a trial between Feasting and Supper. They are summoned before Experience, the Lord Chief Justice! Feasting and Supper are accused of having murdered four persons by force of gorging them. Experience condemns Feasting to the gallows; and his executioner is Diet. Feasting asks for a father-confessor, and makes a public confession of so many crimes, such numerous convulsions, apoplexies, head-aches, and stomach-qualms, &c., which he has occasioned, that his executioner Diet in a rage stops his mouth, puts the cord about his neck, and strangles him. Supper is only condemned to load his hands with a certain quantity of lead, to hinder him from putting too many dishes on table: he is also bound over to remain at the distance of six hours' walking from Dinner upon pain of death. Supper felicitates himself on his escape, and swears to observe the mitigated sentence.97
The Moralities were allegorical dramas, whose tediousness seems to have delighted a barbarous people not yet accustomed to perceive that what was obvious might be omitted to great advantage: like children, everything must be told in such an age; their own unexercised imagination cannot supply anything.
Of the Farces the licentiousness is extreme, but their pleasantry and their humour are not contemptible. The "Village Lawyer," which is never exhibited on our stage without producing the broadest mirth, originates among these ancient drolleries. The humorous incident of the shepherd, who having stolen his master's sheep, is advised by his lawyer only to reply to his judge by mimicking the bleating of a sheep, and when the lawyer in return claims his fee, pays him by no other coin, is discovered in these ancient farces. Bruèys got up the ancient farce of the "Patelin" in 1702, and we borrowed it from him.
They had another species of drama still broader than Farce, and more strongly featured by the grossness, the severity, and personality of satire:—these were called Sotties, of which the following one I find in the Duke de la Vallière's "Bibliothèque du Théâtre François."98
The actors come on the stage with their fools'-caps each wanting the right ear, and begin with stringing satirical proverbs, till, after drinking freely, they discover that their fools'-caps want the right ear. They call on their old grandmother Sottie (or Folly), who advises them to take up some trade. She introduces this progeny of her fools to the World, who takes them into his service. The World tries their skill, and is much displeased with their work. The Cobbler-fool pinches his feet by making the shoes too small; the Tailor-fool hangs his coat too loose or too tight about him; the Priest-fool says his masses either too short or too tedious. They all agree that the World does not know what he wants, and must be sick, and prevail upon him to consult a physician. The World obligingly sends what is required to a Urine-doctor, who instantly pronounces that "the World is as mad as a March hare!" He comes to visit his patient, and puts a great many questions on his unhappy state. The World replies, "that what most troubles his head is the idea of a new deluge by fire, which must one day consume him to a powder;" on which the physician gives this answer:——
Et te troubles-tu pour cela?
Monde, tu ne te troubles pas
De voir ce larrons attrapars
Vendre et acheter benefices;
Les enfans en bras des Nourices
Estre Abbés, Eveques, Prieurs,
Chevaucher tres bien les deux soeurs,
Tuer les gens pour leurs plaisirs,
Jouer le leur, l'autrui saisir,
Donner aux flatteurs audience,
Faire la guerre à toute outrance
Pour un rien entre les chrestiens!
And you really trouble yourself about this?
Oh, World! you do not trouble yourself about Seeing those impudent rascals Selling and buying livings; Children in the arms of their nurses Made Abbots, Bishops, and Priors, Intriguing with girls, Killing people for their pleasures, Minding their own interests, and seizing on what belongs to another, Lending their ears to flatterers, Making war, exterminating war, For a bubble, among Christians!
The World takes leave of his physician, but retains his advice; and to cure his fits of melancholy gives himself up entirely to the direction of his fools. In a word, the World dresses himself in the coat and cap of Folly, and he becomes as gay and ridiculous as the rest of the fools.
This Sottie was represented in the year 1524.
Such was the rage for Mysteries, that René d'Anjou, king of Naples and Sicily, and Count of Provence, had them magnificently represented and made them a serious concern. Being in Provence, and having received letters from his son the Prince of Calabria, who asked him for an immediate aid of men, he replied, that "he had a very different matter in hand, for he was fully employed in settling the order of a Mystery—in honour of God."99
Strutt, in his "Manners and Customs of the English," has given a description of the stage in England when Mysteries were the only theatrical performances. Vol. iii, p. 130.
"In the early dawn of literature, and when the sacred Mysteries were the only theatrical performances, what is now called the stage did then consist of three several platforms, or stages raised one above another. On the uppermost sat the Pater Cœlestis, surrounded with his Angels; on the second appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men; and the last and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet passed from this transitory life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames; and, when it was necessary, the audience were treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the howlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relentless demons. From this yawning cave the devils themselves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the spectators:—to delight, because they were usually the greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared; and to instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits." An anecdote relating to an English Mystery presents a curious specimen of the manners of our country, which then could admit of such a representation; the simplicity, if not the libertinism, of the age was great. A play was acted in one of the principal cities of England, under the direction of the trading companies of that city, before a numerous assembly of both sexes, wherein Adam and Eve appeared on the stage entirely naked, performed their whole part in the representation of Eden, to the serpent's temptation, to the eating of the forbidden fruit, the perceiving of, and conversing about, their nakedness, and to the supplying of fig-leaves to cover it. Warton observes they had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and they gave matters just as they found them in the third chapter of Genesis. The following article will afford the reader a specimen of an Elegant Morality.
LOVE