Ideological Drama in 15th Century France by Jonathan Beck

The 15th century in France: war, famine and plague; oorruption and

disorder in the p:>litical and ecclesiastical hierarchies; a noribund culture, a civilization in decline, a litercuy burial ground in which were laid to rest or tcMard which were declining the final enfeebled expressions or the decadent Medieval imagination.

This image of the French 15th century,

a battleground and graveyard oonveniently separating the "Mid:lle Ages" from the "Renaissance", originates in the 16th century.

Later elaborated and

given an air of finality by Ranantic and Positivist literary and cultural historiographers, the

SaIlE

image remained for a long tine the rrost pe.rvasive

arrong the abusive fictions of traditional litercuy-historical mythography. As a oonsequence, iIlportant aspects of the litercuy culture of the French

15th centu..ry have been inaccurately assessed, while others remain-eve.'1 today after the thorough-going reevaluation of the vi tali ty and originality of the fifteenth century by the late Franoo SiIrone-largely or totally 1

unexplored.

This is especially true of the drama.

fure truly and closely than any other rreans of artistic expression, the drama in the 15th century reflects the aspirations, preoccupations and 2 limitations of the society which p:>rtrays itself therein. And of all the developrents in the literary culture of 15th century France, one of the rrost significant is the creation of an entirely new form of drama: the p:>litical rrorality play.

An offshoot of the didactic rrorality play, it redefines the

social function of the theatre, perceived now for the first tine as an ideological instnlrrent, a fonun for the propagation of militant partisan religious and political doctrines. I shall briefly sketch how this invention 1

2

in the 15th century of a new dramatic form carre about, and, rrore iJrl:ortant, how this st=eeific example of the vitality and originality of the 15th century drama bears out Lanson's dimly perceived inference, cited above, concerning the in;lortance of the theatre as "a basic elerrent typical of a whole literary culture" -a culture not in decline, but !tOving fonvard with the t:Ires, adapting and renolding traditional fonns and !lOdes of thought and artistic expression to rreet the requirerrents of an age of fX)litical and religious tunnoil, an age dominated on the one hand by the English wars (Hundred Years War, 1337-1453) and the civil war (Amagnacs and l3ourguignons, 1407-1435) , on the other by the Great Schism (1378-1417), the conciliar !tOvanent (Pisa 1409, Constance 1414-1418, Basel-Florence, 1431-42), and the prerefonnation. The first play to adapt the !tOtifs and dramatic conventions of the

Middle llqes in such a way as to pmnit the drama to confront the problems of the wars in France and the tunroil in the Churcl1. was the

~ralite

du

3

Concil de Basle.

The play was written in 1434 by an anonynous French

churchIran, anxious to advance and defend the positions of the conciliarist refomers in their struggles against the t:QPe at the Council of Basel, and

to urge the resolution of the Hundred Years War through trilateral negoti­ ations (France, England and Burgundy) initiated and coordinated by the 4 p3ace-keeping delegations of the Council. The COncil de Basle recounts in painstaking detail-and in the sarre style and often the sarre terms as one finds in narrative YoOrks fran the sarre p3riod (Olristine de Pisan, Jean de Montreuil, Alain C1artier, Jean Juvenal des Ursins etc.) -the dev­ astation and suffering brought about by the war, and the problems and dangers of the corruption and anarchy in the Churcl1 (also in the same tenns as one finds in contemporary narrative "'Orks: concili.:rr treatises, se.rnons, f?aI11?hlets

3 5 etc.).

The FOlitical rrorality play is thus a v.ork of creative synthesis,

bro~ht

about by the canbination of disparate but already existing narra­

tive and dramatic materials and techniques: lyricism, satire and FOlem.ic fran diverse types of narrative poetry, propaganda from

se.tnlOI1S,

pamphlets,

juridical and eo::lesiological treatises-all bound together in a dramatiza­ tion through the conventional use of allegorical personifications, both collective (France, Eglise, Concil) and abstract (Paix, Pefonration-Justice, Daniel Poirion FOints out that this play, and others like it

He.resie). (e.g.

~

carplainte du Povre Crnmm, 1435, by Michault Taillevant) reflect

very accurately not only the doctrinal FOsitions .of the French clericature, 6 but also the state of public opinion in France with respect to the v.'ar. MJst irrportant, these plays reflect as well the vitality of a dramatic tra­ dition evolving and renewing its rreans of The irnFortance of t.11e ConcH

~

~ression

and persuasion.

Basle in the history of French dramatic

literature has gone largely unnoticed.

Grace Frank rrentions the play only 7 as an exarrple of an "historical rrorality", which it is not, or at least was not when it was written; it is "historical" for us, not for the people for whan it was written.

The ConcH ~ Bas Je is a political play, written

to influence opinion in favor of the CDnciliar refonns of the Church, and

the conciliar solution to the problem of the war in France. as early as 1434 (the ConcH known) it occurred

~

The fact that

Easle is one of the earliest norality plays

to an author to use the frarrework of the edifying rroral­

ity play for pllrfOses other than rroralistic or celebratory, is of i.1nrense significance, marking a tw:ning FOint in the developrent of serious drama in France.

For the ConcH

~

Basle is the first in a long line of plays

belonging to the reformist theatre of the 15th and early 16th centuries,

4 a tradition which begins to rrerge by alrrost iIrperceptible doctrinal ITUltations into the Protestant theatre (rrorality plays, farces and "trage:u.es") 8

of the mid- and later 16th centmy.

The devel0trnent is unbroken and, indeed,

because many of the plays are undated, it is often difficult to tell from the allusions they o:mtain whether they belong to the late pre-reformation or to the early Fefooration.

At any rate, no case need be ma:ie here for the inp:)r­ 9

tance and iIrpact of the Protestant theatre in France.

It is a theatre which 10 spans the entire 16th century and continues even into the early 17th. M:>reover, the nurrber of Protestant plays far exceeds that of the learned pseudo-classical plays of the Renaissance (Jcx:l.elle, La Taille, Garnier etc.) . Finally, the power and efficacy of these plays is \\ell known, as Professor

I..el::legue IXlinted out, noting t.'1at a "Protestant theatre" is in itself a para­ dox, since the Protestant reforrrers usually shunned dramatic representations as bordering on idolatry.

"En theorie, ils s I en rrefient et le consi.de.rent

un divertisserrent dangereuxi en pratique, ils usent largerrent de ce 11 rroyen de propagande". In the same vein, G. Jonker concludes his stuiy of CDme

~ protestantisrre ~ le theatre de ~ franc;aise .au...16e siecle with the

following 51.llmarY of his findings: Avant la Reforrre proprerrent dite, le theatre a sotNent expri..rre le mecontenterrent de ceux qui voyaient les fautes de l' Eglise. Peu peu les attaques deviennent plus violentes, on ne critique pas seulerrent les m:::eurs dissolues d'cme partie du clerge, rrais encore la doctrine. I.e theatre devient un rroyen de propagande considerable des idees nouvelles (p. 236).

a

Sorre 200 pages earlier, Jonker began by noting that "la premiere piece de

theatre qu I il convient de rrentionner est la Moralite du ConcHe de Bale. .

"

(p. 4), and he is surely correct in placing the ConcH de 3asle at tre origins of t."e ideological partisan draIT'a in France.

5 ~

precisely is "new" in the partisan ideoloqical play?

Remarks

~

form,

content and tone ------As

has been state:i, all of the formal and structural raw material (the

rrorality play with its allegorical characters) necessary for the mergence of the partisan ideological play was present long before 14 34, and yet no such

plays exist in French prior to the ConcH de Basle.

Indee:i as early as the

13th century, satirical and polemical allusions and ideol9';ical elerrents may be found in the drama, but the developrrent of political drama as an inde­ pendent genre was, as we shall see, either nipped in the boo by historical events, or inhibited by censorship, whether official or self-iItp:lsed.

Nor

was there lacking, prior to 1434, the specific type of subject matter neces­ sary for the errergence of the political drama, narrely a certain widespread discontent of an id!:!ological nature which w:::>uld entail the delineation of op­ posing constituencies.

These two canplementary factors are the sine

~ ~

for there to be partisan political literature of any sort: an ideological split (opposing doctrines) entail.in;r a polarization of the society, or significant parts of the society, into adversary parties (opposing ccnstituancies).

A

specific a:mbination of historical events in the 15th century precipitated the crystallization of this subject rratter and these opposing constituencies, and the partisan ideoloqical play, the oldest surviving example of its kind in

French, carre into being. not new.

But the subject rratter of the ConcH de Basle

',,'as

The Hundred Years War dates from 1337, the Great Schism from 1378,

and the 12th, 13th and '14th centuries were certainly not devoid of partisan

conflicts; but they are de\.Did of drarna in which these conflicts appear.

There

was, rroreover, no dearth of literature-narrative literature I not drama--devoted 12 to the SChism and the Hundred Years Har. Thus for the public of 1434 the ConcH de Basle could not have seem::rl rrore than a slight deviation from the

6 normal rroralistic and satirical treatrrents (often hostile) of abuses in the ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies. This brings us, after fonn an:i content, to the third

am

rrost important

constituent elerrent characteristic of the ideological drama: tone.

There

are irnportant distinctions which need to be drawn, first J::etween the various types of satire an:i the various types of polemic, second. between polemic on ti'..e one hand, propaqanda on the other.

In the drama. of the 15th and 16th

centuries there is perceptible a definite rroverrent from gentle irony in the satire of clerical foibles to bitter polemic directed against heresy, sirrony, idolatry, "papelardise" and so on.

Indeed one of the rrost ccrrrron

theIres in rredieval literature is the satire of licentious rronks and profli­ gate priests.

But "satire" is a tenn very broad in scope, it can be benev­

olent or violent.

Only when violent, and directed against a

does satire becorre synonyrrous '\lith polemic.

~ific

target,

And while there exists, from

the late 12th to the late 14th century, sore srrall arrount of anticlerical and specifically antipapal pJle.mic, there is nuch less of t.lll.s vigorous type of criticism than there is of satire.

However the satire of the clergy,

fran the 13th to the 15th centuries, does bea::rne :rore virule."1t, less benev­ olent, escalating at tiJTes to a genuine anticlericalisrn.

This escalation in

the degree of satiric virulence is not merely a literary phenorrenon; it corresp:>nds to-and is to sore extent a guage of-an

evolving social reality.

The legislation which, throughout Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries,

limited or, prohibited gifts of land to the Church, points up the econcrnic roots of much of the lay hostility tawaId the clergy.

In an agrarian

economy, destabilized in a vicious circle by plague, famine and war (decreased population bringing about labor shortages and vice versa), clerical endowrents

7

13

ill

the form of land holdings were strongly resented..

Also iJrportant in

this m:>varent, in the drama, towards a m:>re open and m:>re violent satire 14 of the clergy is the fact that by the end of the 14th century the activi­ ty of writing and putting on non-liturgical plays falls m:>re and rrore into

the hands of clerks in the

l~

law courts, and rranbers of the 10lYer

levels of the clergy-i. e. , people in a position to be aware of abJ.ses, but themselves not in a position to profit from them.

Thus it corres as no

surprise that alongside the gentle mxking of priets and m:>nks familiar from the farces (and already present in the fabliaux and the

~.

de Renart,

not to rrention Boccacio and O1aucer), there arises, with worsening econanic condi tions and the general disgrace of the clergy following the Sdlisn and

all the reformist literature it generated, a nuch more virulent brand of satire, genuinely polemical-in plays such as the Farce des Theolc:x:rastres,

-la

!·bralite de la Maladie de Olrestiente, la Moralite du Pane malade etc. ,

-

------

rrost of which figure arrong the plays discussed by Emile Picot in his study entitied Les Morali t~s polenu.aues, 15 theatre fran@s.

~

la a:mtroverse religieuse dans l' ancien

'Ibis brings us to the distinction which needs to be drawn beboJee.'1 partisan ideological plays (propaganda plays) arrl what Picot calls "polemical m:>rality plays" .

Picot used the term "polemical" sinply because it enabled him to

group together in a single category a large number of plays (28) which have nothing other in camon than a high degree of critical satire (polemic).

But

a polemical play is rot necessarily an ideological one, since polemic can be personal, directed againstjIbdividUal, with no partisan or political overtones. M. exarrple is the Jeu de la Feuillee, written around 1276 by Adam de la Halle.

In this play there appear certain discreet, veiled allusions directed against

the Count Robert d' Artois, and against certain corrupt and pOIYerful patricians

8 of Arras whom the Count Il'ai..ntained, or all""'ed to remain, in power. But tbe allusions in question, while critical on the j?ersonal level, even pJssibly fOlemical on the level of a srrall circle of initiates, are rcore properly considered satirical, and in any case too discreet, too veiled to nake of Adam, as one critic would have us believe, "le porte-parole de 1 'opposition anti-praticienne de la rroyenne et petite bourgeoisie arrageoise,... le ~te de l'

16 du parti de la revolte". dose of

~rsonal

extrere

gauche des conmmards,

There are otber plays ·Nhi.ch contain a certain

polemic,

e.g., La

~

are also partisan in their destination.

des Theolo;rastres , but which

Partisan pJlemic, Le., pJlemic

generalized and belonging to a group with a definite (or definable) ideological identity and directed against another group consciously opposed to it, is synononous with propaganda.

But while propaganda often e:'
itself pJlanically, the reverse is not necessarily true; e.g., the MJralite de La Paix ,de perol11".e (1468) is a Burgundian propaganda play, but :1ot at all pJlernical.

Conversely, the rrorality of Hypocrisie, Feintise

~

Faux Ser.'blant

(no. 3 in Picot's study) on the subject of the Pragmatique Sanction is pJlemical, in that the inderdiction of the fete des fous pronoooced by Charles VII is vigorously protested by the author of

t.~

play.

But since his protestations

are directed against local nanbers of the clergy and lllnited in

scope to tbe specific qu:stion of tbe interdiction of tbe

rete

~ fous,

tbey are too parochial to constitute partisan propaganda; this is an example of non-pJlitioal polemic.

A play like the Nouveau

~

(00.6 in Picot), also on

tbe subject of the Pragmatique Sanction, is on the other hand a genuine partisan ideological play, as are, in subject matter and scope, many but not all of the other plays in Picot's MJralites pol6ni.ques.

Beginning with the Concil

de

Basle of 1434, Picot's selection offers a panorama mirroring the beginnings

9 and full blossaning of, on the one hand a reformist (not yet "Protestant") c:msciousness, and, an the other, a conservative and obe:lient orthcrlox consciousness.

Those in the latter canp accuse their crlversaries of being

"novateurs" (revolutionaries), each side accuses the other of heresy, and the theatre is the battleground (but not the graveyard) on which the preliminary ideological skinnishes of the Refonration are reflected in a new draIratic genre, the partisan ideological play, attesting to the origi­ nality and vitality of the theatre in 15th century France.

The creators of the partisan ideological play in France in the 15th and 16th centuries were not bothered by the question of whether or not a work of the creative imagination could be intentionally propagandistic and at the

17 sarre tiIrE a work of art.

This is a problem for m::xlern scholastics.

Far

rrore important is the fact that in the 15th and 16th centuries social problems of the utITost seriousness, both j?ractical and philosophical (for ultimately at stake was nothing less than salvation or darmation), could be formulated in dramatic terms and portraye:i on a theater platfonn. t.~ese

RudiIrentary as many of

plays appear from an aesthetic or dramaturgical viewpoint, their mere

existence testifies to the ilraginative vitality of a dramatic tradition usually rerrerrbered in this period for its farces and sotties, often licentious and amusing, more often banal, or for its sacred drama.(mystery plays, saints' lives, edifying morality plays), usually pious, more often boring. But that the tbeatre in the 15th century in France was not always triVial, that it could vividly represent on a stage its own profoundly felt dilenmas, that it could do so by rreans of dramatic conventions which were

10

not those of Porne or Greece, but which were its iIrportance of the plays I have described.

0Nn,

this is the particular

To appreciate their

vitality as well as their seriousness (a seriousness underlying even the rrost apparently frivolous of them), we must not be put off the track by the allegorical convention. Obviously in a play characters such as Refornation,

Church, Peace and so on will appear strange and hopelessly abstract to an au::lience steepaj as we are in conventions far different but no

less arbitrary.

'!he attenpt must be made, hcwever, to see through the external superficial trappings of dramatic convention to the human problems and rrotivations beneath.

To do this will enable us to participate in the life of an age

far different from our

0Nn,

and yet very rruch the sarre on the deeper levels

of human conflict and suffering, where problems of rroral ~litical

solutions.

coercion remain forever

~ise:i

res~nsibility and

on the precarious seesaw of proVisional

NOl'ES

1 See, in particular, Franco Sirrone, The French Renaissance, trans. H. Gaston Hall (London: Maanillan, 1969), 01.. 3: "The Originality of the French Fifteenth century". SiIrone notes that Gustave Lanson, while generally accepting the prevailing view of a "decadence throu::Jhout the century", did, nonetheless, "stress the importance of the theatre over all the other literary genres active in the fifteenth century. In the fortune of the sacred and profane theatre, and nore in the latter than in the foDreI', Lanson already discerns -shrewdly, and follCMin:J the sch::>lars nost actively concerned with the problem at the tine- a basic elerrent typical of a whole literary culture" (pp. 117-118). '!his point was recently raised again by Professor ~ at the 22rxi CoIJ;1ress of the Association Intemationale des Etudes Fran~s. AddressiIq himself to PJ:cfessor sinone, organizer and president o~ session devoted to "1' Originalit~ du XVe siecle", he began as follCMS: "Dans le programne d' auj oord 'hui, i l y a un vide que j e remarque, . . • i l n' a pas e~ question d J une Partie extl:anemant inportante de la littfu-ature du XVe si~cle: le tMatre. Sur ce ~tre, j' ai prof~ des jugarents assez sev~es autrefois. . . . Je crois que, si je reecmren~ aujourd'hui, . . . je ne serais pas aussi s~~e. J I admire maintenant la valeur de ce ~tre, oon etannante vari~, oon eventail dep.ll.s la sottie jusqu'aux myst~es , . . . et j e vwdrais signaler toutes les ~ces de norali ~ : les farces noralis~, les norali~ histori.ques etc. Je crois que rare­ rrent en France le theatre a ~~ aussi prosp€!re qu' ~ cette E!poque-U. . . ." '!he CDIPlete discussion is printed in the Cahiers de 1 J AIEF (CAIEF), XXIII, (1971), 345-348, and followed up in rro...--e detail inI'i'"Traditions renouvel~ et syn~ c:reatrices: l' originali~ du ~tre au XVe siecle", in Mtllanges . . . Franco SiIrone, edd. Gianni 1-Dnbello and Lionello sozzi (Turi11, fortha::rtlin;).

2

"Une ~ n I est bien connue que si l' on cannait bien les choses Qui saura la passion du M:Jyen ]v;e pour son th~tre, sera pret ~ c:onvenir que, si l' on ignore ce theatre, on ignore en taIps une partie considerable du r-byen Age. . . . Ie M:lyen Age, au noins dans sa ~ence, s'est peint dans ce vaste tableau. L'histoire des noeurs et des icMes au XVe s~cle n' a pas de source plus aborrlante" (Petit de Jullevi11e, La CcrOOdie et les rcoeurs en France au rroyen-§ge ['paris, 1886], pp. 4-5):"" Jean Frappier, sana 80years later, echoed this sentilrent:"Plus que les autres genres, le tb.eatre peut refl~­ ter la r~~ socia1e, les rapports et conflits des classes, la 'riote du m:mde I , pour reprendre une expression rredievale que Charles-Victor Langlois traduisait avec bonheur par la 'mel€!e sociale'" (Le 'lbe.atre orofane en France ~ rroyen-age ~aris, 19651, pp. 4-5). ­ que cette ~poque a partiOllierarent aimees.

mane

11

12

3 I.e Concil de Basle (1434): les ongmes du tMatre refonniste et partisan ~ France. Edition, introduction, glossaire et notes critiques par Jonathan Beck, prMace de Daniel Poirion (Iei.den: Brill, forthCXJlllin3' in 1978 in the series "Studies in the Hi.sto~ of Qlristian ThoU;ht") .

4 On the role of the council of Basel in the peace negotiaticns, see J. G. Dickinson, '!he Congress of Arras of 1435, ~ ~ in Medieval Diplomacy (OXford, 1955), in particular pp. 78-79, 86-87, 202; and Joseph Gill, Constance et Bale-Florence (t. IX in l'Histoire des conciles ~ ­ ~, gen. ed.G. Dunei.ge [Paris, 1965J L, p. 193: "La paix d'Arras fut poor une gram.e part l' oeuvre du concile Lde ~e]. Mais ce demier eten­ dit egalarent son action bienfaisante ~ plusieurs pays: l'Espagne par exanple, aussi bien qua l' Angleterre et l' Allenagne. DI autres dernan~ent sen aide: la Lituanie en conflit avec la Pologne . . "etc.

5 References in Beck, "La ItDralite du Concil de Basle: 'pol6nique' tneatrale au propagande?", Actes du IIe Colloaue International sur le tMatre rrAli~val, Alen90n, 10-14 ]iU.TIet 1977, ed. J .~. Payen-.- - ­ 6

Op. cit. supra n. 3, p. vi.

7

'!he

~eval

Frendl Drama (OXford, 1954), p. 248.

8 See Fritz Hall, Das r;olitisdle und reli~se Tendenzdrarra des 16en Jahrhunderts in Frankreich (Er1angen, 1903), Gerard Jonker, I.e Protes­ tantisrre et le t..'leatre de langue franc;:aise ~ :lications: ''Die Ansicht, dass auch 'schOne' Literatur sehr '-'Ohl mit politisd1.-ideolo­ gisd1er Dienstieistung zu tun haben kann, mag vielen noch inmer als 1JIlziemlich ersd1einen. Dar Unstand, dass sich in dieser Fraga seit sehn Jahren ein ge'lisser Wandel der M!inungen vollzieht, eIIl1Utigt mich, rreine These [in this case, the thesis "das anglanoDllaI'1Ili.sch­ angevinische KOnigtum habe nicht nur die pseucbhistorische Artuslegende der Chroniken, sondem aud1. die Artusliteratur bewusst in den Dienst einer politisd1.en Propaganda gestellt] grundsatzlich aufrechtzuer­ halten" (Ideal und Wirklid'lkeit in ~ hOfischen~, Beibefte zur ZRPh, Heft 97, 2, erganzte Auflage LTUbingen: Max Nierreyer Verlag, 1970J, pp. 266-67.

Thory University

I

.1. '_'.' -.

L_~._

flft~~nth C~ntury ~1udi~s

\lolum~ 1

Edited by

Guy R. Mermier

The University of Michigan

and Edelgard E. DuBruck Marygrove College

Published for

THE MEDIEVAL INSTITUTE

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

by

UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS

INTERNATIONAL

1978