UNI

FRENCH LITERATURE

COMEDY BEFORE MOLIÈRE

In a nation so preeminently social as the French, so quick in seizing and so fond of reproducing the dramatic element in life, so ready to turn from nature to art, and so fond of translating all things, even the most serious, into the language of wit, it was inevitable that the drama, and especially that lighter form of it in which satire, persiflage, and wit find expression, should have a very ancient origin and a very continuous representation-in some form.

Comedy, however, such as Molière's, an artistic satirical expression of the humorous sides of social life, must necessarily belong to a highly polished society, such as France for the first time offered in the age of Louis XIV. Molière, who was to leave behind him the most unsurpassable models of comic writing, found in the work of his predecessors no models of comedy, but only elements of comedy, copious, indeed, and not without considerable variety, but not yet rendered plastic to the moulding hand of the literary artist.

The French drama has its origin in the church, was at first written and represented by churchmen, and, in reality, was a liturgic solemnity. It was written in Latin and in prose, the texts being, in fact, extracted from the Bible. It represented Biblical episodes.

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Gradually, however, this rather factitious product evolved into new forms. It passed from prose into verse, from Latin into French, and from sacred into secular hands, and an element of humor, very coarse and grotesque like the age, soon entered into it. Thus originated, as early as the twelfth century, the plays known as the Miracles, and in the fifteenth century, the Mystères. The miracle was a dramatized version of some miraculous episode in which figured the Virgin or the saints. The mystère was usually a species of dramatized Bible-story. Both combined with sacred edification an element of rather profane merriment. The incongruous comic element, with the irreverence that is inseparable from the comic, finally led to the decadence of the mystère. By degrees people came to see it only to be amused; it ceased to subserve its original religious purpose and even tended to undermine the respect for sacred things by making them laughable. It was ultimately prohibited (1548).

In the meantime other varieties of drama had arisen. In the fifteenth century we meet with the moralité, the sottie, and the farce. The moralité, in its most serious form, is a kind of dramatized sermon, characterized by a very edifying purpose and infected with the prevalent allegorical tendency of the time. As it conveyed moral instruction, chiefly under the guise of personified vices and virtues, a growingly satiric and comic spirit was inevitable. Thus a further step toward the development of comedy was made. In the moralité there is a faint suggestion, but only a faint suggestion, of the comedy of character, such as Molière's. M. Petit de

Julleville goes so far as to say: "The moralité of the fifteenth century has become the comedy of character, the classic comedy par excellence, in which the poet seeks to embody in a single individual a whole type, a universal character. In the Misanthrope suppose that Alceste is called not Alceste but Misanthropy; that Célimène is called Coquetry; Philinte, Optimism; Arsinoé, Prudery; the two marquises, Foppery and Fatuity, and what would the Misanthrope be then but a pure moralité ?"

On a somewhat lower level, but decidedly more genuine and piquant are the farce and the sottie. The latter is a satiric play, turning mostly on political subjects and taking great liberties with contemporary events and persons. The church, and even the pope himself, were not spared. The sotties were played by actors wearing the green and yellow dress and the longeared cap of the court fool, which partly explains the extreme license of speech, the not infrequent voicing of popular sentiment, the pleading for the oppressed, and the telling of unwelcome truths that mark these plays. This genus, however, declined at last into mere trivial buffoonery. The farce usually aimed at being merely diverting, and had no didactic and no aggressive purpose, though sometimes it entered the same field as the sottie. It is the most thoroughly national and vital and consequently the most entertaining of these different forms of medieval dramaturgy. While laying hold of all the sides of human nature that lend themselves to ridicule, the farce accentuates the reaction from chivalrous ideals by attacking, above all, the weaknesses

and wiles of woman-a tendency which even yet characterizes French literature.

This variety and abundance of dramatic production show to what an extent the medieval theatre rooted itself in the affections of the people. It had become a need and an institution. From a religious ceremony it had become a national diversion. It gradually organized itself as such. The miracles were originally played before the church; then, as the secular element predominated, they were transferred elsewhere and performed apparently by amateur troops of bourgeois. The actors of the mystères were at first random volunteers from every social order, from nobility and clergy down. Only in the fifteenth century did the representation pass into the hands of professional actors,— La Confrérie de la Passion. So, in the fourteenth century, the legal clerks at Paris, in connection with, their traditional festivities organized themselves into troops of comedians-La Basoche and Les Enfants sans Souci. They played sotties and farces. Countless similar bands arose and spread all over France. In the fifteenth century the theatre is.at the height of its popularity, and the number of plays, of players, and of playwrights is prodigious.

Unhappily, the literary merit of this great body of dramatic work is very slight. It is almost in inverse proportion to its abundance. There is almost no conception of dramatic form and development, no notion of character-painting.

The plots are loose and arbi

trary, and the personages mere lay-figures or caricatures.

There is almost no beauty of language, no harmony of

verse, no play of fancy, no depth of thought and insight. The moral content is usually trivial, and, when not so, is unconvincing. The moral tone lacks fineness and poetic truth. Superstitious and ceremonious compliances are quite as respectable as virtue. Such seriousness as we find is imposed from without and is only a reflection of the more lugubrious aspects of the medieval atmosphere. The comic side is more genuine and attractive. It shows a certain healthy exuberance, a certain honest and hearty good-nature that belong to primitive and popular art. But the comic too often degenerates into buffoonery, and almost always it is coarse and licentious in expression; and it is not only unideal, but it finds. its favorite diversion in ridiculing the ideal, woman, love, and in general all that lies outside of the practical world. It is too frequently a flat, uninspired, Philistinic raillery attacking what is above it instead of what is below it. It is the exuberant, unreflecting, and wanton gaiety that belongs to the popular art of an uncultivated age, in which are embodied the artistic crudeness, the intellectual triviality, and the general grotesqueness of the medieval world, accompanied by that strain of cynicism and license which characterizes the Gallic temperament. All this was destined to run itself clear and develop into refined wit and pregnant epigram only in the polished society of the seventeenth century. What Molière owes to the medieval theatre is something of this prodigal gaiety and of this sel gaulois which he has mingled with his own finer Attic salt.

Such is the history of the French theatre up to the Renaissance. The art-instinct manifests itself rather