THE FARCE OF MASTER PATHELIN.
The farce of Master Pathelin, whose author was Pierre Blanchet, is certainly the richest jewel in the crown of the old French Theatre; it was what inspired Moliere in several of his works. Represented for the first time in 1480, this celebrated farce is one of the most precious literary monuments for the study of Middle Age morality. It is a chef d’œuvre of spirit, malice, comedy, and naivete, in which medicine is found in every scene, either in the simulation of disease, with consultations, with drugs, and, most amusing of all, the eternal ingratitude of the sick.
All the educated world knows the subject of Master Pathelin: A lawyer without a case or client; a man living on his wits and expedients, making dupes and yet retaining a certain degree of professional correctness in his language and his artifices. Guillemette, his wife, is his worthy accomplice. It is she who reproaches him with not having more clients and his reputation of earlier days; of starving her to death by famine. It is she who excites him by ironically saying:
“Maintenant chascun vous appelle
Partout; avocat dessoubz l’orme,
Nos robes sont plus qu’estamine
Reses.”
And Pathelin responds that he cannot get their clothing out of pawn without redeeming or stealing it—both things out of the question, as he has no money and will not commit a crime. It is then that the worthy couple hit on the credit system to renew their wardrobe. It is for this purpose he goes to a draper’s to purchase cloth to make new clothes. On entering the shop he uses the salutation of the period, “God be with you,” and politely inquires after the shopkeeper’s health, which to him is very dear. Then he asks after his father’s health, telling him he resembles his sire like an old picture. Finally, he takes sixteen yards of fine cloth, and, telling the draper to call at his house in the evening for his money and to eat, as Master Pathelin expresses it, “a Rouen goose roasted,” having invited the astonished tradesman to dine with him, the lawyer walks out with the cloth without paying. Arriving home he relates his adventure to the delighted Guillemette, who is overpowered with bewilderment, however, when she learns that the draper is invited to a roast goose supper. At first it is suggested that they borrow a tailor’s goose, but fear that the draper will not appreciate the joke and demand his money legally induces the worthy couple to adopt a strategem. It is very simple: Master Pathelin is to feign insanity, or rather that maniacal form of excitation so frequently employed even at the present day by those who seek to avoid the consequences of crimes—an excitation principally characterized by uncontrollable loquacity, mobility of ideas, incoherence, and pretended illusions.
These scenes of simulation are extremely curious and interesting. As soon as the draper enters the wife warns him not to make a noise in the house:
“He’s lying in bed. Don’t speak!
Poor martyr! he’s been sick a week.
But the draper refuses to accept the explanation. It cannot be a week, he says, for
“’Tis only this afternoon, you see,
Your husband bought cloth from me.”
Then the voice of the attorney is heard in the next room shouting to his wife:
“Guillemette? Un peu d’eue rose!
Haussez moy, serrez-moy derriere!
Trut! a qui parlay. Je? L’esguiere?
A boire? Frottez moy la plante.”
Rose water in that century was employed to reanimate the strength of sick people. Among apothecaries it was called aqua cordialis temperata. Rose water was prescribed in the following cases: “In mortis subitis et malignis, ubicunque magnus est virium lapsus præscribitur; quemadmodum etiam prodest a morbo convalescentibus, ad vires instaurandas.”
Pathelin simulates hallucinations of sight, and uses all manner of words employed by magicians in their conjurations; he asks the draper and Guillemette to put a charm around his neck such as are used to frighten away demons. He then, in his ravings, abuses the doctors for their malpractice and not understanding the quality of his urine.([97]) Notwithstanding all this the draper is not convinced and demands his money. We all know what importance was attributed to the examination of the urine in olden times, long before any search was made for albumen, sugar, or other morbid principles that it might contain. Charlatans especially exploited in this field of medicine, practicing it illegally in the country under the name of water jugglers or water judges. Such men still practice in Normandy and certain northern provinces of France.
The intestinal functions had also more or less importance in the eyes of the public, and the physician was not always consulted as when to give physic. People sent to an apothecary and ordered a clyster with cassia and other ingredients, according to the following formula of the pharmacopœia: “Cassia Pro Clysteribus. Est eadem pulpa cassiæ cum decocto herbarum aperitirarum extracta et saccharo Thomæo condita. Oportet autem illas herbas adhibere recentes, parumque decoquere, alias viribus aperitivis omnio privantur; siccæ autem per se carent virtute illa aperitiva.”
In the “Revue Historique” of Angers we find a document bearing on the private life of Cardinal Richelieu; it has for its title: “Things furnished for the person of His Most Eminent Highness, the Cardinal Duke Richelieu during the year 1635, by Perdreau, apothecary to his Excellency.” During the one year the Cardinal had used seventy-five clysters and twenty-seven cassia boluses, without counting other laxative medicines and bottles of tisane, his purgative bill amounting to 1401 livres and 14 sous. It is evident that Richelieu was a badly constipated Cardinal.
It was a fine period for apothecaries, and we might add that Moliere did them considerable harm.
Let us return to Master Pathelin. He was allowed a short breathing spell for Guillemette, fought off the obdurate creditor by making him leave the room a few moments while her husband used the bedpan.
But this respite is of short duration; the draper soon returns to demand his cloth back or his money, although the wife declares her husband “is dying in frenzy.” Then commences another scene of maniacal simulation in this wonderful psychological play. In his pretended delirium, Pathelin indulges in Limousin patois, Flemish, Lower Breton; his words grow unintelligible and incoherent in order to convince the draper of his insanity.
“Mere de Diou, la coronade,
Par fie, y m’en voul anar,
Or renague biou, outre mar,
Ventre de Diou, zen diet gigone,
Castuy carrible, et res ne donne.”
Let us pass from a wild Flemish harangue, that possesses but little interest even to those understanding the dialects.
The psychic symptoms, which dominate in the simulated delirium of Master Pathelin, are especially incoherent in language with mobility of ideas. The author of this fine comedy had evidently observed the progressive instability of thought among certain maniacs, the impossibility of fixing their attention, the too rapid succession of ideas without order; in fact, that absolute incoördination, a kind of cerebral automatism, which is the announcement of the breaking-down of intellectual faculties and the prelude of absolute dementia. In his ravings, Pathelin descants on the Mal de Saint Garbot, or, more properly speaking, Garbold; this was dysentery, although such a scholar as Genin translates it as meaning hemorrhoids. Saint Garbold who was Bishop of Bayeux in the seventh century, was driven out from his episcopal chair by his diocesans, and, in order to be avenged, sent them dysentery.
We may remark, in this connection, that during the Middle Ages many maladies were called after the Saints, whose aid they invoked in given diseases; Saint Ladre or Lazare, for leprosy; Saint Roch, for the plague; Saint Quentin, for dropsy; Saint Leu, Saint Loupt, Saint Mathelin, Saint Jehan, Saint Nazaire, Saint Victor, for epilepsy, fever, deafness, madness, etc.
The mal Saint Andreux, mal Saint Antoine, mal Saint Firmin, mal Saint Genevieve, mal Saint Germain, mal Saint Messaut, mal Saint Verain, designated erysipelas, scurvy, etc. Drunkenness was called the mal Saint Martin.
Syphilis naturally had its patron Saint; in fact, it was known as mal Saint homme Job, Saint Merais, Saint Laurant, mal Saint Eupheme, etc. In fact, all diseases had as an attachment the name of one or more Saints, at whose shrine the afflicted might implore aid.
But to return to Master Pathelin: After numerous tirades he finishes by acknowledging his deceit to the draper. This is an epitome of the farce of Master Pierre Pathelin, a medical study that had an immense run in the fifteenth century and remains a valuable document regarding French morality in the Middle Ages, as interesting to the student of psychology as to the Theatre. Some years after this (1490) the sequel to Master Pathelin appeared, called the “Last Will of Pathelin,” which is also full of strange medical conceits appertaining to the age in which it was written. In this piece, Pathelin, after years of fraud and deceit, really becomes ill and sends for the lawyer and priest, abandoning the doctor to a certain extent. In his will he leaves all his ailments to different religious orders and charitable institutions, as, for instance, one item of his will reads as follows:
“Au quatre convens aussi,
Cordeliers, Carmes, Augustins,
Jacobins, soient ors, on Soient ens,
Je leur laisse tous bons lopins,
A tous chopineurs et y vrongnes,
Notre vueil que je leur laisse
Toutes goutes, crampes et rongnes,
Au poing, au coste, a la fesse,” etc.
But enough of Master Pathelin. Let us now turn to the consideration of another curious farce.