But how can we account for the strange and profane caricatures which are so numerous in the stone and wood carvings of our cathedrals? In the scriptural ornamentation of the thirteenth century in Strasburg Cathedral, there was the representation of a funeral performed by animals—a hare carried the taper, a wolf the cross, and a bear the holy water—while in another place a stag was celebrating mass, and an ass reading the gospel. We often find carvings in which foxes are habited as ecclesiastics, sometimes accompanied by geese, who represent their flock, and thus we can understand the significance of the design in Sherborne Minster and Wellingborough, where two geese are hanging a fox.
In St. Mary's, Beverley, are two foxes dressed as ecclesiastics, each holding a pastoral staff, while a goose's head is peeping out of his hood. At Boston Church we find a fox in a cope and episcopal vestments, seated on a throne, and holding a pastoral staff, while on the right is an ass holding a book for the bishop to read. The fact was that no means were left untried by the Church to make converts and to obtain a hold on the people. They wished to render religion as attractive as possible, and perhaps to direct and control tendencies which they could not destroy. It was then a favourite doctrine that the end justified the means—the Roman Church instituted persecutions, adopted heathen rites, and ordained fasts and festivals to impress the mind. It is recorded that Theophylact of Constantinople introduced into the Church, in the tenth century, the licentious "Feast of Fools," to wean the people from the revels of their old religion, and have we not until late years celebrated the Nativity of our Lord, not only by games and frolics, but gluttony and drunkenness, and riotous proceedings, under pagan misletoe! I believe that among the masses of the people the Roman saturnalia still survive. We need not then be surprised that the early Christians tried to recommend religion by unsuitable ornamentation. They adopted all kinds of floral designs, they represented fables and romances. In the old church of Budleigh, in Devonshire—which Sir Walter Raleigh attended, and where his head is buried—all kinds of devices are represented on the pews, from a pair of scissors to a man-of-war, including a cook holding a sheep by the tail. It was only a step from this to introduce humour, and as men's feelings had not then been chastened or brought into order by reflection, they probably overlooked the lowering tendencies of levity. Those who came to laugh, might remain to pray, and so a strange crop of incongruities germinated upon the sacred soil. Thus, in Beverley Minster, we have a monkey riding upon a hare—a bedridden goat, with a monkey acting as doctor; and at Winchester a boar is playing on the fiddle, while a young pig is dancing.[47] Even scenes of drunkenness and immorality are not always excluded. But the principal representations attributed human actions to birds and beasts—people who could laugh at stories of this kind, could also at depictions of them. It may be maintained that men were then highly emotional, and demanded but little complexity or truth in humour, so that they could see something amusing in a boar playing upon the bagpipes, or in such a device as a monster composed of two birds, with the head of a lion, or another with a human head on a lion's body! But there must have been something more than this—some peculiar estimation of animals to account for such numerous representations. They were common in the secular ornamentation of the day, for instance, in a MS. copy of Froissart of the fifteenth century, there is a drawing of a pig walking upon stilts, playing the harp, and wearing one of the tall head-dresses then in fashion.
This love of the comic seems to have been fostered by the leisure and the lively turn of some ecclesiastics. In the injunctions given to the British Church in the year 680, no bishop is to allow tricks or jocosities (ludos vel jocos) to be exhibited before him, and later we read of two monks, near Oxford, receiving a man hospitably, thinking he was a "jougleur," and could perform tricks, but kicking him out on finding themselves mistaken. We find some of the monks amusing themselves with "cloister humour," consisting principally of logical paradoxes; while others indulged in verbal curiosities, such as those of Tryphiodorus, the lipogrammatist, who wrote an Odyssey in twenty-four books without once using the letter A. Some were more fond of pictorial designs, and carved great figures on the chalk downs, such as the Giant of Cerne Abbas, in Dorsetshire, and the Long Man of Wilmington, in Sussex.
As we found reason to believe that the earliest kind of laughter was that of pleasure, so in this revival of civilization, we often see humour regarded as having no influence beyond that of ministering to amusement. The mind was scarcely equal to regarding things in more than one light. A jest was often viewed as entirely unimportant, its levity and depreciatory character being altogether overlooked. To this and to the hostile element then very prominent, we may attribute the caricatures of the devil, formerly so common. Before the tenth century, the devil was thought too dreadful to be portrayed, but afterwards, as the Church made a liberal exhibition of the torments of hell, the idea occurred of deterring offenders by representing evil spirits in as frightful a form as possible. Some think that such figures were suggested by the Roman satyrs, but they may have come from Jewish or Runic sources. There is a mediæval story of a monk having carved an image of the devil so much more repulsive than he really was, that the sable gentleman called upon him one night to expostulate. The monk, however, was inexorable. But the story says further that, although the holy man was proof against the entreaties of the devil, he was not so well armed against the fascinations of the fair, and owing to his suffering a defeat at the hands of the latter came afterwards to be shut up in prison. The original of his portrait again called upon him, and the monk agreed that, if he would obtain his release, he would represent him as a handsome fellow.
As times advanced, people began to fear the devil less, and to be amused at these strange carvings. From regarding them as ludicrous, it was only a step to make humorous caricatures—and there could be little harm in ridiculing the Devil. Thus we frequently find imps and demons brought in to perform the comic parts in the Church mysteries. It was a short advance from the ludicrous to the humorous, and thus we find the devil a merry fellow, playing all kinds of practical jokes on mankind. Such representations would now appear rather ludicrous than humorous, and are seldom seen, except to amuse children on Valentine's Day.
CHAPTER III.
Origin of Modern Comedy—Ecclesiastical Buffoonery—Jougleurs and Minstrels—Court Fools—Monks' Stories—The "Tournament of Tottenham"—Chaucer—Heywood—Roister Doister—Gammer Gurton.
As the early drama of Greece arose from the celebration of religious rites, so that of modern times originated in the church. This does not seem so strange when we remember that religion is in connection with abstract thought, and with an exercise of the representative powers of the mind. And if we ask how comedy could have been thus introduced, the reply must be that the ideal of former ages was very different from our own. In the days when the mind was dull and inactive, striking illustrations were very necessary to awaken interest in moral and spiritual teaching. They changed in accordance with the progress of the times and country—sometimes the medium was fables or other such impossible fictions, sometimes it was similitudes from nature, as parables, and sometimes dramatic performances. Whatever drama the Jews had was of a religious character. It is supposed by some that the words—"When your children shall say unto you, 'What mean ye by this service,'" refers to some commemorative representation. However this may be, we know that about the year 100 B.C., Ezekiel, an Alexandrian Jew, wrote a play in Greek on the Exodus, which somewhat resembled a "mystery." Luther thought that the books of Judith and Tobit were originally in a dramatic form; and, even among the Jews, a comic element was sometimes introduced—as in the ancient Ahasuerus' play at the feast of Purim—with a view of attracting attention at a time when people had little reflection, and were not very particular about the intermingling of utterly incongruous feelings, whether religion and cruelty, or religion and humour.
We have traced the gradual decline of the drama in Rome, until it consisted but of buffooneries and mimes; and so its revival in modern times commenced with performances in dumb show, the low intellectual character of the age being reflected in popular exhibitions. The mimi were people who performed barefooted, clothed in skins of animals, with shaven heads, and faces smeared with soot. The Italians gradually came to relish nothing but a sort of pantomime, and it seems to have occurred to the Roman Church, always enterprising and fond of adaptation, that they might turn this taste of the people to some account. Accordingly, we read of religious mummings in Spain as early as the sixth century, and in 1264 the Brotherhood of the Gonfalone was founded in Italy to represent the sufferings of Christ in dumb show and processions.[48] In France the performance of holy plays, termed Mysteries, dates from the conclusion of the fourteenth century, when a company of pilgrims from the Holy Land, with their gowns hung with scallop shells and images, assisted at the marriage of Charles VI. and Isabella of Bavaria. They were incorporated as a Society in Paris to give dramatic entertainments, and were known as the "Fraternity of the Passion." Originally the intention was to represent scenes in Scripture history, but gradually they introduced "Moralities"—fanciful pieces in which God, the Devil, the Virtues, &c., were the dramatis personæ. In one of these, for instance, the Devil invites the Follies to a banquet on their arrival in hell. When they sit down the table seems hospitably spread, but as soon as they begin to touch the food it all bursts into flame, and the piece concludes with fireworks. We can see that a comic element might easily be introduced into such performances. But Charles VI., who seems to have been fond of all mimetic exhibitions, formed another company named "L'Institution Joyeuse," composed of the sons of the best families in Paris, who, under the name of the "Enfans sans Souci," and presided over by the "Prince des Sots," made France laugh at the follies of the day, personal and political. The above mentioned religious fraternity joined these gay performers without apparently seeing anything objectionable in such a connection, and under the name of the "Clercs de la Bazoche," or clerks of the revels, acted with them alternately. Even in the Mysteries, an occasional element of humour was evidently introduced, although many things which would appear ludicrous to us did not so affect the people of that day. A tinge of buffoonery was thought desirable. Thus in the "Massacre of the Holy Innocents," a good deal of scuffling takes place on the stage, especially where the women attack with their distaffs a low fool, who has requested Herod to knight him that he may join in the gallant adventure. In France there was "The Feast of Asses," in which the priests were attired like the Ancient Prophets, and accompanied by Virgil! Balaam, armed with a tremendous pair of spurs, rode a wooden ass, in which a man was enclosed. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, forbade the celebration in churches of the "Feast of Fools," in which the clergy danced and gesticulated in masks. The "Mysteries" seem sometimes to have been of extraordinary length, for there was a play called "The Creation," performed at Clerkenwell which lasted eight days.