[314] Ælred (†1166), Speculum Charitatis, ii. 23 (P. L. cxcv. 571) ‘Videas aliquando hominem aperto ore quasi intercluso halitu expirare, non cantare, ac ridiculosa quadam vocis interceptione quasi minitari silentium; nunc agones morientium, vel extasim patientium imitari. Interim histrionicis quibusdam gestibus totum corpus agitatur, torquentur labia, rotant, ludunt humeri; et ad singulas quasque notas digitorum flexus respondet. Et haec ridiculosa dissolutio vocatur religio!... Vulgus ... miratur ... sed lascivas cantantium gesticulationes, meretricias vocum alternationes et infractiones, non sine cachinno risuque intuetur, ut eos non ad oratorium sed ad theatrum, non ad orandum, sed ad spectandum aestimes convenisse.’ Cf. op. cit. ii. 17 ‘Cum enim in tragediis vanisve carminibus quisquam iniuriatus fingitur, vel oppressus ... si quis haec, vel cum canuntur audiens, vel cernens si recitentur ... moveatur’; and Johannes de Janua, s.v. persona (cited Creizenach, i. 381) ‘Item persona dicitur histrio, repraesentator comoediarum, qui diversis modis personat diversas repraesentando personas.’ All these passages, like the ninth-century responsio of arch-bishop Leidradus referred to on p. 36, may be suspected of learning rather than actuality. As for the epitaph of the mime Vitalis (Riese, Anth. Lat. i. 2. 143; Baehrens, P. L. M. iii. 245), sometimes quoted in this connexion, it appears to be classical and not mediaeval at all; cf. Teuffel-Schwabe, §§ 8. 11; 32. 6. Probably this is also the case with the lines De Mimo iam Sene in Wright, Anecdota Literaria, 100, where again ‘theatra’ are mentioned.
[315] Cf. p. 71. The mention of a ‘Disare that played the sheppart’ at the English court in 1502 (Nicolas, Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York) is too late to be of importance here.
[316] Creizenach, i. 383, citing at second-hand from fourteenth-century accounts of a Savoy treasurer ‘rappresentando i costumi delle compagnie inglesi e bretoni.’
[317] Creizenach, i. 380.
[318] Thomas de Cabham mentions the horribiles larvae of some minstrels. A. Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire française (ed. 2, 1886), 444, quotes a sermon of Étienne de Bourbon in MS. B. N. Lat. 15970, f. 352 ‘ad similitudinem illorum ioculatorum qui ferunt facies depictas quae dicuntur artificia gallicè, cum quibus ludunt et homines deludunt.’ Cf. Liudprand, iii. 15 (Pertz, iii. 310) ‘histrionum mimorumve more incedere, qui, ut ad risum facile turbas illiciant, variis sese depingunt coloribus.’ The monstra larvarum, however, of various ecclesiastical prohibitions I take to refer specifically to the Feast of Fools (cf. ch. xiii).
[319] Schack, Gesch. der dram. Litt. und Kunst in Spanien, i. 30, quotes a Carolingian capitulary, from Heineccius, Capit. lib. v. c. 388 ‘si quis ex scenicis vestem sacerdotalem aut monasticam vel mulieris religiosae vel qualicunque ecclesiastico statu similem indutus fuerit, corporali poena subsistat et exilio tradatur.’ This prohibition is as old as the Codex Theodosianus; cf. p. 14.
[320] Œuvres de Rutebeuf (ed. Kressner), 115; cf. Romania, xvi. 496; Julleville, Les Com. 24; Rép. Com. 407.
[321] Creizenach, i. 386, further points out that a stage was not indispensable to the Latin mimus, who habitually played before the curtain and probably with very little setting; that the favourite situations of fifteenth-century French farce closely resemble those of the mimes; and that the use of marionettes is a proof of some knowledge of dramatic methods amongst the minstrels.
[322] On this treatise, cf. ch. xx.
[323] A ‘japer’ is often an idle talker, like a ‘jangler’ which is clearly sometimes confused with a ‘jongleur’; cf. Chaucer, Parson’s Tale, 89 ‘He is a japere and a gabber and no verray repentant that eft-soone dooth thing for which hym oghte repente.’ Langland uses the term in a more technical sense. Activa Vita in Piers Plowman, xvi. 207, is no minstrel, because ‘Ich can not ... japen ne jogelen.’ No doubt a ‘jape’ would include a fabliau. It is equivalent etymologically to ‘gab,’ and Bédier, 33, points out that the jougleurs use gabet, as well as bourde, trufe, and risée for a fabliau.—The use of ‘pleye’ as ‘jest’ may be illustrated by Chaucer, Pardoner’s Tale (C. T. 12712) ‘My wit is greet, though that I bourde and pleye.’—The ‘japis’ of the Tretise are probably the ‘knakkes’ of the passage on ‘japeris’ in Parson’s Tale, 651 ‘right so conforten the vileyns wordes and knakkes of japeris hem that travaillen in the service of the devel.’