It is not generally known that, while these Catholic and Protestant dramas were opposed to each other in England, at the same period the Huguenots in France had also entertained the derisory muse of the more comic interludes. There was, however, this difference in the fortunes of the writers; as in France the government had never reformed nor changed their position, there could have been no period which admitted of the public representation of these satirical dramas. In their dramatic history, it was long considered that the subjects of these Hugonistic dramas were too tender to bear the handling; and the brothers Parfait, in their copious “History of the French Theatre,” only afford a slight indication of “the turbulent Calvinists,” who had spread “pieces of dangerous heresy and fanaticism against the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops; works which could not be noticed without profaning the page!”—and therefore they refrain from giving even their titles! It is in this spirit, and with such apologies, that historians have often castrated their own history. The existence of these dramas might have escaped our knowledge, had not the more enlightened judgment of the Duke de la Vallière supplied what the more stubborn Romanists had suppressed. This lover of literature has favoured the curious with the interesting analysis of two rare French Protestant plays, Le Marchand Converti, in 1558; and Le Pape Malade et tirant à sa Fin, in 1561. Allowing largely for the gross invectives of the Calvinist—“les impiétés”—they display an original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively sallies.[23] It is remarkable that Le Marchand Converti, at such an early period of modern literature, is a regular comedy of five acts, introduced by a prologue in verse; odes are interspersed, and each act concludes with a chorus, whom the author calls “the company.” The classical form of this unacted play, instinct with the spirit of the new reform, betrays the work of a learned hand.
[1] Warton’s “Hist. of Eng. Poetry,” iii. 195, 8vo edition; but it has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically, this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer, another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 572. The dramatist, however, was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the present occasion.
[2] Tertullian, Chrysostom, Lactantius, Cyprian, and others, have vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubtless the invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of the puritanic denouncement against “stage-plays” and “play-goers.” The Fathers furnished ample quotations for Prynne in his “Histriomastix.” It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amusement is necessary to the happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic art. See a curious tract, “The Stage Condemned,” which contains a collection of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, “Sur les Théâtres,” does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman.
[3] “Tiraboschi,” iv.
[4] These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the Gothic poem of Dante—his Hell, his Purgatory, and his Paradise—was an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which often fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as in the year 1739, a mystery of The Damned Soul, acted by living personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin; we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.—Spence’s “Anecdotes,” 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-shows, and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and elsewhere.
[5] See the note and this extraordinary blunder in Fabliaux, ii. 152.
[6] Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed collections see note to “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 352.—Ed.]
[7] Perhaps the very last remains of such rude dramatic exhibitions are yet to be traced in our counties—about Christmas-tide, or rather old Christmas, whose decrepit age is personified. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, and also in Dorsetshire, families are visited by “the great Emperor of the Turks” and St. George of England, or by the lion-hearted Richard. After a fierce onset, ringing their tin swords, the Saracens groan and drop. The Leech appears holding his phial; from some drops the dead survive their fate, and rise for the hospitable supper. The dialogue, however, has not been so traditional as the exhibition. The curious portion of these ancient exhibitions is, therefore, totally lost in the substitutions of the rude rustics. The Wassail Songs, or the Christmas Carols, have come down with fewer losses than these ancient “Tales of the Crusaders;” for the language of emotion, and the notice of old picturesque customs, cling to the memory, and endure with their localities. But for these we must travel far from the land of the Cockneys.
[8] Bouterwek.