THE STAGE.
I.
Dramatic art, in which the English people was to find one of the most brilliant of its literary glories, was evolved slowly from distant and obscure origins.
In England, as in the rest of Europe, the sources of modern drama were of two sorts: there were civil and religious sources.
The desire for amusement and the craving for laughable things never disappeared entirely, even in the darkest days; the sources of the lay drama began to spring and flow, owing to no other cause. The means formerly employed to amuse and raise a laugh cannot be expected to have shown much refinement. No refinement was to be found in them, and all means were considered good which ensured success; kicks were among the simplest and oftenest resorted to, but not at all among the grossest; others were worse, and were much more popular. Let us not wonder overmuch: some of them have recovered again, quite recently, a part of their pristine popularity. They were used by jugglers or players, "joculatores," nomadic sometimes, and sometimes belonging to the household of the great. The existence of such men is testified to from century to century, during the whole of the Middle Ages, mainly by the blame and condemnation they constantly incurred: and so it is that the best information concerning these men is not to be sought for in the monuments of the gay literature, but rather in pious treatises and in the acts of Councils.
Treatises and Councils, however, might to our advantage have been even more circumstantial; the pity is that they, naturally enough, consider it below their dignity to descend to very minute particulars; it is enough for them to give an enumeration, and to condemn in one phrase all the mimes, tumblers, histrions, wrestlers, and the rest of the juggling troup. Sometimes, however, a few particulars are added; the peculiar tricks and the scandalous practices of the ill-famed race are mentioned; and an idea can thus be formed of our ancestors' amusements. John of Salisbury in the twelfth century alludes to a variety of pastimes, and while protesting against the means used to produce laughter, places them on record: a heavy laughter indeed, noisy and tumultuous, Rabelais' laughter before Rabelais. Of course, "such a modest hilarity as an honest man would allow himself" is not to be reproved, and John did not forbear to use this moderate way of enjoyment; but the case is different with the jugglers and tumblers: "much better it would be for them to do nothing than to act so wickedly."[742]
No doubt was possible. The jesters did not care in the least to keep within the bounds of "a modest hilarity"; nor did their audience, for in the fourteenth century we find these men described in the poem of Langland, and they have not altered in any way[743]; their tricks are the same, the same shameful exhibitions take place with the same success; for two hundred years they have been laughed at without intermission. Many things have come and gone; the nation has got tired of John's tyranny, of Henry the Third's weakness, of the Pope's supremacy, but the histrions continue to tumble and jump; "their points being broken, down fall their hose," (to use Shakespeare's words), and the great at Court are convulsed with laughter on their benches.
Besides their horseplay, jugglers and histrions had, to please their audience, retorts, funny answers, witticisms, merry tales, which they acted rather than told, for gestures accompanied the delivery. This part of the amusement, which came nearest the drama, sharp repartees, impromptu dialogues, is the one we know least about. Voices have long been silent, and the great halls which heard them are now but ivy-clad ruins, yielding no echo. Some idea, however, can be formed of what took place.
First we know from innumerable testimonies that those histrions spoke and told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached with it for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there is superabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the Middle Ages, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining at the end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in a spider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit his clever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of them were preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them; clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collections of exempla. They afforded amusement for a king, an amusement of a mixed sort, sometimes:
—Why, says the king, are there no longer any Rolands?—Because, the fool answers, there are no longer any Charlemagnes.[744]