A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance

by J. J. Jusserand

Sometimes the upper room did not remain open, but a curtain was drawn, according to the necessity of the action. The heroes of the play moved about the place, and went from one scaffold to another; dialogue then took place between players on the ground and players on the boards: "Here thei take Jhesu and lede hym in gret hast to Herowde; and the Herowdys scaffald xal unclose, shewyng Herowdes in astat, alle the Jewys knelyng except Annas and Cayaphas."[792] Chaucer speaks of the "scaffold hye" on which jolif Absolon played Herod; king Herod in fact was always enthroned high above the common rabble.

The arrangements adopted in England differed little, as we see, from the French ones; and it could scarcely be otherwise, as the taste for these dramas had been imported by the Normans and Angevins. Neither in England nor in France were there ever any of those six-storied theatres described by the brothers Parfait, each story being supposed to represent a different place or country. To keep to truth, we should, on the contrary, picture to ourselves those famous buildings stretched all along on the ground, with their different compartments scattered round the public square.

But we have better than words and descriptions to give us an idea of the sight; we have actual pictures, offering to view all the details of the performances. An exquisite miniature of Jean Fouquet, preserved at Chantilly, which has never been studied as it ought to be with reference to this question, has for its subject the life of St. Apollinia. Instead of painting a fancy picture, Fouquet has chosen to represent the martyrdom of the saint as it was acted in a miracle play.[793] The main action takes place on the ground; Apollinia is there, in the middle of the executioners. Round the place are scaffolds with a lower room and an upper room, as at Chester, and there are curtains to close them. One of those boxes represents Paradise; angels with folded arms, quietly seated on the wooden steps of their stairs, await the moment when they must speak; another is filled with musicians playing the organ and other instruments; a third contains the throne of the king. The throne is empty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with fleurs-de-lys, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part in the main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, with opening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the better accommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama, and to keep the interest of the crowd alive, by running suddenly through it, with their feathers and animals' skins, howling and grinning; "to the great terror of little children," says Rabelais, who, like Chaucer, had often been present at such dramas. Several devils are to be seen in the miniature; they have cloven feet, and stand outside the hell-mouth; a buffoon also is to be seen, who raises a laugh among the audience and shows his scorn for the martyr by the means described three centuries earlier in John of Salisbury's book, exhibiting his person in a way "quam erubescat videre vel cynicus."

Besides the scaffolds, boxes or "estableis" meant for actors, others are reserved for spectators of importance, or those who paid best. This commingling of actors and spectators would seem to us somewhat confusing; but people were not then very exacting; with them illusion was easily caused, and never broken. This magnificent part of the audience, besides, with its rich garments, was itself a sight; and so little objection was made to the presence of beholders of that sort that we shall find them seated on the Shakesperean stage as well as on the stage of Corneille and of Molière. "I was on the stage, meaning to listen to the play ..." says the Éraste of "Les Facheux." In the time of Shakespeare the custom followed was even more against theatrical illusion, as there were gentlemen not only on the sides of the scene, but also behind the actors; they filled a vast box fronting the pit.

The dresses were rich: this is the best that can be said of them. Saints enwreathed their chins with curling beards of gold; God the Father was dressed as a pope or a bishop. For good reasons the audience did not ask much in the way of historical accuracy; all it wanted was signs. Copes and tiaras were in its eyes religious signs by excellence, and in the wearer of such they recognised God without hesitation. The turban of the Saracens, Mahomet the prophet of the infidels, were known to the mob, which saw in them the signs and symbols of irreligiousness and impiety. Herod, for this cause, wore a turban, and swore premature oaths by "Mahound." People were familiar with symbols, and the use of them was continued; the painters at the Renaissance represented St. Stephen with a stone in his hand and St. Paul with a sword, which stone and sword stood for symbols, and the sight of them evoked all the doleful tale of their sufferings and death.

The authors of Mysteries did not pay, as we may well believe, great attention to the rule of the three Unities. The events included in the French Mystery of the "Vieil Testament" did not take place in one day, but in four thousand years. The most distant localities were represented next to each other: Rome, Jerusalem, Marseilles. The scaffolds huddled close together scarcely gave an idea of geographical realities; the imagination of the beholders was expected to supply what was wanting: and so it did. A few square yards of ground (sometimes, it must be acknowledged, of water) were supposed to be the Mediterranean; Marseilles was at one end, and Jaffa at the other. A few minutes did duty for months, years, or centuries. Herod sends a messenger to Tiberius; the tetrarch has scarcely finished his speech when his man is already at Rome, and delivers his message to the emperor. Noah gets into his ark and shuts his window; here a silence lasting a minute or so; the window opens, and Noah declares that the forty days are past ("Chester Plays").

To render, however, his task easier to the public, some precautions were taken to let them perceive where they were. Sometimes the name of the place was written on a piece of wood or canvas, a clear and honest means.[794] It worked so successfully that it was still resorted to in Elizabethan times; we see "Thebes written in great letters upon an olde doore," says Sir Philip Sidney, and without asking for more we are bound "to beleeve that it is Thebes." In other cases the actor followed the sneering advice Boileau was to express later, and in very simple fashion declared who he was: I am Herod! I am Tiberius! Or again, when they moved from one place to another, they named both: now we are arrived, I recognise Marseilles; "her is the lond of Mercylle."[795] Most of those inventions were long found to answer, and very often Shakespeare had no better ones to use. The same necessities caused him to make up for the deficiency of the scenery by his wonderful descriptions of landscapes, castles, and wild moors. All that poetry would have been lost had he had painted scenery at his disposal.

Some attempts at painted scenery were made, it is true, but so plain and primitive that the thing again acted as a symbol rather than as the representation of a place. A throne meant the palace of the king. God divides light from darkness: "Now must be exhibited a sheet painted, know you, one half all white and the other half all black." The creation of animals comes nearer the real truth: "Now must be let loose little birds that will fly in the air, and must be placed on the ground, ducks, swans, geese ... with as many strange beasts as it will have been possible to secure." But truth absolute was observed when the state of innocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals "out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be ashamed. The woman must also be seized with shame, and cover herself with her hands."[798]

If painted scenery was greatly neglected, machinery received more attention. That characteristic of modern times, yeast through which the old world has been transformed, the hankering after the unattainable, which caused so many great deeds, had also smaller results; it affected these humble details. Painted canvas was neglected, but people laboured at the inventing of machinery. While a sheet half white and half black was hung to represent light and chaos, in the drama of "Adam," so early as the twelfth century, a self-moving serpent, "serpens artificiose compositus," tempted the woman in Paradise. Wondering Eve offered but small resistance. Elsewhere an angel carried Enoch "by a subtile engine" into Paradise. In the Doomesday play of the Chester Mysteries, "Jesus was to come down as on a cloud, if that could be managed." But sometimes it could not; in Fouquet's miniature the angels have no other machinery but a ladder to allow them to descend from heaven to earth. In the "Mary Magdalene" of the Digby Mysteries a boat appeared with mast and sail, and carried to Palestine the King of Marseilles.

Hell was in all times most carefully arranged, and it had the best machinery. The mouth opened and closed, threw flames from its nostrils, and let loose upon the crowd devils armed with hooks and emitting awful yells. From the back of the mouth appalling noises were heard, being meant for the moans of the damned. These moans were produced by a simple process: pots and frying-pans were knocked against each other. In "Adam," the heroes of the play are taken to hell, there to await the coming of Christ; and the scene, according to the stage direction in the manuscript, was to be represented thus: "Then the Devil will come and three or four devils with him with chains in their hands and iron rings which they will put round the neck of Adam and Eve. Some push them and others draw them toward hell. Other devils awaiting them by the entrance jump and tumble as a sign of their joy for the event." After Adam has been received within the precincts of hell, "the devils will cause a great smoke to rise; they will emit merry vociferations, and knock together their pans and caldrons so as to be heard from the outside. After a while, some devils will come out and run about the place." Pans were of frequent use; Abel had one under his tunic, and Cain, knocking on it, drew forth lugubrious sounds, which went to the heart of the audience.