A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art

by Thomas Wright

The sotties and moralities were more imaginative and extravagant than the farces, and were filled with allegorical personages. The characters introduced in the former have generally some relation to the kingdom of folly. Thus, in one of the sotties, the king of fools (le roy des sotz) is represented as holding his court, and consulting with his courtiers, whose names are Triboulet, Mitouflet, Sottinet, Coquibus, and Guippelin. Their conversation, as may be supposed, is of a satirical character. Another is entitled “The Sottie of the Deceivers,” or cheats. Sottie—another name for mother Folly—opens the piece with a proclamation or address to fools of all descriptions, summoning them to her presence. Two, named Teste-Verte and Fine-Mine, obey the call, and they are questioned as to their own condition, and their proceedings, but their conversation is interrupted by the sudden intrusion of another personage named Everyone (Chascun), who, on examination, is found to be as perfect a fool as any of them. They accordingly fraternise, and join in a song. Finally, another character, The Time (le Temps), joins them, and they agree to submit to his directions. Accordingly he instructs them in the arts of flattery and deceiving, and the other similar means by which men of that time sought to thrive. Another is the Sottie of Foolish Ostentation (de folle bobance). This lady similarly opens the scene with an address to all the fools who hold allegiance to her, and three of these make their appearance. The first fool is the gentleman, the second the merchant, the fourth the peasant, and their conversation is a satire on contemporary society. The personification of abstract principles is far bolder. The three characters who compose one of these moralities are Everything (tout), Nothing (rien), and Everyone (chascun). How the personification of Nothing was to be represented, we are not told. The title of another of these moralities will be enough to give the reader a notion of their general title; it is, “A New Morality of the Children of Now-a-Days (Maintenant), who are the Scholars of Once-good (Jabien), who shows them how to play at Cards and at Dice, and to entertain Luxury, whereby one comes to Shame (Honte), and from Shame to Despair (Desespoir), and from Despair to the gibbet of Perdition, and then turns himself to Good-doing.” The characters in this play are Now-a-Days, Once-good, Luxury, Shame, Despair, Perdition, and Good-doing.

The three dramatic societies which produced all these farces, sotties, and moralities, continued to flourish in France until the middle of the sixteenth century, at which period a great revolution in dramatic literature took place in that country. The performance of the Mysteries had been forbidden by authority, and the Bazochians themselves were suppressed. The petty drama represented by the farces and sotties went rapidly out of fashion, in the great change through which the mind of society was at this time passing, and in which the taste for classical literature overcame all others. The old drama in France had disappeared, and a new one, formed entirely upon an imitation of the classical drama, was beginning to take its place. This incipient drama was represented in the sixteenth century by Etienne Jodel, by Jacques Grevin, by Rémy Belleau, and especially by Pierre de Larivey, the most prolific, and perhaps the most talented, of the earlier French regular dramatic authors.

These French dramatic essays, the farces, the sotties, and the moralities, were imitated, and sometimes translated, in English, and many of them were printed; for the further our researches are carried into the early history of printing, the more we are astonished at the extreme activity of the press, even in its infancy, in multiplying literature of a popular character. In England, as in France, the farces had been, at a rather early period, detached from the mysteries and miracle-plays, but the word interludes had been adopted here as the general title for them, and continued in use even after the establishment of the regular drama. Perhaps this name owed its popularity to the circumstance that it seemed more appropriate to its object, when it became so fashionable in England to act these plays at intervals in the great festivals and entertainments given at court, or in the households of the great nobles. At all events, there can be no doubt that this fashion had a great influence on the fate of the English stage. The custom of performing plays in the universities, great schools, and inns of court, had also the effect of producing a number of very clever dramatic writers; for when this literature was so warmly patronised by princes and nobles, people of the highest qualifications sought to excel in it. Hence we find from books of household expenses and similar records of the period, that there was, during the sixteenth century, an immense number of such plays compiled in England which were never printed, and of which, therefore, very few are preserved.

The earliest known plays of this description in the English language belong to the class which were called in France moralities. They are three in number, and are preserved in a manuscript in the possession of Mr. Hudson Gurney, which I have not seen, but which is said to be of the reign of our king Henry VI. Several words and allusions in them seem to me to show that they were translated, or adapted, from the French. They contain exactly the same kind of allegorical personages. The allegory itself is a simple one, and easily understood. In the first, which is entitled the “Castle of Perseverance,” the hero is Humanum Genus (Mankynd), for the names of the parts are all given in Latin. On the birth of this personage, a good and a bad angel offer themselves as his protectors and guides, and he chooses the latter, who introduces him to Mundus (the World), and to his friends, Stultitia (Folly), and Voluptas (Pleasure). These and some other personages bring him under the influence of the seven deadly sins, and Humanum Genus takes for his bedfellow a lady named Luxuria. At length Confessio and Pœnitentia succeed in reclaiming Humanum Genus, and they conduct him for security to the Castle of Perseverance, where the seven cardinal virtues attend upon him. He is besieged in this castle by the seven deadly sins, who are led to the attack by Belial, but are defeated. Humanum Genus has now become aged, and is exposed to the attacks of another assailant. This is Avaritia, who enters the Castle stealthily by undermining the wall, and artfully persuades Humanum Genus to leave it. He thus comes again under the influence of Mundus, until Mors (Death) arrives, and the bad angel carries off the victim to the domains of Satan. This, however, is not the end of the piece. God appears, seated on His throne, and Mercy, Peace, Justice, and Truth appear before Him, the two former pleading for, and the latter against, Humanum Genus, who, after some discussion, is saved. This allegorical picture of human life was, in one form or other, a favourite subject of the moralisers. I may quote as examples the interludes of “Lusty Juventus,” reprinted in Hawkins’s “Origin of the English Drama,” and the “Disobedient Child,” and “Trial of Treasure,” reprinted by the Percy Society.

The second of the moralities ascribed to the reign of Henry VI., has for its principal characters Mind, Will, and Understanding. These are assailed by Lucifer, who succeeds in alluring them to vice, and they change their modest raiment for the dress of gay gallants. Various other characters are introduced in a similar strain of allegory, until they are reclaimed by Wisdom. Mankind is again the principal personage of the third of these moralities, and some of the other characters in the play, such as Nought, New-guise, and Now-a-days, remind us of the similar allegorical personages in the French moralities described above.

These interludes bring us into acquaintance with a new comic character. The great part which folly acted in the social destinies of mankind, had become an acknowledged fact; and as the court and almost every great household had its professed fool, so it seems to have been considered that a play also was incomplete without a fool. But, as the character of the fool was usually given to one of the most objectionable characters in it, so, for this reason apparently, the fool in a play was called the Vice. Thus, in “Lusty Juventus,” the character of Hypocrisy is called the Vice; in the play of “All for Money,” it is Sin; in that of “Tom Tyler and his Wife,” it is Desire; in the “Trial of Treasure” it is Inclination; and in some instances the Vice appears to be the demon himself. The Vice seems always to have been dressed in the usual costume of a court fool, and he perhaps had other duties besides his mere part in the plot, such as making jests of his own, and using other means for provoking the mirth of the audience in the intervals of the action.

A few of our early English interludes were, in the strict sense of the word, farces. Such is the “mery play” of “John the Husband, Tyb the Wife, and Sir John the Priest,” written by John Heywood, the plot of which presents the same simplicity as those of the farces which were so popular in France. John has a shrew for his wife, and has good causes for suspecting an undue intimacy between her and the priest; but they find means to blind his eyes, which is the more easily done, because he is a great coward, except when he is alone. Tyb, the wife, makes a pie, and proposes that the priest shall be invited to assist in eating it. The husband is obliged, very unwillingly, to be the bearer of the invitation, and is not a little surprised when the priest refuses it. He gives as his reason, that he was unwilling to intrude himself into company where he knew he was disliked, and persuaded John that he had fallen under the wife’s displeasure, because, in private interviews with her, he had laboured to induce her to bridle her temper, and treat her husband with more gentleness. John, delighted at the discovery of the priest’s honesty, insists on his going home with him to feast upon the pie. There the guilty couple contrive to put the husband to a disagreeable penance, while they eat the pie, and treat him otherwise very ignominiously, in consequence of which the married couple fight. The priest interferes, and the fight thus becomes general, and is only ended by the departure of Tyb and the priest, leaving the husband alone.

The popularity of the moralities in England is, perhaps, to be explained by peculiarities in the condition of society, and the greater pre-occupation of men’s minds in our country at that time with the religious and social revolution which was then in progress. The Reformers soon saw the use which might be made of the stage, and compiled and caused to be acted interludes in which the old doctrines and ceremonies were turned to ridicule, and the new ones were held up in a favourable light. We have excellent examples of the success with which this plan was carried out in the plays of the celebrated John Bale. His play of “Kyng Johan,” an edition of which was published by the Camden Society, is not only a remarkable work of a very remarkable man, but it may be considered as the first rude model of the English historical drama. The stage became now a political instrument in England, almost as it had been in ancient Greece, and it thus became frequently the object of particular as well as general persecution. In 1543, the vicar of Yoxford, in Suffolk, drew upon himself the violent hostility of the other clergy in that county by composing and causing to be performed plays against the pope’s counsellors. Six years afterwards, in 1549, a royal proclamation prohibited for a time the performance of interludes throughout the kingdom, on the ground that they contained “matter tendyng to sedicion and contempnyng of sundery good orders and lawes, whereupon are growen daily, and are likely to growe, muche disquiet, division, tumultes, and uproares in this realme.” From this time forward we begin to meet with laws for the regulation of stage performances, and proceedings in cases of supposed infractions of them, and it became customary to obtain the approval of a play by the privy council before it was allowed to be acted. Thus gradually arose the office of a dramatic censor.

With Bale and with John Heywood, the English plays began to approach the form of a regular drama, and the two now rather celebrated pieces, “Ralph Roister Doister,” and “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” which belong to the middle of the sixteenth century, may be considered as comedies rather than as interludes. The former, written by a well-known scholar of that time, Nicholas Udall, master of Eton, is a satirical picture of some phases of London life, and relates the ridiculous adventures of a weak-headed and vain-glorious gallant, who believes that all the women must be in love with him, and who is led by a needy and designing parasite named Matthew Merygreeke. Rude as it is as a dramatic composition, it displays no lack of talent, and it is full of genuine humour. The humour in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is none the less rich because it is of coarser and rather broader cast. The good dame of the piece, Gammer Gurton, during an interruption in the process of mending the breeches of her husband, Hodge, has lost her needle, and much lamentation follows a misfortune so great at a time when needles appear to have been rare and valuable articles in the rural household. In the midst of their trouble appears Diccon, who is described in the dramatis personæ as “Diccon the Bedlam,” meaning that he was an idiot, and who appears to hold the position of Vice in the play. Diccon, however, though weak-minded, is a cunning fellow, and especially given to making mischief, and he accuses a neighbour, Dame Chat, of stealing the needle. At the same time, the same mischievous individual tells Dame Chat that Gammer Gurton’s cock had been stolen in the night from the henroost, and that she, Dame Chat, was accused of being the thief. Amid the general misunderstanding which results from Diccon’s successful endeavours, they send for the parson of the parish, Dr. Rat, who appears to unite in himself the three parts of preacher, physician, and conjurer, in order to have advantage of his experience in finding the needle. Diccon now contrives a new piece of mischief. He persuades Dame Chat that Hodge intends to hide himself in a certain hole in the premises, in order, that night, to creep out and kill all her hens; and at the same time he informs Dr. Rat, that if he will hide in the same hole, he will give him ocular demonstration of Dame Chat’s guilt of stealing the needle. The consequence is that Dame Chat attacks by surprise, and somewhat violently, the supposed depredator in the hole, and that Dr. Rat gets a broken head. Dame Chat is brought before “Master Bayly” for the assault, and the proceedings in the trial bring to light the deceptions which have been played upon them all, and Diccon stands convicted as the wicked perpetrator. In fact, the “bedlam” confesses it all, and it is finally decided by “Master Bayly” that there shall be a general reconciliation, and that Diccon shall take a solemn oath on Hodge’s breech, that he will do his best to find the lost needle. Diccon has still the spirit of mischief in him, and instead of laying his hand quietly on Hodge’s breech, he gives him a sharp blow, which is responded to by an unexpected scream. The needle, indeed, which has never quitted the breeches, is driven rather deep into the fleshy part of Hodge’s body, and the general joy at having found it again overruling all other considerations, they all agree to be friends over a jug of “drink.”

We cannot but feel astonished at the short period which it required to develop rude attempts at dramatic composition like this into the wonderful creations of a Shakespeare; and it can only be explained by the fact that it was an age remarkable for producing men of extraordinary genius in every branch of intellectual development. Hitherto, the literature of the stage had represented the intelligence of the mass; it became individualised in Shakespeare, and this fact marks an entirely new era in the history of the drama. In the writings of our great bard, nearly all the peculiarities of the older national drama are preserved, even some which may be perhaps considered as its defects, but carried to a degree of perfection which they had never attained before. The drollery, which, as we have seen, could not be dispensed with even in the religious mysteries and miracle-plays, had become so necessary, that it could not be dispensed with in tragedy. Its omission belonged to a later period, when the foreign dramatists became objects of imitation in England. But in the earlier drama, these scenes of drollery seem frequently to have no connection whatever with the general plot, while Shakespeare always interweaves them skilfully with it, and they seem to form an integral and necessary part of it.