647. Marionettes. Marionettes are mentioned in Xenophon's Symposium. They were of more ancient origin. The puppet play was used as a means of burlesquing the legitimate theater and drama. It passed to the Turks as the puppet shadow play, in which the hero Karagöz is the same as Punch in figure, character, and acts. This puppet play spread all over the Eastern world. Lane[2076] says of it in Egypt, in the first half of the nineteenth century, that it was very indecent. Reich[2077] describes an indecent shadow play. A special form of it was developed in Java, the wajang-poerva, with figures of the pantin type, operated by strings and levers. This amusement is very popular in Java and very representative of the mores. Whether these oriental forms of the mimus were derived from the Greco-Roman world is uncertain. The mimus is so original and of such spontaneous growth that it does not need to be borrowed.

648. The drama in India. In India, at the beginning of the Christian era, there was a development of drama of a high character. The one called the Clay-waggon (a child's toy) is described as of very great literary merit,—realistic, graphic, and Shakespearean in its artistic representation of life.[2078] Every drama which has that character must be in and of the mores. In the Clay-waggon the story is that of a Brahmin of the noblest character, who marries a courtesan, she having great love for him. The courtesan gives to the Brahmin's son a toy wagon of gold for his own made of clay. The name of the play comes from this trivial incident in it. A wicked, vain, and shallow-pated prince intervenes and is taken as a biolog, or standing type of person. Modern Hindoo dramas require a whole night for the representation. They represent the loves and quarrels of the gods and other mythological stories. "The actors are dressed and painted in imitation of the deities they represent, and frequently the conversations are rendered attractive by sensual and obscene allusions, whilst in the interludes boys dressed in women's clothes dance with the most indecent gestures. The worst dances that I have ever seen have been in front of an image and as a part of the rejoicings of a religious festival. Crowds of men, women, and children sit to watch them the whole night through."[2079] The history of Ram is also enacted in pantomime in northern India. The text of the Ramayana is read and days are spent in acting it, by a great crowd, which moves from place to place, and naïvely plans to act city incidents in cities, forest incidents in forests, boat episodes on ponds, and war episodes or battles on great fields.[2080]

649. Punch in the West. Punch was brought to Italy in the fifteenth century.[2081] Polichinelle, as developed in France, is distinctly French. The model is Henri IV. The hump is an immemorial sign of the French badin-ès-farces. "Polichinelle seems to me to be a purely national (French) type, and one of the most spontaneous and vivacious creations of French fantasy."[2082] The puppet play of Punch and Judy has enjoyed immense popularity in western Europe. The Faust legend has been developed by the puppets.[2083] With the improvements in the arts people became more sophisticated. The puppets were left to children and to the simplest rural population, not because the mores improved, but because people were treated to more elaborate entertainments and the puppets became trivial. Punch is now a blackguard and criminal, who is conventionally tolerated on account of his antiquity. He is not in modern mores and is almost unknown in the United States. He is generally popular in southern Europe. To the Sicilians "a puppet play is a book, a picture, a poem, and a theater all in one. It teaches and amuses at the same time."[2084] Then it still is what it has been for three thousand years.

650. Resistance of the church to the drama. The council in the palace of Trullo, at Constantinople in 692,[2085] adopted canons forbidding clerics to attend horse races or theatrical exhibitions, or to stay at weddings after play began, also pantomimes, beast combats, and theatrical dances, also heathen festivals, vows to Pan, bacchanal rites, public dances by women, the appearance of men dressed as women, or of women dressed as men, and the use of comic, tragic, or satyric masks. All the Dionysiac rites had been forbidden long before. These canons prove that those rites were still observed. These clerical rules and canons do not represent the mores and they never overruled the mores at Constantinople. They only bear witness to what existed in the mores late in the seventh century, and they were an attempt to purify the usages which had been taken over by compromise from heathenism. In the sixth century in the West dances in church were often forbidden. The only stock of ideas in the eighth and ninth centuries were fantastic notions of nature, heaven and hell, history, supernatural agents, etc., which notions the ecclesiastics had an interest to teach. Dramatic representation was a means of teaching. The external action corresponded closely with the mental concept or story. From the time of Charlemagne pantomimes, tableaux, etc., set forth incidents of biblical stories and the resurrection, ascension, etc. The mores of the age seized on these modes of representation and gave method and color to them. All the grossness, superstition, and bad taste of the age were put into them. Satan and his demons were realistically represented, and the mass was travestied by ecclesiastics in a manner which we should think would be deeply offensive to them.[2086] It was another case of conventionality for a limited time and place. Some of the clergy no doubt enjoyed the fun; others had to tolerate what was old and traditional. The folk drama reawakened as burlesque, parody, satire. The evil characters in the Scripture stories (Pharaoh, Judas, Caiaphas, the Jews) all fed this interest. All persons and institutions which pretended to be great and good and were not such provoked satire (clergy, nobles, warriors, women). The drama, introduced to show forth religious notions, served also to set forth others (social, political, city rivalry, class antagonisms). The "mass of fools" was a complete parody of the mass, with mock music and vestments and burlesque ceremony. In the "mass of innocents" children took the place of adults and carried out the ceremony as a parody. At the "feast of the ass" an ass was led into church and treated with mock respect. This last degenerated into obscenity, indecency, and disorder. Bulls and edicts against it were long vain. It was popular as a relief from restraint.[2087] It continued the function of the Saturnalia, which had been a grand frolic and relaxation. The ecclesiastics tolerated these outbursts, perhaps because they saw that the lines could not be drawn very tightly without such relaxation. From the eleventh century the ecclesiastics opposed any automatic figure. They construed the making of such a figure as an attempt to call the saints, etc., to life again. The skill employed also seemed to them like sorcery.[2088] "There was not an ecumenic, national, or diocesan council in whose canons may not be found severe and peremptory reproofs of all sorts and qualities of drama, of actors, and of those who run to see plays."[2089] This became the orthodox attitude of the church to the theater. There were complaints of the attendance of clerics and people at theatrical exhibitions until the tenth century. Then they cease because the church ceremonies were more interesting and better done.[2090] The Christian drama reached the height of its hieratic development between the ninth and twelfth centuries.[2091]

651. Hrotsvitha. Klein[2092] puts as the next important literary work of dramatic composition after the Pseudo-Querolus the works of the nun Hrotsvitha. In the tenth century she wrote six comedies in Latin, in imitation of Terence, her purpose being to show the superiority of the conventual conception of love to the worldly theory, and of religious passion to erotic passion. In the introduction she apologizes for her realistic descriptions of erotic passion, which she says was necessary for the argument implicit in her plays. She introduces God as a character, and miracles as a means of bringing about the dénouement at which she wants to arrive. It became the custom in mediæval drama to reach, by introducing a miracle, the moral result which current dogma required.[2093] The situations and intrigue are generally very unedifying. To our taste the plays seem very unfit to be acted by nuns before nuns.

652. Jongleurs. Processions. In the eleventh century abbeys and cathedrals were built. At the beginning of the century the basilicas of the churches were repaired throughout Latin Christendom.[2094] The Jongleurs of the twelfth century were the popular minstrels. "Poet, mountebank, musician, physician, beast showman, and to some extent diviner and sorcerer, the jongleur is also the orator of the public market place, the man adored by the crowd to whom he offers his songs and his couplets. Questions of morals and politics, toothache, pious legends, scandalous tales about priests, noble ladies, and cavaliers, gossip of grog shops, and news from the Holy Land were all in his domain."[2095] In the second third of the twelfth century the vulgar language began to displace the Latin in church, especially in dramas.[2096] Processions were in the taste and usage of the Middle Ages and Renaissance for both civil and religious pomp and display. The dresses, banners, arches, etc., contributed to the spectacle, and all took on a dramatic character for, on a saint's day or other occasion, the exhibition had a second sense of reference to the story of the saint, or the success in war of the king or potentate. The latter sense might be dramatically set forth, and generally was at least suggested. Tableaux and dramatic pantomime in the streets were combined with the processions. Mythological subjects as well as incidents of Christian history were so represented. All classes coöperated in these functions. Poets and artists of the first rank assisted. The contribution of these functions to the development of the drama is obvious. In modern times the taste for processions is lost, and the cultivated classes refuse to participate, but when the whole population of a city took part in setting forth something they all cared for, the social effect was great, and the whole proceeding nourished dramatic taste and power. In Italy the pantomime with song and dance, or ballet, had its origin in the procession.[2097] In the churches arrangements were made, with elaborate machinery, for exhibiting representations of Scripture incidents. Godfrey, Abbot of St. Albans (♰ 1146) wrote a play on the life of St. Catharine "such as was afterwards called a miracle." The Annunciation was represented in St. Mark's, Venice, in 1267. In Germany the mysteries were partly in German from the end of the thirteenth century.[2098]

653. Adam de la Halle. De Julleville[2099] puts Adam de la Halle as the first comic writer in France, in point of time. He wrote the Jeu de la Feuillée about 1262. It is described as a "scenic satire rather than a comedy." It is local, personal, and satirical, and includes miracles and capricious inventions without much regard to probability. It stands by itself and is not the first of a series. The notion of a connection between comedy and bodily deformity was now so firmly established that Adam was called the "Humpback of Arras," although he was not humpbacked at all.[2100] Association of acts and ideas is always very important in all folkways and popular mores. At Florence, in 1304, on boats on the Arno, devils were represented at work. The bridge on which the spectators stood broke down under the crowd, and it was said that "many went to the real hell to find out about it."[2101] At Paris, in 1313, at the celebration of the knighting of the sons of Philippe le Bel, devils were represented tormenting souls.[2102]

654. Flagellants. The flagellants exerted some of the suggestions of the processions, and they used dramatic devices to set forth their ideas, to say nothing of the dramatic element in the self-scourging. They were outside of the church system, and acted on their own conception of sin and discipline, like modern revivalists. They reappeared from time to time through the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They meant to declare that the asserted correlation between goodness and blessing did not verify, and they were at a loss for a doctrine to replace it. Their antiphonal singing turned into dialogue, and then became drama at the end of the thirteenth century.[2103]

655. Use of churches for dramatic exhibitions. The mediæval plays were presented in churches or on the open spaces on the streets in front of them, at Florence. Later this became customary in all cities.[2104] The old idea had been that churches were common public property, a universal rendezvous for every common interest. Dedications of churches and feasts of martyrs had been general merrymakings. D'Ancona collects dicta of councils and popes condemning dramatic actions in churches, and the singing of lewd songs and dancing by women.[2105] The language used implies that the songs, gestures, acts, and suggestions connected with the performances in the churches were lewd and indecent. The populace, while using the license, well perceived its incongruity and impropriety, and this stimulated the satire, which was so strong a feature of the late Middle Ages and which produced the farce. The mysteries and moralities for a time gave entertainment, but they became tedious. The farce was at first "stuffing," put in to break up the dullness by fun making of some kind and to give spice to the entertainment, just as meats were farcies to give them more savor. It grew until it surpassed and superseded the sober drama. The populace did not want more preaching and instruction, but fun and frolic, relief from labor, thought, and care. The take-off, caricature, burlesque, parody, discerns and sets forth the truth against current humbug, and the pretenses of the successful classes. The fool comes into prominence again, not by inheritance but by rational utility. The fifteenth century offered him plenty of material. As a fool he escaped responsibility. This rôle,—that of the badin in France, the gracioso in Spain, arlequino in Italy, Hanswurst in Germany,—becomes fixed like the buffoon (maccus) in the classical comedy. In France, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, the basochiens were young clerks and advocates who were studying law and who made fun of law proceedings. They met with only limited toleration. Their satire was not relished by the legal great men. In the fourteenth century they took up moralities overweighted with allegory but broken up by farces. In the fifteenth century the Enfans sans Souci were another variety of comédiens. Their emblem was the cap with two horns or ass's ears.[2106] The life of St. Louis was represented in tableaux at Marseilles in 1517.[2107] The Passion was represented in the Coliseum until 1539, when Paul III forbade it. Riots against the Jews had been provoked by the exhibition.[2108]

656. Protest against misuse of churches. It may be said that there was never wanting a dissenting opinion and protest amongst the ecclesiastics about the folk drama in the churches. In 1210 Innocent III forbade such exhibitions by ecclesiastics. Then the fraternities began to represent them on public market places. The "festival of fools" at Christmas time was originally invented to turn the heathen festivals into ridicule. When there were no more heathen it degenerated into extreme popular farce. Thomas Aquinas consented to the mimus, if it was not indecent.[2109] The synod of Worms, in 1316, forbade plays in churches. Such plays seem to have reached their highest perfection in the fourteenth century.[2110] Plays of this type gave way in the fifteenth century to "moralities," with allegorical characters, which prevailed for a long time, the taste for allegory marking the mental fashion of the time. The council of Basle forbade plays in churches (1440).[2111]