id stringlengths 16 16 | text stringlengths 151 2.3k | word_count int64 30 60 | source stringclasses 1 value |
|---|---|---|---|
twg_000012922300 | subjects, not from the Bible, were turned into dialogues: first lives of saints, later, in France, some few subjects borrowed from history or romance: the story of Griselda, the raising of the siege at Orlans by Joan of Arc, &c.[] The English adhered more exclusively to the Bible. Dramas drawn from the lives of saints were usually called Miracles; those | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922301 | derived from the Bible, Mysteries; but these appellations had nothing very definite about them, and were often used one for the other. The religious drama was on the way to lose its purely liturgical character when the conquest of England had taken place. Under the reign of the Norman and Angevin kings, the taste for dramatic performances increased considerably; within | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922302 | the first century after Hastings we find them numerous and largely attended. The oldest representation the memory of which has come down to us took place at the beginning of the twelfth century, and had for its subject the story of that St. Catherine of Alexandria whom the Emperor Maximinus caused to be beheaded after she had converted the fifty | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922303 | orators entrusted with the care of bringing her back to paganism by dint of their eloquence. The fifty orators received baptism, and were burnt alive.[] The representation was managed by a Mancel of good family called Geoffrey, whom Richard, abbot of St. Albans, had asked to come from France to be the master of the Abbey school. But as he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922304 | was late in starting, he found on his coming that the school had been given to another; in his leisure he caused to be represented at Dunstable a play, or miracle, of St. Catherine, "quendam ludum de Sancta Katerina quem miracula vulgariter appellamus." He borrowed from the sacristan at St. Albans the Abbey copes to dress his actors in; but | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922305 | the night following upon the performance, the fire consumed his house; all his books were burnt, and the copes too: "Wherefore, not knowing how to indemnify God and St. Albans, he offered his own person as a holocaust and took the habit in the monastery. This explains the zeal with which, having become abbot, he strove to enrich the convent | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922306 | with precious copes." For he became abbot, and died in , after a reign of twenty-six years,[] and Matthew Paris, to whom we owe those details, and whose taste for works of art is well known, gives a full enumeration of the splendid purple and gold vestments, adorned with precious stones, with which the Mancel Geoffrey enriched the treasury of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922307 | the Abbey.[] A little later in the same century, Fitzstephen, who wrote under Henry II., mentions as a common occurrence the "representations of miracles" held in London.[] In the following century, under Henry III., some were written in the English language.[] During the fourteenth century, in the time of Chaucer, mysteries were at the height of their popularity; their heroes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922308 | were familiar to all, and the sayings of the same became proverbs. Kings themselves journeyed in order to be present at the representations; Chaucer had seen them often, and the characters in his tales make frequent allusions to them; his drunken miller cries "in Pilates vois"; "Jolif Absolon" played the part of "king Herodes," and is it to be expected | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922309 | that an Alisoun could resist king Herodes? The Wife of Bath, dressed in her best garments, goes "to pleyes of miracles," and there tries to make acquaintances that may be turned into husbands when she wants them. "Hendy Nicholas" quotes to the credulous carpenter the example of Noah, whose wife would not go on board, and who regretted that he | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922310 | had not built a separate ship for "hir-self allone." A treatise, written in English at this period, against such representations, shows the extreme favour in which they stood with all classes of society.[] The enthusiasm was so general and boundless that it seems to the author indispensable to take the field and retort (for the question was keenly disputed) the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922311 | arguments put forward to justify the performance of mysteries. The works and miracles of Christ, he observes, were not done for play; He did them "ernystfully," and we use them "in bourde and pleye!" It is treating with great familiarity the Almighty, who may well say: "Pley not with me, but pley with thi pere." Let us beware of His | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922312 | revenge; it well may happen that "God takith more venjaunce on us than a lord that sodaynly sleeth his servaunt for he pleyide to homely with hym;" and yet the lord's vengeance cannot be considered a trifling one. What do the abettors of mysteries answer to this? They answer that "thei pleyen these myraclis in the worschip of God"; they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922313 | lead men to think and meditate; devils are seen there carrying the wicked away to hell; the sufferings of Christ are represented, and the hardest are touched, they are seen weeping for pity; for people wept and laughed at the representations, openly and noisily, "wepynge bitere teris." Besides, there are men of different sorts, and some are so made that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922314 | they cannot be converted but by mirthful means, "by gamen and pley"; and such performances do them much good. Must not, on the other hand, all men have "summe recreatioun"? Better it is, "or lesse yvele, that thei han thyre recreacoun by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis." And one more very sensible reason is given: "Sithen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922315 | it is leveful to han the myraclis of God peyntid, why is not as wel leveful to han the myraclis of God pleyed ... and betere thei ben holden in mennus mynde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peyntynge, for this is a deed bok, the tother a quick." To those reasons, which he does | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922316 | not try to conceal, but on the contrary presents very forcibly, the fair-minded author answers his best. These representations are too amusing; after such enjoyments, everyday life seems plain and dull; women of "yvil continaunse," Wives of Bath maybe, or worse, flock there and do not remain idle. The fact that they come does not prevent the priests from going | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922317 | too; yet it is "uttirly" forbidden them "not onely to been myracle pleyere but also to heren or to seen myraclis pleyinge." But they set the decree at nought and "pleyn in entirlodies," and go and see them: "The prestis that seyn hemsilf holy, and besien hem aboute siche pleyis, ben verry ypocritis and lyeris." All bounds have been overstepped; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922318 | it is no longer a taste, but a passion; men are carried away by it; citizens become avaricious and grasping to get money in view of the representations and the amusements which follow: "To peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche, and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothinge grucche." Merchants and tradesmen "bygilen | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922319 | ther neghbors, in byinge and sellyng," that is "hideous coveytise," that is "maumetrie"; and they do it "to han to spenden on these miraclis." Many documents corroborate these statements and show the accuracy of the description. The fondness of priests for plays and similar pastimes is descanted upon by the Council of London in .[] A hundred years earlier an | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922320 | Englishman, in a poem which he wrote in French, had pointed out exactly the same abuses: from which can be perceived how deeply rooted they were. Another folly, William de Wadington[] had said, has been invented by mad clerks; it consists in what is called Miracles; in spite of decrees they disguise themselves with masks, "li forsen!"[] Purely liturgical drama, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922321 | of course, is permissible (an additional proof of its existence in England); certain representations can be held, "provided they be chastely set up and included in the Church service," as is done when the burial of Christ or the Resurrection is represented "to increase devotion."[] But to have "those mad gatherings in the streets of towns, or in the cemeteries, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922322 | after dinner," to prepare for the idle such meeting-places, is a quite different thing; if they tell you that they do it with good intent and to the honour of God, do not believe them; it is all "for the devil." If players ask you to lend them horses, equipments, dresses, and ornaments of all sorts, don't fail to refuse. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922323 | For the stage continued to live upon loans, and the example of the copes of St. Albans destroyed by fire had not deterred convents from continuing to lend sacred vestments to actors.[] In the case of sacred vestments, says William, "the sin is much greater." In all this, as well as in all sorts of dances and frolics, a heavy | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922324 | responsibility rests with the minstrels; they ply a dangerous trade, a "trop perilus mester"; they cause God to be forgotten, and the vanity of the world to be cherished. Not a few among these English dramas, so popular in former days, have come down to us. Besides separate pieces, histories of saints (very scarce in England), or fragments of old | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922325 | series, several collections have survived, the property whilom of gilds or municipalities. A number of towns kept up those shows, which attracted visitors, and were at the same time edifying, profitable, and amusing. From the fourteenth century the performances were in most cases intrusted to the gilds, each craft having as much as possible to represent a play in accordance | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922326 | with its particular trade. Shipwrights represented the building of the ark; fishermen, the Flood; goldsmiths, the coming of the three kings with their golden crowns; wine merchants, the marriage at Cana, where a miracle took place very much in their line. In other cases the plays were performed by gilds founded especially for that purpose: gild of Corpus Christi, of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922327 | the Pater Noster, &c. This last had been created because "once on a time, a play setting forth the goodness of the Lord's Prayer was played in the city of York, in which play all manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn and the virtues were held up to praise. This play met with such favour that | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922328 | many said: 'Would that this play could be kept in this city, for the health of souls and for the comfort of citizens and neighbours!' Hence the keeping up of that play in times to come" (year ).[] In a more or less complete state, the collections of the Mysteries performed at Chester, Coventry, Woodkirk, and York have been preserved, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922329 | without speaking of fragments of other series. Most of those texts belong to the fourteenth century, but have been retouched at a later date.[] Old Mysteries did not escape the hand of the improvers, any more than old churches, where any one who pleased added paintings, porches, and tracery, according to the fashion of the day. These dramatic entertainments, which | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922330 | thrilled a whole town, to which flocked, with equal zeal, peasants and craftsmen, citizens, noblemen, kings and queens, which the Reformation succeeded in killing only after half a century's fight, enlivened with incomparable glow the monotonous course of days and weeks. The occasion was a solemn one; preparation was begun long beforehand; it was an important affair, an affair of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922331 | State. Gilds taxed their members to secure a fair representation of the play assigned to them; they were fined by the municipal authority in case they proved careless and inefficient, or were behind their time to begin. Read as they are, without going back in our minds to times past and taking into account the circumstances of their composition, Mysteries | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922332 | may well be judged a gross, childish, and barbarous production. Still, they are worthy of great attention, as showing a side of the soul of our ancestors, who in all this did _their very best_: for those performances were not got up anyhow: they were the result of prolonged care and attention. Not any man who wished was accepted as | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922333 | an actor; some experience of the art was expected; and in some towns even examinations took place. At York a decree of the Town Council ordains that long before the appointed day, "in the tyme of lentyn" (while the performance itself took place in summer, at the Corpus Christi celebration) "there shall be called afore the maire for the tyme | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922334 | beyng four of the moste connyng discrete and able players within this Citie, to serche, here and examen all the plaiers and plaies and pagentes thrughoute all the artificers belonging to Corpus Christi plaie. And all suche as thay shall fynde sufficiant in personne and connyng, to the honour of the Citie and worship of the saide craftes, for to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922335 | admitte and able; and all other insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice, or personne to discharge, ammove and avoide." All crafts were bound to bring "furthe ther pageantez in order and course by good players, well arayed and openly spekyng, upon payn of lesying s. to be paide to the chambre without any pardon."[] These texts belong to the fifteenth | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922336 | century, but there are older ones; and they show that from the beginning the difference between good and bad actors was appreciated and great importance was attached to the gestures and delivery. The Mystery of "Adam" (in French, the work, it seems, of a Norman), which belongs to the twelfth century, commences with recommendations to players: "Be Adam well trained | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922337 | so as to answer at the appropriate time without any slackness or haste. The same with the other actors; let them speak in sedate fashion, with gestures fitting the words; be they mindful not to add or suppress a syllable in the verses; and be their pronunciation constantly clear."[] The amusement afforded by such exhibitions, the personal fame acquired by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922338 | good actors, suddenly drawn from the shadow in which their working lives had been spent till then, acted so powerfully on craftsmen that some would not go back to the shop, and, leaving their tools behind them, became professional actors; thus showing that there was some wisdom in the reproof set forth in the "Tretise of Miraclis pleyinge." Once emerged | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922339 | from the Church, the drama had the whole town in which to display itself; and it filled the whole town. On these days the city belonged to dramatic art; each company had its cars or scaffolds, _pageants_ (placed on wheels in some towns), each car being meant to represent one of the places where the events in the play happened. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922340 | The complete series of scenes was exhibited at the main crossings, or on the principal squares or open spaces in the town. The inhabitants of neighbouring houses sat thus as in a front row, and enjoyed a most enviable privilege, so enviable that it was indeed envied, and at York, for example, they had to pay for it. After the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922341 | choosing of the places for the representations was regulated by auction, and the plays were performed under the windows of the highest bidders. In other cases the scaffolds were fixed; so that the representation was performed only at one place. The form of the scaffolds varied from town to town. At Chester "these pagiantes or cariage was a highe place | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922342 | made like a house with two rowmes beinge open on ye tope: the lower rowme they apparrelled and dressed them selves; and in the higher rowme they played: and they stoode upon six wheeles. And when they had done with one cariage in one place, they wheeled the same from one streete to an other."[] In some cases the scaffolds | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922343 | were not so high, and boards made a communication between the raised platform and the ground; a horseman could thus ride up the scaffold: "Here Erode ragis in the pagond and in the strete also."[] 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922344 | 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."[] Chaucer speaks of the "scaffold | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922345 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922346 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922347 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922348 | picture, Fouquet has chosen to represent the martyrdom of the saint as it was acted in a miracle play.[] 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922349 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922350 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922351 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922352 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922353 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922354 | well as on the stage of Corneille and of Molire. "I was on the stage, meaning to listen to the play ..." says the raste 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922355 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922356 | _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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922357 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922358 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922359 | 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, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922360 | 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"). | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922361 | 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.[] It worked so successfully that it was still resorted to in Elizabethan times; we see "Thebes written in great letters | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922362 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922363 | another, they named both: now we are arrived, I recognise Marseilles; "her is the lond of Mercylle."[] 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. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922364 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922365 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922366 | 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."[] 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922367 | Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[] 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."[] If painted scenery was greatly neglected, machinery | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922368 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922369 | 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, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922370 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922371 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922372 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922373 | 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 | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922374 | 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. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922375 | machinery became more and more complicated toward the time of the Renaissance; but much money was needed, and for long the Court or the municipalities could alone use them. In England fixed or movable scenery reaches great perfection at Court: Inigo Jones shows a genius in arranging elegant decorations; some of his sketches have been preserved.[] But such splendid inventions | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922376 | were too costly to be transferred to the stages for which Shakespeare wrote; and he never used any other magic but that of his poetry. Inigo Jones had fine scene-shiftings with the help of his machinists, and Shakespeare with the help of his verses; these last have this advantage, that they have not faded, and can still be seen. III. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922377 | Whatever may be thought of so much simplicity, childishness, or barbarity of those ivy-clad ruins, the forms of which can scarcely be discerned, they must be subjected to a closer inspection; and if there were no other, this one consideration would be enough to incline us to it: while in the theatre of Bacchus the tragedies of Sophocles were played | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922378 | once and no more, the Christian drama, remodelled from century to century, was represented for four hundred years before immense multitudes; and this is a unique phenomenon in the history of literature. The fact may be ascribed to several causes, some of which have already been pointed out. The desire to see was extremely keen, and there was seen all | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922379 | that could be wished: the unattainable, the unperceivable, miracles, the king's Court, earthly paradise, all that had been heard of or dreamt about. Means of realisation were rude, but the public held them satisfactory. What feasts were in the year, sacraments were in the existence of men; they marked the great memorable stages of life. A complete net of observances | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922380 | and religious obligations surrounded the months and seasons; bells never remained long silent; they rang less discreetly than now, and were not afraid to disturb conversations by their noise. At each period of the day they recalled that there were prayers to say, and to those even who did not pray they recalled the importance of religion. Existences were thus | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922381 | impregnated with religion; and religion was in its entirety explained, made accessible and visible, in the Mysteries. The verses spoken by the actors did not much resemble those in Shakespeare; they were, in most cases, mere tattle, scarcely verses; rhyme and alliteration were sometimes used both together, and both anyhow. And yet the emotion was deep; in the state of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922382 | mind with which the spectators came, nothing would have prevented their being touched by the affecting scenes, neither the lame verse nor the clumsy machinery; the cause of the emotion was the subject, and not the manner in which the subject was represented. All the past of humanity and its eternal future were at stake; players, therefore, were sometimes interrupted | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922383 | by the passionate exclamations of the crowd. At a drama lately represented on the stage of the Comdie Franaise, one of the audience astonished his neighbours by crying: "Mais signe donc! Est-elle bte!..." In the open air of the public place, at a time when manners were less polished, many such interjections interrupted the performance; many insulting apostrophes were addressed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922384 | to Eve when she listened to the serpent; and the serpent spoke (in the Norman drama of "Adam") a language easy to understand, the language of everyday life: "_Diabolus._--I saw Adam; he is an ass." "_Eva._--He is a little hard." "_Diabolus._--We shall melt him; but at present he is harder than iron." But thou, Eve, thou art a superior being, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922385 | a delicate one, a delight for the eyes. "Thou art a little tender thing, fresher than the rose, whiter than crystal, or snow falling on the ice in a dale. The Creator has badly matched the couple; thou art too sweet; man is too hard.... For which it is very pleasant to draw close to thee. Let me have a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922386 | talk with thee."[] And for such cajolery, for such folly, thought the crowd, for this sin of our common mother, we sweat and we suffer, we observe Lent, we experience temptations, and under our feet this awful hell-mouth opens, in which, maybe, we shall some day fall. Eve, turn away from the serpent! Greater even was the emotion caused by | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922387 | the drama of the Passion, the sufferings of the Redeemer, all the details of which were familiar to everybody. The indignation was so keen that the executioners had difficulty sometimes in escaping the fury of the multitude. The Middle Ages were the age of contrasts; what measure meant was then unknown. This has already been noticed _ propos_ of Chaucer; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922388 | the cleverest _compensated_, as Chaucer did, their Miller's tales with stories of Griselda. When they intend to be tender the authors of Mysteries fall in most cases into that mawkish sentimentality by which the man of the people or the barbarian is often detected. A feeling for measure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922389 | Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-paths always represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetness unspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, in the middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound of his horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape, with a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922390 | blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected in Dickens, many also in the Mysteries. After a truly touching scene between Abraham and his son, the pretty things Isaac does and says, his prayer not to see the sword so keen, cease to touch, and come very near making us laugh. The contrast between the fury of Herod | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922391 | and the sweetness of Joseph and Mary is similarly carried to an extreme. This same Joseph who a minute ago insulted his wife in words impossible to quote, has now become such a sweet and gentle saint that one can scarcely believe the same man addresses us. He is packing before his journey to Egypt; he will take his tools | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922392 | with him, his "_smale_ instrumentes."[] Is there anything more touching? Nothing, except perhaps the appeal of the street painter, calling our attention to the fact that he draws "on the _rude_ stone." How could the passer-by not be touched by the idea that the stone is so hard? In the Middle Ages people melted at this, they were moved, they | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922393 | wept; and all at once they were in a mood to enjoy the most enormous buffooneries. These fill a large place in the Mysteries, and beside them shine scenes of real comedy, evincing great accuracy of observation. The personages worst treated in Mysteries are always kings; they are mostly represented as being grotesque and mischievous. The playwrights might have given | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922394 | as their excuse that their kings are miscreants, and that black is not dark enough to paint such faces. But to this commendable motive was added a sly pleasure felt in caricaturing those great men, not only because they were heathens, but also because they were kings; for when Christian princes and lords appear on the stage, the satire is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922395 | often continued. Thus Lancelot of the Lake appears unexpectedly at the Court of king Herod, and after much rant the lover of queen Guinevere draws his invincible sword and massacres the Innocents ("Chester Plays"). Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Pharaoh, the King of Marseilles, always open the scenes where they figure with a speech, in which they sound their own praise. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922396 | It was an established tradition; in the same way as God the Father delivered a sermon, these personages made what the manuscripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and curse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922397 | fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The English Herod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects of Angevin monarchs would have shrugged their shoulders at the representation of a prince who did not speak French. It was for them the sign of princeship, as a tiara | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922398 | was the sign of godhead. Herod therefore spoke French, a very mean sort of French, it is true, and the Parliament of Paris which was to express later its indignation at the faulty grammar of the "Confrres de la Passion" would have suffered much if it had seen what became of the noble language of France on the scaffolds at | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922399 | Chester. But it did not matter; any words were enough, in the same way as any sword would do as an emblem for St. Paul. One of the duties of these strutting heroes was to maintain silence. It seemed as if they had a privilege for noise making, and they repressed encroachments; their task was not an easy one. Be | 60 | gutenberg |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.