A Literary History of the English People Part 52

The Middle Ages were the age of contrasts; what measure meant was then unknown. This has already been noticed _a propos_ of Chaucer; 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.

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 blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected in d.i.c.kens, 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 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 with him, his "_smale_ instrumentes."[801] 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 pa.s.ser-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 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 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 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 ma.s.sacres the Innocents ("Chester Plays").

Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Pharaoh, the King of Ma.r.s.eilles, always open the scenes where they figure with a speech, in which they sound their own praise. It was an established tradition; in the same way as G.o.d the Father delivered a sermon, these personages made what the ma.n.u.scripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and curse unblus.h.i.+ngly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The English Herod could not claim kins.h.i.+p 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 princes.h.i.+p, as a tiara was the sign of G.o.dhead. 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 "Confreres de la Pa.s.sion" would have suffered much if it had seen what became of the n.o.ble language of France on the scaffolds at 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 still, "beshers,"

cries Augustus; "beshers" means "beaux sires" in the kingly French of the Mysteries:

Be stylle, beshers, I commawnd you, That no man speke a word here now Bot I my self alon.

And if ye do, I make a vow, Thys brand abowte youre nekys shalle bow, For-thy by stylle as ston.[802]

Silence! cries Tiberius. Silence! cries Herod:

Styr not bot ye have lefe, For if ye do I clefe You smalle as flesh to pott.[803]

Tiberius knows Latin, and does not conceal it from the audience:

Stynt, I say, gyf men place, quia sum dominus dominorum, He that agans me says rapietur lux oculorum.[804]

And each of them hereupon moves about his scaffold, and gives the best idea he can of the magnitude of his power:

Above all kynges under the cloudys crystall, Royally I reigne in welthe without woo ...

I am Kyng Herowdes.[805]

Be it known, says another:

That of heven and h.e.l.l chyff rewlar am I, To wos magnyfycens non stondyt egall, For I am soveren of al soverens.[806]

Make room, says a third:

A-wantt, a-want the, on-worthy wrecchesse!

Why lowtt ye nat low to my lawdabyll presens?...

I am a sofereyn semely, that ye se b.u.t.t seyld; Non swyche onder sonne, the sothe for to say ...

I am kyng of Marcylle![807]

Such princes fear nothing, and are never abashed; they are on familiar terms with the audience, and interpellate the bystanders, which was a sure cause of merriment, but not of good order. Octavian, being well pleased with the services of one of his men, tells him:

Boye, their be ladyes many a one, Amonge them all chouse thee one, Take the faierest, or elles non, And freely I geve her thee.[808]

Every lord bows to my law, observes Tiberius:

Is it nat so? Sey yow all with on showte.

and a note in the ma.n.u.script has: "Here answerryt all the pepul at ons,'Ya, my lord, ya.'"[809] All this was performed with appropriate gesture, that is, as wild as the words they went with, a tradition that long survived. Shakespeare complained, as we know, of the delivery of those actors who "out-heroded Herod."

The authors of English Mysteries had no great experience of Courts; they drew their caricatures somewhat haphazard. They were neither very learned nor very careful; anachronisms and mistakes swarm under their pen. While Herod sacrifices to Mahomet, Noah invokes the Blessed Virgin, and the Christmas shepherds swear by "the death of Christ," whose birth is announced to them at the end of the play.

The psychology of these dramas is not very deep, especially when the question is of personages of rank, and of feelings of a refined sort.

The authors of Mysteries speak then at random and describe by hearsay; they have seen their models only from afar, and are not familiar with them. When they have to show how it is that young Mary Magdalen, as virtuous as she was beautiful, consents to sin for the first time, they do it in the plainest fas.h.i.+on. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her that he finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir," the young lady replies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prost.i.tute)?" Not at all, says the other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall we drink something?

Soppes in wyne, how love ye?

Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers:

As ye dou, so doth me; I am ryth glad that met be we; My love in yow gynnyt to close.

Then, "derlyng dere," let us go, says the "galaunt."

_Mary._ Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng!

Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd, I wol never from yow wynd (turn).[810]

Clarissa Harlowe will require more forms and more time; here twenty-five verses have been enough. A century and a half divides "Mary Magdalene"

from the dramatised story of the "Weeping b.i.t.c.h"; the interpretation of the movements of the feminine heart has not greatly improved, and we are very far as yet from Richardson and Shakespeare.

But truth was more closely observed when the authors spoke of what they knew by personal experience, and described men of the poorer sort with whom they were familiar. In this lies the main literary merit of the Mysteries; there may be found the earliest scenes of real comedy in the history of the English stage.

This comedy of course is very near farce: in everything people then went to extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were among the most popular.

In all the collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders somewhat at first:

A! worthy lorde, wolde thou take heede, I am full olde and oute of qwarte.

He sets to work, however; rain begins; the time for sailing has arrived: Noah calls his wife; she does not come. Get into the ark and "leve the harde lande?" This she will not do. She meant to go this very day to town, and she will:

Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne.

She does not fear the flood; Noah remarks that the rain has been terrific of late, and has lasted many days, and that her idea of going just then to town is not very wise. The lady is not a whit pacified; why have made a secret of all this to her? Why had he not consulted her? It turns out that her husband had been working at the ark for a hundred years, and she did not know of it! Life in a boat is not at all pleasant; anyhow she will want time to pack; also she must take her gossips with her, to have some one to talk to during the voyage. Noah, who in building his boat has given some proof of his patience, does not lose courage; he receives a box on the ear; he is content with saying:

I pray the, dame, be stille.

The wife at length gets in, and, as we may believe, stormy days in more senses than one are in store for the patriarch.[811]

St. Joseph is a poor craftsman, described from nature, using the language of craftsmen, having their manners, their ignorances, their aspirations. Few works in the whole range of mediaeval literature contain better descriptions of the workman of that time than the Mysteries in which St. Joseph figures; some of his speeches ought to have a place in the collections of Political Songs. The Emperor Augustus has availed himself of the occasion afforded by the census to establish a new tax: "A! lorde," says the poor Joseph,

what doth this man nowe heare!

Poore mens weale is ever in were (doubt), I wotte by this bolsters beare That tribute I muste paye; And for greate age and no power I wan no good this seven yeaire; Nowe comes the kinges messingere, To gette all that he maye.

With this axe that I beare, This perscer and this nagere, A hamer all in feare, I have wonnen my meate.

Castill, tower ne manere Had I never in my power; But as a simple carpentere With these what I mighte gette.

Yf I have store nowe anye thing, That I must paye unto the kinge.[812]

Only an ox is left him; he will go and sell it. It is easy to fancy that, in the century which saw the Statutes of Labourers and the rising of the peasants, such words found a ready echo in the audience.

As soon as men of the people appear on the scene, nearly always the dialogue becomes lively; real men and women stand and talk before us.

Beside the workmen represented by St. Joseph, peasants appear, represented by the shepherds of Christmas night. They are true English shepherds; if they swear, somewhat before due time, by Christ, all surprise disappears when we hear them name the places where they live: Lancas.h.i.+re, the Clyde valley, Boughton near Chester, Norbury near Wakefield. Of all possible ales, Ely's is the one they prefer. They talk together of the weather, the time of the day, the mean salaries they get, the stray sheep they have been seeking; they eat their meals under the hedge, sing merry songs, exchange a few blows, in fact behave as true shepherds of real life. Quite at the end only, when the "Gloria" is heard, they will a.s.sume the sober att.i.tude befitting Christmas Day.

In the Mysteries performed at Woodkirk, the visit to the new-born Child was preceded by a comedy worthy to be compared with the famous farce of "Pathelin," and which has nothing to do with Christmas.[813] It is night; the shepherds talk; the time for sleeping comes. One among them, Mak, has a bad repute, and is suspected of being a thief; they ask him to sleep in the midst of the others: "Com heder, betwene shalle thou lyg downe." But Mak rises during the night without being observed. How hard they sleep! he says, and he carries away a "fatt shepe," and takes it to his wife.

_Wife._ It were a fowlle blotte to be hanged for the case.