Laughter in medieval English drama: a critique of modernizing and historical analyses

Comparative Drama, Spring-Summer, 2002 by Hans-Jurgen Diller

In the English context it is important to remember that the harshest criticism of religious drama, and also the harshest criticism of "game and play," is to be found in the Wycliffite Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge. (7) We are thus faced with the fact that the severest criticism of the plays comes from those who were also the harshest critics of the ruling Church as a whole. It would thus be a serious mistake to regard their rigorism as representative of the medieval Church and to regard all "game and play" as a vote for the opposition.

Kolve contrasts this rigorism with writings that can claim higher ecclesiastical authority and can also draw on the centuries of experience which the Church had accumulated in moral guidance and pastoral care. His greatest achievement is to have directed our attention to a text which until then had been hardly noticed. Dives et Pauper is preserved in eight complete and four fragmentary manuscripts. It has meanwhile been edited for the Early English Text Society and is thus generally accessible. (8) In the form of a dialogue between a rich layman (Dives) and a mendicant friar (Pauper) it discusses a number of practical examples to show how the layman can lead a life that is pleasing unto God. The dialogue is divided into ten "Precepts," in correspondence to the Ten Commandments. The third "Precept" is of course concerned with the hallowing of holidays, and in this connection with man's right to enjoy himself, or to "honest mirth" as it is called (esp. Precept 3, chap. 17).

The behavioral code of the medieval Church distinguished very clearly between measured mirth, which was to lead to an increased love of God, and unmeasured merrymaking, which was permitted neither on feast days nor on workdays. While Dives et Pauper refers not to laughter but only to mirth, Kolve also reports an anecdote of St. Brice, who was laughing during Mass. When asked by his godfather St. Martin of Tours why he laughed, Brice replied that he had observed the devil making a record of the laughter of the women during Mass. The vellum on which he wrote soon proved too short, "and he plucked harde to haue made it lengger with his tethe, and it scaped out of his mouthe, and hys hede had a gret stroke ayenst the wall, `& that made me to laugh' And whan seint Martin herde hym, he knewe that seint Brice was an holy man." (9)

Having to laugh at the misfortunes of the devil is a proof of holiness. But we also have records, in the York Memorandum Book, which show that undesirable laughter was prevented. In 1431 the masons of that city asked to be relieved of their pageant because it caused more laughter and clamor than devotion. And in 1426 the Memorandum Book tells of a most famous preacher and professor of scripture, who found that on Corpus Christi Day many people not only saw the play but also participated in feastings, drunkenness, clamors, gossipings, and other wantonness, thus risking the loss of the pardon that was promised for participation in the procession. As a consequence, the York City fathers agreed to separate the play from the procession and to stage it on a different day. (10) It appears that the authorities of a medieval city were quite capable of assessing the mass psychological consequences of a theatrical performance.