Striking a pose: performance cues in four French hagiographic mystery plays.

Hamblin, Vicki L.

While they approach medieval theater from different perspectives, modern theorists and theater historians nevertheless agree that theatrical texts are unlike literary texts in a variety of ways. Their most obvious difference lies in the fact that theatrical texts presuppose a supra-textual performance that may include gestures, decors, timing, costumes, props, intonation, simulated action, noise, and music. Players, musicians, painters, and staging supervisors are among those who amend the structural and thematic intention of the written words by providing any number of conventional, or improvised, creative acts. As theoretician Anne Ubersfeld has argued, this intentional relationship between a dramatic text's verbal (textual) and nonverbal (performance) elements is unique to theatrical works. (1) From the historical perspective, Graham Runnalls's examination of French mystery play culture in the late medieval period confirms that a performance intention preceded in most cases the writing of an appropriate text; therefore, that intention would have been reflected in the resulting document. (2) Accordingly, the written composition of any work intended for performance contains evidence of this unique relationship between a spoken narrative and its performance mandate.

As a result of this internal relationship between spoken text and implied performance, plays are not simply characterized by written dialogue that carries a narrative forward, but by spoken words that rely on physical and vocal acts to amplify, or perhaps even complete, their narrative intention. If a dramatic character proclaims that "[t]here is the church I seek," he or she must follow through on those words by moving physically through space toward the appropriate decor or prop. If he or she fails to do so, the theatrical intention fails to achieve its communicative goal. In other words, even if the narrative itself has been satisfied by such an announcement, the theatrical intention requires further interpretation. Theater's genesis as an art form, as Mercedes Travieso Ganaza reiterates, resides in the fact that it is "toujours liee, concretement et virtuellement, des configurations de mise en scene" (always linked, physically and purposefully, to the contours of performance). (3)

With regard to the mystery plays of the late medieval era, (4) written records of their spoken texts dwarf in volume and in comprehensiveness any surviving production notes, whether the latter take the form of didascalias, post-production records, or witness reports. This state of affairs is the direct reflection of a medieval performance culture in which surviving theatrical texts are generally post-production souvenirs. Thus, unless they were created as commemorative copies of a singular event, the surviving texts tend to retain few recorded features, beyond the spoken text itself, which may have been relevant to performance. (5) For this reason, when a surviving text does include some staging notations their purpose there seems to "play some part for a reader who through them can imagine how the action might take place" according to Peter Happe's work with the English Macro plays. (6) That is, the surviving textual souvenir has become a performance prototype rather than an exhaustive account of a theatrical event because that event, even when carefully planned and executed by a team of professional poets, painters, and technicians, was not usually recorded in a single document. By reflecting how the action might take place rather than how it actually did take place, the "post-production" copy of a mystery play reflects only part of its original intention. (7) This is as it should be, since any renewed performance would have necessitated re-evaluating the written souvenir text for its applicability to different circumstances, funding, or participants. Thus, in the propensity in modern times to imagine the surviving performance remnant of a medieval play as an actualized text we have tended to mistake the skeletal theatrical text for a full-fledged literary one.

Consequently, it is not surprising that the rubrics, titles, and didascalias that punctuate the spoken dialogue of many medieval plays have sometimes been regarded by modern scholars as both unnecessary to the narrative and unhelpful to deciphering its performance requirements. A "speech then action" format, as I have maintained elsewhere, is one of the compositional constructs of medieval theater texts. (8) Thus, in the imaginary text to which I referred earlier, for example, the prototypical player identifies the church to which he or she is headed. The line in the spoken text might well be followed by a marginal notation repeating that he or she "goes toward the church." As a result, in analyzing the rhymed dialogues' relationship to the marginal notes found in Pierre Gringore's Vie de sainct Loys, Lynda Bourgogne asserts that the staging notations seem unnecessary to the narrative, but only because the spoken words themselves often direct the play's action. (9) This hybrid format of verbal performance cue and marginal performance reminder clearly distinguishes the theatrical text from its literary cousin: in the former, the spoken narrative, even when a well-structured whole, is deemed insufficient for the performances completion, thus requiring the seemingly redundant notation. What we as critics have too often failed to acknowledge is that the theatrical text depends on the physical act to provide meaningfulness to the spoken dialogue, rather than the other way around.

The present study had its inception in a larger analysis of the performance features of French hagiographic mystery plays from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Rather than concentrating on a particular play or a single feature of medieval performance, this investigation is grounded in both reception theory (as it relates to the theater) and in a social science model known as "fuzzy-set" analysis. The latter approach seeks to identify common features across a wide, and seemingly dissimilar, set of complex structures in order better to understand them. (10) For example, by treating as a single study-set the stage directions of mystery plays or the musical content of Passion Plays, we can schematize the frequency of various elements as well as the scale of similarities and differences across texts. The resulting data, within the context of the plays' reception in a highly performance-focused culture, yield a more complex reading of the ways in which medieval performance reconstructed the environment in which it took place.

In this case I have chosen to focus on four French hagiographic mystery plays that were part of my larger study-set. They do not share any specific features aside from those found in the larger group of plays: they are hagiographic plays that narrate the life of a nonbiblical saint; they were written in French and performed in the fifteenth or sixteenth century; and, they contain framing segments involving both heavenly and demonic characters. While these features may seem patently obvious, in my comparison study of all nonbiblical, hagiographic plays in French, a number of texts did not conform to at least one of these defining criteria, requiring their elimination from that study-set. The only other condition that I applied to the selection of texts for the present study was my impression that they might represent different performance types. This distinction between performance types of French hagiographic mystery plays is what I hope to illustrate in the following pages in ways that the larger study could not accomplish because of the survey nature of its mandate.

Two of the four plays in question, La vie et passion de monseigneur sainct Didier, martir et evesque de Lengres and Le mystere de saint Bernard de Menthon, narrate the lives of bishops who were worshipped regionally in medieval France. The two remaining plays, Le mystere de saint Crespin et saint Crespinien and La vie de monseigneur sainct Laurens par personnaiges, recount instead the tales of martyred saints who lived in the early centuries of the Christian expansion. (11) One of these four plays survives in a sixteenth-century edition; the three other plays exist in manuscript copies. At least one of these plays was produced by a professional confraternity while another was most likely performed publicly by volunteers from the local citizenry. All of the plays consist of more than one performance session: the shortest play took place on two afternoons; the longest one required three all-day journees to perform. The Saint Didier play identifies its author. The three other plays are anonymous, although one is attributed to a monastic community in Aosta and another to the confraternity mentioned above. The following table summarizes the elemental features of these four mystery play texts:

Feature        S. Bernard         S. Crepin        S. Didier

Play date(s)   unknown            1458.1459        1482

Provenance     Grand-Saint-       Shoemakers'      Civic and
               Bernard            confraternity    religious
               monastery          in Paris         leaders of
                                                   Langres

Sessions       2 short            4 annual         3 daily sessions
               sessions           sessions
                                  (1 missing)

Text lines     4,340              4,596            10,214

Format         manuscript         manuscripts      manuscript

Narrative      Life and death     Torture and      Election and
               of founding        martyrdom of     martyrdom of
               father of Grand-   patron saints;   local bishop who
               Saint-Bernard      dedication of    defended the city
               monastery          chapel           against infidels

Feature        S. Laurent

Play date(s)   unknown

Provenance     unknown

Sessions       2 full days
               (1 missing)

Text lines     8,812

Format         early edition

Narrative      Education and
               martyrdom of
               early church
               leader in Rome

Beyond these circumstantial similarities and differences, the four texts also appear to share a number of internal performance features that were suggested in the introductory paragraphs of the present study. For our purposes, the following features will be analyzed for the ways in which their inclusion in the texts elucidates diverse performance styles: (1) embedded performance cues; (2) marginal notations; and (3) references to staging. The first group of performance features in mystery play texts consists of spoken cues pronounced by the players themselves. These cues perform a variety of functions and are potentially the primary mechanism for organizing the visualized narrative. The second group of features consists of all non-spoken notations in the text that may be performance related, including staging directions, or didascalias, as well as rubrics, episodic titles, and intentional marks used to direct the performance. The final group refers to the rarest of scripted instructions: direct textual references to decors, props, and other staging requirements.

II. Embedded Performance Cues

The primary attestation of the relationship between the spoken word and performance in theatrical texts can be found in the fact that their dialogues predict simulations, destinations, gestures, and the introduction of new interlocutors, as already noted. Embedded in the plays' spoken dialogues ("There is the church I seek"), these staging indicators direct audience attention visually as the player moves about the arena or platform. This type of performance cue appears more or less frequently in mystery play texts and may be related to the particular performance venue, its complexity, and perhaps even its date. In the case of the four plays in the present study, embedded cues consistently serve one of three purposes: (1) instructional cues announce narrative action; (2) visual cues point out props, decors, or characters; and, (3) mid-speech greetings announce a shift in focus or tone. (12) The first type of embedded cue takes the form of short commands or announcements using the imperative mode or the verbal construction "to go" + infinitive: "menons-les;" "allons savoir" (let's take them away; let's find out). In each case, these cues underscore a staging instruction: players will move from one decor or station to another; mercenaries will tie up a prisoner; or, a saint will preach to a nearby group of people, for instance. A majority of these commands specify movement to or from a decor; others specify instead actions to be taken at a given location. The same verbs (to go, to leave, to travel, to find out, to rest, to enter, to sing, to strike, to drink, to pray, etc.) are repeated multiple times in all four plays. Despite these general consistencies, however, significant differences among the four texts in this regard do seem to underscore differing performance styles.

Using the first session of S. Crepin as a point o comparison, that text's speakers proclaim more than seventy separate times in approximately 1,200 lines what action they intend to take. Embedded instructional cues occur on average, then, once every sixteen verses in that session. In an opening segment, for example, a torturer calls on the jailor to hand over the two saintly brothers, Crispin and Crispian:

      IIIIe tyrant.

   Vales querir, que les ayons.

      Le geolier.

   Ouvrir vueul les huis des prisons,
   Et puis je les vous bailleray:
   C'est fait.--Venes hors sans delay,
   Meschans maleureux, malotrus.

      (4th Torturer:

   Go get them, that we might have them.

      Jailor:

   I'll first open the prison doors
   And then deliver them to you.
   There, it's done.--Come out of there without dawdling,
   You wicked, ill-mannered wretches.) (13)

Three times in this segment an embedded instructional cue (in italics) announces which acts the players must perform, thus moving the narrative forward while requiring specific actions from three different groups (torturer, jailor, prisoners). The concision of this staging sequence moves directly from one character and his speech to another. This segment's dramatic intention relies on this straightforward series of minor events, consistent with the "speech then action" convention of all mystery plays.

At the other end of the scale, with more than 8,800 verses, the first and only surviving session of S. Laurent is at least seven times longer than S. Crepin's first session. Embedded instructional cues occur in S. Laurent's session on an average once every thirty-five verses. This difference might be dismissed by the fact that S. Laurent contains many more extended speeches than does S. Crepin. Instead, it happens that many of the 250 separate instructional cues in S. Laurent are actually repeated, either verbatim or with minimal changes, by more than one character, thereby increasing their number incrementally while at the same time formalizing the staging style. In this example, the emperor Philip and his entourage prepare to greet Decius's army at the gates of Rome:

      L'empeureur.
   Abillez vous bien chascun home.
   Jusques a la porte de Romme
   Yrons a l'encontre de luy.

      (The Emperor:
   Each of you don your finest garments.
   We will then proceed to the Rome gate
   To meet him.) (14)

Next, the Emperor's son repeats that he and his men will change into their finest clothing and a musical interlude provides them the time to do so. At the conclusion of the interlude, the Emperor restates their intention:

   Partons d'icy, ne targon point,
   Car il est pres de ceste terre.
   Passevent, vales chevaulx querre
   Et les amaine cy devant.

   (Let's be off, without putting on armor,
   Since he must be nearby by now.
   Pass-Wind, go get the horses
   And lead them here before us.) (15)

After consenting, Passevent leaves to fetch the horses. In the meantime, the three waiting characters discuss their desire to get underway in a short rondeau that repeats the second embedded instruction: "Allon a Dieu, le roy celestre. / Qui nous doint faire son plaisir (Let's go with God, the heavenly king; / May He grant we do His will.) (16)

At this point, the same characters step down from the staging platform, mount their horses, and repeat the above refrain before preceding "parmy le jeu" (into the playing arena), where they finally meet Decius and his waiting army. Clearly, this sequencing of segments is more complex than the segment cited from S. Crepin, but it involves the same number of speaking characters as well as only three separate instructional cues, in this case, changing costumes, fetching the horses, and leaving the staging platform. In the S. Laurent production, these extended simulations are planned for and announced well in advance of any simulated activity. Thus, while maintaining the "speech then action" construct of this type of theater, this production must have been more elaborate, not only poetically, but spatially and physically as well.

As it happens, all four plays in this study-set include speeches in which instructional cues are repeated more than once before following through with a stated simulation. However, the repetition of such cues occurs but a handful of times in S. Crepin, where it is only prevalent in the play's torture segments. Embedded instructional cues appear less often in the opening sessions of both S. Bernard (an average of 1/43 verses) and in S. Didier (an average of 1/51 verses) than they do in S. Laurent's first session. In addition, in S. Bernard's approximately two thousand verses, very few instructional cues are repeated by more than one character, but S. Didier's text repeats instructional cues in a number of segments. One example in particular mirrors the S. Laurent departure segment cited above. After announcing their intention to travel to Geneva, Langres's municipal leaders call for their horses. While a messenger fetches them, the leaders discuss their trip; the messenger converses with a coworker as they lead the horses center stage; finally, the leaders prepare to leave amid a bevy of good-byes from well-wishers. (17)

Thus, the two shorter sessions, S. Crepin and S. Bernard, contain fewer protracted segments in which instructional commands are a prevalent feature, but S. Crepin and S. Laurent, the text with the highest number of protracted commands, actually share a higher frequency of these embedded instructions. From this initial comparison, the two plays that represent both the shortest and the longest sessions share a more dynamic mandate in which spoken cues carry the narrative forward with frequently occurring simulated actions or movement. However, S. Crepin's production type implies shorter distances between decors, fewer players, and a less complex performance style. By virtue of their less frequent use of this type of cue, S. Bernard and S. Didier, on the other hand, would appear to possess a more staid presentation style characterized by less action.

Another type of embedded cue found in the four French mystery plays in the present study are those visual cues which, when spoken onstage, identify new decors, props, or persons to those sharing the stage and to those watching the play. These cues consist of the verbs voir or regarder (to see, to look at), as well as demonstrative adjectives and pronouns, or perhaps a combination of these two elements. (18) A messenger named Menton points out a relevant decor in S. Bernard in the following manner:

   Je voy le castel de Duyng:
   C'est une place bien assisse
   Dedans l'aygue, faite a devise,
   Impregnable, ce m'est advis.

   (I see the Duyng castle:
   It's a well-situated place
   Surrounded by water, well-planned,
   And impenetrable, or so I hear.) (19)

Demonstrative forms, whether alone or doubled with a verbal reference, also abound in all four texts. A torturer in S. Crepin announces what must be done with his prisoners: "Aler les nous fault deslier; / Je voudray cestui-cy lier" (We must go untie them; / I should like to secure this one). (20) Once again, S. Crepin's first session incorporates visual cues more frequently than do the three other plays in this study-set, with almost twice as many occurrences of this type of embedded cue as are found in S. Didier's first session. (21) In S. Crepin, demonstrative forms also outnumber perception verbs two to one, with an emphasis on pointing out torture instruments, ropes, and wounds on the prisoners' bodies. Although its visual cues appear less frequently, S. Bernard's first session follows S. Crepin's lead in this regard, pointing out for the most part people, clothing, and locations while occasionally including perception verbs. In S. Didier, on the other hand, perception verbs and demonstratives appear in nearly equal number. After learning that someone has seen the Bishop approaching, two characters anticipate his impending arrival:

      Vergier.
   Ou est-il?
      Choiseul.
      La.
      Vergier.
         Ce n'est-il mye?
      Choisel.
   Si est, par le Dieu qui me fit.
      (Vergier:
   Where is he?
      Choiseul:
      There.
      Vergier:
         That can't be him ...
      Choiseul:
   Yes it is, as God is my maker.) (22)

S. Laurent's use of embedded visual cues (in italics) like the examples cited here is similar in type and in frequency to S. Didier's first session. Demonstratives outnumber the use of perception verbs, but not appreciably. The most noteworthy appearance of this type of embedded cue takes place instead in S. Laurent's prologue, as will be demonstrated in the third section of the present study.

While greetings between individual players or groups are another conventional staging cue in mystery plays, occurring as a transition between different populations and decors or announcing to spectators and fellow players the beginning or ending of a new narrative segment or sequence, mid-speech greetings are arguably more significant because they have considerable impact on a theatrical text's staging style. Since they take place mid-speech, these salutations can constitute a break in a player's tone as well as a refocusing of his attention. Either of these staged events will shift the audience's attention as well, in much the same way as would any verbal departures from standard mnemonic rhyme. (23) Interestingly, mid-speech salutations take place no more than a handful of times in the first sessions of S. Didier, S. Bernard, and S. Laurent. One of S. Bernard's five mid-speech cues occurs when Bernard's father welcomes a guest into his home. He turns his attention mid-speech from that guest to his house steward, asking that the latter prepare drinks and dinner for those present. (24) Conversely, in the shortest first session in this study-set, mid speech greetings of this kind occur thirty-nine times in just 1,200 verses. Since we know that S. Crepin has the fewest number of spoken lines but the highest frequency of both embedded instructional and visual cues, the fact that this text once again relies so heavily on this type of verbal mechanism to abbreviate speeches in order to turn attention to the next event or character must be directly related to its performance style.

III. Marginal Notations

Textual notations about performance appear alongside the spoken text, where they might serve a number of purposes. Rubrics identify by name or function those characters who are about to speak; staging notations appear intertextually or marginally as an aid to reading a post-production text or in order to recall a performance that has been recopied as a commemorative text. In some cases additional written notations, in the form of descriptive or honorific titles for specific events or episodes in the plays, have been added. S. Didier's text, for example, is annotated by a few subtitles that point out features such as a sermon's "thema" and a "Finis prologi." (25) A few plays, including S. Bernard, have even been given episodic or chapter titles by later readers.

The presence and purpose of marginal notations in the four mystery plays under study vary appreciably from text to text for reasons that reach beyond performance to the ways in which they have been preserved. The S. Laurent text, despite being an early sixteenth-century edition, retains many staging cues in apparent commemoration of at least one performance, as Runnalls remarks in his analysis of the play's narrative structure. (26) S. Bernard's nineteenth-century editor divided that text into titled episodes, hoping to facilitate its reading. (27) He also notes with some enthusiasm that the text contains a number of useful performance notations, but does not elaborate on them or their relationship to the spoken text. (28) S. Crepin's three surviving sessions have been rewritten as commemorative texts of a play that was interpreted dramatically in annual installments. (29) The three surviving sessions contain only a small number of minor revisions on the word level, most likely made by a meneur du jeu who identifies himself in the incipit of Day 3, rather than by an unidentified author. (30) Finally, S. Didier was copied in May, 1507, by a city official and his aide nearly twenty years after it had been performed. (31) Their purpose in recording the text appears to have been commemorative rather than performance-driven so they likely reproduced the text from the original fatiste's copies. The S. Didier's nineteenth-century editor maintained that his sixteenth-century predecessors had very carefully copied the text, but he provided no further information about its staging interventions. (32)

Two types of marginal interventions have been extracted from these four mystery play texts in order to distinguish further among their performance mandates: the plays' prose didascalias and their references to songs, musical pauses or siletes. (33) With 370 and 257 staging notations respectively, S. Didier and S. Laurent contain the highest frequency of recorded performance cues in the form of didascalias. These notations vary in length from a short command, such as "Lors s'en vont vers l'Empeureur" (Then they leave for the Emperor's stage) to extended descriptions of what will take place at one station while players are moving toward another decor. (34) S. Didier's spoken text is punctuated an average of once every twenty-seven lines by a written notation that comments on or directs actions on the staging platforms; S. Laurent, with a didascalia appearing on an average once every thirty-three spoken lines, demonstrates a similar regularity between spoken text and performance cues. In an earlier analysis of the plays' narrative sequencing, I determined that longer, multiple-session plays, including S. Laurent and S. Didier, are constructed with complex and parallel sequencing that help organize their narrative threads. (35) By weaving several narrative threads together, and thereby moving players among various stations, this type of sequencing simulates chronological and spatial realities, as Pascale Dumont has amply demonstrated for the Miracles de Nostre-Dame par personnages. (36) Punctuating the spoken texts with clarifying didascalias, like the use of rondeaux to end staged sequences, is thus a feature that is particular to this type of complex staging. Hans-Jurgen Diller comes to a similar conclusion in his examination of what he terms "discontinuous representation" in English mystery plays and liturgical plays. In his estimation, English mystery plays tend to interrupt a narrative thread (while its characters are moving between decors) by switching to a second thread. (37) The spatial arrangement of the decors in larger venues would have facilitated this kind of composition and representation; it would also have required that someone other than the players keep track of who was to go where.

While both S. Didier and S. Laurent incorporate many written staging cues, it may be remembered that the latter text is also typified by a higher frequency of embedded commands related to staging. Given that its fatiste has organized the production with these two internal mechanisms, S. Laurent must have been the more intricate of these two productions. On one level, players are advancing the narrative by moving among various stations, which they repeatedly identify vocally. On another level, decisions about the play's ambitious organization are being made about how groups of players will interact with each other and in what order they will do so. This is an important distinction in S. Laurent because, as Runnalls so accurately observes, the stage directions actually prove that the dialogue shifts from one staging scaffold to another. (38)

S. Crepin, on the other hand, is structured by simple sequencing that moves only a single narrative thread laterally among a small number of staging stations. (39) This may explain why, unlike S. Didier and S. Laurent, its text--although commemorative--includes only twenty didascalias, or one staging notation for an average of sixty spoken lines. All of these notations, which occur marginally in Latin in Days 3 and 4, specify a player's gestures or movement. However, they are seconded in that text by a series of marginal signs that serve both structural and performance functions. One of these signs, the capitulum, precedes the text's didascalias and its initial rubrics as it would have in other medieval documents. However, S. Crepin's capitulum also signals the moment when a player should refocus his attention mid-speech, thereby reinforcing this prominent performance transition in that text. (40) As already observed, S. Crepin's simple staging is also characterized by the inclusion of many embedded cues that were spoken by the players themselves. This combination of embedded verbal cues and marginal staging cues clearly distinguishes that text's performance focus. S. Bernard, with only one staging notation for an average of fifty-seven spoken lines, is also characterized by fairly simple, lateral staging. With fewer instructional and mid-speech cues than S. Crepin, and with a similar proportion of visual cues, S. Bernard's performance style appears to have been somewhat more deliberate, with simple staging and longer verbal interventions between actual simulations.

Their incorporation of musical interludes and songs further nuances the different performance styles of these four mystery plays. Marginal references to instrumental music generally occur between narrative segments as performance cues. ]These interludes (pauses or siletes) were customarily performed by minstrels who played selections from their own repertoire. (41) One such interlude in S. Bernard announces, for example, that "corne menestriers" (minstrels play their horns). (42) When characters sing, on the other hand, they often embed the instructional cue in their speech; the pertinent didascalia, in "speech then action" style, subsequently provides the appropriate title. All of S. Laurent's hymns are presented in this fashion. Angels announce that they will sing, for instance, followed by a didascalia specifying that "[a]donc s'en vont chantant en Paradis: 'Sanctorum meritis', et mainent quatre petis enfans en espece d'ames tous nudz" (then they return to Heaven singing "Sanctorum meritis" carrying four little children made up like naked souls). (43)

While S. Crepin again distinguishes itself by failing to incorporate any musical pauses at all, S. Laurent, S. Didier, and S. Bernard each include a number of these interludes as staging organizers. In that capacity, instrumental pauses allow time for players to change costumes or to transition from one staging decor to another. With seventeen pauses each, S. Bernard and S. Laurent share the highest frequency of musical interludes, despite the fact that the latter play is twice as long as the former. S. Bernard's treatment thereof is significant because its lateral staging of only one or two narrative threads relies on pauses to transition, for instance, from the devils' lively discussion to unsuspecting pilgrims who are about to fall into their trap. (44) S. Didier's staging cues, though numerous, specify only eight musical interludes, preferring to carry the narrative forward with frequent, short simulations. Thus, despite the relative complexity of S. Didier, and especially of S. Laurent, instrumental music did not consistently function as markers between segments in these two productions, providing instead only occasional disruptions in the complex narrative threading while allowing time for some nonverbal simulations or announcing staging transitions. This detail too is typical of mystery plays in which several narrative threads are juggled by alternating characters who must often continue to speak throughout staging transitions. The Mistere du siege d'Orleans, for example, alternates its culminating battle sequences between the English and French forces who speak from one camp, quite literally, while players from the opposing camp retrieve their dead on the central battlefield. (45)

On the other hand, all four plays in the present study do incorporate songs in fairly even number, although S. Laurent includes a few more titles than do the three remaining texts. (46) Of the songs called for in each of these four plays, most are hymns cited by their first line, as the preceding example from S. Laurent illustrates. (47) Three of the plays include both "Veni, Creator Spiritus" and "Te Deum laudamus," two utility pieces which are among the most common in mystery plays. (48) S. Bernard again distinguishes itself musically by incorporating a "Te Deum" on three separate occasions to mark a celebratory moment, as in the sequence in which the saint is elected archdeacon. (49) In that text, church leaders incorporate hymns into the simulated narrative, alternating with angels whose songs function both as narrative constructs and as a staging mechanism. (50) All three of S. Crepin's cited hymns ("Te Deum," "Veni creator," "Virgo, Dei genitrix") are intoned by Christians while six unscripted verbal references to angelic song provide time for these beings to travel to and from paradise. In S. Laurent, all but two of the cited hymns are sung by angels. (51) Uncharacteristically, S. Didier's angels do not sing; that play's only hymn is sung twice by church leaders during the same simulated ceremony. (52)

Unlike the hymns cited, popular songs occur in mystery plays only as a specific feature of the narrative itself. S. Didier is the only play in this study-set to include popular songs. A first example is presented textually as three short, interrupted excerpts, which, as Prosper Tarbe claimed more than 140 years ago, could constitute together a single popular song. (53) The second popular selection in S. Didier, entitled "He! Gentil vin de morillon," appears to be a rendition of a bacchanal attributed to Olivier Basselin, with lyrics somewhat modified for the occasion. (54)

IV. Textual References to Staging

Explicit or implicit references to a mystery play's staging requirements can appear both as a spoken and as a written performance feature. Embedded verbal cues, for instance, might include hints about a raised platform that represents paradise or a locked door behind which prisoners are being kept. Written cues to staging may also be found in the text's marginal notations, as in "There should be a church with an altar," or in the play's prologue as it points out to spectators the staging stations they see before them. In the four plays in the present study-set, staging cues once again provide uneven evidence of varying production styles. S. Crepin's embedded cues, which reveal much about the kinds of props needed by its torturers, tell us little about the production's broader staging needs. They do, though, confirm the traditional notion that paradise was constructed somewhat higher than the earthly platform on which the saints were tortured. (55) Numerous times, players announce that heaven is "up there," (1a sus) while from the divine perspective, earthly actions take place "down there" (1a jus or 1a val). Marginal cues, which are very few in number, as already noted, nonetheless reiterate the higher level on which paradise was to be located. (56) In addition, we may infer from the players themselves that a bridge represented the river into which the saints were thrown and that "the city" was offstage. (57) Moreover, there are no spoken or written references in the text to the standard devilish lair or hell mouth, although devils are present to carry off heathens who have gone mad.

The S. Bernard text includes a prologue on Day 2 as well as epilogues which were recited by the meneur du jeu on all three days, but their thematic focus on the church's history provides no staging indications. On the other hand, like S. Crepin's three surviving sessions, without prologues altogether, S. Bernard's embedded and marginal cues do confirm a few staging details. The players' repetition of perception verbs signal the presence on the staging platform(s) of both a "city" and at least one "castle" as well as the imposing "mountain" possessed by demons and on which pilgrims are attacked. Players and didascalias alike confirm that this mountain was a prominent feature, as evidenced by a typical reference in which a character suggests: "Montons a la montaigne, dont / Se sarons qu'il est devenu" (Let's climb the mountain; from there / We'll know what's become of him). (58) Once again, the play's divine beings reiterate that earthly events take place "down there" (la jus). (59) Otherwise, the S. Bernard text remains primarily a souvenir of the production's recitation and songs, bereft of further indications about its staging.

Two salient features differentiate S. Didier and S. Laurent from the two plays discussed in the preceding paragraphs. The first is the fact that their didascalias occur more frequently, as noted, informing their staging styles. The second distinguishing feature is the fact that their prologues also point out both staging stations and their occupants. After a brief reminder about the seriousness of the play's subject matter, S. Laurent's prologue speaker points out in detail, using visual cues, the twelve different permanent staging stations that the spectators see around them. His description clearly defines four scaffolds, beginning with divine and noble characters on the upper level and ending with the least prestigious characters below. In the latter group, he points out the messenger who will be the first player to leave his lowly station for another scaffold at the onset of the play. (60) At the end of the visual list, and at the bottom of the last scaffold, the prologue speaker characteristically names hell and its occupants.

As stated earlier, S. Laurent's marginal notations specify that action is moving from one scaffold ("echafaud") to another. (61) Even more telling, the action begins quite deliberately at the first scaffold identified there; from that scaffold, action continues to the second, then the third and the fourth scaffolds before ultimately returning to the first one, as Runnalls affirms in his examination of S. Laurent. (62) Thus, when the action transitions from the first to the second scaffold, a didascalia notes: "le second eschauffault" (the second scaffold). (63) As characters in the second segment prepare to cede to those in the next segment, another staging notation adds:

   Adonc s'en va devers le maistre descole, et Passevant
   dit devant l'estage du roy de Gaule, et Ancelot descent et
   va emmy les champs.

   (At this point he goes toward the schoolmaster, and while
   Ancelot comes down and wanders about the arena, Pass-Wind
   speaks from in front of the king of Gaul's stage.) (64)

Thus, Ancelot leaves the second scaffold and moves away to deliver his own message while Passevant positions himself to speak before the king of Gaul's stage, that is, at the third scaffold enumerated in the prologue. (65) Other notations specify that players at/on one scaffold should go about their business in silence while those at/on another speak, as in this example: "Adonc s'arme Decius et ses gens sans faire bruit, et dit Passevent a Ypolite" (Then Decius and his men arm themselves without a word, while Pass-Wind says to Hypolite). (66) Further clues about the performance venue confirm the use of multilevel scaffolds: eminent characters must descend from their raised stage while less notable characters must wait "au pie de l'estage de l'empeureur" (at the foot of the emperor's stage). (67) Those who travel or wander must remain "parmi le champ" (within the arena/field), clearly unattached to any of the permanent stations on the scaffolds. (68)

Unlike S. Laurent's detailed description of its characters and their stations, S. Didier's prologue begins with a fairly protracted admonishment and historical lesson. Next, the players themselves parade in order of their rank as the prologue speaker identifies the central feature of the production: the city of Langres itself, "en hault assise, / Plus noble que tous aultres lieux" (prominently situated, / More noble than all other places). (69) Using perception verbs and demonstratives, he points out the city's church and civic leaders; next, a simple laborer named Didier, and finally the Roman emperor and other pagan leaders. Paradise and the hell mouth, while clearly present in the production, ate not mentioned in the prologue. I have suggested elsewhere that S. Didier may have been performed in an open field not far from the fifteenth-century Saint-Didier gate which the text itself incorporates in its final session's translation of the saint's remains. (70) Both embedded and written clues, while plentiful, only underscore the city's lofty location, the city wall, a field, and the aforementioned gate. Also, in Day 3, the players, and perhaps the spectators as well, form a procession from the chapel where the saint's bier is located to that gate and back to what I presume is the field upon which a number of small platforms formed the basis for the nonlocal stations in the play. This might explain why the staging notations limit their references to the players' seating rather than to their stations; it may also explain why several times in the text players who ate inactive simply disappear "en quelque lieu" (somewhere). (71)

V. Conclusion

When Graham Runnalls mused that mystery plays could be divided into two groups, the first being those plays in which the poet's talent is appreciated by modern historians and the second being those in which the fatiste's talent was appreciated in the medieval era, (72) his purpose was to explain how S. Laurent's rather flat poetic style could have enjoyed enough of a theatrical success to be recorded in at least one early edition. That distinction, of course, reiterates the opening premise of the present study: theatrical texts deviate from their literary cousins because they incorporate a physical performance that has primacy over the text itself. That performance has been characterized in modern times as "un spectacle de la participation" (a communal celebration) that brought together players and spectators to create their own meaning. (73) The present analysis reads into the text itself a perceptible echo of what may have characterized at least a fraction of that collective act.

As a result, several different performance styles seem to emerge from this small set of plays. First, previous studies have already identified S. Crepin with a banquet hall or similarly restricted space. (74) The preponderance of embedded instructional and visual cues, as well as the numerous examples of mid-speech salutations, all elements found in S. Crepin's verbal text, would seem to confirm that the performance was intended for a compact staging area occupied by few players and fewer stations. The fact that the only surviving musical interludes are hymns, some of which double as staging mechanisms that would have given angels adequate time to move to and from their raised stage, like the fact that so few written notations are required to clarify the action spatially, all point to what was possibly a frontal stage not unlike the one described in archival notes for a S. Christofle play performed in Paris in 1539-40. (75) Conversely, we know nothing about where and when S. Laurent was performed, but we can assume, as has Runnalls, that it must have been a success. From that text's spoken and written staging cues, it appears that the performance took place in an enclosed arena or theater, perhaps similar to the four scaffolds constructed for Andre de La Vigne's S. Martin or the two-tiered arena in which Jean Fouquet portrays a S. Apollonia performance. (76) Embedded instructional cues in S. Laurent isolate players and their destinations visually, but the absence of mid-speech salutations implies a more protracted sequencing of the narrative. Its use of fairly numerous hymns, concentrated heavily on angelic transitions, might also be related to the time required for those simulations to occur. The play's prologue confirms the vertical and horizontal arrangement of numerous permanent staging stations. In addition, the regularity and specificity of the marginal cues underline the need to arrange the play and its players spatially.

Of the four texts in the present study-set, S. Bernard conceals best its staging secrets. It is not heavily reliant on embedded cues, although they are certainly present. Few mid-speech salutations redirect the action mid-segment; in addition, a relatively small number of staging notations punctuate the spoken text. On the other hand, despite being a comparatively short text, it does incorporate a higher percentage of musical interludes and songs. (77) It is likely, as some critics have suggested, that textual references to "celle maison" (this body) identify S. Bernard with a monastery formerly named Mont-Joux. (78) If that is the case, the play may have been performed in a rectory or similar hall within that complex on a frontal stage with movable props to designate decors and musicians to facilitate the staging arrangement. Finally, S. Didier, with the highest ratio of written notations in its first session, but with a relatively low reliance on embedded cues and mid-speech transitions, seconds the kind of performance venue that made use of gestures and simulations, as well as poetic variety, in a larger staging venue. Langres's play lacks the characteristic use of melody as a manifestation of the divine, focusing instead on the repeated use of protracted sequences in which players, sometimes on horseback, approach and leave disparate decors in an open arena. United in the present study, but divided in the ways in which they have incorporated conventional textual features about staging, S. Crepin, S. Bernard, S. Didier, and S. Laurent appear to represent four different types of performance venue in the late medieval era.

Western Washington University

NOTES

(1) Anne Uberseld, Lire le theatre (Paris: Editions sociales, 1978), 26.

(2) Graham A. Runnalls, "Langue de la parole ou langage du geste? Le Mystere de Saint Laurent," in Langues, codes et conventions de l'ancien theatre, ed. Jean-Pierre Bordier (Paris: Champion, 2002), 121-34 (133).

(3) Mercedes Travieso Ganaza, "Le dialogue comme matrice didascalique," in Langues, codes et conventions, 67-82 (68).

(4) The term mystery play is a conventional term translated from the French mystere, for plays that narrated stories based on authoritative sources.

(5) Two of the most complete post-performance texts, Romans's Mystere des trois doms and Seurre's Mystere de saint Martin, also happen to be commemorative copies.

(6) Peter Happe, "The Macro Plays Revisited," European Medieval Drama 11 (2007): 37-57 (40).

(7) Two typologies proposed in the 1980s made a distinction between the working or production texts and the commemorative or post-production souvenirs of French mystery play manuscripts. See Elizabeth Lalou and Darwin Smith, "Pour une typologie des manuscrits de theatre medieval," Fifteenth-Century Studies 13 (1988): 569-79, and Graham A. Runnall, "Towards a Typology of Medieval French Play Manuscripts," in The Editor and the Text, ed. Philip E. Bennett and Graham A. Runnalls (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 96-113.

(8) See Vicki L. Hamblin, Saints at Play: The Performance Features of French Hagiographic Mystery Plays (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, forthcoming).

(9) Lynda Bourgogne, "La rime mnemonique et la structure du texte dramatique medieval," Le moyen francais 29 (1991): 7-20 (14).

(10) See, for example, Charles C. Ragin, Constructing Social Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge, 1994), and Literature and Social Practice, ed. Philippe Desan, Priscialla P. Ferguson, and Wendy Griswold (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

(11) Le mystere de saint Bernard de Menthon (ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche [Paris: Firmin Didot, 1888]) is held in a private collection; Le mystere de saint Crespin et saint Crespinien (ed. L. Dessalles and P. Chabaille [Paris: Silvestre, 1836]) is in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, nouv. acquis, franc. 2100; La vie et passion de monseigneur sainct Didier, martir et evesque de Lengres (ed. J. Carnandet [Paris: Techener, 1855]; ed. Alain-Julien Surdel [PhD diss., Univerity of Strasbourg 1997]) is in Chaumont's Municipal Library, MS 159; and La vie de monseigneur sainct Laurens par personnaiges (ed. W. Soderhjelm and A. Wallenskold [Helsinki: Societatis litterariae fennicae, 1891]) is in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, res. Yf 122.

(12) This comparison was based on identifying the number of embedded staging cues in the first session of each play relative to the number of spoken lines in that session.

(13) Mystere de saint Crespin et saint Crespinien, ed. Dessalles and Chabaille, 8. I use the term segment to refer to each part of an on-going narrative thread in a play; the "sequencing" of the narrative refers to the organization of narrative threads within the play. See note 36, below. The translation of this and all other citations from the four plays are mine.

(14) La vie de monseigneur sainct Laurens par personnaiges, ed. Soderhjelm and Wallenskold, 167.

(15) S. Laurent, 167-68.

(16) S. Laurent, 168.

(17) La vie et passion de monseigneur sainct Didier, martir et evesque de Lengres, ed. Carnandet, 59-60.

(18) Only occurrences directly linked to staging cues were used in these calculations. In addition to the verbs voir and regarder, the verb apercevoir occurred once. The various forms of modern voici and voila were considered verbal forms. All demonstrative adjectives, pronouns, and particles (ci, la) were included.

(19) Le mystere de saint Bernard de Menthon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, 6-7.

(20) S. Crepin, 40.

(21) Embedded visual cues occur in the first session of each play with the following frequency (on average): S. Crepin, 1 in 31 verses; S. Bernard, 1 in 54 verses; S. Laurent, 1 in 58 verses; S. Didier, 1 in 60 verses.

(22) S. Didier, 95.

(23) As Bourgogne notes, 'Tabsence de la rime mnemonique cree une brisure sur le plan formel, laqeulle est confirmee sur le plan semantique" (12) (the absence of mnemonic rhymes creates a formal break which is affirmed on the semantic level as well). My translation.

(24) S. Bernard, 11.

(25) S. Didier, 142 and 316.

(26) Runnalls, "Langue de la parole," 123. My translation.

(27) A. Lecoy de la Marche, ed., Le mystere de s. Bernard de Menthon, xx.

(28) Ibid.

(29) Graham A. Runnalls, "Le theatre a Paris et dans les Provinces a la fin du moyen age; Le mystere de saint Crespin et saint Crespinien," Moyen age 82 (1976): 517-38 (531).

(30) Runnalls, "Le theatre a Paris," 520. Runnalls notes that the S. Crepin and S. Crepinien was most likely composed some decades before the performances cited in the surviving manuscript in the 1450s.

(31) Prevost's signature appears at the beginning of S. Didier's second session (138).

(32) J. Carnandet, ed., La vie et passion de monseigneur sainct Didier, ii.

(33) While a traditional distinction between heavenly siletes and courtly of popular pauses has been mandated by some critics, in my survey of twenty-eight French hagiographic mystery plays very few retained this distinction. In the plays analyzed in the present study, S. Bernard consistently prefers the term silete for all musical interludes; S. Didier prefers the term pause or pausa, but includes one instance of "pause et silete" (253); and S. Laurent prefers pause.

(34) S. Didier, 120.

(35) Hamblin, Saints at Play, forthcoming.

(36) A narrative thread is generated at one staging station where it develops a verbal narrative involving a set of characters. As they move about the staging platform those characters may interact with characters representing other narrative threads. This activity breaks the threads into alternating of interwoven segments. The organization of multiple threads was no small staging feat. For an analysis of this compositional style, see Pascale Dumont, "Du texte narratif au drame: Codes et conventions d'ordre spatio-temporel dans quelques Miracles de Notre-Dame par personages," in Langues, codes et conventions, 101-20.

(37) Hans-Jurgen Diller, "The Verbal Representation of Space in the English Mystery Plays," Fifteenth-Century Studies 13 (1988): 177-93 (180).

(38) Runnalls, "Langue de la parole," 125. My translation.

(39) Hamblin, Saints at Play, forthcoming.

(40) For a discussion of such signs in S. Crepin and other mystery play manuscripts, see Vicki Hamblin, "The Theatricality of Pre- and Post-Performance French Mystery Play Texts," in Essays on the Mysteries: Texts, Theatricality and Urban Drama, ed. Peter Happe (Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming).

(41) Richard Rastall, The Heavenly Singing: Music in Early English Religious Drama, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996), 1:86.

(42) S. Bernard, 27.

(43) S. Laurent, 270.

(44) S. Bernard, 43.

(45) Le mistere du siege d'Orleans, ed. V. L. Hamblin (Geneva: Droz, 2002), 54.

(46) The number of songs (titled and untitled) in the plays is as follows: S. Crepin, 9; S. Bernard, 9; S. Didier, 8; S. Laurent, 11.

(47) S. Bernard, S. Crepin, and S. Laurent do not refer to any nonliturgical songs, although one hymn ("Vray Dieu," 266) is sung in the vernacular in S. Laurent.

(48) In my survey of twenty-eight French hagiographic mystery plays, "Te Deum," intoned twenty-eight times, and "Veni, Creator," sung on sixteen occasions, were the two most repeated hymns.

(49) S. Bernard, 114.

(50) In S. Bernard, church leaders intone "Te Deum" (82, 114, 153), "Veni creator" (126), and "Veni sancte spiritus" (127) as a regular component in their religious ceremonies. The play's angels sing "Virgo dei genitrix" (137), "Iste confessor Domini sannctus" (173), and an uncited hymn (175).

(51) Christians sing two titles in S. Laurent: "Te Deum" (284) and "Vray Dieu" (266).

(52) Only "Veni creator" is cited twice: S. Didier, 51 and 55.

(53) Prosper Tarbe, Romancero de Champagne: Deuxieme Partie; Chants populaires (Reims: P. Dubois, 1863), 252. I am indebted to Vincent Corrigan for pointing out this reference.

(54) Vincent Corrigan located this popular lyric in Oscar Ludwig Bernhard, Altfranzosische Volkslieder (Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer, 1831), 20.

(55) In Day 4, both saints Sir and Eloi are also housed on a higher level of raised station, since they "descend" in order to communicate with church leaders (S. Crepin, 157).

(56) S. Crepin, 157.

(57) Players speak about the "bridge" from which they will throw the saints, as well as the "stone" they will use to weigh them down (S. Crepin, 64). After this segment in which the water is miraculously warmed and the saints escape unharmed, players state that citizens are following the two brothers as if they were marvels, but the specific segment is not staged. Instead, the brothers return to the platform near the bridge, where the visuatized narrative is reactivated (S. Crepin, 68).

(58) S. Bernard, 140.

(59) S. Bernard, 59. Note: the text was edited without diacritical marks which have no syllabic or vocalic value.

(60) In reference to Passevent, the prologue speaker states: "La est Passevent, leur herault / Qui tantost aura faict ung sault" (There you see Pass-Wind, their messenger / Who will soon have taken the plunge; S. Laurent, 124).

(61) While the term echaufaud may be translated as a horizontal platform or as a vertical scaffold, the hierarchical description in the play's prologue confirms the latter translation as more appropriate.

(62) Runnalls, "Parole et geste," 124. I charted the characters which the prologue identifies with each of four scaffolds then followed their movement in the initial interwoven segments of the narrative. They each travel from their respective stations in the same order in which the scaffolds themselves are identified.

(63) S. Laurent, 127.

(64) S. Laurent, 130.

(65) S. Laurent, 130. The text states: ".III. eschauffault."

(66) S. Laurent, 145.

(67) S. Laurent, 182.

(68) S. Laurent, 257. There are at least fifteen examples of this usage in the text.

(69) S. Didier, 5.

(70) Hamblin, Saints at Play, forthcoming. This suggestion comes from a map of the city found in P. Gras and J. Richard, Histoire de Langres et de ses institutions municipales jusqu'au commencement du XVIe siecle (Dijon: Association Bourguigonne des Societes Savantes, 1955), appendix.

(71) Examples may be found in S. Didier, 28, 225, 249, and 267.

(72) Runnalls, "Parole et geste," 132.

(73) Henri Rey-Flaud, Pour une dramaturgie du moyen age (Paris: Presses universitaires, 1980), 17.

(74) Elisabeth Lalou, "Les cordonniers metteurs en scene des mysteres de saint Crepin et saint Crepinien," Bibliotheque de l'ecole des chartes 143 (1985): 91-115 (101).

(75) Graham A. Runnalls, Le mystere de saint Christofle (Bibliotheque Nationale, Reserve Yf 1606) (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1973), xxviii.

(76) See Grabara A. Runnalls, "The Staging of Andre de La Vigne's Mystere de saint Martin," Treteaux 3 (1981): 68-79, for a description of these scaffolds. Fouquet's miniature is, of course, the subject of some modern debate with regard to its artistic style: Jonathan Beck, "Sainte-Apolline: L'image d'un spectacle," in Spectacle and Image in Renaissance Europe, ed. Andre Lascombes (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 232-42, and its content; Gordon Kipling, "Theatre as Subject and Object in Fouquet's 'Martyrdom of St Apollonia,'" Medieval English Theatre 19 (1997): 26-80; Graham Runnalls, "Jean Fouquet's 'Martyrdom of St Apollonia' and the Medieval French Stage," Medieval English Theatre 19 (1997): 81-100; Gordon Kipling, "Fouquet, St Apollonia, and the Motives of the Miniaturists' Art: A Reply to Graham Runnalls," Medieval English Theatre 19 (1997): 101-20.

(77) The relative number of songs and musical interludes in S. Bernard is quite low when compared with other French mystery plays. Liber beate Barbare, currently being edited by Mario Longtin and Jacques Lemaire, contains approximately 222 pauses and 13 songs; Le livre et mistere du glorieux seigneur et martir saint Adrien, ed. Emile Picot (Macon: Protat Brothers, 1895) includes 70 musical pauses, but only one hymn.

(78) See Paul Aebischer, "Le mystere de Saint-Bernard de Menthon: Une oeuvre litteraire valdotaine?" in Neuf etudes sur le theatre medieval (Geneva: Droz, 1972), 95-116 (104).