THE THEATRICAL TRADITION The French have had a continuous theatrical tradition in the church since the 10th century Easter trope, “Quem Quaeritis.” Liturgical dramas gradually developed into the grand mystères and miracle plays of the 15th and 16th centuries, huge municipal extravaganzas sometimes taking as many as forty days to perform and calling upon the help of hundreds of townspeople. No one knows exactly how or when comic theater developed, but we know that it was immensely popular: the present-day veneration of Jerry Lewis by the French is not an unprecedented phenomenon. The secular counterparts of the above-mentioned religious production numbers were short plays: moralities, farces, sotties and humorous monologues intended more to entertain than uplift. This tradition was probably well-established by about 1400, though most plays cannot be traced before 1450. Once begun, the comic tradition lasted well into the 16th century, when the “new renaissance trends” encouraged more sophisticated (and serious) theater pieces modeled on the ancient Greeks and Romans. THE COMIC PLAYS Moralities could be funny but they were primarily meant to teach, usually pointing up a moral by employing abstract situations and allegorical figures like “Reason,” “Faith,” “Envy” or “Lust.” Most farces were shorter and simpler; pure entertainment; more often stories of human frailty rather than satires on the ills of society. The usual farce plots involved stock comic situations--there is scarcely a faithful wife in all the comic theatrical literature. Country bumpkins and city slickers abounded (think of Jack and the Beanstalk). The sottie, very similar to the farce, distinguished itself by the presence of sots or badins, fools in their traditional dress of bells, pointed hat, asses ears, staff and multi-colored costume. Often the dialogue was short and quick with riddles and puns, punctuated with juggling and acrobatics. Sotties had little plot; perhaps the acting out of a fable or a familiar saying, reminiscent of the modern game of charades. The least pretentious of all the forms of comic theater were the sermons joyeux and humorous monologues, both performed by a single actor. In the former he would parody the regular church sermon by quoting Biblical texts, Latin tags and made-up saints such as Saint Ham, Saint Herring and Saint Sausage. In the monologues he would impersonate many of the people a citizen of the 16th century would meet in daily life-- saucy chambermaids, boasting soldiers, wily charlatans, innocent milkmaids -- a tour-de-force for a skilled actor. THE PLAYERS Throughout the Middle Ages professional entertainers wandered from town to town alone or in small groups; amusing the rabble by doing tricks, telling stories, singing, playing on instruments like the rebec, recorder, hurdy gurdy or jaw harp; showing off their exotic animals (monkeys, bears, marmosets) if they were lucky enough to have them; and possibly performing plays. Regular acting troops seem not to have existed in France until after 1550, though professional actors worked for various nobles and towns as early as 1400. Most plays, however, were written by middle-class playwrights, not nobles, and were intended primarily for the lower and middle classes, though kings and nobles enjoyed them too from time to time.. THE MUSIC Secular plays were enlivened by all kinds of music-- chansons, dances, fanfares, instrumental preludes and interludes, street cries, sacred music and parodies of sacred music. We cannot always determine just where music was heard in the play, though; while occasionally the playwright or director would notate a “pause” or “silete” in the script, more often directions were spoken, not written. By thinking about a musical comedy or a Shakespeare play with incidental music we can come up with many situations that might have lent themselves to music. Music could have accompanied a pantomimed stage action, indicated a change of scene (if no curtain were available), filled in pauses when actors moved around the stage, or announced the entrances and exits of royal personages. Stage characters would have sung while working, walking or rocking their babies; they would have listened to music during stage banquets, and when they were being wooed. We also cannot know exactly what instruments were used for each play, though rebec, viol, lute and recorders, as well as vielle, slide trumpet, drum, pipe and tabor, trombone, organ, harp, tambourine are all mentioned in play descriptions. Great numbers of extra musicians were not needed; often an actor picked up a lute or recorder when it was required and every professional musician doubled on at least three or four different instruments. In addition, almost every play had a chorus, often made up of local amateurs, of angels, witches, townspeople, saints, devils, sprites, or sailors; unaccompanied vocal chansons were the most common (and least expensive) type of theatrical music. THE EXACT PIECES So, we have some idea that music was used in plays; we know where and under what circumstances it might have been employed; and we know what kinds of instruments might have played it. However, we don’t always know for certain exactly which piece of music was performed in which play. Very seldom do penciled-in performance directions specify, “Play Lordault here,” or does the dialogue say, “Why don’t you sing me Baisez moi now?” Reconstructing the musical score of a 16th century French play is a tricky business, mainly because we are not totally familiar with the play’s literary and social context. This makes it difficult to discern, for example, whether a phrase was just a meaningless common expression (like that favorite Marx Brothers tag, “I’ll say she does,”) or meant to evoke a song without having it sung, or actually the lead-in to a musical performance. A man might wake sleeping revelers with “Resveillez vous!” which means “Wake up!” but is also the first line of a whole complex of songs, most of them warning adulterous couples that the husband was returning. Other common expressions which doubled as song incipits were “Il fault d’argent” (“one must have money,”) and, “Gentilz galans” (“gentle gallants”). Our recording includes chansons based on all three phrases. Fortunately, almost 50% of the music mentioned in secular plays has survived, but none of it is found with its corresponding play. Instead the music exists in chanson collections with other pieces quite unrelated to the theater. A scholar must look through the collections with the promising text fragments in the back of his mind, scanning for titles. One scholar has indeed done just that, and this recording is dedicated to Howard Mayer Brown whose pioneering and painstaking work has made available the repertoire we present to you here. Tina Chancey Brown, Howard. Music in the French Secular Theater, 1400-1550. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1963. King, Margaret L. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1993. Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. New York, Cambridge University Press, 1993.