Tag Archives: medieval drama

A Farce Bibliography, Part 2

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Musings, Farces, French Farces

Continuing from our last #FridayFarces, here is the second installation of our farce director’s lengthy reading list!

If last week wasn’t enough book list for you, here is the second half, which includes most, though possibly not all, of the editions which I consulted in trying to carve out our translation. I don’t assume you’d want to read all of these, or possibly any, but I have once again put asterisks by those books that were especially helpful in getting my head around this project, and at the bottom you’ll find a list of editions that were consulted in preparing our translation. I sincerely hope that our plays will have a similar effect on you that they did on us: a kindling of curiosity, a window that beckons towards you and whispers, “I want to know more about this.”

Jacob, P.L. Recueil de Farces, Soties et Moralites du Quinzieme Siecle. (1859) Adolphe Delahays: Paris.

** Knight, Alan E. Aspects of Genre in the Late Medieval French Drama. (1983) Manchester University Press: Manchester. 

Knight, Alan E. “The Condemnation of Pleasure in Late Medieval French Morality Plays”, The French Review, Vol. 57 No. 1 (1983), pp. 1-9.

Knight, Alan E. “The Medieval Theatre of the Absurd”, PMLA, Vol. 86, No. 2 (1971), pp. 183-189.

Koopmans, Jelle & Darwin Smith. “Un Théâtre ‘Français’ du Moyen Âge?”, Mèdièvales, No. 59 (2010), pp. 5-16.

Koopmans, Jelle. “La farce, genre noble aux prises avec la facètie?”, Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, Vol. 32 (2016), pp. 147-163.

Kramer, Femke. “How to Deal With Farces?” Medieval English Theatre, Vol. 21 (1999), pp. 66-78.

Langle, Paul Fleuriot de. Les sources du comique dan “Maître pathelin”. (1926), Librairie du Roi René: Angers, France.

Lejeune, Rita. “Pour Quel Public ‘La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin’ A-T-Elle Été Rédigée?”, Romania Vol. 82 No. 328 (1961), pp. 482-521.

Lemercier, P. “Les Éléments Juridiques de ‘Pathelin’ et la Localisation de l’oeuvre”, Romania vol. 73 No. 290 (2) (1952), pp. 200-226.

Lewicka, H. “Pour la Localisation de la Farce de M e Pathelin”, Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 24 No. 2 (1962), pp. 273-281.

Maddox, Donald. “The Morphology of Mischief in ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, L’Esprit Créateur, Vol. 18 No. 3 (1978), pp. 55-68.

Maddox, Donald. The Semiotics of Deceit: the Pathelin Era. (1984) Associated University Presses: Lewisburg, PA and London.

Manzour, Charles. “Vingt ans de recherches sur le théâtre du xvie siècle: deuxième partie: le théâtre comique, les genres nouveaux, les spectacles de cour, le théâtre scolaire”, Nouvelle Revue du XVIe Siécle, Vol. 17 No. 2 (1999), pp. 301-318.

Maskett, David. “The Aesthetics of Farce: ‘La Jalousie du Barbouillé”, The Modern Language review, Vol. 29 No. 3 (1997), pp. 581-589.

Meyerhold, Vsevolod & Nora Beeson. “Farce”, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 4 No. 1 (1959), pp. 139-149.

Nitzie, William A. & Preston Dargan. A History of French Literature. (1938) Holt, Rinehart & Winston: New York.

Norland, Howard B. “Formalizing English Farce: Johan Johan & Its French Connection”, Comparative Drama (1983), pp. 141-152.

Oliver, Thomas Edward. “Some Analogues of Maistre Pierre Pathelin”, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 22 No. 86 (1909), pp. 395-430.

Peters, Edward et al. “A Feast of Law: A Symposium on the Teaching of Medieval Legal History”, The History Teacher, Vol. 22 No. 1 (1988), pp. 7-31.

Philipot, Emmanuel. “Remarques et Conjectures sur le Texte de ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, Romania, Vol. 56 No. 224 (1930), pp. 558-584.

Picot, Émile. Recueil Général des Sotties (3 vols.). (1968) Librairie de Firmin Didot et Cie: Paris.

Pinet, Christopher. “French Farce: Printing, Dissemination and Readership from 1500-1560”, Renaissance and Reformation, Vol. 3 No. 2 (1979), pp. 111-132.

Redmond, James, ed. Farce. (1988) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Roques, Mario. “Notes sur ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin’: I: Manger de l’Oie”, Romania, Vol. 57 No. 228 (1931), pp. 548-560.

Roy, Bruno. “Quand les Pathelin Achètent du Drap”, Médiévales, No. 29 (1995), pp. 9-22.

Schaumburg, K., et al. La Farce de Patelin et Ses Imitations. (1889) C. Klincksieck: Paris.

Schoell, Konrad. “Humour in Farce, Sotie and Fastnachtspiel“, European Medieval Drama, No. 4 (2000), pp. 9-22.

Schreiber, Cècile. “L’Univers compartimenté du théâtre médiéval”, The French Review, Vol. 41 No. 4 (1968), pp. 468-478.

Schumacher, Joseph. Studien Zur Farce Pathelin. (1911) C. Hinstorff: Rostock, Germany.

Segre, Cesare & John Meddemmen. “Maistre Pathelin: Manipulation of Topics and Epistemic Lability”, Poetics Today, Vol. 5 No. 3 (1984), pp. 563-583.

Small, Graeme. Late Medieval France. (2009) Palgrave Macmillan: New York.

Smith, Darwin. “About French Vernacular Traditions: Medieval Roots of Modern Theatre Practices”, Journal of Early Modern Studies, No. 8 (2019), pp. 33-67.

Smith, Darwin. Maistre Pierre Pathelin: Le Miroir d’Orgueil. (2002) Tarabuste: Saint-Benoit-du-Sault.

Stephenson, Robert C. “Farce as Method”, The Tulane Drama Review, Vol. 5 No. 2 (1960), pp. 85-93.

Symes, Carol. “The Appearance of Early Vernacular Plays: Forms, Functions, and the Future of Medieval Theatre”, Speculum Vol. 77 No. 3 (2002), pp. 778-831.

Urwin, Kenneth. “Pathelin ‘Pendable'”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 42 No. 3 (1947), pp. 359-361.

Watkins, John H. “The Date of the ‘Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (1942), pp. 485-487.

EDITIONS

Allen, John. Three Medieval Plays. (1953) Heinemann Educational Books: London.

Bowen, Barbara C. Four Farces. (1967) Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Champion, Richard T. Maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1970) Librairie Honore Champion: Paris.

Coustelier, Antoine Urbain. La farce de maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1723) Antoine-Urbain Coustelier: Paris.

Dondo, Mathurin. Pathelin et Autres Pièces. (1924) D.C. Heath & Company: Boston.

Dufournet, Jean. La Farce de Maître Pierre. (1986) Flammarion: Paris.

Eliot, Samuel A. (ed.). Little Theatre Classics, Vol. 2. (1920) Little, Brown & Company: Boston.

Enders, Jody. Trial by Farce. (2023) University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

Faivre, Bernard. Les Farces Moyen Age et Renaissance, Vol. 1. (1997) Imprimerie Nationale: [unknown].

Fournier, Edouard. La Vraie Farce de Matire Pathelin. (1881) E. Dentu: Paris.

Frappier, Jean & A.M. Gossart. Le Theatre Comique au Moyen Age. (1935) Larousse: Paris.

Gassies, G. Anthologie du Théatre Français du Moyen Age. (1925) Librairie Delagrave: Paris.

Hankiss, János. Farce Nouvelle. (1925) JHE Heitz, GE Stechert & Co.: New York.

Harden, A. Robert. Trois Pièces Médiévales. (1967) Meredith Publishing Co.: New York.

Holbrook, Richard T. Master Pierre Pathelin. (1914) Walter H. Baker & Co: Boston.

Holbrook, Richard. The Farce of Master Pierre Patelin. (1905) Riverside Press: Cambridge, MA.

Jacob, P.L. La Farce de Maitre Pathelin. (1876) Librairie des Bibliophiles: Paris.

Jagendorf, Moritz. The Farce of the Worthy Master Pierre Patelin. (1949) Walter H. Baker Co.: Boston, MA. 

Jodogne, Omer. Maître Pierre Pathelin. (1983) Peeters: Louvain, Belgium.

Leteissier, Anne. La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin. (2001) Magnard: Paris.

Malaunoy, Marion de. Maistre Pierre Pathelin: Hystorie, Reproduction en Fac-smile. (1904) Librairie de Firmin Didot Etc.: Paris.

Marin, Fanny. La Farce de Maître Pathelin. (2000) Hachette Livre: Paris.

Pickford, C.E. La Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin. (1967) Bordas: Paris.

Picot, Guillaume. La Farce de Maistre Pathelin. (1972) Librairie Larousse: Paris.

Relonde, Maurice. The Farce of the Worthy Master Pierre Patelin, the Lawyer. (1917) R.G. Badger: Boston.

Robert-Busquet, L. Farces du Moyen Age. (1942) Lanore: Paris.

Snook, Lee Owen. The Fourth Yearbook of Short Plays. (1938) Row, Peterson & Co.: Evanston, IL.

Tissier, André. Farces du Moyen Age. (1984) Flammarion: Paris.

Unknown. The Village Lawyer. (1809) D. Longworth: New York. 

A Farce Bibliography, Part 1

Posted on by under Academic Curiosity, Farces, French Farces

If you’re wondering what we’ve read behind the scenes for the French farces and for our #FarcesFriday writings, here’s the first part of the director’s bibliography.

I went into this project knowing extremely little about farce from any era, so this is a longer reading list than usual (and it actually isn’t totally comprehensive; many other things were read as well). I don’t assume you’d ever want to read quite this much about them- though I hope you’ll find something that intrigues you!- so I’ve put asterisks by those titles which were particularly helpful. I’d especially like to highlight the wonderful anthologies by Jody Enders, which even the most casual reader will find entertaining rather than academic, though they have a deeply erudite foundation. They were the inspiration for this project, and while we have taken a different approach to adapting and translating the plays, they show a unique approach to bringing plays which were very much a reflection of their own time, into our own era. On to the books…..

Arden, Heather. Fools’ Plays. (1980) Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Badawi, Abdurrahman. “Influences Islamiques sur la littérature française a l’époque classique”, Studia Islamica, No. 45 (1977), pp. 5-25.

Bazin, François Emmanuel Joseph. Matire Pathelin, opéra comique en un acte. (1879) Léon Escudier: Paris.

Beam, Sara. Laughing Matters. (2007) Cornell University Press: Ithaca & London.

Beck, Jonathan. Théatre et propagande aux débuts de la Réforme. (1986) Editions Slatkine: Geneva, Paris. 

Bentley, Eric. The Life of The Drama. (1964) Applause Theatre Books: NY.

Bermel, Albert. Farce: a History from Aristophanes to Woody Allen. (1990) Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale & Edwardsville.

Bloch, Marc. French Rural History. (1966) University of California Press: Berkeley & Los Angeles.

Bloch, R. Howard. “Medieval Misogyny”, Representations, No. 20 (1987), pp. 1-24

Bowen, Barbara C. “Metaphorical Obscenity in French Farce, 1460-1560”, Comparative Drama, 1977, pp. 331-344.

Brown, Arthur. “Folklore Elements in the Medieval Drama”, Folklore, Vol. 63 No. 2, (1952), pp. 65-78.

Brun, Laurent. “French Studies: Late Medieval Literature”, The Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 76 (2016), pp. 14-34.

Campbell, Josie P. “Farce as Function in the Wakefield Shepherds’ Plays”, The Chaucer Review Vol. 14 No. 4 (1980), pp. 336-343.

Cannings, Barbara. “Towards a Definition of Farces as a Literary ‘Genre’”, The Modern Language Review, Vol. 56 No. 4 (1961), pp. 558-560.

Caputi, Anthony. Buffo: the Genius of Vulgar Comedy. (1978) Wayne State Detroit Press: Detroit.

Cazalas, E. “Où et Quand se Passe l’Action de ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin’?”, Romania Vol. 57 No. 228 (1931), pp. 573-577.

Chase, Carol J. & Marie-Sol Ortolá. “The Ideology of Deception in ‘La Farce de Maistre Pathelin'”, Modern Language Studies, Vol. 16 No. 3 (1986), pp. 134-148.

Chevaldin, L.E. Les jargons de la farce de Pathelin. (1903) A. Fontemoing: Paris.

Conroy, Peter. “Old and New in French Medieval Farce”, Romance Notes, Vol. 13 No. 2 (1971), pp. 336-343.

Cons, Louis. “L’Auteur de la Farce de Maistre Pathelin”, Revue du Seizième siècle, (1913), pp. 473-476.

Cons, Louis. “L’ L’Auteur de la Farce de Maistre Pathelin”. (1926) Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey.

Crist, Larry S. “Pathelinian Semiotics: Elements for an Analysis of ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, L’Esprit Créaeur, Vol. 18 No. 3, (1978), pp. 69-81.

Cunningham, W.R. “The Date of the ‘Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles'”, Modern Language Review, Vol. 38 No. 3 (p. 250).

Dane, Joseph. Res/Verba. (1985) Brill: Leiden.

Davidson, Clifford, ed. Fools and Folly. (1996) medieval Institute Publications: Kalamazoo, MI.

*** Davis, Jessica Milner. Farce. 2003) Transaction: New Brunswick, NJ.

Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society & Culture in Early Modern France. (1975) Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA.

Dean, Joan F. “Joe Orton and the Redefinition of Farce”, Theatre Journal, Vol. 34 No. 4 (1982), pp. 481-492.

Devereux, George. “Ethnopsychological Aspects of the Terms ‘Deaf’ or ‘Dumb'”, Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 37 No. 2 (1964).

Diller, Hans-Jurgen. “Laughter in Medieval English Drama: a Critique of Modernizing & Historical Analyses”, Comparative Drama, Vol. 36 No. 1/2 (2002), pp. 1-19.

Droz, E. “L’Illustration des Premières Éditions Parisiennes de la Farce de Pathelin”, Humanisme et Renaissance, 1 No. 1/4 (1934), pp. 145-150.

Dunn, E. Catherine. “The Farced Epistle as Dramatic Form in the Twelfth Century Renaissance”, Comparative Drama(1995), pp. 363-381.

Dutton, Kenneth R. “Farce/Farts: Divergent Styles of Comedy in Medieval France.” Stylistyka, Vol. 10 (2005), pp. 351-361.

Enders, Jody. “Allegory Plays”, Studies in English Literature Vol. 55 No. 2 (2015), pp. 447-464.

*** Enders, Jody. The Farce of the Fart & Other Ribaldries. (2011) University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.

*** Enders, Jody. Holy Deadlock. (2017) University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.

*** Enders, Jody. Immaculate Deception. (2022) University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.

*** Enders, Jody. Trial by Farce. (2023) University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor.

Evans, Joan. Life in Medieval France. (1989) Lonsdale & Bartholomew Ltd: Leicester.

Famiglietti, R.C. Tales of the Marriage Bed from Medieval France (1300-1500). (1992) Picardy Press: Providence, RI.

Field, W.H.F. “The Picard Origin of the Name ‘Pathelin'”, Modern Philology, Vol. 65, No. 4 (1968), pp. 362-365.

Frank, Grace. The Medieval French Drama. (1954) Clarendon Press: Oxford.

Frank, Grace. “Pathelin”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 56 No. 1 (1941), pp. 42-47.

Frappier, Jean & A.M. Gossart. Le Theatre Comique au Moyen Age. (1935) Larousse: Paris.

Ganderax, Louis. “Revue Dramatique”, Revue des Deux Mondes (1829-1971), Vol. 46 No. 3 (1881), pp. 694-704.

Guynn, Noah D. “A Justice to Come: The Role of Ethics in la Farce de Maistre Pierre Pathelin”, Theatre Survey, pp. 13-31.

Guynn, Noah D. Pure Filth: Ethics, Politics, & Religion in Early French Farce. (2020) University of Pennsylvania Press: Philadelphia.

Haug, Hélène. “‘Maistre Pierre de Hurion, Agille Imitateur’: Bilan sur les Auteurs Actifs á la Cour de René d’Anjou (1434-1480)”, Romania, Vol. 131 No. 521 (2013), pp. 130-151.

*** Harvey, Howard Graham. The Theatre of the Basoche. (1969) Harvard University Press: NY

Holbrook, Richard. Etude sur Pathelin. (1965), Elliott Monographs, reprint by Kraus Reprint Corporation: NY.

Holbrook, Richard. “Exorcism with a Stole”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 19 No. 8 (1904), pp. 235-237.

Holbrook, Richard. “The Harvard Manuscript of the Farce of Maistre Pierre Pathelin and Pathelin’s Jargons”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 20 No. 1 (1905), pp. 5-9.

Holbrook, Richard. “Le Plus Ancien Manuscrit Connu de ‘Pathelin'”, Romania, Vol. 46 No. 181 (1920), pp. 84-108.

Holbrook, Richard. “Pour le Commentaire de ‘Maistre Pierre Pathelin'”, Romania, Vol. 54, No. 213 (1928), pp. 66-98.

Holmes, Urban T. Jr. “Pathelin, 1519-1522”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 55 No. 2 (1940), pp. 106-108.

Howe, Irving. “Farce and Fiction”, The Threepenny Review, No. 43 (1990), pp. 5-6.

Hue, Denis & Darwin Smith. Maistre Pierre Pathelin, Lectures et contextes. (2000) Presses Universitaires de Rennes: Rennes, France.

Hughes, Leo. A Century of English Farce. (1956) Princeton University Press.

Hughes, Leo. “The Early Career of ‘Farce’ in the Theatrical Vocabulary”, Studies in English, Vol. 20 (1940), pp. 82-95.

On the Joys of Auditions

Posted on by under Musings, Mystery Plays, York Mystery Plays 2026

After a busy week of auditions, it’s #MysteryPlayMonday! Our show’s director looks back on what made this such an enjoyable process.

It was auditions week here at HIDden, a time of equal parts stress and delight. This week, it’s been more the delight than the stress.

I’ve written previously about the fact that auditions are one of my least favourite parts of directing, because it’s such an imperfect process, but one where a casting mistake can lead to real problems for a production, not to mention distress to all involved. But auditions can also be really brilliant, and I thought today would be a good chance to talk about what’s been so amazing about them.

First of all, new people! Despite being a very shy person by nature, I actually really love getting to know new people, and actors are some of the most delightful folks in the world. They bring such diverse backgrounds and interests to a project, gifts which shape a production in large and small ways that you can’t imagine until they’re there in front of you. No two people will approach a character in the same way. Actors’ interests tend to be wide-ranging, maybe because you never know what aspect you’ll need to portray a character somewhere down the road; this also tends to make them natural psychologists or sociologists, interested in people and their quirks, the way their minds work, the way that small and large decisions can impact a character. That makes them fascinating people to talk to, and I come away from auditions feeling unusually positive about humanity in general, that if everyone is like the actors I’ve spent the week meeting, then people are more intelligent and insightful than I generally admit. 

I learn from them in a way that can change the shape of how I see the characters and the play. I’m not saying even the most brilliant audition would make me radically overturn the basic concept of the show, but in almost every individual audition, there was a moment where a lightbulb went off in my head. Maybe it was “oh, that line, that emphasis really gives God an extra nuance that’s fascinating!” or a particular small gesture that makes a demon seem particularly creepy and menacing that would be worth incorporating into their choreography. Not all ideas will make it into the final production, and not all interpretations will fit into the overall vision for the play, but the ideas that come to the table get considered and played with and that process refines it as a whole. My auditions notes have lots of scribbling in the margins about ideas that have been generated by the way audition pieces were presented.

The actors are the engine that drives the play in a very literal sense, but this is also true in a more subtle way. Actors at auditions give the process an injection of enthusiasm and excitement. This is even more pronounced with something like the Mystery Plays, which is a passion project for everyone involved. With all that goes on behind the scenes from a production end, it’s easy to get exhausted- endless rounds of design and re-design, meeting after meeting after meeting, hiring things and sourcing material and filling out paperwork and policy and and and… Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy 99% of the whole theatrical process, but even what you love can be exhausting. Meeting the actors in auditions is like a delightful caffeine injection, a much-needed influx of pure joy, and a reminder of how fortunate we are to be involved in a production that is almost entirely unique in the world. 

Enthusiasm and delight are emotional factors that auditions reintroduce at a much-needed juncture, but there is also an intellectual component to this. They appreciate the historicity of the Mystery Plays just as much as we do, and that in turn reminds me: this is their moment of immortality, of being a part of a tradition that started more than six hundred years ago. I owe it to them to give them the best circumstances for performing, to help them creature a performance worthy of that place in history. I often ponder- many of them will have heard me pose the question- what people will write about ourmystery plays in five hundred years, just the way I spend time thinking about the experience for our fifteenth-century forebearers. (“They won’t be able to say much, everything will have been digital and lost,” is a response I hear quite often, which is a conversation my friends in academia often entertain as well.) I am never unaware that we are, as the title of Margaret Rogerson’s book about the modern York plays says, “playing a part in history”, but at auditions I become extra conscious that what I owe to history comes through the actors, so those actors need the very best work that I can give, so that they in turn can do theirs.

In writing this and reflecting on the week, and what comes next, I realise that it’s not actually auditions I dislike at all, it’s casting. Making decisions about who will play what, knowing that I have more good people than big roles, and that some people will inevitably not get the part they would have preferred. That’s the part that’s stressful, both because it doesn’t feel great to disappoint anyone, and because it’s where mistakes are costly. But the auditions themselves? They were pretty damn fun! And now we have a whole team of new people to get to know, work with, and share in the process of creating something exciting for our contribution to the history of York. Yeah, that’s a pretty good week in the office, by any measure.

Pathelin on the Web

Posted on by under Drama, Farces, Historic, Musings

It’s #FarcesFriday! This week our Farces’ director searches the internet for productions of Pathelin, to see how widely it has travelled and how many different ways the play has been performed.

I have a very strict rule about not watching productions of a play I’m working on- I don’t want my own ideas about it, and that of my collaborators, to get hung up by someone else’s concepts. Sometimes, once you’ve seen something, as the saying goes you can’t unsee it. But I’m still curious, and being so far down our farces rabbit hole, I decided it was okay to be at least a little bit nosy, so I started looking up Master Pierre Pathelin online. What kind of online presence did the play have?

In terms of images, book covers from various editions are what come up the most frequently, but a dive into Wikimedia Commons, of all places, yielded rather more interesting fruit. (I’m pinning these to a new Pinterest board, if you’re curious to see them.) The woodcut prints which accompany some editions of the text are the most frequent images that aren’t a volume cover. They portray moments such as Pierre talking to his wife Guillemette, “buying” cloth from Guillaume, and the trial scene before the Judge- in short, the major scenes from the play. There are a couple sketches of Victorian actors portraying some of the characters, which look as if they may have been intended for publication, perhaps in a magazine or newspaper devoted to the theatre, as well as an advertising cartoon for the same production. There are photos from a late Victorian production which remind one that the lines between melodrama, pantomime, and farce are blurry. Available for perusal, too, is the music and libretto for an operatic version of the play (as well as photographs which suggest it was translated and staged in other languages, outside of France). Pathelin, this tells us, didn’t just spawn sequels, but adaptation into other art forms as well.

As a beloved- and easy-to-stage- piece of French dramatic history, it’s not surprising to find Pathelin well represented on YouTube. You can watch primary school-aged children enacting scenes, which surprised me as I would have thought the comedy was a little bit more sophisticated than the average nine- or ten-year old would enjoy. High school drama groups also perform it, as do the more expected university students and professional companies. There’s one version where a family decided to have some fun with their video camera and record themselves doing scenes from the play in their own home! The majority of the online videos show performances in French, including performances from classes who are learning French as a second language. And not all those which are linguistically French are nationally French: the National Theatre of Senegal has performed Pathelin and put it online. I found at least one iteration in Portuguese, as well as a black-and-white film version, professionally made in 1961, translated into Danish, and another iteration which, while possibly still performed in French, was presented in what was then known as Yugoslavia. 

What is the takeaway from this online Pathelin blitz? Well, first, it’s simply evidence that those who know the play have always found it entirely entertaining and worth staging; it’s not simply a medieval relic known only to footnote-grubbing academics, it’s a play that has been performed, at least occasionally, across many centuries and in many countries. It’s also far better known to the French than the English, which is fair- the original is in their language- but also a bit of a shame, because there is nothing about the play that is so specific, culturally or linguistically, that it can’t be enjoyed equally in translation. (This is why it still felt right for us at HIDden- it’s a historic drama that in our wider culture isn’t especially well known, though it has every right to be!) And, indeed, the variety of countries where it appears in even these limited records indicate that its basic ideas and humour transcend borders and cultural differences.

Another interesting observation is that, if we may go by the costumes, it’s almost always staged very clearly as medieval. (The interesting exception is one illustration that places the characters in Georgian dress. Dating from the mid nineteenth century, their choice is unusual in terms of choosing to present a historical version of Pathelin, but one set in a different time than its origins.) What I find curious about this adherence to medieval dress is that the play isn’t socompletely grounded in medieval circumstances that it must be medieval to make sense. YouTube is, of course, a limited sample, and I feel very confident in assuming that there have been “modern dress” Pathelins, with the lawyers in suits and carrying briefcases. But it doesn’t seem to be a particularly common choice. Contrast this with productions of Shakespeare’s plays, which have probably spent more time out of their own period than in. Why do some plays get locked into a particular time period while others, with no more or less internal requirement for being period-specific, don’t? I don’t actually know! But I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Even the limited data set which is this brief internet search speaks to the durability of the play. Across centuries, languages, and borders, the tale of a trickster lawyer and the people who try to cheat him in turn is universally appealing. Do other cultures have lawyer jokes? Pathelin’s popularity says yes! The next question is why, when it’s made it to such diverse places as Denmark and Yugoslavia, it’s still relatively unknown in the UK. This is indeed a mystery. At least we can hope that, by the middle of May, at least a few more people in York will have “met” this delightful text (along with its far more obscure but equally funny farce sibling, The Washtub) and joined the many who, around the world and across the years, have found delight in the antics of Pierre and his fellows!