Rabelais's Radical Farce

Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais

E. Bruce Hayes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317072300
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism in Drama
• Index: Literature

In the first extended investigation of the importance of dramatic farce in Rabelais studies, Bruce Hayes makes an important contribution to the understanding of the theater of farce and its literary possibilities. By tracing the development of farce in late medieval and Renaissance comedic theater in comparison to the evolution of farce in Rabelais's work, Hayes distinguishes Rabelais's use of the device from traditional farce. While traditional farce is primarily conservative in its aims, with an emphasis on maintaining the status quo, Rabelais puts farce to radical new uses, making it subversive in his own work. Bruce Hayes examines the use of farce in Pantagruel, Gargantua, and the Tiers and Quart livres, showing how Rabelais recast farce in a humanist context, making it a vehicle for attacking the status quo and posing alternatives to contemporary legal, educational, and theological systems. Rabelais's Radical Farce illustrates the rich possibilities of a genre often considered simplistic and unsophisticated, disclosing how Rabelais in fact introduced both a radical reformulation of farce, and a new form of humanist satire.

PART 1
The World of Farce

Chapter 1
The Ethics and Ethos of Farce

Crimes and Punishments

The primary objective of this chapter is to uncover the system of justice underlying the seemingly gratuitous acts of violence and punishments that abound in farce, while examining the ethical and moral implications that can be inferred from which behaviors are punished in the plays. As a manifestation of so-called popular culture (a culture far from homogeneous), this genre of theater offers fascinating insights into acceptable and unacceptable forms of conduct within a particular, though somewhat varied cultural context. There is, in fact, a rather consistent ethical system underlying the attacks and reprisals that constitute the core element of farce, which includes limits on punishments and rules of engagement.1 Jean-Claude Aubailly has captured the essence of this embedded system of justice contained in the plays, highlighting that victims in farce are typically guilty of some form of démesure, or excessiveness:

La farce, si elle admire la ruse, ne l’admet et ne la prône que lorsqu’elle est justifiée par la démesure de la victime. Le rire de la farce est un rire franc, gardien de la norme … qui plaide en faveur d’une morale du juste milieu–du ‘chacun à sa place’–fondée sur l’acceptation de son sort dans la dignité et la conscience des responsabilités.2

[Farce, if it admires deception, accepts and calls for it only when it is justified by the excessiveness of the victim. The laugh of farce is a sincere laugh, protector of the status quo … which pleads for a happy medium—of everyone in his or her place—founded upon one’s dignified acceptance of his or her lot with an awareness of one’s responsibilities.]

This fundamental ethical framework governing the turbulent action of traditional farce, with its insistence on punishments predicated on a victim’s overstepping prescribed norms, points to the conservative nature of the genre. Investigating the crimes and punishments of farce will illustrate specific correlations between the two; it will become clear that those punished in farce are almost always guilty of excessive behavior. Victims in farce invariably demonstrate some sort of exaggerated appetite, often base appetites such as avidity, gluttony, concupiscence, or the condemnable vice of pride. In farces aimed at a more educated audience, the victim is typically mocked for his or her pretentious aspirations. In all cases, farce’s ethical underpinnings can be described as traditional or conservative, although the genre does not adhere to any conventional Christian ethics or morality: sex, primarily in its illicit varieties, permeates the genre, and lying and cheating are essential to a character’s survival in a dramatic world populated with conmen and hucksters. In farce, naïveté is very much a punishable offense, with no pity shown towards the gullible and the credulous.

Using Aubailly’s term, the crimes of traditional farce can be grouped together under the rubric of démesure. This word covers any action considered immoderate and implies going beyond established limits or transgressing societal norms, violating the “juste milieu.” [“happy medium.”] In examining notions of justice in farce, démesure proves central. It is a term that comes from “a view of the world … as a place of ‘limited good’ where no one can prosper save at someone else’s expense.”3 Each time a punishment occurs in farce, it is meant as a corrective to reestablish an equilibrium which has been disturbed by the victim’s actions (or, in some cases, inaction). As Aubailly explains, farce “se borne à exploiter sur scène toutes les conséquences de ce défaut principal qu’est … la démesure individuelle par excès ou par défaut–par rapport à la norme définie socialement comme justice et équité.”4 [“limits itself to the on-stage exploitation of every consequence of this main flaw, which is … individual immoderation through excess or through failure—in comparison with socially defined norms such as justice and fairness.”] All attacks in farce are the result of the victim’s excessive behavior or unwillingness to conform to expected standards, thus transgressing social norms either par excès [“through excess”] or par défaut. [“through failure.”]

Another important element in considering justice in farce is the hierarchical inversions that occur. Those who are in higher social positions are often portrayed as greedy and willing to take advantage of any unsuspecting individual, and they often become the final victims in farce. There exists a sort of social justice where those who have little to lose and much to gain are usually the ones found triumphing over those who are better off. Characters of a more privileged existence, such as the merchant in the Farce de Maître Pathelin, are usually portrayed as jealous protectors of their possessions, or as greedy opportunists looking to gain even more. For example, had Pathelin been honest and paid the merchant as he had promised, it is the merchant who would have been the thief, since he was obviously overcharging the hapless lawyer for his vaunted fabric.

There are, however, limits imposed on forms of social justice. Characters taken from the three estates, whether they are nobles, clergy, or bourgeois, are always of a rather modest position. As Raymond Lebègue has observed regarding the second estate, while avid priests and lascivious monks abound in farce, “on ne met jamais en scène l’abbé ou l’évêque.”5 [“one never places an abbot or a bishop on stage.”] The same holds true for the other societal castes, with petty nobles, provincial lawyers, and lower members of the bourgeoisie frequently being on the receiving end of farce’s humiliations, while higher members of their social groups remain conspicuously absent.6 And while it is often (but not always) a character of higher social position being punished in farce, it would be erroneous to assert that farce contains any form of radical social critique or that the genre seeks to redress socio-economic inequities. The ethos of farce is fundamentally conservative, and the punishment of excessive behavior serves to reassert the status quo, not to undermine it. It is also important to note that there are no heroes or villains in farce; it is in some respects an amoral universe where roles are constantly reversed, and a trickster in one scenario can quickly become the one duped in another.7 This explains the most common message of farce, “à trompeur, trompeur et demi.”8

There are also specific didactic moments in the plays, instances where a moral is offered that serves as a commentary on, or interpretation of, the play. These pronouncements typically occur after the action of the play has ended, and they serve to guide the audience’s reaction and to state explicitly the meaning of the piece. As Alan Knight has written,

Medieval writers had a penchant for adding explicit moral conclusions to works whose moral implications may have been obscured by too much indirectness. … In order for a playwright to draw a … moral in farce, he must have the actors step outside the dramatic fiction and address the audience directly.9

One of the questions to examine while looking at these didactic moments is how the dramatic context in which they are placed affects the efficacy of the moral. Is there a clear relation between the action and the message that follows, or is there tension between the two? Finally, what do these didactic messages tell the spectator or reader about the overall ethos of the genre?

One of the problems in asserting that one can uncover an ethical and moral framework in farce is that the plays are comprised of essentially interchangeable, even amoral, characters.10 No character functions as a model of moral rectitude, but rather the plays are peopled with petty swindlers and confidence men whose fortunes can be reversed at any moment. The turbulent nature of farce can itself serve to undermine the common moral of “chacun à sa place,” [“everyone in his or her place,”] because farce by definition depends on the kind of movement that eventually leads to the trompeur trompé resolution. The Farce de Maître Pathelin provides the most germane example of this problem, due to its unusual length. It has been argued elsewhere that Pathelin actually consists of three distinct plays, and even that the play represents France’s first comedy,11 a multiplication that shows what is not overtly manifest in more typical farces, namely that the character who punishes an opponent can quickly find himself (victims in farce are almost never women) on the receiving end of a farcical punishment. Thus, at the very least, the concluding moral in a play is precarious in the sense that it typically lacks a positive example to support it.

The ubiquitous moral of farce, “A trompeur, trompeur et demi,” emphasizes the genre’s retributive nature, where punishment comes to anyone who desires excessive gratification or advancement, or who fails to demonstrate the cynicism needed to survive in the world of farce. The peculiar nature of the victim’s punishment is that it comes from a character who, given the chance, will commit the same crimes as the character being punished. In Pathelin, the protagonist capitalizes on the merchant’s excessive greed and gullibility, but is in turn duped by the shepherd Thibault Aignelet. Does this behavioral parity between the punisher and the punished serve to reinforce the moral or to undermine it? In other words, can a genre in which everyone is guilty of something provide an appropriate context for any credible moral pronouncement?

If one of the central messages of farce is “chacun à sa place,” [“everyone in his or her place,”] this is a curious message in some respects, since despite the reestablishment of the status quo that takes place at the conclusion of these plays, farces can only occur when a character is willing to leave his or her place. If everyone remains content with present circumstances, then farce cannot exist. While each act of démesure is punished, the sheer multiplication of punishable acts seems to undermine, at least in part, the message that everyone should remain in his or her place. The other problem with this moral centers on the ability, or rather inability, to maintain the resolutions at the end of the plays. Farce, by the very extreme, abrupt nature of its concluding resolutions, seems to suggest that the next deceptive plot is always waiting to be hatched and that the schemers will never stop scheming. At the very least, there is a pervading pessimism accompanying the moral of “chacun à sa place,” as farce constantly suggests that human nature will never remain contented.

Through an examination of the punishable offenses in farce, coupled with an exploration of the explicitly didactic moments in the plays, it becomes clear that behind the exuberant chaos of the genre, there is in fact an ethical and moral framework that governs the plays. By coming to terms with this ethical structure, we can begin to see that these seemingly simplistic plays are actually a valuable resource for understanding the conservative nature of late medieval popular culture, as well as the inherent tensions of the value system presented in farce. While this analysis will illustrate the traditional and reactionary ethics of the plays, it will also show how an author such as Rabelais recognized the potential for mischief embedded within the genre. The primary settings of farce will guide this investigation: the home, the marketplace, church, and school.

Domestic Turmoil

The anonymous home is the most prevalent setting in farce. Set against these domestic backgrounds is what Barbara Bowen has called “Le ménage et ses soucis,” [“the household and its concerns,”] or, “la sottise et la ruse des deux sexes.”12 [“the folly and craftiness of the war of the sexes.”] Within this context, a host of misdeeds can be delineated, and moral pronouncements abound. In the marital battle of the sexes that comprises much of the corpus of farce (about half of all farces take place in a domestic setting),13 all husbands are overly jealous, inept, naïve, or some combination of these characteristics. Wives can be devious and cunning, sexually insatiable, domineering, and they are almost never punished. This is attributable at least in part to the sexist stereotypes which dominate in the plays. Women are typically portrayed as naturally deceptive, and are therefore much less prone to be caught in the trap of a farce. All of this underscores a profound male insecurity projected in the plays, with the constant fear that women will refuse their subservient position and rebel against the patriarchal order.14

Cheating on one’s spouse is not condemnable in farce; it is both acceptable and inevitable, and the only important rule emphasized in the plays is the need to keep adulterous liaisons a secret. Domestic farces are categorically misogynistic in their characterizations of the sexes; trying to uncover traces of female empowerment in the plays requires great effort and imagination. As Charles Mazouer notes concerning an article by Anne Amari Perry, in which she argued for a progressive interpretation of the Farce du cuvier, “Il faut avoir l’optimisme d’une féministe d’outre-Atlantique pour voir dans cette farce une morale égalitaire entre les époux!”15 [“One must have the optimism of a feminist from the other side of the Atlantic to see in this farce an egalitarian moral!”] Notwithstanding the somewhat chauvinistic tone of Mazouer’s observation, he is essentially right: it is difficult to discover positive attributes or roles accorded to women in the plays, except that their mischievous behavior presents the possibility of female revolt and rebellion in a male-dominated world, what David LaGuardia ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART 1 The World of Farce
• PART 2 Rabelais’s Radical Farce
• Conclusion
• Selected Bibliography
• Index