[In the essay below, Schroeder contends that the prologue of Jeu de Saint Nicolas serves to heighten the humor of the play.]

A recent article on Jean Bodel's Jeu de saint Nicolas¹ suggests that the primacy of the comic in the play forces a re-examination of the function of the so-called "serious" scenes. However, no account is taken of the Prologue and its possible relationship to the Jeu itself. The present paper will attempt to determine its function within the framework of this essentially comic play.

Albert Henry, in the introductory notes to his recent edition, examines the style, vocabulary and syntax of the Prologue and concludes that "… le prologue nous paraît apocryphe et probablement de plusieurs dizaines d'années postérieur au miracle dramatisé".² A dismissal on chronological grounds in no way solves the problem of the Prologue's presence in the MS; the temptation to speculate on its actual effect on the audience remains strong. Other critics either make no mention of the apparent differences between the dialogue and the Prologue, or else note a certain strangeness while passing on to other topics. The exception is Patrick Vincent, who claims that the majority of the critics, tending to focus their attention on the spirit of the crusades and the tavern scenes in the play, fail to recognize that Bodel was primarily interested in dramatizing the Iconia legend. This point of view, says Vincent, is possible only if one ignores the Prologue, or takes it as an "empty formality." Accepting Bodel as the author of the Prologue, he theorizes:

The Prologue is such a deliberate composition that to recognize in it no significance would be to make of Bodel a most inconsistent author. Why would he elaborate a carefully constructed prologue and go to such lengths to make his plot acceptable if it were to be but a pretext for a comèdie de moeurs, relieved by a spectacular crusading scene? We must accept the Prologue as a true introduction to the play and discover in it an implicit poetic aim to be fulfilled in the play depending upon it.³

One must not discount the possibility that the great value of this "carefully constructed prologue" could reside in its deliberately comic misleading of the spectator, thus heightening the humor so important to the play that follows. Leaving aside the unverifiable question of the authorship, let us examine the Prologue as a functional introduction to the play, and specifically to the play as a comic, not necessarily didactic, work.

The question is whether the Prologue in any way hints of the comedy to come, or if it is in complete contradiction to it. A first reading shows that the prêcheur limits himself to those aspects of the play directly touching the legend of Saint Nicolas. In fact, the Prologue tells the people exactly what they might expect to hear: a group of pagans deliberately goad a Christian army into attacking them when they, the Christians, are at a disadvantage and are easily routed; one lone survivor of the slaughter is picked up by the pagans and Saint Nicolas is put to a test; the three thieves are mere mechanical figures, with no history and no future; and the entire incident ends happily with a conventional conversion of the pagans to Christianity.

The play itself, however, presents strange omissions and contradictions, and incidents recounted in the Prologue are here presented from a different point of view. In the very first scene, Auberon announces:

Rois, tès empires ne teuls os
Ne fu, puis que Noeus fist l'arche,
Con est entree en ceste marche.
Par tout keurent ja li fourrier,
Putain et ribaut et houlier
Vont le païs ardant a pourre.
Roys, s'or ne penses de rescourre,
Mise est a perte et a lagan.
(v. 126-133)

This view of the war from the pagan standpoint—a throng of unruly scavengers running unchecked through their country—offers within the play a contrast to the stilted attitudes of the Christian knights. It directly contradicts the version of the Prologue, whose effort to secure the spectator's sympathy for the Christians by picturing them as the poor victims of a savage pagan onslaught is quickly destroyed. What remains is the irony that of the Christian army, only the humble, terrified preudome survives.

Next, Pincedé, Cliquet and Rasoir, who have such important roles in the play, are mentioned as just three nondescript thieves in the Prologue. To the initiated, there seems to be a deliberate holding back of information on the part of the prêcheur. The few verses dedicated to a sketchy description of the theft follow the larrons to where they fall asleep, then the prêcheur drops the subject with:

Ne sai ou, en un abitacle.
Mais pour abregier le miracle,
M'en passe outre, selonc l'escrit.
(v. 59-61)

There is no mention, for example, that the three are back at the tavern, scene of former exploits, and thus the other bits of local color surrounding the thieves in the play itself take on added humor by their very gratuitousness.

Finally, when the pagans are won away from their infidel practices, instead of the Prologue's smooth mass conversion, the stage is occupied by the Emir d'Outre l'arbre sec, who refuses to cooperate except under coercion, and even then sullenly declares that he is still a pagan at heart:

Sains Nicolais, c'est maugré mien
Que je vous auure, et par forche.
De moi n'arés vous fors l'escorche:
Par parole devieng vostre hom,
Mais li creanche est en Mahom.
(v. 1507-1511)

There are other specific incidents where the conflict between the Prologue's account of the legend and the events on the stage presents a humorous or satirical effect. For example, the sequence of events after the theft is lent a deliberately spiritual flavor by the prêcheur, who observes:

Si leur donna Dieus volenté
De dormir: …
(v. 56-57)

This suggests that God has a hand in the affair and makes the thieves sleepy in order to prepare for the events to come. But in the play, the three thieves haul the booty back to the tavern where they promptly start to fight again. When the tavern-keeper settles the dispute temporarily, Rasoir suggests that they all have a nap before dividing the money because they have been up all night, (as the spectator knows, drinking, gambling and stealing). With such a full night behind them, they do not need divine intervention to put them to sleep.

In yet another incident, when the Saint Nicolas of the Prologue comes to recover the treasure, he seems to inspire fear and obedience in the thieves by his very presence. The saint awakens the three:

Et maintenant quant il le virent,
Si furent loeus entalenté
D'esploitier a se volenté;
(v. 88-90)

Henry, in his translation, insists on the immediacy of the thieves' reaction to the very sight of the saint, without a word having been spoken:

… et tout aussitôt qu'ils le virent, ils eurent, à l'instant même, grande envie d'agir selon sa volonté.⁴

In the play, however, Saint Nicolas is not content with intimidating the thieves by his mere presence; he awakens them shouting:

Maufaiteour, Dieu anemi,
Or sus! Trop i avés dormi.
Pendu estes dans nul restor!
(v. 1274-1276)

Pincedé, still dazed with sleep, mutters:

Qu'est chou? Qui nous a esvillié?
Dieus! con je dormoie ore fort!
(v. 1279-1280)

Saint Nicolas, in case his first words were lost in the fog of sleep, repeats himself:

Fil a putain, tout estes mort!
Or l'eure sont les fourques faites,
Car les vies avés fourfaites,
Si vous mon conseil ne creés.
(v. 1281-1284)

The contrast with the more pious version offered by the Prologue is impressive, reinforcing as it does the four-square policeman's role of the saint.

Finally, at the end of the Prologue, the prêcheur takes pains to say that he has just reported, very faithfully, what is going to be presented in the Jeu:

Pour che n'aiés pas grant merveille
Se vous veés aucun affaire;

Car canques vous nous verrés faire
Sera essamples sans douter
Del miracle representer
Ensi con je devisé l'ai.
Del miracle saint Nicolai
Est chis jeus fais et estorés.
(v. 106-113)

The exaggerated insistence on the authenticity of the Prologue as a summary of the play serves to confirm the idea that the Prologue, from the very beginning, has been deliberately presenting a bland, inoffensive version of the Saint Nicolas legend which acts as a foil to what is to follow in the dialogue.

In conclusion, a comparison of the Prologue with the Jeu de saint Nicolas indicates that this Prologue may be interpreted in accordance with an essentially comic reading of the play itself. It would seem that the prêcheur acts as a literary or poetic "straightman" to the play. He presents the ostensible subject in rather conventional terms so that nothing suggests the tone to be assumed later in the play. This juxtaposition of a serious prologue and a lively play heightens the shock of the unexpected novelty of the comic treatment of the Saint Nicolas legend. Of course, the immediate enjoyment of the intentionally bland tone of the Prologue is reserved to those who know the play and who, while hearing this "outline of the plot," can enjoy the joke being played on their fellow spectators.

Notes

¹ Howard S. Robertson, "Structure and Comedy in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas," SP, LXIV (July 1967), 551-563.

²Le "Jeu de Saint Nicolas" de Jehan Bodel (Paris and Brussels, 1965), p. 16.

³The "Jeu de Saint Nicolas" of Jean Bodel of Arras, A Literary Analysis, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages, XLIX (Baltimore, 1954), p. 37.

⁴ Henry, p. 65.