SOURCE: "Structure and Comedy in Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXIV, No. 4, July, 1976, pp. 551-63.

[In the essay below, Robertson refutes earlier interpretations of Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas, contending that the focus of the play is its comic scenes, not religion or the crusades.]

This paper will present some obtrusive aspects of the structure of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas determined from a detailed analysis of the play. The distribution of the alternating serious and comic scenes (according to their subject matter and setting) reveals that comedy is the central interest of the play, while the so-called serious epic and religious materials—or, to put it more broadly, the Iconia features—are simply part of the frame-work in which the comedy operates. A distinction will be drawn between the principal human and comic interest of the play (hitherto referred to as "réalité arrageoise") and the ostensible plot: the theft and miraculous restitution in a framework of crusading warfare. Our conclusions will draw out the implications of the juxtaposition of these two apparently opposing themes. The characters of the play are found to be distributed along a spectrum running from Christian to pagan which is further complicated by being abstract and ideal at both ends while the center deals with the problems and values of human beings. Our examination will suggest that the dualism "comic-serious" or "comic-epic" or (even less) "local interest-epic and religious idealism"¹ is too simple to account for the above-mentioned alternation and the spectrum of characters and interests which we shall demonstrate. It is hoped that this analysis will provide a solid and reliable foundation for future more detailed interpretations of the play.

Recent studies of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas² and the latest and best edition³ have shown awareness of some of these problems, but nowhere has a sufficient detailed and accurate examination of the play been made to permit an objective interpretation of the structure. The principal critical difficulties have revolved around the alternation of comic or tavern scenes with those of a so-called "epic" or religious nature, the presence of seemingly disparate materials in what purports to be a miracle play, and the real function of Saint Nicolas in the religious fabric of the play. Mr. Vincent presents the simplest possible historical interpretation:

[Bodel] achieved, for all the apparent disparity and incongruity of its component parts, a work of transcendant unity, an artistic expression of the attitude of the common men of the twelfth century towards the active and familiar Saint Nicholas.⁴

We must reject this equation of literature to historical belief along with the following attempt to explain the complexities of the play by an historical statement:

The crux of the answer to those who speak of incongruities in the Jeu, the juxtaposition of lofty and low, spiritual and material, exotic and familiar, serious and comic, lies then in the attitude of the common man of the medieval city to his saints.⁵

In rejecting this historicism, we agree with the statement of Mr. Adler which makes a vital distinction here:

A juger par leurs manières et par la façon dont ils s'expriment, ces types de taverne semblent campés en pleine réalité arrageoise. Mais il ne faut pas s'y tromper. Le rôle des voleurs, piliers de taverne, constitute une illustration frappante de la distinction qu'il faut faire entre la réalité historique et l'image que nous en donne un poète.⁶

M. Foulon's observation that "la pièce est, en même temps, ou tour à tour, sublime et comique,"⁷ leaves us with an unresolved paradoxical dualism which he does not discuss. M. Henry approaches the problem more directly in saying "on a fait tort a son miracle en parlant sans cesse de mélange de tragique et de comique";⁸ however, he complicates his line of investigation by adding "il faut le juger non pas tellement sur son contenu—dont on force fatalement les disparates apparentes—mais en se plaçant davantage sur le plan de l'écriture et sur celui de l'agencement scénique et des effets proprement dramatiques."⁹ However, this seems to be an evasion of the central problem by admitting a division between form and content which is as unclear as such divisions usually are.

On the more strictly methodological level, we shall ignore in this study the historical intentionalism raised by M. Foulon—"Nous ne devons pas juger les écrivains du moyen-âge avec les critères qui, plus tard, ont été en usage parmi nos écrivains modernes"¹⁰—in favor of a more direct method mentioned by M. Henry: "Ce qui compte, c'est beaucoup moins ce qu'un auteur a repris que ce qu'il a fait de ses emprunts et réminiscences."¹¹ We shall seek to examine "ce qu'il a fait" by making precise statements about the literary text as it appears in the valuable edition of M. Henry.¹²

… [The play can be divided] into scenes of "serious" and "sublime" nature (crusade, religion, conversion) and scenes of comedy and human interest (tavern scenes, drink, gambling, quarreling, theft, etc.), the latter taking place in the street and the tavern except for the moment of the theft, and the former taking place elsewhere.…

The play thus divides into three "acts" of 587, 596 and 350 lines respectively. The divisions at vv. 495 and 1015 represent M. Foulon's division of the play into three "acts." The first 250 lines (including 114 lines of the Prologue) take place at the first "mansion" and deal with the news of the war, the consultation of the god Tervagan and the despatching of the courier Auberon. The next alternating section or "scene" (vv. 251-314) takes place in the street and the tavern between Auberon, Cliquet and the innkeeper in an atmosphere of daily tavern business, gambling and drinking. As M. Foulon has pointed out,¹³ this scene serves as a preparation for the main tavern scene to follow; however, it performs this function by serving as a relief during the introduction of the characters and the establishment of the ostensible plot of war and defeat, thus setting up early the juxtaposition of the comic interest and the crusading-religious atmosphere. This juxtaposition places any interpretation of the war as serious in jeopardy, as the "swift" Auberon occupies the sixty-four lines (vv. 251-314) between the proclamation of the ban and his mission with drinking and gaming in the tavern. (In the second "act," specifically vv. 594-641, the juxtaposition of the serious and comic worlds becomes explicitly parodistic as Connart, the king's crier, and Raoul, the crier of wines, confront each other in a dispute which is resolved (vv. 629-38) by placing wine and the king's news on an equal footing.) The third "scene" (vv. 315-587) takes us through the war preparations on both sides, the battle, the capture of the preudom and the bargain about the exposure of the treasure. "Act One," then, is an exposition, relieved by a comic scene, which also advances the ostensible plot to the point where only the theft and the miraculous restitution are necessary to trigger the resolution. For the entire second "act" (vv. 588-1184) the interest shifts to another level: the antics of the trio of thieves in conflict with one another, the innkeeper and his waiter; only vv. 992-1015 deal with the actual theft. The third "act" shows the same sort of symmetry as did the first. The theft is discovered and the suspense rises as the preudom is granted a delay of twenty-four hours, while the saint appears to the thieves and frightens them badly (vv. 1184-1306). But comedy returns in "scene two" (vv. 1307-77) as the innkeeper throws out the thieves who, with suitably unrepentant comments, return the treasure and describe to one another their respective plans for their next "jobs." This comic scene disposes satisfactorily of the thieves and serves to relieve momentarily the dramatic suspense while leaving it unresolved. With the departure of the thieves, we are again thrust back into the charged atmosphere of the pagan court as the time of reckoning has come. At this point, we are wondering less what will happen to the preudom than what awaits the roi d'Afrique and his followers. This last "scene" (vv. 1378-1533) takes us through the vindication of the preudom's faith, the conversion of the pagans and the disgrace of Tervagan, ending in a Te Deum.

One reservation that should be borne in mind about this scheme is that the contention is not that the "serious" scenes are devoid of comedy or vice versa. We shall comment on this later. However, the obvious pattern of the play is a central comic act within the framework of an ostensible serious plot which is set up and resolved by the first and third acts. These two acts are relieved by comic scenes, while the central comic act is only superficially related to the ostensible plot in that of some 596 lines, only 79 (vv. 767-90 and 959-1015) are required to form the conspiracy, engage the co-operation of the innkeeper and steal the treasure. The other 517 lines of act two are spent in the ribald comedy of the tavern.

An examination of the serious epic atmosphere stressed by previous criticism of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas reveals the existence of a hierarchy on the Christian side running the full distance from religious abstraction to the human level, which is roughly: ange—un chrétien (likely the same person as le chrétien of vv. 424-27) and le nouveau chevalier—les autres chevaliers—le preudom. (Saint Nicolas never has any connection with the actual crusade since he is only introduced in v. 482 when the preudom invokes his protection after the massacre.) An analysis of the components of this hierarchy will establish their relative importance and the role of epic characteristics and the crusading spirit in the play.

The angel, a supernatural manifestation of the Christian crusading spirit, appears to the Christian knights and exhorts them to have no fear but to expose their lives (which they will surely lose) in the assurance of an honorable death and eternal life. Speaking in the future tense,

Pour Dieu serés tous detrenchié,
Mais le haute couronne arés,
(vv. 433-34)

the angel holds out no promise of the victory of the just cause, only of salvation after death. This is confirmed by the angel's words over the bodies of the knights after the battle (vv. 466-81) and simply reinforces, on a higher level to be sure, the words of le chrétien:

Segneur, n'en doutés ja, ves chi vostre juise;
Bien sai tout i morrons el Damedieu serviche.
(vv. 401-2)

The news is received by the Christian knights with an unbelievable equanimity expressed by their spokesman:

Sachiés, se chou est voirs que chi nous
 recordés,
Asseür rechevrons nos anemis mortés.
(vv. 426-27)

In these forty lines (one may judge of the time required to perform them¹⁴) the various stock members of the Christian camp express a very one-sided version of the crusading spirit: no thoughts of victory with God's help whatever the odds, no thought of any possible gain or earthly advantage, only the certainty of death coupled with the promise of eternal life. While certain epic characteristics may well be found in this scene, the tone is set by the type of reference to military glory made by the Christian knights at this point.

Sains Sepulcres, aīe! Segneur, or du bien faire!
Sarrasin et paien vienent pour nous fourfaire;
Ves les armes reluire, tous li cuers m'en
  esclaire.
Or le faisons si bien que no prouesche i paire;
Contre chascun des nos sont bien cent par
  devise.
(vv. 396-400)

The opening shouts of the knights form simply a rapid series of commonplaces:¹⁵ the enemy advances; the sight of their arms shining fills the knights' hearts with joy; the pagans outnumber the Christians by a hundred to one. Five lines suffice to set a typical chanson de geste battle scene. The speech of un chrétien, aside from announcing their hopeless situation (vv. 401-2) and uttering a new form of the well-known dictum "Paien unt tort e chrestïen unt dreit"¹⁶ in v. 406—"Paradys sera nostres et eus sera ynfers"—provides us with a gab:

Mais mout bien m'i vendrai, se m'espee ne
 brise:
Ja n'en garira un ne coiffe ne haubers.
(vv. 403-4)

But the protasis of v. 403 finds an immediate echo in the next gab offered by un chrétien, nouveau chevalier:

Je ferrai cel forcheur, je l'ai piecha eslit;
Sachiés je l'ochirai, s'il anchois ne m'ochit.
(vv. 410-1)

This is an equally pointless boast whose protasis underlines the certainty of failure even before the arrival of the angel to confirm the forthcoming disaster.

Aside from this perfunctory and parodistic representation of the crusading spirit, various other factors make it difficult to believe that the play is seriously concerned with this idealized concept of epic and religious values. Note first the immediate setting. This scene occurs as a sort of jeu de caméra amid the enthusiastic gathering of the pagan emirs. Once the emirs are assembled and have given their tribute, they make their boasts and rush to the battle with the shout "alons, a Mahommet soiions nous commandé!" (v. 395). No pious defeatism enters their minds; they set out to win and they do. Further, consider the wider setting. We have already noted that most of the play is composed of scenes far removed from any sort of idealism. The swift yet thirsty Auberon has already stopped at the tavern for a drink and a roil of the dice with Cliquet (vv. 251-313). The entire second act will return us to the same spot. Finally, the whole epic scene having been reduced to a series of clichés about the crusading spirit, the battle itself is significantly disposed of by the manuscript in one stage direction (admittedly perhaps the work of the rubricator, but at least one interpretation—"Or tuent li sarrasin tous les crestïens" (not even "or se battent")—thus emphasizing the brief and parodistic treatment which contrasts markedly with the infinitely detailed descriptions of the dicing and tavern skullduggery in the central act of the play. The conclusion suggests itself that this extremely brief and one-sided presentation of the crusading ideal juxtaposed with the detailed and colorful reality of the tavern scenes offers an interpretation of this particular idealism as narrow, divorced from the practicality of life and the ribald appreciation of the tavern scenes explicit in the rest of the play, and quite useless because it acknowledges defeat and failure from the very start.

It is essential to point out that the crusading spirit and associated religious tone which some critics have thought of such importance in the play must not be confused with the fact that the Jeu de Saint Nicolas holds up a type of Christianity as the only religion of any real value. To understand this fully, however, we must consider the other end of the spectrum of characters mentioned earlier and examine the hierarchy of the pagan religion, which runs again from religious symbol to human being in the following order: Tervagan—I 'emir d'outre l'Arbre sec—other emirs—roi d'Afrique and his seneschal. Though the highest in the religious hierarchy and the nearest to the abstract, Tervagan is addressed as "fieus a putain" (v. 134), abused by the roi d'Afrique (vv. 134-43) and is actually instructed as to the manner of sign he is expected to give (vv. 181-82). The unclear answer when Tervagan both laughs and cries indicates a useless deity whose failure to perform adequately sends the roi d'Afrique into a rage when an ambiguous interpretation is given (vv. 214-19). Tervagan's later nonsense speech (vv. 1512-15) echoes the earlier oracular sign and results in his final disgrace. The emirs spend little time talking about their god, aside from conventional battle cries and customary salutations; they appear to place more trust in their right arms (vv. 436-53). Only the emir d'outre l'Arbre sec remains true to his faith when the others are converted. A strange person even among his own peers, ruler of a land where millstones are money, a butt of humor for his suzerain (vv. 378-80), this emir is the ultimate conservative who remains unregenerate even though he bows his head to Saint Nicolas. His reliance on Mahomet to strengthen his arms to resist conversion proves vain (vv. 1495-96), but he remains unconvinced. The spectacle of recently converted pagans forcing their own fellow into a halfhearted conversion completes the picture of unreasonable and ridiculous infidels deficient in their understanding of their religion.

It seems clear that the formal religions expressed in both the pagan and the Christian camps are foreign to the central point of view of the play. While the Christian ideal presented is a stylized conception of the crusading spirit necessarily remote from human experience, the pagan religion appears to offer an impotent god, unable to prophesy, whose devotees rely on their own strength rather than any divine aid to the point where they win their own battles and repeatedly abuse this deity who speaks in an incomprehensible fashion. The most fanatic among the Christian knights (le chrétien and un chrétien, nouveau chevalier) express an impractical aspect of their religion which the rest of the knights die attempting to sustain; the only fanatic among the emirs is abandoned by a god on whom he calls as his fellows force him into an unwanted conversion. We may in fact observe a whole spectrum of characters which moves from a non-religious center to a religious extreme on either end. From the concrete and colorful reality of the non-religious center (thieves, Innkeeper, Caignet, Auberon, Raoul, Connart) the spectrum of interest spreads out to practical human religion (roi d'Afrique, seneschal towards the pagan side; preudom towards the Christian), then to formal religious idealism (pagan emirs; Christian knights), further to extreme religious idealism (Emir d'outre l'arbre sec; le chrétien, le nouveau chevalier), finally to the supernatural manifestations of the religious abstraction itself (Tervagan; ange). Saint Nicolas himself, however, has no contact at all with any characters in the play outside the three central categories.¹⁷ In the light of this observation we must now examine the religious aspect of the play connected with Saint Nicolas: the comforting and deliverance of the preudom, the appearance of the saint before the thieves, the miracle, and the conversion of the pagans.

Other critics have observed that the religious practice of the preudom is largely confined to imploring the saint's aid in difficult times and thanking him for it, which tends mainly to the propagation of the cult of this patron. The equation of this observance with what may have been the religious practice of the bourgeois and common people in the Middle Ages¹⁸ is less important than the fact that the area of the saint's influence (preudom, thieves, roi d'Afrique) contrasts sharply with the idealistic crusading attitude which we have already discussed. The preudom's attention centers on the saint rather more than the God whose instrument he is. Fearful and unsure of himself, the preudom asks protection (vv. 482-87); his faith in the saint is based on the latter's solid and visible achievements (at least as they have been reported, vv. 518-31); he reminds the saint of the consequences of failure (vv. 1238-49); in a word, his religious attitude is human and practical. As one moves to the center of the spectrum, the religious attitude disappears completely. Saint Nicolas appears to the thieves not as the great saint who directs wrongdoers back to the straight and narrow road of virtue, but as a simple policeman interested in the restitution of the treasure and somewhat annoyed that the thieves ignored the protective symbol of his statue (vv. 1293-94). Addressing them as "fil a putain" (v. 1281), he introduces himself as Saint Nicolas "Qui les desconsillies ravoie" (v. 1288) and almost produces a pun when he says "Remetés vous tout a le voie" (v. 1289), i.e., "take the treasure back to where you found it." No word of repentance or salvation or virtue is mentioned; threats of death accomplish the policeman's purpose. The thieves' reaction is fitting: sheer terror and prompt compliance without a single religious pang. Having failed in one exploit, the thieves turn to their next as the most natural course available. In this context, the traditional question "Why does Saint Nicolas not even attempt to convert the thieves?" proves quite irrelevant. If the simple fact that he does not were insufficient to prevent the discussion of what does not happen in the play, it is surely clear that a sudden attempt at conversion and a discussion of religious values would violate the completely secular nature of this central act of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas.¹⁹

To complete our consideration of the symmetry of this spectrum, let us return to a discussion of the roi d'Afrique. This king's reaction to the sudden return of his treasure parallels the attitude of the preudom to the other well-known miracles of Saint Nicolas; he accepts the idea that actions speak louder than words:

Or me di, crestïens, amis,
Crois tu dont qu'il le peüst faire?
Crois tu qu'il me puist desloier?
Crois tu qu'il me puist renvoier
Mon tresor? En iés tu si fers?
(vv. 1418-22)

Beginning with the most abstract notion, he asks if the saint can really change his religion and eventually arrives at the matter nearest his heart—the treasure.

Preudom, il a bien commenchieé,
Car mes tresors est revenus.
(vv. 1430-31)

Convinced by the obvious miracle,

Assés sont li miracle apert,
Puisqu'il fait avoir che c'on pert.
Mais je n'en creïsse nului!
(vv. 1432-34)

he yields to persuasion (vv. 1435-37). Both he and his seneschal can agree with the preudom:

Sire, faus est qui te mescroit
Et qui de toi servir recroit,
Car te vertus reluist et pert.
(vv. 1447-49)

The emirs conform to the new views of their suzerain with the exception of the one fanatic whom we have already discussed.

The restatement of some tentative conclusions may now be useful. It appears evident that the central interest of the play, i.e., the main textual reason for going to see it (or for reading it in modern times), is first the down-to-earth comedy which centers mainly around the tavern scenes. To say that the tavern scenes represent any approach to a description of "réalité arrageoise" is pointless unless the audience were composed of thieves and rascals.²⁰ Further, the view that epic crusading and religion are central to the interest of the play ignores the fact that the whole second act and the specifically comic scenes of the first and third acts are entirely devoid of religious significance; even the appearance of Saint Nicolas to the thieves is merely a police matter for the saint.

The humor of the central act, however, is related, as we have noted, to the practical view of religion evidenced both by the preudom and by the sudden conversion of the roi d'Afrique and his following to the veneration of the saint rather more than to the worship of the Christian God. Only on the fringe of the story does there exist any reference to idealized religion: in the case of Christianity, this reference is in obvious contrast to the practical religion of those milieux directly affected by Saint Nicolas; in the case of the pagans, theirs is a vain and powerless faith, incapable of combatting the Christian religion on even the lowest and most material level. The religion that produces results on the practical level is obviously the best. It is true that we are presented with a contrast between an utterly disembodied religious symbol in the angel who appears to the Christian knights and a completely earthly symbol in Tervagan whose devotees offer him gold to fatten up his cheeks at one point (vv. 162-63) and kick him bodily down the stairs at another (vv. 1520-21). Neither the disembodied Christian messenger nor the tangible pagan god appear to be of any real use as such—so the form of the symbols involved is really beside the point since both are classed together as powerless and impractical. The choice to be made is between the solidly practical faith in Saint Nicolas exhibited by the unpretentious Christian preudom on the one hand, and, on the other, the disastrously idealized faith of the Christian knights or the ludicrously material attitude of the pagans towards their deity.

Against these aspects of the play, the "crusading-epic" framework assumes a reasonable proportion and leaves us little grounds to speak of the Jeu de Saint Nicolas as either an attempt at edification or as a reflection of the spirit of the Fourth Crusade.²¹

Notes

¹ Charles Foulon, L'Oeuvre de Jehan Bodel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1958), p. 639.

² Foulon; and Patrick R. Vincent, The 'Jeu de saint Nicolas' of Jean Bodel of Arras, A Literary Analysis, The Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Languages and Literatures, XLIX (Baltimore, 1954).

³ Albert Henry, ed., Le Jeu de saint Nicolas de Jehan Bodel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962).

⁴ Vincent, p. xi.

⁵lbid, p. 103.

⁶ Alfred Adler, "Le Jeu de saint Nicolas, édifant, mais dans quel sens?" Romania, LXXXI (1960), 113.

⁷ Foulon, p. 639.

⁸ Henry, p. 43.

⁹Ibid.

¹⁰ Foulon, p. 639.

¹¹ Henry, p. 18.

¹² This paper accepts the solution to the problem of the rubrics of vv. 1473 ff. suggested by M. Henry. See his note to these lines.

¹³ Foulon, p. 641.

¹⁴ M. Jean Frappier, Le théâtre profane en France au moyen-age XIIIe et XIVe siècles (Paris: Les Cours de Sorbonne, n. d.), p. 45, mentions the brevity of this scene, but draws no significant conclusion from it.

¹⁵ Mr. Vincent realizes (p. 42) that these scenes represent "virtually the sum of mostly commonplace elements taken from the epics," but he does discuss the implications of this device.

¹⁶La Chanson de Roland, ed. F. Whitehead, Blackwell's French Texts (Oxford, 1946), vv. 1015 and 1212.

¹⁷ The angel does appear to the preudom, but not in the context in which he (or another angel) appears to the Christian knights on the battlefield. Before the preudom, the angel is simply an extension of Saint Nicolas who reinforces the preudom's faith in the saint. It is true that the emirs are converted to the faith of Saint Nicolas, but only because they follow their suzerain, as we shall note later.

¹⁸ This would seem to be Mr. Vincent's main conclusion (see … above).

¹⁹ Mr. Vincent does not discuss this question, although his emphasis on the importance of religion in the play would seem to demand it. However, he applies the word "desconseilliés" to the preudom with the meaning "découragé" (p. 97) instead of allowing it also to apply to the thieves with the meaning "égaré" as does M. Henry (p. 293; cf also his translation of v. 1288). Thus Mr. Vincent's description of the saint's rôle appears too simple: "Saint Nicholas' most important rôle is that of the helper of the true believer who has fallen into distress, as here the Preudom" (p. 97).

²⁰Cf Vincent, p. 66, concerning the tavern scenes: "Directly observed from life and with fantasy and exaggeration playing but a small part, they afforded the onlookers the enjoyment of seeing themselves as in a mirror. [Italics mine.] In all probability, the characters were recognizable not merely as well-known types, but as living persons of Arras." Can this reasonably be said of the main tavern characters (the thieves, the innkeeper and Caignet)?

²¹Cf Frappier, p. 45: "Ne nous y trompons pas. Jean Bodel veut èdifier. Son inspiration essentielle reste èpique et religieuse." Cf also Vincent, pp. 63-65.