SOURCE: “Formalizing English Farce: Johan Johan and its French Connection,” in Comparative Drama, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 1983, pp. 141-52.

[In the following essay, Norland focuses on the ways in which Johan Johan varies from its French source, concluding that Heywood, if he is indeed the translator of this farce, produced an English version that is in many ways artistically superior to the French original.]

Although Noah's wife and Mak with his “sothren tothe” may possibly provide earlier examples of farcical action in the Towneley cycle, Johan Johan, published by William Rastell in 1533, is the first play printed in England to represent farce as a dramatic form. Attributed to John Heywood by the bookseller Francis Kirkman in 1671, Johan Johan has long been recognized as vastly different in form and style from Heywood's known plays or those of his contemporaries. Karl Young in 1904 sought to explain these differences by suggesting that Heywood was influenced by French farce in several of his plays and that Johan Johan was drawn from the Farce de Pernet qui au vin.¹ Later scholars elaborated this argument, and in 1946 Ian Maxwell published what was thought to be the definitive work on this matter: French Farce and John Heywood.² However, with the appearance of Gustave Cohen's Recueil de Farces françaises inédites du XV^e siecle in 1949,³ William Elton and T. W. Craik almost simultaneously noted that Johan Johan was in fact a translation of Farce nouvelle très bonne et fort joyeuse du Pasté (XIX in Cohen's Recueil de Farces). Elton describes Johan Johan as “a fairly literal translation, with some minor differences,”⁴ and Craik, claiming that the translator “has taken very few liberties with his real source,” says that “Johan Johan is a close (though none the less spirited) translation.”⁵ Both accept the traditional view that the translator is Heywood, though neither supplies evidence on this point. Craik discusses some variations in the French and English versions, most notably the priest's accounts of the three miracles and the endings of the two plays; but neither Elton nor Craik investigates the hundreds of variants in details or considers the implications of these changes. What a close examination of the two texts reveals is that Johan Johan is in fact a very careful adaptation of the French farce to the English cultural and dramatic context.

A few gallicisms appear in the English play, such as Johan Johan's threat to “traine [his wife] by the here” (14) for “la trainer par les cheveulx” (23)⁶ and his later comment that “I almost enrage that I ne can / Se the behav[i]our of our gentilwoman” (89-90) for “J'enrage presque je ne puis / Veoir le tour de nostre bourgeoise” (91-92); but generally the language is attuned to the English setting. Not only are references to place changed—“Nostre-Dame” (154) becomes “the Church of Poules” (153) and “Romme” (166) becomes “Coventre” (164)—but also allusions to the saints are altered as “saincte Me[s]aise” (148) is changed to “swete Saint Diri[c]k” and invocations to “Sainct Julien” (209), “Saint Pol et Saint Remy” (218), “Saint Anthonie” (227), and “Saincte Marie” (229, 231) are dropped altogether. Local customs are taken into account as ale (287, 387, 618) is substituted for vin (300, 397, 698). Even more significant, colloquial oaths and proverbs are introduced into the English text, occasionally to fill out the metrical line but more often to provide a homely touch. “By Gogges” or “cokkes blood” (9, 30), “cokkes bones” (72), “Gogges body” (74, 83), “cokkes soule” (127), and “Kokkes lilly woundes” (163) sprinkle the speech of Johan Johan throughout the play. Johan Johan adds the proverb “He must nedes go that the divell driveth” (313) when he is sent by Tib to invite Sir Johan; later, after Sir Johan and Tib have eaten the pie, Johan Johan emphasizes Sir Johan's arrogance by adding, “nowe I se well the olde proverbe is trew: ‘The parisshe preest forgetteth that ever he was clarke’” (594-95). The translator provides a more specific sense of place as well as expanding the colorful language of the play.

The translator occasionally reduces the details of a passage in French. For example, in Farce du Pasté, there are a daughter of a neighbor, a nephew, an uncle, and two cousins who are involved in the preparation of the pasté in addition to the wife, the priest, and the woman friend (157-65), but only the “neybours yongest daughter, An” aids Tib, Sir Johan, and the gossip Margery in the English version (158-62, 400-04). Some passages from the French are summarized, and some are omitted altogether; more often, however, the French lines are expanded in the English version as new details are added. These expansions may involve the addition of a few words, of a line or two, or of several lines, but the usual effect is to make the passage more concrete. At times the expansion is redundant as in the line “Ma femme n'a eu nulz enfans” (102), translated “My wife had never child,” to which the words “doughter nor son” are added (100). More frequently the addition extends the meaning or makes the expression more colorful, such as the end of Johan Johan's initial monologue, just before Tib enters. The speech in Farce du Pasté ends:

Or brief, par le sacrament de l'autel,
Elle en aura son payement,
Car je l'ordiray tellement
Que l'allée luy sera dure.

(115-18)

This rather general statement is transformed in Johan Johan as follows:

But, in faith, all these wordes be in wast,
For I thinke the matter is done and past.
And whan she cometh home she will begin to chide,
But she shall have her payment-sti[c]k by her side!
For I shall order her, for all her brawling,
That she shall repent to go a catter-wawling.

(105-10)

The vague concern of the French husband becomes for Johan Johan an anticipation of his wife's behavior and an expression of his response, which he fails to carry out. Earlier in this same monologue some twenty lines are added to reiterate Johan Johan's determination to give Tib a sound beating when she returns, but her offensiveness is emphasized as her body odor becomes a comic motif. Here is a short sample:

And I shall beate her, by Cokkes bones,
That she shall stinke like a pole-kat,
But yet, by Gogges body, that nede not,
For she will stinke without any beting;
For every night, ones she giveth me an heting,
From her issueth such a stinking smoke
That the savour thereof almost doth me choke.

(72-78)

This addition not only contributes concrete images and humor to Johan Johan's monologue, but also it serves to reveal his character and his wife's.

Many of the additions provide insight to the characters or express another dimension to their portrayals than is represented in the French version. The translator's interest in characterization is suggested by the change of title from Farce du nouvelle très bonne et fort joyeuse du Pasté which emphasizes the motivating force for the action, the pasté, to A mery play betwene Iohan Iohan the husbande / Tib his wyfe / & syr Ihan the preest which stresses the persons of the play. Although Johan Johan is an anglicization of Jehan-Jehan or Jehan-Jehannin, in the French text Jehan-Jehan is identified in the dramatis personae simply as L'Homme, and he retains this designation in the speech prefixes throughout the play. The wife in the French version is never named; she is simply La Femme. The priest too is consistently called Le Curé, though his name is revealed to be Guillaume in the dialogue. However, in the English version not only is the wife called Tib, but the priest is given the same name as the husband, perhaps to emphasize the priest's assumption of the husband's role. The translator's interest in character led him to develop the individual figures in greater depth as aspects of the French originals are extended and new dimensions are added.

Tib retains in the English version most of the characteristics of the stereotypical promiscuous and cunning shrew encountered in both the French fabliaux and the French farces, but she is bolder and more cynical than her French counterpart. Tib directly expresses her awareness of her husband's suspicions about her visits to the priest (169-70) shortly after arriving on stage unlike La Femme, and rather than resorting to tears when confronted by her husband as La Femme does, Tib calmly outfaces her husband's jealousy and then insists Johan Johan invite the priest to share the pie. After calling Johan Johan back several times for various tasks before fetching the priest, Tib physically threatens her husband for taking so long, but Tib's impatience is emphasized by a longer speech than La Femme's and by Johan Johan's extended response which adds the proverb noted above likening his wife to the devil. The boldness and cynicism of Tib is even more apparent during the priest's visit. Though no stage direction in the English text indicates that the wife embraces the priest when he arrives as in the French text, Tib clearly greets Sir Johan as a lover in front of her husband, La Femme addresses Le Curé, “vous, sayez le tresbien venu! / A'vous celle que vous aymez” (441-42); Tib says, “Welcome, min[e] owne sweetharte! / We shall make some chere or [ere] we depart” (427-28), which stresses the special endearment as well as promising pleasure. Later when Tib and Sir Johan are eating the pie while Johan Johan chafes the wax to mend the pail, Tib says, “Loke how the kokold chafith the wax that is hard, / And, for his life, darith not loke hetherward” (505-06). The French text provides no equivalent lines; nor is Jehan-Jehannin so directly called a cuckold by his wife, though the name Jehannin is traditionally associated with the cuckold. Moments later La Femme calls attention to her husband's folly—“Par mon serment, c'est bien pour rire / D'ung homme qui folie maine” (557-58)—but the sentiment is shifted in Tib's lines to the wife's role in making the husband a comic butt. Tib says, “Now, by my trouth, it is a pretty jape / For a wife to make her husband her ape” (513-14).

Just as the wife is bolder and more cynical in the English version, so also is the priest. Shortly after receiving Johan Johan's invitation, Sir Johan alludes to his relationship with Tib. He tells Johan Johan, “Yet thou thinkist amis, peradventure, / That of her body she should not be a good woman,” which loosely translates the French text, but then Sir Johan adds:

But I shall till the[e] what I have done, Johan,
For that matter: she and I be sometime aloft,
And I do lie uppon her many a time and oft
To prove her; yet could I never espy
That ever any did wors with her than I.

(346-52)

No precedent for this admission of adultery exists in the French version. Even though these lines may appear to be interpreted more innocently by Johan Johan, who blithely replies, “Sir, that is the lest care I have of nine, / Thankyd be God and your good doctrine” (353-54), the priest is most blatantly testing the intelligence or the spinelessness of Johan Johan. Sir Johan's part in the mockery of Johan Johan as the priest and wife greedily eat the pie while the husband chafes the wax follows the French original quite closely, but given his earlier admissions, Sir Johan appears more cynical than Guillaume. This cynicism is stressed at the end of the play; when Johan Johan confronts the pair and calls Tib a “prestes whore,” Sir Johan answers, “Thou liest, [w]horson kokold, evyn to thy face!” (656-57). By directly calling Johan Johan a cuckold, the priest reaffirms his earlier admission at the same time that he appears to contradict himself. Again the translator departs from the French version.

The extension of the boldness and cynicism of both the wife and priest in the English version makes Johan Johan more victimized, but it also makes him appear more cowardly and/or more stupid than his French counterpart. Further, his own speeches develop his humiliation and the discrepancy between what he promises to do and what he does. The twenty lines added to the opening monologue in the English version justify Johan Johan's beating of Tib and whet his appetite for the encounter, but because he answers so mildly when she appears, the emptiness of his threats is stressed. Even more significant, Johan Johan's recognition that he is being cuckolded by the priest is made more graphic than in the French text. Tib complains of being sick when she arrives home, a detail not included in Farce du Pasté, which leads Johan Johan to say apparently as an aside:

By Cokkes soule, nowe, I dare lay a swan
That she comes nowe streyght fro Sir Johan.
For, ever when she hath fatched of him a lyk,
Than she comes home and saith she is syk.

(127-30)

A few lines later Johan Johan refers to the priest giving Tib “absolution upon a bed” (141), another detail which the English translator adds.

Shortly after this point in the French version the husband à part expresses a rather subtle image of the priest and wife in amorous play:

… tout à l'entour du lit,
Voire entre vous deux et non plus
Et à la fin montez dessus
Pour la procession parfaire.

(175-78)

These lines are translated quite literally in the English text, and then another line is added: “He lepeth up, and thou liest down” (178). Again the added detail emphasizes Johan Johan's awareness of his plight, which makes his cooperation with Tib and Sir Johan while they mock him in the pie-eating episode appear even more spineless.

Johan Johan's position as a comic butt and the irony of his role are most fully expressed in the ending of the English play. In Farce du Pasté L'Homme at the end finally turns on La Femme and Le Curé, accuses them of lying, threatens them, and beats them with a sack full of bread. The final lines are assigned to Le Curé, but in fact they indicate an altercation punctuated by the cries of all three characters:

Le Curé                                                             Par delà!
Je vous pry, suyvons-le de près.
                                        L'homme revient par derrière
                    atout ung sac plain de pain.
Après curé, après, après.
A! vous me gastés le pasté,
Après, curé, après, curé,
A ly! à ly! à ly! à ly!
Or, Messeigneurs, adieu vous dy!
                                                                                          EXPLICIT.

(761-67)

Gustave Cohen appears to be in error in his note that the husband and wife join together to beat the priest,⁷ for there is nothing in the lines to indicate the wife's change in loyalties. It is possible that the extant text is corrupt, but the French farce unquestionably ends with the dispute unresolved. By contrast the English Johan Johan, after complaining about what he has suffered, throws the pail to the floor where it breaks, and then threatens Tib and Sir Johan with a shovel full of coals. Neither the breaking of the pail nor the shovel full of coals is indicated in the French text, but the most significant change is in the outcome of the row. The stage direction in the English version reads: “Here they fight by the e[a]rys a while, and than the preest and the wife go out of the place” (664). This leaves Johan Johan alone on stage as he was at the beginning of the play. He first boasts that he has “paid some of them even as I list” (665), but his triumph evaporates as he fears Tib and Sir Johan “Will make me kokold, evyn to anger me” (674). The plot has come full circle as Johan Johan finds himself back where he started. The English ending is not only more subtle than the French version, but also it focuses much more fully on the ironic dimension of the central comic character.

The change in the ending may be the most remarkable alteration of the French source, but another significant adaptation occurs in the handling of the religious element in the play. The English translator generally drops the allusions to saints, and he alters the wife's reference to the priest as a “vray Catholicque” (242) to a description of him as “vertuouse and full of charité” (232). Perhaps these changes were dictated by the religious trends in England before the play was printed in 1533. Fear of possible censure may also have led to the omission of lines from the French text that could be considered blasphemous. After Le Curé's account of a woman who “miraculously” gave birth to a fully developed child only seven months after marriage, La Femme compares this to their cat bearing kittens after seven weeks. L'Homme then comments:

                                                                                          Dea! m'amye,
Dieu doit de tout estre loue,
Mais qui scet s'elle evoit voué
Son fruit au Glorieux Corps saint?

(664-67)

This jesting implication that the Holy Spirit has impregnated the cat does not appear in the English text, but the “miracles” that prompt the joke are made even more “miraculous” in the translation. The fully developed infant is born only five months after the mother's marriage rather than seven, and Puss the cat is described as having eighteen kittens in a year (588-89) rather than a litter in seven weeks.

The accounts of the other two miracles are also altered in the English version. The identification of St. Arnoul as the source of the miracles is dropped; instead Sir Johan personally attests to knowledge of these events. In his reference to knowing a woman who bore a fully developed child after only five months, he may be implying that he has fathered the child as Bevington suggests;⁸ however, in his account of the first miracle which in the French describes a woman who had fourteen children without benefit of her husband, Sir Johan reduces the number to seven but adds, “Yet had she not had so many by thre / If she had not had the help of me” (547-48). Sir Johan's personal involvement in these miracles, which is absent from the French text, reinforces the abuse of his clerical role that informs his relationship with Tib as it emphasizes the clerical satire in the play. One miracle described in the English version has no basis in the French text at all. This miracle, the second in the series, describes a woman who had been married “many a day” but had no child:

Wherefore to Saint Modwin she went on pilgrimage,
And offered there a live pig, as is the usage
Of the wives that in London dwell.

(561-63)

Within a month she is said to have had a child. This does not point to clerical abuse as the other miracles do, but instead apparently ridicules a current superstitious practice. The translator treats traditional objects of clerical satire with increased vehemence as the priest is perceived more negatively than in the French version, and at the same time the religious perspective is adjusted to the contemporary English context.

The translator also adapts the staging of the play to current dramatic practice. As G. R. Proudfoot indicates, the “English text … makes more precise reference to an indoor location for the performance than its original.”⁹ This is especially evident at the end of the play where Tib threatens Johan Johan with her “distaf” and “clipping-she[a]rys” and Johan Johan takes up a shovel full of coals. This appears to support the traditional association of the English play with Heywood and the More circle and initial production in a great hall or at court.¹⁰ In the French farce the staging is less definite. Even more important, the involvement of the audience in production, which is characteristic of the popular French dramatic tradition,¹¹ not only is retained by the English translator but also is expanded. At the beginning of Farce du Pasté, L'Homme comes on stage and enquires about his wife, but in Johan Johan, the husband first greets the audience—“God spede you, maysters, everychone!”—and then directly asks, “Wote ye not whither my wife is gone?” (1-2). The twenty-line addition the English translator makes to this initial monologue is also introduced with a direct address to the audience: “But, masters, for Goddes sake, do not entrete / For her whan she shall be bete!” (65-66). The entire monologue in both the French and English versions is, of course, obviously played to those assembled, but the English text more directly acknowledges their presence. In Farce du Pasté the husband, as Cohen's edition indicates, clearly speaks a number of his lines à part or as asides when the wife and the priest share the stage with him; but a greater number of Johan Johan's speeches appear to be asides,¹² and Tib is also given an occasional aside not found in the French text (e.g., 35-38, 226). The asides, by revealing the real thoughts of a character in addition to what is spoken for the benefit of the other characters on stage, imply a bond with the audience, and as in Roman comedy the device frequently is used for humorous effect. By expanding the number of asides from the French text the English translator extends the relationship with the audience as he seeks at the same time to heighten the comedy.

Audience involvement for humorous effect is carried a step further when a member of the audience is asked to hold a cloak while the husband fetches the priest. In Farce du Pasté La Femme asks a spectator to hold her husband's cloak, but then, realizing the man asked is near the door and could run away with it, she gives it to another. In Johan Johan the French lines are translated quite literally including the comic details of not putting the cloak down where a dog has urinated and asking the person holding the cloak to scrape off the dirt; however, the wife's part in this action is eliminated as her speeches are given to Johan Johan. Both Pollard and Sultan, unaware that Farce du Pasté was the true source of Johan Johan, suspected Rastell was in error in assigning the entire sequence (242-59) to the husband, and both scholars suggested emendation.¹³ Modern editors, however, have generally followed Rastell's text, for it appears that the translator has purposely reassigned the lines from the wife to Johan Johan. The first of La Femme's speeches

Sire, mettez-la dessoubz vous
Ou entre vous et la boutte,
Mais venez cà!

(261-63)

is adapted to Johan Johan by introducing the first person pronoun: “Therefore I pray you take ye the paine / To kepe my gowne till I come again.” That it is Johan Johan and not the wife as in the French version who has second thoughts is suggested by the repetition of “But yet” that signals his change of mind: “But yet I am afraid to lay it down” (243) and “But yet he shall not have it, by my fay!” (252). The effect is to enhance Johan Johan's comic role and to reinforce his bond with the audience.

Both the French and English versions of the farce end with a farewell to the audience, but in the French text “Or, Messeigneurs, adieu vous dy” (767) follows a physical row, and it is not clear in the text who speaks the line. In the English text Johan Johan remains alone on the stage after his fight with Sir Johan and Tib and brags of his triumph to the audience, but then asks, “But yet, can ye tell / Whether they be go?” (668-69). Johan Johan varies the question with which the play began, “Wote ye not whither my wife is gone?” (2). He is again appealing for help in seeking his wife, but now he knows she is with the priest. His decision to go to the priest's chamber “To se if they do me any vilany” (677) provides motivation for his exit lacking in the French original, which ends with the altercation unresolved. Before exiting Johan Johan says, “fare well this noble company” (678), which may imply an aristocratic audience, though “noble” could be a general compliment. “Company” does not specify men; however, this speech begins with an address to “Sirs,” and the play itself begins with a greeting to “maysters.” Whatever the composition of the audience, Johan Johan's relationship to them remains close throughout the play as he asks them questions, confides in them, and even involves them in disposing of his cloak.

Johan Johan extends the relationship between actor and audience beyond its source, Farce du Pasté, in addition to developing the characters, adapting the clerical satire, and refining the conclusion of the original. In almost every respect the English version is more artistically sophisticated and more dramatic than the French text. Whether the translator was John Heywood, as has been traditionally assumed though neither external nor internal evidence has been discovered to prove his authorship, or whether it was William Cornish as C. W. Wallace argues¹⁴ or even Thomas More as Reed would like to believe,¹⁵ the translator demonstrates uncommon literary talent and practical knowledge of dramatic production. Johan Johan serves as a creative precedent for the incorporation of French farce in English Renaissance comedy.

Notes

1. “The Influence of French Farce upon the Plays of John Heywood,” Modern Philology, 2 (1904), 97-124.

2. (Melbourne: Univ. of Melbourne Press, 1946).

3. (Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1949).

4. TLS, 24 February 1950, p. 128.

5. “The True Source of John Heywood's Johan Johan,” MLR, 45 (1950), 290.

6. The edition of Johan Johan used throughout is for convenience that of David Bevington in Medieval Drama (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), and the edition of Farce du Pasté is Cohen's included in Recueil de Farces.

7. Cohen says, “A la fin mari et femme se réconcilient sur le dos de leur hôte qu'ils battent” (Recueil de Farces, p. xiv). Halina Lewicka in Études sur l'ancienne farce Française (Warszawa: Éditions scientifiques de Pologne, 1974) also notes Cohen's error (p. 108).

8. See Bevington's text, l. 577n.

9. A mery play between Iohan Iohan the husbande / Tyb his wyfe / & syr Ihãn the preest (London: Malone Society, 1972), p. vi.

10. See A. W. Reed, Early Tudor Drama, Medwall, the Rastells, and the More Circle (London: Methuen, 1926), pp. 146-47. See also Bevington, Medieval Drama, p. 970.

11. See Jean-Claude Aubailly, Le Monologue, le Dialogue, et la Sottie (Paris: Editions Honoré Champion, 1976), pp. 181-83 and passim.

12. Cohen's edition identifies 25 lines of L'Homme spoken à part, while Bevington suggests 58 lines of Johan Johan are asides.

13. See A. W. Pollard in Representative English Comedies, ed. C. M. Gayley (New York: Macmillan, 1903), I, 72-73; and Stanley Sultan, “The Audience Participation in Johan Johan,” JEGP, 52 (1953), 491-97.

14. The Evolution of the English Drama up to Shakespeare (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1912), pp. 51-52.

15. Early Tudor Drama, pp. 146-47.