"Ludus: medieval and early Renaissance theatre and drama"--Preliminary page.

Introduction / Wim Hüsken and Konrad Schoell -- Farcical Elements in the English Mystery Cycles / Peter Happé -- Mockery, Farce, and Risus Paschalis in the York Christ before Herod / Michael O’Connell -- Mirth and Mockery: The Devil’s Way / Charlotte Spivack -- Farce and Farcical Elements in the English Interludes, or: How the Vice beat the Farce / Jean Paul Debax -- Chaucer, Medieval Drama and a Newly Discovered Seventeenth-Century Play: The Survival of Medieval Stereotypes? / Elizabeth Baldwin -- L’Individu et le Groupe Social dans la Farce / Konrad Schoell -- Les Eléments Farcesques dans la Sottie Française / Jelle Koopmans -- “Le Silence est le bouclier de la sagesse”: Le Dialogo da Ressurreição de Gil Vicente / Maria José Palla -- Combat Between the Genders: Farcical Elements in the German Fastnachtspiel / Leif Søndergaard -- Das heiß eysen, un Jeu de Carnaval de Hans Sachs / Marie Lesaffre -- La Reception du Décaméron dans les Jeux de Carnaval de Hans Sachs / Danielle Buschinger -- From Revelry to Reality: Drinking, Poverty and Salvation in Hans Rudolf Manuel’s Weinspiel / Joe G. Delap.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

Farcical elements were incorporated into non-comic drama ever since the theatre had been rediscovered in the Middle Ages. Already at a very early stage, comic scenes proved to be popular additions to liturgical music drama and, later, to religious plays in the vernacular. Some scholars believe that the genre of farce developed out of these farcical elements. The suggestion was made that farces, similar to the stuffing of meat or poultry, had been added to plays to increase audience involvement. Other researchers see quite different origins for the farce. The present volume does not aspire to solve the question of the relationship between the two types of “comedy” on the medieval stages but its editors hope that it will nevertheless contribute to this discussion. In addition, it will enable its readers to form an impression of the huge variety of the comic in the vast area of medieval and early Renaissance theatre and drama.

English and French.