Seeing Justice Done: Courtroom Scenes in Medieval French Theatre

Abstract

The medieval French theatre offers several plays with trial scenes. These may occupy as much as half the action, or as little as a couple of pages. In the serious genre, there is the moralité, such as the very early sixteenth-century Condamnation de Banquet, 3,644 lines, where the somewhat tongue-in-cheek moral is advice to moderate gluttony. The comic genre is represented by the farce, such as Maître Pathelin, nearly 1600 lines, where there is more emphasis on amusing the audience, either with a discussion of legal procedure (for a learned audience) or with the tricks of litigants and lawyers (for a more popular audience). The legal professionals, especially the judges, are generally given respectful treatment, and do their duty, while the more amateurish practitioners simply use their wits. The procedure shown in these trials accords fairly well with that of the more didactic treatises of writers like Philippe de Beaumanoir.