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Document Details : Title: Tekst en opvoering van de abele spelen Subtitle: Het kopieerwerk in het handschrift-Van Hulthem en de geïntendeerde voorstellingen Author(s): REYNAERT, Joris Journal: Spiegel der Letteren Volume: 56 Issue: 4 Date: 2014 Pages: 453-475 DOI: 10.2143/SDL.56.4.1000001 Abstract : In the Van Hulthem manuscript (ca. 1407), the only document in which the so-called abele spelen, four very early courtly secular plays have survived, each of these plays is followed by a farce (sotternie), with which it clearly constitutes a pair, as in each case the sotternie is already announced in the rubric introducing the abel spel. The serious play and the sotternie are often also textually linked by means of a transitional passage at the end of the abel spel, in which the audience is directly addressed and informed of the fact that a farce will follow. It has been justly argued by Hans van Dijk that these links must have been added for the purpose of a specific performance and do not, as such, indicate that the pairs of serious play and ensuing farce were originally conceived as a unit at the same time. Van Dijk, and others meanwhile, have also advanced that not only these transitional passages, but other passages as well in which the audience is addressed directly, mainly the prologues and the concluding lines spoken by a ‘last’ character in the serious plays, may well be later additions. This view is challenged here. A close examination of the possible arguments pro and against leads to the conclusion that there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of these addresses to the public and – as a consequence – to discard them as representatives of the originally intended form and tenor of the plays. |
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