Adam de la Halle was born in Arras, France, and
spent most of his life there.He was educated in the
church but did not take holy orders. Because of his
writing talent and connections in literate and cultural
circles, Adam became a spokesman for a
group of local men who criticized the corrupt aristocratic
government of Arras. In 1283, he traveled
as court musician to Robert II, Count of Artois, in
Naples, where he died around 1287.
Adam de la Halle was a gifted composer whose
surviving body of work includes motets and chansons
for single and multiple voices. He was not
only talented enough to contribute to medieval
music but also wrote two plays that are some of the
most frequently anthologized pieces of medieval
drama. Both The Play of Madness (Le Jeu de la
Feuillée, ca. 1276) and The Play of Robin and Marion
(Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, ca. 1283) are secular
comedies that are fresh, charming (and in The
Play of Madness’s case, raunchy and absurdist)
glimpses into the medieval mind and society.
The Play of Robin and Marion is a pastoral in
which the title characters court each other and entertain
their fellow shepherds with songs and
dances. There is some dramatic tension when a
knight becomes infatuated with Marion and tries
to abduct her, but Robin and his friends recover
her and they celebrate with a picnic and games.
The piece charms readers and spectators because
of its playfulness and light touches of humor and
realism; when Marion asks Robin to dance the
farandole, a lively court dance, he excuses himself
because his leggings are torn. The picnic consists of
water, bread, apples, and cheese, and the partygoers
are extravagant in their delight; one wonders if
a courtly audience laughed condescendingly at the
rustic characters’ simple pleasures or recognized
themselves in some of the games and songs the
characters play. The Play of Robin and Marion has
been recorded by several contemporary earlymusic
groups and could still entertain a contemporary
audience.
The Play of Madness, however, more closely resembles
20th-century experimental theater than
the morality plays and farces of the time period.
Adam’s characters are himself and his friends from
his Arras circle mingling with fairies, and there are
stock comic characters such as an old woman, a
doctor, and a village idiot.Nothing is sacred in this
piece; Adam mocks his own desire to leave Arras
for Paris, as well as his distaste for his aging wife.
The humor in the play is often bawdy and insensitive;
male characters complain about their wives’
shrewishness, the idiot spouts obscene jokes, and
characters mock church politics and the public’s
gullibility when it comes to worshipping saints’
relics. Political and social satire intertwine with
physical comedy. There is no plot per se; characters
shift from center stage to background, from participant
to observer of what takes place center stage.
The play’s in-jokes about the well-to-do townsmen
of Arras indicate its original audience may have
been the literate burghers of this prosperous
northern French city. The specific details of medieval
life and the fresh direct language of both
plays make Adam de la Halle’s surviving plays not
only significant artistic contributions to European
drama but also intriguing glimpses into his world.
English Versions of Works by
Adam de la Halle
Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. Translated by Shira I.
Schwam-Baird. New York: Garland, 1994.
Medieval French Plays. Translated by Richard Axton
and John Stevens. New York: Barnes & Noble,
1971.
Works about Adam de la Halle
Baltzer, Rebecca A., Thomas Cable, and James I.
Wimsatt, eds. The Union of Words and Music in
Medieval Poetry. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1991.
Dane, Joseph A. Res/Verba: A Study in Medieval French
Drama. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1985.