ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the forms taken by social and political commentary in the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French theater, or, more broadly, public performances. Absent modern notions of “freedom of speech,” with several forms of censorship in play, many public performances were able to express surprisingly sharp discontent on a variety of topics and were a conduit for public opinion. Text, body language, stage props, and performance context served to reflect national and local politics, settle accounts between urban factions, grouse over taxations or social privileges, lament the ravages of war, denounce scarcity and immiseration of the people, or propagandize royal agendas.
The chapter shows the correlation between the performance genres of this period, from monologues and dialogues to farces, “fools’ plays,” and more elaborate morality plays, and an increasing collective awareness and verbalizing of political events and social tensions, contributing to a history of the formation of “public opinion” in the late Middle Ages.
