Adam de la Halle is the other famous name from early Arras, France theater. He was an educated man who composed both poetry and music; Adam is also called le Bossu, which does not mean “boss” in Japanese, it means “hunchback,” but nobody thinks he actually was deformed, so go figure. He’s known for two plays, which seems little compared to later writers, but to have gotten anything down on paper, and persisting through the vicissitudes of time to the present day, signals real importance. Adam’s life seems to have run between about 1240 and 1285; he lived and worked in Arras until, later, he went to the court of Charles of Anjou, a French prince who had become King of Sicily, ruling from Naples. He may have accompanied Charles on his Crusade.
So we know he left Arras eventually, but ironically, his most famous work “Le Jeu de la Feuillée” poses the question: will he leave Arras tonight? It turns out that he does not. It’s an interesting composition because its form is unusual, as is its “plot.” The year was 1262, and the event was the Confrèrie des Jongleurs et Bourgeois annual banquet. The play takes place inside the banquet, and it seems most likely that it was a series of sketches put on during the actual banquet itself, perhaps one per hour, as the night passed in eating and drinking. The banquet lasted most of the night, and the sketches end with “morning” dawning.
During the sketches, Adam de la Halle appears as the protagonist, probably Adam himself acting the role. He is in his room, telling his family and friends that he is now leaving Arras to study in Paris. Each sketch is a different set of persuasions not to leave: his father, a harlot, a monk, a fool, and a doctor all try to persuade him not to leave. At midnight, three fairies arrive for the banquet (people may have come and gone during the night, so the fairies may have just showed up at the door like anyone else). What did they look like—men or women? We think of Disney, but probably not so much.
Three fairies at a banquet are always trouble. These fairies notice that their places have not been set correctly; something, a spoon perhaps, is missing. One of them vows that in retribution, Adam de la Halle will be cursed with an inability to leave Arras! And so it proves: by the last sketch, everyone is tired and drunk, and Adam de le Halle has not left his room. Church bells ring, and they all go home. If Jelle Koopmans is correct (he formed the hypothesis that it was a set of sketches within the real banquet), the audience was also tired and a bit drunk, and ready to go home.
Adam’s other well-known work “Le Jeu de Robin et Marion” is actually musical theater, with the 13th-century-notation music still preserved. It’s a play about Robert the Shepherd and his girl Marion, who is courted by a gentleman out hunting but remains true to the shepherd. The play appears to be the fleshing-out of an old song, “Robin m’aime, Robin m’a.” Of course, the music has been reconstructed and recorded. Here you can enjoy (audio only) the full production, presented by Ensemble Micrologus, an Italian group. They once staged it with costumes, but there’s no video on YouTube. Here, you can see the musicians playing and slightly acting a scene: Robin et Marion. Here, you can read an English translation of the play!
footnote: Jelle Koopmans’s essay, “Arras, Where Jongleurs Meet, Play, and Develop Forms Aftewards Seen as Theatre,” appears in The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance (2016).