sotties and other dramatic amusements. The most important of these societies were those
of Paris (whose “fools” made up the Enfants-sans-souci), Rouen, Dijon, and Lyon.
In the past, scholars have disagreed about whether the term sottie referred to the
internal characteristics of a dramatic genre or the external properties of the sot, such as
costume. That is, was the sottie simply any play performed by a company of fools? Most
scholars now propose a definition of the sottie based on the plays rather than the players,
but no definition has been universally accepted. Part of the problem is caused by the
apparently inconsistent use of generic terms by the texts, which sometimes label farce or
moralité plays that appear to be sotties. Farce seems to have been a general term that
included a variety of comic plays. Furthermore, the sottie is similar to the morality play
in its use of allegorical characters.
The problem is made more difficult by the complex nature of the fool in the Middle
Ages and Renaissance, a paradoxical creature who had three principal facets: he was a
clown, an entertainer often using absurd or obscene forms of humor; he was a foolish
person, unable to refrain from wrongdoing; and he was a speaker of the truth, who could
strip away appearances to reveal the underlying reality, showing himself wiser than the
reputedly wise. The fools of the sottie combine these characteristics in varied ways. The
plays themselves can be grouped according to their relation to these three facets of the
fool, for the sotties are either primarily comic plays in which the sots are clowns, or they
have a social and political significance, through the relation of the sots to evil—either
doing evil (the sot as malicious fool) or revealing it (the sot as speaker of truth).
Only a few sotties fall into the category of simple, humorous sketches with no political
overtones. The Sottie de Trotte-Menu et Mire-Loret involves little more than a
scatalogical joke; the Sottie des coppieurs et lardeurs is a lively exchange between two
groups of sots who attempt to make fools of each other. In a number of sotties (the sotties
de bande), the fools make fun of themselves as a group or type of character. In the
Vigilles Triboullet, for example, a band of fools holds a mock funeral to bury one of their
heros, whose eulogy recalls above all how well he could drink. Even the simplest sotties,
however, usually have some satiric significance, just as the satiric fools are still clowns.
Many sotties put on stage a group of fools (usually three) who criticize the way the
world is going; they speak about hidden evildoers, though prudence (the fear of
censorship or punishment) usually forces them to do so in veiled terms. The Menus
propos simply has three sots speak one after another, mixing absurd, outrageous
statements with allusions to social reality: Se m’aist Dieu, tout ce qu’on
promet/Maintenant n’est pas verité (“May God help me, everything they promise these
days isn’t true”). Other plays, such as the Croniqueurs of Gringore, are more open in
their political commentaries. The structure of a court case or investigation is sometimes
used to allow the fools to reveal wrongdoing by professions or social classes, as in La
mère de ville. When the sots are faced with the agents or the victims of wrongdoing, they
may act out the situations that fools like the “Chroniclers” only describe. In Gringore’s
sottie of the Prince des Sots et Mère Sotte, a play that combines both truth-speaking and
evildoing fools, we watch the evil pope as he attempts to corrupt the king’s loyal
supporters but is unmasked by the wise fools.
In the third group of sotties, most or all of the characters act out satirical portraits of
foolish wrongdoers, such as those who attempt to step outside their social roles or status.
The plot of these sotties is often an enactment of a general idea, such as the use of a card
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1674