1

The Expression of Emotion in Robin

and Marion by Adam de la Halle
Abstract

Adam de la Halle (c.1245-c.1290) wrote what is often construed as the earliest opera, Le jeu de
Robin et Marion, by transposing the lyric genre, the pastourelle, into theatre. The work falls into
two parts, the first (lines 1-396), patterned on the classic pastourelle, and the second (lines 397-
780), on the pastourelle-bergerie. The classic pastourelle involves a chevalier out riding on a fine
spring morning when he discovers a beautiful shepherdess who inspires an erotic impulse in
him. The seduction attempt follows, and to avoid the plot-spoiler I will leave undisclosed
which of the possible outcomes Adam de Halle chose for Marion. The pastourelle-bergerie is
again in the voice of the chevalier who is once more out riding on a beautiful spring day when
he observes shepherds and shepherdesses engaged in dances, songs, games and disputes. This
paper considers what emotions such a scenario might evoke and interrogates the text to
discover which emotions can be found and to learn how they are expressed.

--o0o--

Adam de la Halle was a French trouvère born in Arras around 1245 and dying probably in
Naples around 1285. His musical and literary works encompass almost every genre current
in the late 13th century and he was one of the few musicians from this time who composed
both monophonic and polyphonic music. He is often described in the sources as “maistre”
providing the public recognition of his learning during the 1260s in Paris at the University
there. It seems that he returned from Paris to Arras around 1270 and went into the service of
the Count of Artois, Robert II (1250-1302) who was the nephew of King Louis IX. It is likely
that Robert was involved in the Aragonese Crusade, part of the larger War of the Sicilian
Vespers, and that Adam accompanied him to Italy. It was during this turmoil that Adam
entered the service of Charles of Anjou, King of Naples and Sicily and that Robin and Marion
was composed and performed in Naples. Charles died in 1285 and one piece of evidence1
suggests that Adam himself died in Naples shortly thereafter. However, an English source of
1306 lists a “maistre Adam le Boscu” among the minstrels engaged for the coronation of
Edward II in 1307.2 It would be wonderful to extend Adam’s life by a couple of decades and
have him exerting an influence in England on the Robin Hood and Maid Marion stories, but
this remains conjectural.

1
This is confirmed in F-Pn fr. 375 f.119v which presents a posthumous tribute written purportedly by
Adam’s nephew.
2 See Robert Falck, "Adam De La Halle." In Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford

University Press.
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/subscriber/article/grove/music/0
0163. (accessed 1 October, 2016)

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“Adans li bosus fist ces kancons” [detail from F-AS 657]

Adam de la Halle (c.1245-c.1290) wrote what is often construed as the earliest opera, or
musical comedy, Le jeu de Robin et Marion, by transposing the lyric genres, the pastourelle and
bergerie, into theatre. This sexy musical farce presents a day in the life of the shepherdess
Marion, and includes the menace of a wandering knight; the efforts of her lover Robin to
protect her, and dancing, singing and a picnic with a small group of friends. At first glance
the work seems a transparent little piece of innocent pastoral froth, but this patina conceals
cleverly wrought generic virtuosity and theatricalised innovation.

[The opening of the play in manuscript Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque Méjanes MS 166, f. 1r]3

The work falls into two parts, the first (lines 1-396), patterned on the classic pastourelle, and
the second (lines 397-780), on the bergerie. The fundamental form, the pastourelle, is a
vernacular narrative sung poem that relates the encounter of a knight, the first person
protagonist, with a young shepherdess. In this little play the opening scenario is of a solitary

3 Le Jeu de Robin et Marion is preserved in three manuscripts: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, manuscript
français 25566, ff. 39-48v [P]; Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque Méjanes, manuscript 527 [166], ff. 1-11v
[A] and Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, manuscript français 1569, ff. 140-144v (without music) [Pa].

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shepherdess, Marion, tending her sheep and dreaming of her lover, Robin. This is the standard
setup for the pastourelle. The less common bergerie is another lyric form in which the dances,
song, and games specifically of shepherds are discussed; here the knight is a non-participant
observer, more properly a voyeur, reporting on the activities of this complicated series of
interlocking games. By employing this second lyric form, the bergerie, as the frame for the
second half of the play, Adam unites two previously unconnected genres producing a
formally innovative vehicle for the farce. Both genres are reliant on the pastoral idea, though
the improbability of the sanitised innocence of the frolicsome, well-fed, well-dressed
shepherds and shepherdesses conceals a dark side of the pastoral ethic.

[The opening of the play in manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, français 25566, f. 39r.]

Pastourelles vary in outcomes – the knight may successfully seduce the girl, he may be
repulsed, or he might rape her. Usually the poet announces his foray into the countryside with
a short framing narrative, for example “The other day as I was out riding in a shady meadow,
I found a fine shepherdess, sparkling-eyed and blonde, dressed in a tiny tunic …” Though
violence and sexual aggression against the female is the typical result, the genre is coded for
humour. Jean Bodel’s famous pastourelle “L’autrier quant chevauchoie” courts the
shepherdess by offering to save a sheep that a wolf has carried off if she will agree to have sex
with him. She agrees, he kills the wolf and when she appears to forget her promise, he rapes
her [“I had my way until I got plenty of her in a short time”]. Another pastourelle, the
anonymous “C’est en mai quant reverdoie” has a similar rape theme [“I laid her on the
ground. Three times I did her the trick.”] The story is always presented from the knight’s point
of view with the subjective position fostering sympathy for the knight. In Robin and Marion

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however, the narrative voice is dropped, thus sabotaging sympathy for the knight and
relocating that sympathy with the shepherdess. It is theatricalisation that allows the story to
be told without a first person narrator; the protagonists present themselves physically to the
gaze of the audience thus obviating the need for the mediating narrator.

The impact of theatricalisation hinges on the tension between tradition and innovation. This
tension is created and sustained when Adam recalls the lyric genre’s conventions while
subverting them through their presentation in a new performative context. When the lyric
forms of pastourelle and bergerie are recast as theatre, the primary female character takes on
new dimensions. Physically present on stage Marion breaks through the lyric silence of the
shepherdess victim and enters into a new relationship with both the knight and the audience.

[The knight espies fair Marion]

The first person narrative construct that characterises the pastourelle has been dismantled. No
longer is the knight the privileged first person voice, the filter of and sole witness to the past
event he recounts. The demotion of the knight corresponds to a shift in the status of the other
characters who become equally present, accessible and credible. By transforming the lyric into
theatre Adam changes the nature of the pastourelle world from imaginary and discursive to
materially and temporally present. As a result of the shift from mediated presentation to
physical presence, the characters now speak for themselves. It is thus the spectator’s
experience as a witness and not the knight’s words that authorises what happens in the course
of the pastourelle drama. For Marion this means the possibility of complicity with and
sympathy from the audience, and a break away from her role as purely imaginary object of
the poet's desire and discourse. Marion’s sensual humanity is revealed particularly in the
bergerie section of the Jeu.

There are two games, Saint Coisne and Kings and Queens, featured in the bergerie and enacted
on stage. In Saint Coisne (lines 427-466) the players take turns bringing a gift to the person that
plays the saint. Huart explains the rules of the game: “Whoever laughs when he goes up to
make an offering to the saint, must sit in turn in Saint Cosme’s place. And may the best one
win.” (lines 431-434). The saint must not laugh or she will lose her position. At first the gifts
are literal, but the game quickly dissolves into flirting, kissing and touching. Tiring of this
Marion interjects “Ho! Gentlemen, this game is too ugly; isn’t it Peronelle?” Peronelle
responds “It’s not worth it. I think that we really should find some other games. Here we are
two girls and you are four among you.” Underlining the farcical, Gautier adds “Let’s fart to
amuse ourselves. I don’t see anything better to do.” Robin quickly replies “Shame on you
Gautier! How can you joke like that and in front of Marion my sweetheart, say such an awful
thing? Cursed be the ugly mug who finds it right and pleasing! You had better not ever do it

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again!” (lines 461-474) The second game, Kings and Queens, (lines 477-578) is a kind of truth or
dare game which swiftly becomes quite risqué when the King commands Robin to name
female sexual anatomy. The king commands “You’re next, Robin!” Robin responds
“Welcome, your majesty. Ask me whatever pleases you.” The king asks “Robin, when a
creature is born, how do you know if it’s a female?” Shocked, Robin exclaims “That’s a nice
question to ask!” “Then answer it!” said the king. In high indignation Robin responds “I most
certainly will not! But if you want to know the answer Lord King, look at its backside. You’ll
get nothing more from me. Did you think to embarrass me this way?” (lines 513-522) The
punishment on his refusal is for Robin to embrace Marion.

[Robin and Marion embrace in the game of “Kings and Queens”]

This becomes a rather persuasive embrace which in being thoroughly titillating advances the
farce. Other farcical elements include the central association between food and sexual
availability made throughout the work.

The game of “Kings and Queens”; the king is crowned with a borrowed straw hat.

The farce sexualises its overabundant food, associating it directly with the female body. In her
first meeting with Robin, Marion pulls the cheese from her ‘corsage’ (bodice) and later makes
a show of replacing it there (lines 142-64).

Marion: It doesn’t matter, Robin, I still have some cheese here in my bodice and a big
piece of bread and the apples you brought me

Robin: My God, how rich this cheese is! Eat some my dear.

----

Marion: Say, Robin, do you want any more to eat?

Robin: No, not really.

Marion: Then I will put away this bread and cheese in my bodice until we get hungry.

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Marion’s friend Peronnelle also carries food in her clothes, including bread, salt and
watercress, which she contributes to the picnic (lines 640-1). It is Robin’s friend Huart who
draws attention to these ‘boches’ (bumps) in her dress.

Huart: Tell me, what do you have in those bulges?

Peronnelle: Some bread, salt and watercress.

The unlikely abundance of food is outlined in what follows:

Peronnelle: (continuing) And you, have you anything, Marion?

Marion: Nothing really; ask Robin – except for some cheese from this morning, and
sone bread that’s left, and some apples that he brought me. Here they are, if you want
some.

Gautier: And who wants two salted hams?

Huart: Where are they?

Gautier: They’re right here.

Peronnelle: And I have two fresh cheeses.

Huart: Say, what are they made from?

Peronnelle: From sheep’s milk.

Robin: My lords, I have some roasted peas.

Huart: Do you think yourself quits for just that?

Robin: Nay, I have some baked apples too. Marion do you want to have some? (lines
641-654)

There is the clear assumption that the female body is a commodity, and a consumable one at
that. These ‘shepherds’ are in a world of consumption where a woman’s body is not primarily
a source of labour but rather a source of pleasure. The play intentionally misreads the bucolic
life as not only one of plenty but also one of sexualised leisure. That this must be coded as
nostalgic fantasy is clear from the historical context of the years when the Jeu de Robin et Marion
was composed and first performed.

The play was almost certainly written against the backdrop of the Sicilian Vespers of 1282.
Palermo was then governed by the Angevin Charles, King of Sicily who was imposing a
programme of cultural assimilation on the populace. On March 30th, some drunken French
soldiers began molesting young Sicilian women in a crowd. One woman’s husband took
revenge, killing a soldier in a knife fight. When the other soldiers tried to avenge that death,
they were slaughtered. The mob then moved through the city attacking every French man and
woman. In the end all French inhabitants of Palermo were massacred. Within six weeks, three
thousand French men and women were slain by the rebels, and the government of King
Charles lost control of the island. The retreat was made to the Angevin stronghold at Naples
but the court was to be on the knife’s edge of nerves and it was some time before there was a
return to the cultural confidence of the glorious past. The performance of Robin and Marion
in 1283 to the expatriate French soldiers and their families must have prompted strong

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memories of home. So for this first audience the principal emotion evoked was nostalgic
escapism.

This rustic farce is not a reflection of actual bucolic life but an idealisation of that bucolic life
in aristocratic terms in order to provide a moment of nostalgic escape for its aristocratic
audience. The peaceful French countryside of Robin and Marion invoked a place and time
where the happy rustic peasant would never rise up and slaughter their masters. To help this
along and probably at a subliminal level, it is likely that the musical material used in the farce
was pre-composed and drawn from the expansive catch-bag of the refrain. It would thus have
been familiar territory for the aristocratic audience and offered immediate nostalgic
associations.

“By presenting a bucolic landscape populated by dancing shepherds, Adam indulges his
nervous aristocratic audience in a fantasy world as entertaining as it was impossible. In doing
so, he holds up a mirror to aristocratic values and desires. In giving us happy, well-fed and
sexually playful shepherds, Adam shows us what his aristocratic patrons themselves most
wanted to be.” (Lundeen 2005: 73)

Opera, the art of emotions Friday, 30 October, 2016 Carol J. Williams