Alan Hindley (University of Hull, UK)

Pardonnez- nous, jeunes et vieux;

Une autre foys nous ferons mieux.

That a colloquium on medieval drama should have adopted ‘the verbal made visual’ as one of its central themes is no surprise given that one of the essentials of the dramatic is its ability to make the abstract concrete and thus to communicate grand concepts to engage, excite and extend its public. If this is the case for all theatre, it must be particularly true of the late medieval French moralités, a corpus of some seventy surviving plays dating from the period 1400-1550, and which are characterised by their elaborate use of allegorical personifications to put across their moral lessons. In some of the specifically religious examples of the genre these plays can make vivid dramatically often highly complex concepts in texts which also make effective use of other visual features of the drama such as costume, props, and meaningful stage-business. In discussing here the French morality plays’ insistence on this combination of both verbal and visual demonstration, I have chosen the related motifs of Fortune and Chance as featured in a group of the religious moralités. It will be argued, no doubt, that such a topic is too broad for a short paper, and I must apologise now to those who may be expecting an elaborate philosophical discourse. But my approach – as my rather playful title suggests – is essentially that of the theatre historian, my aim being to examine first the theme of Fortune and her wheel, and then the motif of gambling, in order to show how both are exploited to dramatic and didactic effect in a genre which, despite some recent renewal of interest, remains relatively little appreciated. My inquiry will focus on the anonymous Bien Advisé, Mal Advisé (BAMA) and on Simon Bourgoing’s L’Homme Juste et l’Homme Mondain (HJHM), the only surviving plays in which Dame Fortune appears as a speaking character. For the gambling sequences, I shall refer to episodes in both these plays, and in the anonymous L’Homme Pecheur (HP), L’Enfant prodique (EP), and Les Enfants de Maintenant (EM).

Given the ubiquitous presence of Dame Fortune in later medieval satirical and moralising texts, it is perhaps surprising that she features in only two of the moralités. She is however, frequently invoked in the drama, often for inflicting her ‘slings and arrows’ on the most innocent of sufferers: Job, for instance, in the late 15^th-century Mystère de la Pacience de Job, from whom Fortune, under God’s authority, has removed all ‘biens mondains’. But as his counsellor Baldach reminds him:

Qui a toutes gens est commune:

Sa roue de torner ne cesse;

Les ungs tombe, les aultres toust:

Des biens mondains fait ce qu’elle voust.

Pourquoy donc vous doibt il desplayre,

Si Dieu veult sa volumpté faire?

This description of the role of Fortune in human affairs is typical of many to be found in texts of the period where she is often depicted as ‘the arbitrary bestower of victory and defeat, the power behind the rise and fall of nations, the causer of happiness or wretchedness in peoples, families, and individuals: potent, unpredictable, quite unfeeling, deaf to human appeals and blind to human tears, answerable only to God’. This model is largely consistent with her treatment in the morality plays, where we see an even more precisely christianized transformation of the pagan goddess. We also see there something of the widespread influence of the medieval Boethius and the iconography associated with French translations of the Consolatio Philosophiae. Of particular interest to us here, then, is how dramatists sought to incorporate her symbolism, just as they did with the pilgrimage of life metaphor or the psychomachia of the vices and virtues, in order to give a strong visual stimulus to christian teachings on sin and salvation.

When Crokesos in the Jeu de la Feuillée asks the question: ‘Dame, qu’est che la que je voi/En chele roee? Sont che gens?’, Morgue replies:

Nenil, ains est essamples gens.

Et chele qui le roe tient,

Chascune de nous apartient,

Et s’est, tres dont qu’ele fu nee,

Muiele, sourde et avulee. (vv. 766-72, ed. Dufournet)

We will return later to the question of ‘essamples gens’, but the depiction of Dame Fortune as ‘dumb, deaf and blind’ does not quite square with her role in our two moralities. Dumb she most certainly is not, witness her detailed explanations of the significance of her physical appearance, delivered in that auto-presentational manner typical of many a moralité character. In BAMA, describing herself as ‘mauvaise et diverse’, she explains to Bien Advisé, advised by Honneur to contemplate the significance of her message, her distinctive facial appearance: ‘…tainte et perse…riant et debonnaire’ (pp. 76-77). Her particoloured visage traditionally denoted Fortune’s irrational changes of mood and fickleness, and the revolutions of her wheel her power to control human life. Her self-portrait in a prose section of HJHM gives a similar picture:

In other words Fortune remains in both plays close to the standard figure outlined by Howard Patch: a capricious force, both kindly and menacing (‘angelique/espouventable’, BAMA, p. 77), contrasts which are sometimes expressed in the characteristic ‘now…now’ formula (‘Present marrie, present haittie/Present chante et present enrage’, BAMA p. 78), and which represent her sudden changes of mood. When in bad humour she will ‘faire la moe’ (‘qui a maint fol a fait la moue’ BAMA, pp. 2; 81) and thereby bring shame on the beholder. Moreover her power is often alluded to in a secular, wordly, context, as we shall see. It is reflected, too, in her lofty physical position, certainly in Bourgoing’s play, where she is enthroned: noblement en ung haut lieu, et aupres d’elle y aura une grande roe (p. 538). We do not find her blindfolded, however (as often in the pictorial evidence), an impractical arrangement here since she has to stage-manage movements on and off the wheel (which she sometimes cranks), as well as organising costume changes. She also has relatives, a common feature of the genre: thus in HJHM, Fortune is married to Le Monde and her sister is Adversité.

It is no surprise to find Fortune’s famous wheel much in evidence in the two plays – ‘veez ma roe cointe et jolie…de tresbel ouvrage’ (BAMA, p. 78) – an important visual focus for spectators familiar with the standard iconography. The advantage of the dramatic mode of course is that such normally static visual elements can be brought to life in performance via practicable machinery that revolves like a veritable merry-go-round, and from which characters can be sent flying at the turn of a handle. This facility is seen at its most dramatically telling in HJHM, when Homme Mondain receives his final punishment for consorting with the vices: Adversité arrives with Necessité, Connaissance and Bon Vouloir, forcefully spins the wheel in the wrong direction, and topples the wordly trio from their lofty position:

When, in BAMA, Mal Advisé makes a bid to climb onto the wheel, he is smartly rejected in favour of Regnabo, Regno, Regnavi, and Sine Regno. These figures have apparently vacated their earlier positions on the wheel, but now re-appear in turn, each staking his claim before being invited by Fortune to take his place: Regnabo ‘en bas’, Regno, ‘plus hault que une aloue’, Regnavi ‘en ce mellieu’, and Sine Regno ‘au dernier degré’. Their eagerness to feature on the wheel is explained by the promise of wealth and wordly position, symbolised by the crown that Fortune now passes up to him, and that will designate him a ruler. The standard iconography of the wheel is thus gradually built up by Fortune, who instals the characters on their appropriate ‘estage’, each movement accompanied by an explanatory speech. Regno’s attitude is especially haughty to those lower down: to the entreaties of Regnabo, for instance, he crudely retorts:

Aussi maistre Cocquelaribus,

Il n’y a icy nulle ne nulz

Qui jamais en jour de sa vie

En mon lieu se siege le cul…(pp. 80-81).

…an outburst that prompts Fortune to show him her ‘laide face’, and then to send him unceremoniously crashing to the ground with a reminder that her ‘biens’ are merely on loan and can be quickly removed. It is noteworthy that such violent mood-changes on the part of the wheel figures, detectable in some of the pictorial illustrations, are sometimes taken up in these plays: in HJHM, for example, Wordly Man is directed to [mettre] les mains sur ses hanches et [dire] moult fierement (p. 544) as he boasts:

Gay, beau, rich, cler, reluysant,

Et mon beau visage polly?

Moreover the ludic value of a wheel that actually turns also means that when Regno is displaced, Regnabo automatically takes his place at the top as it rotates four times through 90 degrees until the original positions are reached. As their situations change, the four figures swap appeals and insults, roundly cursing Dame Fortune: ‘Ha! Je pry a Dieu qu’il te maudie,/Mauvaise Fortune diverse…’ (Sine Regno, p. 84). At the end of this scene, each soberly takes stock of his situation, his message highlighted by a metrical shift to decasyllables. Fortune, too, joins in, signalling once more her perversity:

Mon chant est plour et ma chanson clameur,

Mon ris est plour et ma joye tristour,

Mon jeu est ire et mon repos labeur,

Mon miel est fiel, amer est ma doulcour….(pp. 87-89).

Simon Bourgoing’s play HJHM, however, will use the wheel differently from BAMA. He opts for a more pointed allegorical message by eschewing the traditional ‘figure of four’, by using personifications with which his audience might have been more familiar, and by having HM make two visits to the abode of Fortune instead of just one. While HJ is engaged in honest toil surrounded by the Virtues, HM, wearing a blindfold, is brought, with Orgueil, Le Monde, and Honneur Mondain to make obeisance to Dame Fortune (p. 538), her wheel thus far having no figures upon it. Fortune promises to elevate him and to bestow her riches upon him; and in case the message is not quite clear enough, they are there joined by Le Monde, La Chair, and Le Dyable. In such company HM is naturally blind to Fortune’s perverse nature; he would have done better to heed the Angel’s advice to ‘…faire obeyssance/A Dieu, par bonne conscience,/Et laisser tous ces mauditz biens’ (p. 542). But this is not to be: together with his wordly crew, he will be showered with Fortune’s bounties, but with an ominous reminder that his good fortune will be purely temporary. Cognoissance, explaining again the significance of Fortune’s double visage and of her wheel and its unexpected revolutions (p. 547), steps up to remind HM that he will soon be cast down from it – by Povreté and Necessité. Which is precisely what happens: cheated of money and clothes in the nearby house of Perdition, HM returns with Orgueil and her retinue to Fortune, who reinstates him, blindfold once more, on her wheel (p. 624). Now, an even more swaggering and self-congratulating HM (il mect les mains sur les deux costez comme orgueilleux et dit…) is honoured by a song and dance routine, organised by Honneur Mondain, round the base of the wheel:

The Angel proffers more advice but it is drowned out by the blandishments of Le Monde, La Chair and Le Dyable – and also by Liberté, who reminds HM that he has the freedom of choice ‘De faire tout a ton plaisir,/Ou le bien ou le mal choisir’ (p. 627). This Boethian relationship between free will and fate is seen in other personifications in these plays -- characters such as Franc Arbitre, Franche Volonté, Raison, Congnoissance, Entendement, whose role is to help the heroes make their moral choices. But in the case of HM, it is not long before he is delivered, naked and destitute, into the hands of Malle Fin, with Desesperance in attendance, his end recalling that of Judas in Jean Michel’s Mystère de la Passion.

In addition to incorporating the concept of free will into their dramas, our playwrights are quick to develop other elements of the Boethian influence, particularly those that can be externalized dramatically to reinforce the message. The most obvious of these is perhaps the use of costume and costume-change. In a genre which attaches particular importance to emblematic costumes, significant dress and attributes are a sure means of visualising the verbal, as in the BAMA scene just discussed, where Regno’s fall from the wheel is accompanied by a ritual stripping of his kingly accoutrements: Adonc le despoille et le regarde a terrible face… (p. 81). When Regnabo then takes Regno’s place, he is similarly handed une couronne et une belle robe (p. 82), and the remorseless merry-go-round continues, each figure being shown Fortune’s ‘horrible face/grimasse et moe’, then clothed in appropriate finery, finally to have it forcibly removed to symbolize his change of fortune.

This association of Fortune with significant clothing, seen clearly in some of the illustrations of her wheel, is also exploited by Simon Bourgoing in HJHM, a play which combines dual journey metaphor with elaborate psychomachia. Here Fortune makes her appearance at the beginning of the action, just after the naked brothers’ emergence from La Terre to which, of course, they will inevitably return. She introduces herself as the wife of Le Monde, a relationship that meaningfully allies her with notions of a wordliness that is scenically highlighted by the ‘deux habits tous garniz’ which Fortune carries with her, and with which she and Monde will later cover the brothers’ nudity when they are brought before Innocence (p. 441). Later in the action, HM’s first elevation on Fortune’s wheel will be demonstrated initially by means of costume: ‘Or ça, il vous fault accoustrer/Homme Mondain subtillement/Pour mieulx a chascun vous monstrer,/Vous aurez riche habillement (p. 538)… a quick-change that is followed by his crowning by Orgueil. Finally, with HM’s terrifying end in sight, Adversité will remove his blindfold, his sudden penury signalled by a costume-change: Icy Fortune et Adversité despoillent l’Homme Mondain de tous habillemens et de tous autres biens et demourra tout nud en chemise. In this sorry state he will be delivered into the hands of Desesperance and Malle Fin.

It is clear from these scenes that Fortune does not play the role of the Fatum of classical tragedy, and that any analysis along the lines of Frappier’s examination of her function in La Mort Artu is here inappropriate. Significantly perhaps, it is only in the dual-action plays that Fortune figures: in HP, for example, she does not appear at all. But in plays depicting a dual path either to salvation or damnation, she occupies a significant place in the characters’ moral itinerary: a sort of focal point to which both the saved and the sinner are attracted before making their moral choices. This explains why characters such as ‘Raison’, ‘Entendement’, ‘Cognoissance’, ‘Libre Arbitre’, Franc Volenté and ‘Liberté’ are significant in this dialectic. The influence of Boethius and the later medieval versions of the Consolatione is also clear with frequent emphasis upon the ‘biens de la Fortune’ in stark opposition to her ‘faux biens’, an opposition figured most obviously in her contrasting black/white appearance. This contrast indeed lies at the heart of the structure of the two surviving plays in which Fortune appears. The ‘division’ of the stage-set described by the Prologue to BAMA could perhaps be said to arise out of this opposition, a structure clearly echoed in plate 99 of Courcelle’s selection (Strasbourg, 1501) depicting bifurcating paths: to the left a money-lender approached by a beggar, his table piled high with filthy lucre; in the centre, a narrow, winding path leading to a bust of Christ set high in a flaming cloud, i.e. the ‘destre chemin’ followed by Bien Advisé. The fact that Fortune and her Wheel is one of only three woodcuts to feature in Vérard’s edition of this play (Paris, Pierre Le Caron for Anthoine Vérard, s.d. [1499]) – significantly just a few pages before a conventional depiction of devils herding souls into a hell-mouth (pp. 79 and 98) – similarly highlights its religious significance in the action.

By exploiting the thematic and pictorial commonplaces of Fortune the playwrights were able successfully to enhance their religious message. At the end of BAMA for instance – a fascinating play by any standards – the souls of the rich, powerful and (for a time) upwardly mobile Regno and Regnabo will suffer, with Mal Advisé, the torments of Hell, ‘sans jamais estre rachetée[s]’ (p. 95), whilst those of the repentant have-nots – Regnavi, Sine Regno and Bien Advisé -- will climb ever higher until they reach Honneur and Bonne Fin, to obtain ‘De leurs pechez remission’ (p. 107). This message will be reinforced scenically, too, as the three ‘bien advisés’ finally take their rightful place, not on the now empty wheel of Fortune, but ‘en paradis…en la celestielle compagnie’. Moreover the particular skill of the playwright can be seen in the special perspective that is brought to bear here, his message conveyed not just directly to the audience, but more subtly via Bien Advisé, who is presented as a spectator of Mal Advisé’s perilous journey to damnation, and of the Fortune scenes in particular, presented almost as a play-within the-play, but in which Bien Advisé himself takes part as he points out to Regno and Regnabo the error of their ways. He is thus, as Helmich has pointed out (p. xxv), part of the ‘fiction primaire’, yet also a character who is seen to be heeding the lesson of the play, and in whom the audience can clearly recognize themselves. In such episodes as these the essential penitential lesson can be said to transcend the standard imagery.

* * *

There is little need to dwell here on the appeal of gambling scenes in a wide variety of medieval comico-realist texts, particularly those dealing with tavern transgression and its associated thematics. A new study of the fabliaux, for instance, considers such game motifs in the context of their characters – essentially winners and losers – and their narrative structures; and in the gambling episodes of such ‘contes à rire en vers’ as Saint Pierre et le jongleur we indeed find many of the dicing topoi that will reappear in our morality play texts. The essential difference, however, is the shift of emphasis that we see in the plays, where gambling is not just condemned as a social and moral evil, but also elaborated figuratively in the context of the wider struggle for men’s souls: the fabliaux gamblers play games with each other; while those in the moralités dice with death. The stakes here are thus far higher, and in the morality plays’ fictional universe, have a sharply didactic aim. They often take place in some representation of the tavern (the house of Perdition in HJHM) and are employed, like Fortune’s wheel, as a focus for those tendencies that set mankind on the road to damnation. There is moreover in the gambling motif a close link with Fortune who, as Boethius points out, often parades her fickle power as a game, exalting mankind and then casting him down at her whim. It is probably this affinity with ‘play’ that prompted the miniaturist of the Rothschild MS of BAMA to have Mal Advisé carry a tennis racket wherever he goes, even in the hectic round of the dance!

That games and gambling were so roundly condemned by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities is a clear indication of their widespread popularity across the social spectrum, particularly in the later Middle Ages. Much of the information in the important work by J.-M. Mehl derives from legal prohibitions, whilst for the Church the pastime was regarded as an infringement of the second Commandment, a Contemptus Dei that led Jean Gerson to exhort his flock to: ‘Querez notre Seigneur…ne le querez pas en la taverne ni au jeu de dez’. Hardly surprising then that it should feature in the moralities as a ‘plaisir mondain’ to be condemned, and that it should serve to enhance the deeper religious structure of the plays. Lack of space prevents a detailed analysis here, but the following is an attempt at a brief typology of such gambling sequences.

(i) Types of Gambling: The games played in the moralities are mainly dicing and cards, usually the former, the greatest variety being found in Les Enfants de Maintenant (EM), a treatment of the parable of the prodigal son in a pedagogic context. Having rejected the chance of a formal education two young brothers, Finet and Malduict, are introduced to gambling by Jabien and his daughter Luxure, with whom they play first of all at ‘glic’, similar to our three-card brag, and played here with playing-cards; they then move to ‘franc de carreau’, a game involving throwing a die or counter so that it lands fully within the lines of a square; Luxure beats Finet: ‘Il est tout franc, la gaigne est mienne’ (v. 1149). Their final game is ‘marelles’ (‘merels’, or ‘nine men’s morris’), played here with dice, and according to Jabien highly popular: ‘C’est bien dit; le jeu du mereau/Est bien commun; si est la chance’ (vv. 1216-17). When Mal Advisé meets his ‘tutor’, Oysance (‘fille aisnée de Paresse’), she refers to a wider range of pastimes: ‘Jouer vueil aux dez et aux tables,/A l’eschiquier, aussi aux quilles…’ (pp. 22-23); and Folie promises to introduce him ‘ aux dez et aux tables/Aussi a jouer du bouclier,/Et a telz jeux defamiables’ (p. 27). We soon see him in the tavern playing ‘hazart’ with Hoquellerie and Folie (pp. 32-33). In L’Enfant prodigue the prodigal is fleeced by the whores Fin Cuer and La Gorriere, first (vv. 782-824) at ‘glic’ using cards, then at ‘hazart’ (vv. 955-72), at which three dice are used, as in Bodel’s famous play. In HJHM an extended game of cards takes place (pp. 615-20) between Homme Mondain, Tromperie, and Folle Plaisance, with Mauvaise Voulenté, Prodigalité, Obstination, and Perdition urging them to further excesses. Here again, the precise nature of the game is unclear, but as they cut the cards to see who is to start (p. 617), it is Tromperie who receives the king and not Homme Mondain, an ironic comment on his earlier position on Fortune’s wheel.

(ii) Technical Realism: There can be little doubt from the true-to-life detail accorded to these games that audiences would have recognized them as realistically portrayed: not only are precise ‘rules’ followed, but numerical details of scores are precisely given; with technical terms coming thick and fast: ‘hazard/chance’ (HP, p. 245), ‘le glic des roys’ (EM, v.1113), ‘honneurs’ (EP p. 800; EM v. 1116), ‘ronfle’ (EM v. 1084), ‘ronfler’ (EP v. 824), ‘ars/embesars’ (EM v. 885), ‘coucher/cousche’ (EM v. 1165), ‘roy…dame…varlet’ (HJHM p. 619), ‘roynes, varletz’ (EM vv’ 1072-73), ‘royne, roy’ (EP v. 800), ‘mesler les cartes’ (HJHM p. 617); and the whole paraphernalia of gaming is carefully described: the the ‘tablier’, the ‘fines cartes’, the ‘beaux dez’, and the ‘bourses’ from which dice or money are ritually produced. It is important that such scenes should represent real moral threats, and that the audience should understand who are the winners and who are the losers. This is why there is also much numerical precision in the stakes involved (cf. HP, p. 246), and in the upping of those stakes by the players: in the card-school of HJHM, for instance, Mondain may initially have the King, but it his opponent Tromperie who wins, as the stakes are inexorably raised until Mondain loses all he has (p. 620). On a realistic level, Tromperie can perhaps be said to signify the ‘bluffing’ that is an accepted part of gambling; but the message of the play is that the activity will drag you ever further down the slippery slope to damnation. The detail is necessarily plausible, but the essential focus is on the players – on their accusations, arguments and indignant protests, certainly – but mainly on their inevitable fate when they risk their souls in such dice-games from Hell.

(iii) Related activities. This ‘slippery slope’ of escalating sinfulness is another standard feature: the idea that one excess leads inevitably to something even worse. One of the means of externalising this is to have the loser dice away even his clothes, the attendant stage-business often highlighting a stark contrast between sartorial excess and sudden nakedness. Clothes indeed are closely associated with both motifs examined in this paper. If, on Fortune’s wheel, Man’s wordly success is represented by kingly clothes and attributes, his fall is represented by his being stripped naked in a gambling school. This misfortune will usually have been caused by his cheating opponents, sharps who are sometimes warned to keep their hands above the table (‘Gettez tout hault a descouvert’, HP, p. 247); or, if they are female, by the promise of sexual activity: for instance Cotgrave defines the game of ‘glic’ as ‘to play fast and loose’ which in EM does indeed seem to be understood by Luxure as a sexual metaphor. In HJHM scenes of open sexual dalliance follow quickly on from the card-game (cf. p. 607), while other sins of the flesh such as eating and drinking sometimes accompany the gambling, as in HP, where Luxure orders a lavish dinner ‘pendant qu’on jourra’ (p. 243).

Another example of the ‘slippery slope’ motif is the association of gambling with more serious types of cheating which have wider social and religious implications. Reduced to naked penury by Tromperie, Homme Mondain, will need clothes and money to make his come-back on the Wheel of Fortune, and which he will acquire from Avarice, Usure, and Simonie. The message is stark enough, indeed similar to the advice given by the husband of the Le Mesnagier de Paris, who reminds his young wife that ‘la vi. Branche d’avarice si est le hazart. Si est quant on joue aux dez pour gaignier l’argent d’autruy’, repeating no doubt the advice of many a confession manuel. Such books also condemned gambling for its incitement to blasphemy, a danger to which the frequent squabbles and violent brawling – also a common motif – inevitably gave rise.^. In HJHM, as Tromperie scoops up her winnings, Ire attributes Mondain’s losses to his inability to blaspheme properly: ‘Que dyable n’es tu dilligent/Pour jurer et te courrocer?/Tu ne pourras rien embourser/Se Dieu ne despites et jures!’ (p. 619).

(iv) Gambling Symbolism. In the context of the morality play allegory it is naturally the deeper religious symbolism of the gambling scenes that was most intended to impinge upon audiences. In these plays, gambling is portrayed not just as an appealing, if morally risky, ‘plaisir mondain’, but rather as an activity that leads to the fires of hell itself. In the moralities, whenever the Everyman figure rolls his dice he is the inevitable loser since his opponents are the deadly sins or other related vices, and thus the embodiment evil. One of the most telling examples is the scene in HP, where Sinner’s tutor, the very Devil himself, explains to him the diabolical significance of the numbers on the dice:

Comme il est pointé vous appere.

C’est en depit de Dieu le Pere.

Le second point, je vous affis,

En despit du Pere et du Filz.

Les poins de la ternité,

En despit de la trinité,

Et en ce point ne par esperit…etc. (p. 242)

This formula would doubtless have been a familiar reminder to the audience of the dangers of dicing with death via the intermediary of the devil: it is one of the key structural elements of the Dit du Jeu de Dez, which explains that dicing ‘fu premier fait par male entencion,/Du conseil l’anemi qui ne fait se mal non,/Et a tous crestiens qui est leur destruction’. Rendered concrete in HP in a game of ‘hazart’ that pits Sinner against the ‘empeschements’ (i.e. three ‘gallants’ representing man’s inherent sinfulness, and called Crainte de faire penitence, Esperance de longue vie, and Desespoir de pardon), there can be no doubt about the perils of keeping bad company. Things can only go from bad to worse, as Sinner, having lost all, proceeds with Luxure to the ‘Jardin du monde’, where he is tempted in turn by the seven deadly sins. Such symbolism is commonplace in the popular medieval interpretation of games of chance, witness those Passion play scenes depicting the gambling for Christ’s garments before the crucifixion. Similar associations are clear in the iconography of medieval gaming: a 13^th-century sketch by Villard de Honnecourt, depicts two semi-naked dice-players facing each other across the gaming board. The one on the right, however, plays not with conventional numbered cubes, but with circular dice bearing cabalistic symbols on their six faces. Here, as in the moralités, the Everyman gambler is dicing for his very soul, but in a game where the dice are inevitably biased against him.

Both the motifs studied in this paper are of course interrelated. Though they take different allegorical forms, they are both employed by playwrights seeking to demonstrate, with characteristic medieval dualism, the battle of the vices and virtues for the soul of mankind. Symbolically both motifs represent the force of destiny, but a destiny that is firmly transplanted into the christian context: there is a parallel between the unpredictable rotations of Fortune’s wheel and the random rolling of the dice, but in the end the outcome represents God’s judgement. In the moralities, both are used as means of testing human weakness and failure. Their proximity on the stage-set tells us something of this relationship: in HJHM, for instance, Fortune’s abode is adjacent to the Palace of Perdition, which in turn is ‘du costé d’enfer’; and when HM loses all at the gaming table, it is but a step for him to return to Fortune’s wheel temporarily to seek further wordly success. Yet we know that he is doomed because he has chosen the wrong path. To play cards or roll dice leads to damnation, just as to sit on the wheel is to court eventual disaster: after all, what goes up, must come down.

Both motifs, of course, are eminently dramatic: Fortune in a more obviously visual sense, thus making connections with the iconographical tradition particularly revealing. Whereas Adam de la Halle’s Wheel of Fortune was probably some kind of backdrop (perhaps a tapestry given the Arras setting, hence ‘essamples gens’), in these large-scale productions it was almost certainly represented life-size on stage and was capable of holding (and throwing off!) real actors. If we want evidence for the feasibility of this we need look no further than the vast wheel of Fortune set up in the streets of Bruges in 1515 to celebrate the entry of of the future Charles V into the city. Used on this occasion to a more satirical end, it held four allegorical characters, and was controlled by two of the players who: ‘par y mectre la main seulement la faisoient tourner et changier le lieu desdits assietes et consequemment l’estat desdictz quatre personnages seans sur icelle.’ The gambling too, though on a smaller canvas, is dramatic in a different way, offering an opportunity for serious moral comment, but leavened by physical business with props and costumes, stage-violence, argument, humour, and even suspense -- a lively counterpoint to the more sober and lengthy allegorical exchanges.

The two motifs examined here help us to understand something of the genesis of the religious moralities and their place in a long moralising tradition. We see here something of the playwrights’ methods in transposing well-known topoi into a dramatic mode in order to demonstrate the essential religious lessons that were the ‘raison d’être’ of the genre. They may have done this in a way that has largely lost its appeal today, but their use of Fortune’s Wheel, and of some lively gambling episodes show how they could succeed, in the words of Guillaume des Autels, effectively to ‘montrer les choses intelligibles par les sensibles et manifestes.’