About the scene and clip:
This is a news report about the key hunchback in the fabliau—with a good deal of extra drama provided by the reporter (she is upset at having to say bad things about a humpback) and the director of the news program (who wants to get things rolling).
About the work:
The Three Hunchbacks is a comic tale about a man who marries off his daughter to a jealous hunchback—and about the wife’s clever stratagem to get rid of the bodies of three hunchbacked minstrels who suffocated in trunks in her chamber; her nasty husband is disposed of as well. The website contains several clips drawn from this fabliau, exemplifying some of the many ways in which this story can be performed.
About the genre:
Fabliaux are short comic tales. This narrative genre was extremely popular in the 13th and 14th centuries in France and elsewhere in Europe (Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale is a sophisticated fabliau). Fabliaux almost invariably deal with the passions of lust, gluttony, avarice—and with attempts to trick or deceive others. Characters are typically bourgeois, clerks and monks, or peasants—and often women. The treatment is comic or satirical. But fabliaux vary considerably. Some are extremely vulgar in language and treatment, inviting crude gestures in performance. Other fabliaux are based on puns or wordplay. Many have a moral at the end and some have ethical overtones throughout. A few fabliaux are refined and courtly in language and themes. Many fabliaux are anonymous, but a few are by known poets. Performance styles and strategies for the fabliaux probably varied considerably in the Middle Ages, according to the subject matter and characters, the poet, the performer(s), the occasion, and the kind of audience present.
About the edition/translation:
Freely adapted from Fabliaux Fair and Foul, trans. John Duval, Pegasus/ Medieval & Renaissance Texts, Binghamton, NY, 1992, pp. 140ff. Old French: Fabliaux, ed. R.C. Johnston and D.D.R. Owen, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1965 (other Old French editions also exist).
About the performer/ensemble:
Kara Durrett and Ellie Johnson are Drama students in the Atlantic Acting School at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (2010).
About the production:
This performance was created for “Acting Medieval Literature,” taught at New York University by Prof. Timmie (E.B.) Vitz, in spring 2010. Sam Erenberger was the videographer.