Et destruira son âme (à dire voir) O doncques, Homme en qui santé empire, Tu sentirois Enfer dedans ton cueur. Mais Dieu tout bon sentir (sans plus) te laisse Certes plutost un bon père desire Son filz blessé que meurdrier, ou jureur: ENVOI Prince Royal, quand Dieu par son povoir Et que les corps sortiront de la lame, Nous aurons lors ce bien, c'est à sçavoir, त L'Infortuné in L'Instructif de la Seconde Rhétorique (1500) explained that the chant royal was above all others the poem especially adapted to royal, noble or majesterial subjects, that it was the best possible vehicle for all serious themes. He described the poets as vying with one another in the composition of chants royal in the puy in order to gain the prize. Sibilet, in 1548, wrote that the chant royal was nothing but a ballade superimposed upon a ballade. He explained the term by saying that it was called royal since, because of its grandeur and majesty, it was particularly suitable to be sung in the presence of royalty, especially since its special function was to praise princes and potentates, mortal and immortal. Deschamps, the earliest theorist on the forms, defines the chant royal substantially as it is written at the present time, as a five-stanza poem of ten, eleven or twelve lines, no especial number being prescribed, with an envoy beginning with an address to the prince and identical rhymes running throughout. Jehan Molinet, in his L'Art de Rhétorique, cites a chant royal that was crowned at the puy at Amiens in 1470. The chant royal and the ballade became favorite forms with the poets of the puy. The chant royal seems to have been the wholly sophisticated artifice of poetic contrivers who were familiar with the songs of the trouvères and with the early ballades, whereas the ballade originated outside of the puy and was adapted to the circumstances under which poetic contests were held. VIII THE RONDEAU IN FRANCE Among the fixed verse forms the rondeau belongs with the ballade in point of age. Though lifted into literature as an artistic dance-song, it, too, has its roots in the primitive past of the French folk. In its earliest form it was made up probably of single lines alternating with the refrain. Later, the line was increased, first to a stanza of two lines and then to a more extended stanza, and one or more of the lines was adapted to rhyme with the refrain. The word rondel, which is the earlier form of the word rondeau, just as in the French language chapel is the earlier form of the word chapeau, means simply a song used as the accompaniment to a ronde or round dance. The earlier refrains incorporated in rondeaus, like those incorporated in the ballade, were two lines in length. In the very earliest rondels they may represent fragments of folk poetry. The following stanza of Guillaume d'Amiens, who lived in the thirteenth century, approximates the earliest type of stanza built up in the course of choral song: Hareu! commant m'i maintendrai Apansez sui que j'en ferai; A ma dame consoil prendrai The sense of this ancient French poem is that the pains of love are so great that the lover does not know how he is going to bear up under them, but being completely at a loss he will go to his lady for consolation and she will know how to give him peace. An analysis of this poem shows that it falls into three stanzas, a first stanza of two lines, a second stanza of a single line followed by the first line of the first stanza forming a refrain, and a third stanza containing as many lines as there are in the first stanza with all of the first stanza serving at the end as a refrain. The earliest literary rondels are those of the thirteenth-century poets, Guillaume d'Amiens and Adam de la Halle, whose name is associated with the puy at Arras, but there are older types represented in thirteenth-century romances like the Roman du Chastelain de Coucy and Adenet's Cléomadès. In the fourteenth century, outside of the drama, the rondeau became less a musical composition than a poem. In Deschamps' Art de Dictier there are three kinds. of rondeaus differentiated. The first kind, which he calls a simple rondeau, is exactly in structure like the little poem of Guillaume d'Amiens given above. It is a poem of eight lines with a refrain of two lines at the beginning, with the first line of the refrain repeated as the fourth line, and with a two-line refrain serving again as the seventh and eighth lines, the rhyme scheme being A B*a A ab A B. This earliest form of rondel has persisted since the thirteenth century, but it has gone ever since the end of the fifteenth century under the name of triolet, by which it is known to-day. The second type which he describes was used in the fourteenth century only. It was a poem of thirteen lines, the first stanza consisting of a three-line refrain, the second stanza of two lines plus the first two lines of the refrain, and the third stanza consisting of three lines plus the complete refrain, the rhyme scheme running A B A/a b A B/aba AB A, or A B B/a b A B/ abb ABB. It is illustrated in this little elegy of Eustache Deschamps on the death of a man young in years but old in knowledge: Juenes d'aage, vieux de science, Preudons de bonne conscience, Capitals designate the rhymes at the end of refrain lines. Homs plains de toute sapience, Vo mort fait maint cueur plorer d'ire. The third type which Deschamps discusses is called the double rondeau. It is a poem of sixteen or seventeen lines rhyming A B B A/a b B A/abba A BBA, or A B C D/a b c A B/ a b c d A B C D. This poem, also by Deschamps, is probably intended to conform to the sixteen-line double rondeau, Joyeusement, par un tresdoulx joir, Se joyeux sui, chascuns le puet oir Rien ne me faut quant je vous puis veir, Et joye avoir en la vie amoureuse. the lines being dedicated to the praise of a life spent in joyous preoccupations in the company of the beloved. The evolution of the rondel from an eight-line poem to a poem of twice that number of lines was accomplished by the process of adding one or more lincs either to the refrain or to the body of the poem, more probably to the latter, since the multi-line refrain is older than the single-line refrain. Out of the one hundred |