SOURCE: "Res / Verba: Ambivalence in Jeu de Saint Nicolas," in Res / Verba: A Study in Medieval French Drama, E. J. Brill, 1985, pp. 47-91.

In the following excerpt, Dane analyzes the structure of Le Jeu de Saint Nicolas and places it within the context of French literature, arguing that the meaning of the play is ambivalent.

No other twelfth- or thirteenth-century French play is as complex in its action and as difficult to interpret as Jean Bodel's Jeu de saint Nicolas (1200)¹. As in the case with many of the fourteenth-century Miracles de Notre Dame, it is difficult to assess just what Jean expected his audience to take seriously in his play and what (if anything) is no more than sheer comic relief. Here, it is not so much a question of determining what Jean might mean or intend; he may well have meant nothing at all. Rather, it is...