kwaw wrote:le pendu wrote:Actually, the Empress is really a MAN!!!
You think so? I had thought possibly the Popesse maybe was a man, why not the Empress too? The ugly sisters of our tarot pantomine? Who is our cinderella do you suppose, star lady or the worlds dancer?
The character of the Pardoner from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, who in many ways is very much like our bateleur, is said to be based to an extent upon the character of ‘False Seeming’ from ‘Roman de la Rose’:
But what care I? I'm none the worse,
With silver have I stored my purse
And goods have heaped; so well I've striven,
That foolish folk have freely given
Abundance, and I lead my life
In ease, all undisturbed by strife,
Thanks to the easy prelates who
Fear to say aught whate'er I do.
Not one of them dares make essay
Against me, or he'd roundly pay.
And thus I live as pleaseth me
By fraud, deceit, and trickery.
Who even dressed as a woman when it took his fancy:
Sometimes a woman's robe I wear,
As matron staid or damsel fair,
And oft assume religious dress,
As anchorite or prioress,
An abbess who with life hath done,
Or novice who would fain be nun
As through the world I walk about,
I turn each credence inside out,
And whatsoever may be their law,
I take the grain and leave the straw;
For I but live to cozen folk,
And laugh at all beneath my cloak.
What more to tell? In suchlike way
As serves me best I play my play.
http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~cha ... s-sem.html
The pardoner with his yellow hair and clean shaven face is described by chaucer as either a gelding (eunech) or mare, a cant term according to some for effiminate homosexual (how VERY dare you); anti-clerical reformers who proposed that priests should be allowed to marry as celibacy was unnatural and would only lead to 'unnatural vice' in same sex institutions would often refer to nuns dressing up as men and men dressing up as woman and 'marriages' being perfomed between them: so perhaps Mrs. Pope refers to this type of reformist satire (while not necessariy excluding also Pope Joan reference, a good satirical piece can work on several levels).
Woman as Man or Man as Woman, the mask like face of the Popesse is perhaps another reference to an element of disguise, permissable at carnival and masquerades, and perhaps a necessity for on an individual level at all times for some in society.
Both Popesse and Empress as men? A sort of medieval pantomime? Possible I suppose, even in Shakespeares time the womens roles were taken by men.
In reference to the Pardoner being 'gelding or mare' we may also note the pun upon the French 'mer', the sea (letters of the period to the Chaucer's king write of France as 'ultra mare', meaning 'over sea'), into which Saturns genitals are thrown and from which Venus Urania was born.
Kwaw
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