A Play of Three Suitors: A Neglected Middle Dutch Version of the “Entrapped Suitors” Story (ATU 1730)

The wide diffusion of the “Entrapped Suitors” story-type has often been observed: examples are found in a remarkable number of literatures, ranging from English, French and Greek in the West, to Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri in the East. However, a text of this type that is often overlooked is the Middle Dutch play Een Speel Van Drie Minners (“A Play of Three Suitors”). This is despite the fact that it represents a highly idiosyncratic variation on the story, as it replaces the central moral with something more scabrous. We offer here a comprehensive discussion of this singular text and its narrative form, with an English verse-translation appended.

In terms of their general moral outlook, the versions of the story so far mentioned are all extremely similar. Each displays a tendency to commend the central female character, and through her to acclaim women in general. In the texts, women are credited with the power to identify threats to the given social order, and to eliminate these dangers. In most versions the woman defends her vows to her husband, or even her husband himself: this pattern is followed in the Gesta Romanorum, the Arabian Nights, the Sinbadnameh and the Wright's Chaste Wife.
In each of these cases, the woman rebuffs a direct attempt to transgress or undermine existing social relations, either in the form of her marriage or the standing of her husband in his community. Other redactions, particularly Constant du Hamel and the version in the Kathasarisagara, extend this still further, giving the woman the power to expose corruption within the social order at large. Somadeva's Upakosa, for example, renovates the community as she defends her sexual integrity, laying bare the dishonesty of three court officials. Even seemingly anomalous versions, such as Boccaccio's tale of Madonna Francesca, do not travel far beyond this basic model. The Decameron states that Francesca is punishing "the daring presumption of the lovers," putting down their harmful and excessive social aspiration (Boccaccio 1972, 688). The story not only portrays women as intelligent, resourceful and inventive, but asserts their ability to preserve both their own integrity and that of the wider community. It grants women the power and the judgement to correct any disturbance or disruption to the true order of things, even without male assistance. In short, as Barbara Hanawalt stresses, the core of the tale displays firm feminist sympathies (1998,89).
The version that takes this tendency to the greatest extreme is the text most closely related to Een Speel, the Middle English Lady Prioress and Her Three Suitors. [4] This poem of two hundred and fifty lines, which is doubtfully attributed to John Lydgate in its one surviving manuscript, is typical of English fabliaux, using "trickery to put a stop to illicit behaviour rather than to further it" (Furrow 1989, 13). The text owes its substance to Boccaccio, although places greater emphasis on the corrective power of the central character. Firstly, it makes the woman more respectable, not only turning her into the leader of a convent community, but describing her as nobly born, "a lordes dowter." Secondly, while the Decameron story relies on an agency outside the woman's control, in the form of the city watch, the Lady Prioress makes clear that the woman alone is responsible for chastising her pursuers. It involves three suitors-a "young knyght," "a parson of a paryche," and "a burges of a borrow"-who are given interlocking tasks by the prioress: the first must lie in a coffin overnight to be deemed worthy of the woman's love; the second is sent to bury this "ded corse" in secret, to "say his dorge and masse, and laye him in his grave"; and the third is dressed in a "develles garment" and sent to interrupt the burial (Furrow 1985, 15 and 28). The lovers therefore terrify each other: the knight in the coffin begins to panic as he is being buried, the parson is frightened by the intrusion of the devil, and the merchant is startled when the "corse" springs to life and runs out of the churchyard. In this text, the woman single-handedly punishes these offenders. She does not draw on any separate force to put her plan into operation, but retains sole authority over the events.
Moreover, the Lady Prioress even permits the woman to preach openly on social duty. In her dealings with her wooers, the prioress often weaves subtle moralisations into her speech. She quietly reminds two suitors of their obligations even as she seems to praise them: the knight is hailed as "ower lord, ower patron, and ower precedent," while the parson is told "we send for you, ouer worshype for to save." At the end of the poem, the prioress even reasserts her own commitment to Christ, issuing the pointed statement, "had I never lover yet that ever dyed good dethe" (Furrow 1985, 28-30). As John Hines comments, "the prioress . . . consistently and piously respects conventional standards of decency" (1993,209). The poem forcefully spells out the central moral of its story-type, emphatically championing the ability of women to defend social frameworks, and celebrating their innate cleverness and honesty in the process.
The Dutch Een speel van drie minners, however, directly subverts these ideas, breaking sharply with the position running through most earlier versions of the narrative. In fact, it could almost be said that the play amounts to an antifeminist revision of the story. In most respects the Speel closely follows the Lady Prioress. It retains most of the distinctive features of the English poem: it also features three lovers from different estates (although substitutes the merchant for a coster or "sexton") and focuses on a task that takes place in a graveyard, in which one lover pretends to be a corpse, one pretends to be a devil, and the other attempts to move the "body." It also, unlike the Boccaccio version, leaves the suitors to frighten each other, rather than allowing a third party to intervene. Although the play may not be directly derived from the English poem-its minimal use of explanation suggests that the story was already well known to the Dutch-speaking audience, presumably from another Dutch source-it is closely related to the Lady Prioress in structure.
Yet, despite its resemblance to the English work, the Speel is far less sympathetic in its portrayal of women. From the first it adds a new element to the story: it draws on the misogynous commonplace that women tempt men into "ruin" and humiliation (Bloch 1991, 14-15). The opening and closing speeches allude to the stories of Aristotle and Virgil being outwitted by women. First occurring in Henri d'Andeli's Lai d'Arioste (c. 1250), tales of how these wise men were "by a womans cauylacon / Browt to iniquyte and to mych wo" are found throughout medieval Europe (Wright 1847, 66;Nolan 1998, 88). The wijf of the Speel is herself much closer to the women of these stories than she is to Upakosa or the pious Prioress. She is seemingly motivated by little more than spite. Rather than finding herself pestered by her suitors, she seems to have actively sought their attentions. The play opens with her boasting of her beauty and cunning: she gloats that she "sets many sighing" and has "snared suitors three" (ic ben zeker zeer hertelic ghemint . . . Daer isser drie, die mij vrihen). She does not even expose the suitors to public ridicule, or parade them before a figure of authority, as do the women in the most other versions. In the Speel, the suitors' degradation is staged for her amusement alone, not as a means of securing official or communal rebuke. The woman in the Speel does not defer to any higher authority, and does not embody any moral position. She is more a vindictive deceiver. Rather than defending the social order against interference, she exploits and encourages disruption for her own enjoyment.
Nonetheless, it would not be quite accurate to regard the text as unflinchingly misogynous. While the play certainly introduces antifeminist material, it does not develop this into a coherent attack on women. Rather than condemning the woman's behaviour or character, the Speel seems to revel in her cruelty. The action of the play aligns the woman and the audience: they, like her, are observers of the men's indignities, and are invited to take delight in their abasement. The audience is not placed in opposition to the woman, but made to stand with her. Nor is the woman punished for her trickery. At the end of piece there is no revenge or recompense for the suitors. Once the Speel's woman has initiated her plot, she is able to retire to safety. Even the statement of antifeminist conceits at the end of the piece, which translates its events into the general truth "all women are sly" (vrauwen . . . daer groote subtijlheijt), is highly ambivalent. The context in which this pronouncement is made undercuts it. Firstly, it is uttered by the sexton, who as a commoner lacks the political authority of the squire and the spiritual authority of the priest: secondly, all three men have been portrayed as nothing but gullible idiots, whose lusts draw them into a blatant trap. Like the comparable tirade in the English Gawain and the Green Knight, this "outburst against women" is made to fall flat (Morgan 2002). The play's revision of the "Entrapped Suitors" topos ultimately seems more amoral than strictly antifeminist. The story-type is stripped of any moral content rather than furnished with a new, anti-female message.
It is also worth noting that this new accent is taken in more aggressive directions by later storytellers in the Netherlands. The Speel's revisions of the story-type are not confined to this one text alone. Its antifeminist tone, no matter how slight it may prove on closer inspection, paves the way for more sustained attacks against women in later Dutch versions of the story. Particularly important is a Flemish folktale first recorded in the early nineteenth century, although with apparent roots in the mid-sixteenth century (Wolf 1851, 11). This is one of several anecdotes to feature the "Lange Wapper," a malicious shape-shifting trickster said to live in the river Scheldt at Antwerp. In this account of the "Entrapped Suitors" story, the Wapper disguises himself as a "licentious" woman of the city. Once he has assumed this form, he meets with four of the woman's lovers, and sends them to the local graveyard, wearing the same disguises as the lovers of Een Speel and the Lady Prioress. However, in this version all but one of the men die of fright. This catastrophe in turn drives the woman to "put an end to her life" out of shame (Thorpe 1852, 217-8). The story thus directs its punitive conclusion against the woman herself: at its climax the woman is penalised for her promiscuity, rather than extolled for her modesty or fidelity. This version strays furthest from a conventional telling of the ATU 1730 story-type. It reverses the standard moral resonance of the topos, turning the woman from an agent to an object of punishment. Although Een Speel is by no means as militant in its misogyny, it does open the way for such strident antifeminism, by stripping its own wijf of her conventional moral authority. It may be said that the play is situated midway between the honourable Lady Prioress and the "lascivious woman" of the Wapper story. It initiates the movement from praising the woman with many suitors, to upbraiding her as a whore. In sum, Een Speel stands as a bridge between the earlier philogynous texts and the later, antifeminist version. In terms of the story-type as a whole, its importance is two-fold: not only does it alter the central significance of the story, but it instigates a new application of the story-type in Dutch folklore. Owing to these factors, the play deserves consideration.

WOMAN:
If I so choose I may well declare To myself each day, "Arise, maiden fair": I would be in no danger of lying, For certainly I set many sighing 5 Among the youths, whose hearts madly stir. I shall dress in high heels and fine fur, Even if pipers care little for me. I have already snared suitors three: They will come soon, of that have no doubt. 10 I will give them something to sigh about. Old Virgil, Aristotle the wise, Didn't suffer even half the surprise That these poor dolts are due to receive. Aha! The first arrives, I perceive: 15 Now will I pass through my dwelling.
You'll see trickery far excelling Any ever seen or heard before.