• Staging the Market Mechanisms of Medieval Mating in Den utro hustru
• Mads Larsen (bio)

Scandinavia’s only extant Shrovetide farce, Den utro hustru (The Unfaithful Wife), embodies a unique ethos in regard to mating and gender relations.¹ The school play, presumably written by a university-educated teacher around 1500, dramatizes humanistic, pre-Lutheran views on sex and marriage—yet from a perspective of marginalized urban men. The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) had relegated apprentices to a life phase without copulation or pair-bonding.² In northwestern Europe after the Plague, young men and women of the low and middle classes typically married late—after years of wage labor—and then established a new household.³ By restricting marriage mostly to those who could afford their own domicile, Europeans instituted a nuptial valve that lessened population growth. By depriving young people of reproductive opportunity, Europe reduced the threat of mortality crises during the late-medieval and early-modern periods that were marked by stagnant per-capita growth.⁴ The EMP provided stability for European communities and later helped facilitate industrial growth when the nuptial valve was released.⁵ A significant burden of this regime was placed upon young men and women who were prevented from living out their evolved mating preference. The ideology of courtly love encouraged them to hold out for their one true beloved, a morality that was conveyed through medieval romances and ballads.⁶ I read Den utro hustru to be the first recorded, extant literary response that engages how Nordic lower classes experienced the injustice and hypocrisy of the era’s mating markets.

The EMP was part of a larger program that Harvard anthropologist Joseph Henrich in his 2020 magnus opus, The WEIRDest People in the [End Page 283] World, refers to as the Church’s Marriage and Family Practices (MFPs).⁷ By first prohibiting cousin marriage and changing rules for ownership and inheritance, the Church dissolved Europe’s kinship societies and set in motion the psychological-institutional coevolution that would underpin the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modernity itself. The second phase commenced after the turn of the millennium. Striking down harder on polygyny provided mating opportunities for low-status males, while sacralizing female consent empowered women vis-à-vis kin and men in general.⁸ These MFPs comprised the most influential change to human mating since the Neolithic revolution. Instead of submitting to kin preference, which typically meant marrying a cousin, the new European individual had to create their own identity, work to increase their mate value, and—in a growing number of towns—compete among masses of single men and women on impersonal markets full of strangers.

Den utro hustru offers rare insight into how marginalized young men—those on the lower rungs of society—experienced this novel environment, the late-medieval “sex in the city.” The around half-hour-long play may have been staged by late-teen students from Our Lady’s School in Odense, writes Leif Søndergaard, “but it is still the craftsmen’s living conditions and way of thinking that are reflected in The Unfaithful Wife, in structure and motifs as well as in dramaturgy and values.”⁹ The unknown author appears to have built on a handful of Shrovetide plays written by German craftsmen. He adapted these works, transforming them through his own perspective, into a unique mix of early humanism, fifteenth-century sexual permissiveness, and a crudeness meant to elicit charity from drunk craftsmen and merchants, or perhaps in particular from their apprentices and journeymen.¹⁰ On the eve before Lent, around ten student-actors would sledge from guild party to guild party, performing Den utro hustru in order to earn food and drinks, in addition to cash that was much needed during this time of the year. Den utro hustru was “not a didactic school play, but one aimed at their physical survival,” writes Graham Caie.¹¹

This secular motivation opened up for uniquely honest drama, although the farce genre can give a different surface impression. The era’s didactic plays were situated in an unrelatable story world, informed by biblical ideals, with the intention of instilling moral lessons. Shrovetide [End Page 284] plays caricatured townspeople...

• 在Den utro hustru中上演中世纪交配的市场机制
• 马德斯·拉森（简历）

南坎地那维亚唯一现存的忏悔节闹剧，Den utro hustru （不忠的妻子），体现了关于交配和性别关系的独特精神。¹这部校园剧大概是由一位受过大学教育的老师在 1500 年左右创作的，它戏剧化了前路德教会关于性和婚姻的人文主义观点——但从边缘化的城市男性的角度来看。欧洲婚姻模式（EMP）将学徒降级到没有交配或结对的生活阶段。²在瘟疫之后的欧洲西北部，中下阶层的年轻男女通常结婚较晚——经过多年的有薪劳动——然后建立了新的家庭。³通过将婚姻主要限制在那些能够负担得起自己住所的人身上，欧洲人建立了一个减少人口增长的婚姻阀门。通过剥夺年轻人的生育机会，欧洲减少了以人均增长停滞为标志的中世纪晚期和早期现代时期死亡危机的威胁。⁴ EMP 为欧洲社区提供了稳定性，后来在发布结婚阀门时帮助促进了工业增长。⁵这一制度的一个重大负担被置于年轻男性和女性身上，他们被阻止实现他们进化的交配偏好。宫廷爱情的意识形态鼓励他们坚持自己真正的爱人，这是一种通过中世纪浪漫史和民谣传达的道德。⁶我读到Den utro hustru是第一个有记录的现存文学回应，它涉及北欧下层阶级如何经历那个时代交配市场的不公正和虚伪。

EMP 是哈佛人类学家约瑟夫·亨利希 (Joseph Henrich) 在其 2020 年的巨著《 [End Page 283]世界中最奇怪的人》中将其 称为教会婚姻和家庭实践 (MFP) 的更大计划的一部分。⁷通过首先禁止表亲婚姻和改变所有权和继承规则，教会解散了欧洲的亲属关系社会，并启动了支撑文艺复兴、启蒙运动和现代性本身的心理-制度共同进化。第二阶段是在世纪之交之后开始的。对一夫多妻制的严厉打击为地位低下的男性提供了交配机会，而将女性的同意神圣化则赋予了女性相对于亲属和男性的普遍权利。⁸ 这些 MFP 构成了自新石器时代革命以来对人类交配最有影响力的变化。新的欧洲人不必屈从于亲属偏好，这通常意味着嫁给表亲，而是必须创造自己的身份，努力提高配偶价值，并且——在越来越多的城镇——在大量单身男女之间竞争充满陌生人的非个人市场。

Den utro hustru提供了关于被边缘化的年轻男性（社会底层的那些人）如何体验这种新奇环境的罕见见解，即中世纪晚期的“城市性”。Leif Søndergaard 写道，大约半小时长的戏剧可能是由欧登塞圣母学校的青少年学生上演的，“但在《不忠的妻子》中反映的仍然是工匠的生活条件和思维方式，在结构和主题，以及戏剧和价值观。” ⁹这位不知名的作者似乎建立在德国工匠编写的少数忏悔节戏剧的基础上。他改编了这些作品，通过自己的视角将它们转变为早期人文主义、15 世纪的性放纵以及旨在从醉酒的工匠和商人，或者特别是他们的学徒和熟练工那里获得慈善的粗鲁的独特组合。¹⁰在四旬期前夕，大约十名学生演员会从公会派对到公会派对，表演Den utro hustru以赚取食物和饮料，此外还有一年中这个时候急需的现金。格雷厄姆·凯伊写道，《 Den utro hustru》“不是一出说教的学校戏剧，而是一场以他们的身体生存为目标的戏剧”。¹¹

这种世俗的动机为独特的诚实戏剧开辟了道路，尽管闹剧类型可以给人不同的表面印象。那个时代的说教戏剧位于一个不相关的故事世界中，以圣经理想为依据，旨在灌输道德课程。Shrovetide [End Page 284]扮演讽刺的市民......