Ujváry Zoltán: Kultusz, színjáték, hiedelem (Miskolc, 2007)

Játék és maszk. Dramatikus népszokások IV.

(Píay ancfíMasd IV 883 Dramatic Folklore (especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) has preserved the genre-image of these tinkers and glaziers for practicers and for Posterity! Similarly, it was his ethnic — as well as his religious-distance that made the Jew become a character of folk-plays. It is especially worth attention that Jewishness - in the larger context of the recent history of Hungarians and that of the Carpathian Basin — appeared only from the beginnings of the previous century. In the plays themselves — evidentiy due to the influence of Christian religion — the Jew had appeared centuries before that. In the Hungarian-speaking territory it appeared in the 17th century, as data testify it. The genre-figure of folk dramatic plays was not, however, the „biblical" Jew but the foxy Hebrew who spoke a comic jargon interspersed with German. This figure, representing the Jews, came to be stable in Hungarian folk-plays, comedies and dramas. Although the Hungarian and the European Jew-Masks are much alike and show a great number of parallels, the Jewish figure of Hungarian plays is the result of inner development. We may safely maintain this theory on the basis of unanimous data again. The Gipsy, one of the oldest of genre-figures, is one of the most popular ones in the European Folklore. Most often it is in smaller epics and masques where he turns up. It can be proved that the figure appeared on the Hungarian stage as early as the 17th century. The Gipsy characters appearing in literature and plays are not realistic — in spite of the centuries' long common history and the obviously existing bias — they are rather products of the romantic approach. The gipsy of folk-plays is an anecdotically comic figure. If we analize the texts carefully, we can see that he is not represented as someone belonging to a different ethnicity but as a special social and cultural layer of Hungarian society. It is generally characteristic of the gipsy scenes - which can easily be distinguished — that precisely because of their representation, their way of talking and because of the play-variants, the gipsy embodies a special character-type. He is individualized but he appears everywhere as an identical figure independent of time, place and occasion. In the Hungarian dramatic tradition perhaps the only element which shows traces of direct historical relations is the figure of the Turk. For want of contemporary written documents, we cannot safely establish the time of his appearance in Hungarian dramatic plays: whether he appeared at the time when the Turks invaded Hungary, or shordy afterwards, or perhaps much later - we cannot tell. In most cases the dramatic customs in which Turks actually appear do not emphasize their role, sometimes they get only episodic ones. The entirety of the pertinert dramatic custom does not have a relation with the memories of the Turkish occupation of Hungary. This fact is worth our attention just like the other one: namely, that other peoples of the Carpathian Basin also possess a rich folkloristic material concerning the Turk. The commonly-known and typical figure of the Hungarian — speaking territories' dramatic customs and folkplays is the betyár [in English, approximatively: „highwayman"] who appears in almost all branches of Folklore. The presence of this „outlaw" had attracted the continuous and intense attention of peasantry for more than two centuries, both within and without the sphere of folklore - provoking quite a bulk of artistic representation. Concerning the image of the betyár, these representations offer a good mirror of various and often differing considerations of various layers of society. The formation of the thin layer of betyáf?, and its historical roots can be traced back to the 16th century. Poor outiaws — for example, soldiers forced to go into exile after independence movements had been crashed — were positively viewed by the folks. They often regarded them as heroes. The betyár must have been inspired by a direct contact and — for many people — by personal experience. The betyár appeared as a stage character at the beginning of the last century. His folk-representation in the Hungarian-speaking territories can mostiy be attached to East- and Northern Hungary and to Nagyalfild (the Great Hungarian Plaints), but Transylvania also offers some rata. In some dramatic plays the /^/ytf'r appears only as an episodic figure. He is often without a text and takes part in the parade of other mimes as a singer and dancer. Common singing and dancing is, however, often provoked by his very appearance. As far as his costume and other representational details are concerned, they were determined by the romantic approach of the previous century. We can still meet various mimes wearing the betyar-ma.sk in a great variety of festive occasions of rural life (such as: weddings, harvesting- and Carnival festivities, and so on, and so forth; what is more: they may appear in certain types of Bethlehem-plays, too.) The betyár-plays with several characters, who have texts of their own and who appear among stage-like conditions, deserve a special place in our classification. They probably came into being at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and — with their dramaturgy — present a higher level of original folk drama. Still, they also stand for the most characteristic features of folk acting. The Hungarian betyár-masque seems to be a self-defining phenomenon, even if it is compared to similar genres and similar dramatic tradition of other European peoples. The Hungarian version came into being by way an inner development. The betyár himself is a specifically Hungarian, folk- and historical figure representing an independent genre-type, whose romantic elements of characterization were gained in the time-breeding course of the Folklore. The Betyár-sceues have a significance among the rich tradition-circles originating from the pertinent Hungarian Folklore.