The great god Pan; a biography of the tramp played by Charles Chaplin (1952)

Chapter Four Marionettes JDut the mystery of Charlie is not solved by an appeal to fooling. The priests of the Middle Ages who performed a sacrament in reverse and censed the churches with puddings, sausages and old shoes were fulfilling an essential function: the function of preserving man's humanity and earthiness; but though there is fooling in Charlie and he does not disdain the puddings, the sausages or the old boots, and he would be an admirable performer at the festum follorum, we are conscious that the strange creature whose eyes are almonds and whose mouth resembles the mouth of a tragic mask, is closer to the koshare than to the mediaeval priestly buffoons. Like the koshare he has a special kind of walking, is clothed with a kind of dancing invisibility and in some way derives his strength from the spirits of the dead or of the ancients. There were no white masks at the festum follorum, no ceremonies of lighthearted mockery. In mediaeval Europe the mockery was cruel and blunt-edged, a deliberate abasement following the exaltations of the church. We remember that the koshare were abstemious and when they were obscene, it was with a devilish immediacy, wagging their members as they danced round the priests. Something of that immediacy was lacking in the mediaeval carnival, which tended to substitute horseplay with chamberSi