Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde

Herbert Mouwen

Crimpert Oom en Les deux Savetiers

Abstract -- The rhetorician farce Crimpert Oom consists of two parts: a play with three characters and a supplement which contains a court scene. Although preserved in a Leiden collection, the play is claimed to be written by The Hague rhetoricians chamber De Koorenblommen. The language of the play, however, suggests that the authors were using an older Flemish, and as literary historians have argued, an original play. The court scene was supposed to be a later addition, written by a group of other authors from The Hague rhetoricians chamber. In this article, the origin of Crimpert Oom is discussed - the older French play Les deux Savetiers contains so many resemblances with Crimpert Oom, that doubt about its original character is justified. It is likely that the short Flemish version as well as the court scene are adaptations of the French play. The adaptations such as role splitting and the use of asides by the Dutch rhetoricians are presented and discussed, as well as the status of the final court scene.

TNTL 121-4 (december 2005), 334-348