By Betsy K. Brown

The greatest murder mysteries are often hilarious. Perhaps this is because, as investigator Porfiry Petrovich says in Crime and Punishment, “Human nature is a mirror, sir, the clearest mirror!” Raskolnikov, and other famous murderers in many stories, are not that different from ourselves. How should we respond to this devastating fact? Laughter may be the answer. 

Sonnez Les Matines by Jane Clark Scharl is many things—a verse play, a murder mystery, a philosophical dialogue—but it is also simply and deeply funny. A trio of famous former Parisians: François Rabelais, Jean Calvin, and Ignatius of Loyola, stumble upon a dead body during Mardi Gras, and spend the story arguing about who is guilty. In the play this is both an immediate question and a cosmic question, as the interlocutors explore everything from the weapon and evidence to the incarnation of Jesus and what happens when we die. Meanwhile, there is also ample banter, finger-pointing, and poop jokes. 

This combination of gravity and humor works primarily because the three characters are strikingly real. In spite of being well-known historical figures, Ignatius, Jean, and François whine, preach, belch, and bicker enough to be any gaggle of friends at a pub or in a teachers’ lounge. Loyola is lofty and noble, Calvin is grim and scathing, and Rabelais is rollicking and rude about mankind’s messiness. He stumbles into the first scene already mysteriously besmeared with someone else’s blood, and says, “A stained hood is one slip from a sainthood! / Oh, come now, that was a little good. / If a man’s farce can’t be his dignity, / What hope has he?” Rabelais knows the truth—that disorder is often something to chuckle at, and perhaps is even related to wisdom itself. Erasmus puts it another way in The Praise of Folly: “True prudence . . . recognizes human limitations and does not strive to leap beyond them; it is willing to run with the herd, to overlook faults tolerantly or to share them in a friendly spirit.”

Dostoyevsky may be discussing something similar in his often-funny murder mystery The Brothers Karamazov when Ivan says that he loves “the sticky young leaves” and “the blue sky” not with logic, but with his “guts” and “young strength.” While Ivan desires to love well, to love with his guts, he often fails to do so precisely because he fails to laugh at human limitations (including his own). His brothers, on the other hand, laugh. Encountering schoolchildren, as Alyosha does, or even constantly carousing, as Mitya does, both bring levity and humility in the midst of disorder. Ivan, however, struggles to play, and therefore he is particularly miserable. 

In Scharl’s Sonnez Les Matines, Rabelais, on the other hand, manages to laugh at everyone and everything, even when things are dark. Is he irreverent? Of course. Irresponsible? Probably. And yet, in some sense, his response to the murder is somehow the most fitting. His final action—which I will conceal for the sake of not spoiling the plot—cannot be easily explained, but it is, without a doubt, a playful move. 

Sonnez Les Matines is a Mardi Gras story. It takes place during a night of great foolery in a city that knows how to party; it also takes place on the edge of Lent, which was by contrast a sobering and purifying time for medieval Parisians. It is in this in-between space that Rabelais makes his final move in the play. Scharl’s magic is that she does not suddenly shift out of comedy and into a moralizing ending about how murder is bad, people are bad, and there’s just nothing to be done. She has made Rabelais so real that we watch what he does and can walk away from the play smiling without making a light thing out of murder. I have heard the playwright herself talk about Rabelais, and she does not speak about him as if he is some pawn she created. She talks about him as if he is her friend, a lovable friend who gets on her last nerve. And that is why this play works.

In words that beautifully echo Ivan’s, Rabelais concludes his final soliloquy this way: “Love / Wisdom, say I, but not with what’s above! / She’s a pretty girl, and ripe; love her / with your body, your skin and bones, the gurgle / of your gut; love her with your rutting heart.” Loving with your guts is not a matter of ideas. It is a belly laugh, a romp through the muck of life. Rabelais is the one who gets the final word in the play because he urges us to look into the final scene as if we are peering into a river at our own muddy reflections. Scharl asks us to laugh at ourselves, and to walk away ready to feast, to fast, and to love fully.

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Betsy K. Brown is a poet, essayist, and curricular writer. Her work has appeared in many outlets, including First Things, The New Ohio Review, and The Circe Institute website. She is the author of Leading a Seminar on Frankenstein and chairs the humanities department of a classical school.

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Jane Clark Scharl is an American poet, playwright, and critic. Her poetry has appeared in many American and European outlets, including the BBC, The Hopkins Review, The New Ohio Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Lamp, Measure Review, and others. She is the author of a verse drama, Sonnez Les Matines (Wiseblood Books), as well as a forthcoming collection, Ponds (April 2024, Cascade Books). She lives in Detroit with her husband and children.