Chapter 14

THE THEATRE.

I. Origins. Civil Sources.--Mimes and histrions--Amusements and sights provided by histrions--How they raise a laugh--Facetious tales told with appropriate gestures--Dialogues and repartees--Parodies and caricatures--Early interludes--Licence of amusers--Bacchanals in churches and cemeteries--Holy things derided--Feasts of various sorts--Processions and pageants--"Tableaux Vivants"--Compliments and dialogues--Feasts at Court--"Masks" 439

II. Religious Sources.--Mass--Dialogues introduced in the Christmas service--The Christmas cycle (Old Testament)--The Easter cycle (New Testament). The religious drama in England--Life of St. Catherine (twelfth century)--Popularity of Mysteries in the fourteenth century--Treatises concerning those representations--Testimony of Chaucer William of Wadington--Collection of Mysteries in English. Performances--Players, scaffolds or pageants, dresses, boxes, scenery, machinery--Miniature by Jean Fouquet--Incoherences and anachronisms 456

III. Literary and Historical value of Mysteries.--The ancestors' feelings and tastes--Sin and redemption--Caricature of kings--Their "boast"--Their use of the French tongue--They have to maintain silence--Popular scenes--Noah and his wife--The poor workman and the taxes--A comic pastoral--The Christmas shepherds--Mak and the stolen sheep 476

IV. Decay of the Mediaeval Stage.--Moralities--Personified abstractions--The end of Mysteries--They continue being performed in the time of Shakespeare 489