drama.--Drama
and worship; customs derived from the mysteries.--The word
"God."--Kinship yields to religion as social tie.--Religion and
drama; syncretism.--Beginnings of the theater at Rome.--
Gladiatorial exhibitions.--Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.--
The folk drama.--The popular taste; realism; conventionality;
satire.--Popular exhibitions.--Ancient popular festivals.--The
_mimus_.--Modern analogies.--Biologs and ethologs.--Dickens as
a biolog.--Early Jewish plays.--The Roman _mimus_.--_The
Suffering Christ_; _Pseudo-querolus_.--The _mimus_ and
Christianity.--Popular phantasms.--Effects of vicious
amusements.--Gladiatorial games.--Compromise between the church
and popular customs.--The _cantica_.--Passion for the games.--
German sports.--The _mimus_ from the third to the eighth
century.--The drama in the Orient.--Marionettes.--The drama in
India.--Punch in the West.--Resistance of the church to the
drama.--Hrotsvitha.--The jongleurs; processions.--Adam de la
Halle.--The flagellants.--Use of churches for dramatic
exhibitions.--Protest against misuse of churches.--Toleration
of jests by the ecclesiastics.--Fictitious literature.--
Romances of roguery.--Picaresque novels.--Books of beggars.--
At the beginning of the sixteenth century.--The theater at
Venice.--Dancing; public sports.--Women in the theater and on
the stage.--The _commedia del arte_.--Jest books; Italian
comedy at Paris.--_Commedia del arte_ in Italy.--Summary and
review.--Amusements need the control of educated judgment and
will.--Amusements do not satisfy the current notions of
progress.

+Limits.+ The cases of public amusement and entertainment which shall
here be mentioned are such as were within the limits of usage and
accepted propriety at the time. They are not cases of vice or of
disputed propriety at the time. Drunkenness, gambling, bull baiting,
cockfighting, and prize fighting are amusements which have entered into
the mores of groups and subgroups, as bullfighting still does in Spain,
but they were limited to classes or groups, or they were important on
account of the excess, or they were disapproved by great numbers or by
the ecclesiastical authorities. They would, therefore, lie outside the
mores, to which the cases to be noticed belonged. The theater in England
in Charles II's time testified to a depraved taste and a low standard of
morals, but it was te