oo dramas require a whole night for the representation. They
represent the loves and quarrels of the gods and other mythological
stories. "The actors are dressed and painted in imitation of the deities
they represent, and frequently the conversations are rendered attractive
by sensual and obscene allusions, whilst in the interludes boys dressed
in women's clothes dance with the most indecent gestures. The worst
dances that I have ever seen have been in front of an image and as a
part of the rejoicings of a religious festival. Crowds of men, women,
and children sit to watch them the whole night through."[2079] The
history of Ram is also enacted in pantomime in northern India. The text
of the _Ramayana_ is read and days are spent in acting it, by a great
crowd, which moves from place to place, and naively plans to act city
incidents in cities, forest incidents in forests, boat episodes on
ponds, and war episodes or battles on great fields.[2080]

+649. Punch in the West.+ Punch was brought to Italy in the fifteenth
century.[2081] Polichinelle, as developed in France, is distinctly
French. The model is Henri IV. The hump is an immemorial sign of the
French _badin-es-farces_. "Polichinelle seems to me to be a purely
national (French) type, and one of the most spontaneous and vivacious
creations of French fantasy."[2082] The puppet play of Punch and Judy
has enjoyed immense popularity in western Europe. The Faust legend has
been developed by the puppets.[2083] With the improvements in the arts
people became more sophisticated. The puppets were left to children and
to the simplest rural population, not because the mores improved, but
because people were treated to more elaborate entertainments and the
puppets became trivial. Punch is now a blackguard and criminal, who is
conventionally tolerated on account of his antiquity. He is not in
modern mores and is almost unknown in the United States. He is generally
popular in southern Europe. To the Sicilians "a puppet play is a book, a
picture, a poem, and a theater all in one. It teaches and amuses at the
same time."[2084] Then it still is what it has been for three thousand
years.

+650. Resistance of the church to the drama.+ The council in the palace
of Trullo, at Constantinople in 692,[2085] adopted canons forbidding
clerics to attend horse races or theatrical exhibitions, or to stay at
weddings after play began, also pantomimes, beast combats, and
theatrical dances, also hea