emselves the
_Enfans sans souci_, had, apparently also early in the 15th century,
acquired celebrity by their performances of short comic plays called
soties--in which, as it would seem, at first allegorical figures
ironically "played the fool," but which were probably before long not
very carefully kept distinct from the farces of the Basoche, and were
like these on occasion made to serve the purposes of State or of Church.
Other confraternities and associations readily took a leaf out of the
book of these devil-may-care good-fellows, and interwove their religious
and moral plays with comic scenes and characters from actual life, thus
becoming more and more free and secular in their dramatic methods, and
unconsciously preparing the transition to the regular drama.

The earliest example of a serious secular play known to have been
written in the French tongue is the _Estoire de Griseldis_ (1393); which
is in the style of the miracles of the Virgin, but is largely indebted
to Petrarch. The _Mystere du siege d'Orleans_, on the other hand,
written about half a century later, in the epic tediousness of its
manner comes near to a chronicle history, and interests us chiefly as
the earliest of many efforts to bring Joan of Arc on the stage. Jacques
Milet's celebrated mystery of the _Destruction de Troye la grant_ (1452)
seems to have been addressed to readers and not to hearers only. The
beginnings of the French regular comic drama are again more difficult to
extract from the copious literature of farces and soties, which, after
mingling actual types with abstract and allegorical figures, gradually
came to exclude all but the concrete personages; moreover, the large
majority of these productions in their extant form belong to a later
period than that now under consideration. But there is ample evidence
that the most famous of all medieval farces, the immortal _Maistre
Pierre Pathelin_ (otherwise _L'Avocat Pathelin_), was written before
1470 and acted by the _basochiens_; and we may conclude that this
delightful story of the biter bit, and the profession outwitted,
typifies a multitude of similar comic episodes of real life, dramatized
for the delectation of clerks, lawyers and students, and of all lovers
of laughter.

The Netherlands.

In the neighbouring Netherlands many Easter and Christmas mysteries are
noted from the middle of the 15th century, attesting the enduring
popularity of these religious plays; and with the