moral. Passion plays were performed at Rome in the
Coliseum by the _Compagnia del Gonfalone_; but there is no evidence on
this head before the end of the 15th century. In general, the
spectacular magnificence of Italian theatrical displays accorded with
the growing pomp of the processions both ecclesiastical and lay--called
_trionfi_ already in the days of Dante; while the religious drama
gradually acquired an artificial character and elaboration of form
assimilating it to the classical attempts, to be noted below, which gave
rise to the regular Italian drama. The poetry of the Troubadours, which
had come from Provence into Italy, here frequently took a dramatic form,
and may have suggested some of his earlier poetic experiments to
Petrarch.

It was a matter of course that remnants of the ancient popular dramatic
entertainments should have survived in particular abundance on Italian
soil. They were to be recognized in the improvised farces performed at
the courts, in the churches (_farse spirituali_), and among the people;
the Roman carnival had preserved its wagon-plays, and various links
remained to connect the modern comic drama of the Italians with the
_Atellanes_ and _mimes_ of their ancestors. But the more notable later
comic developments, which belong to the 16th century, will be more
appropriately noticed below. Moralities proper had not flourished in
Italy, where the love of the concrete has always been dominant in
popular taste; more numerous are examples of scenes, largely
mythological, in which the influence of the Renaissance is already
perceptible, of eclogues, and of allegorical festival-plays of various
sorts.

Spain.

In Spain hardly a monument of the medieval religious drama has been
preserved. There is manuscript evidence of the 11th century attesting
the early addition of dramatic elements to the Easter office; and a
Spanish fragment of the Three Kings Epiphany play, dating from the 12th
century, is, like the French _Adam_, one of the very earliest examples
of the medieval drama in the vernacular. But that religious plays were
performed in Spain is clear from the permission granted by Alphonso X.
of Castile (d. 1284) to the clergy to represent them, while prohibiting
the performance by them of _juegos de escarnio_ (mocking plays). The
earliest Spanish plays which we possess belong to the end of the 15th or
beginning of the 16th century, and already show humanistic influence. In
1472 the coup