rama for centuries--was simply an expansion of or
excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their
antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus,
were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those
numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never
reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that
all literary forms are more or less natural to man, and that man's
nature will therefore, example or no example, find them out and
practise them, in measure and degree according to circumstances,
sooner or later.

At any rate, if there was any hope in the mind of any ecclesiastical
person at any time of confining dramatic performances to sacred
subjects, that hope was doomed to disappointment, and in France at
least to very speedy disappointment. The examples of Mystery or
Miracle plays which we have of a date older than the beginning of the
fourteenth century are not numerous, but it is quite clear that at an
early time the necessity for interspersing comic interludes was
recognised; and it is needless to say to any one who has ever looked
even slightly at the subject that these interludes soon became a
regular part of the performance, and exhibited what to modern ideas
seems a very indecorous disregard of the respect due to the company in
which they found themselves. The great Bible mysteries, no less and no
more than the miracle plays of the Virgin[153] and the Saints, show
this characteristic throughout, and the Fool's remark which pleased
Lamb, "Hazy weather, Master Noah!" was a strictly legitimate and very
much softened descendant of the kind of pleasantries which diversify
the sacred drama of the Middle Ages in all but its very earliest
examples.

[Footnote 153: Several of these miracles of the Virgin will be found
in the volume by Monmerque and Michel referred to above: the whole
collection has been printed by the Societe des Anciens Textes. The MS.
is of the fourteenth century, but some of its contents may date from
the thirteenth.]

It was certain, at any rate in France, that from comic interludes in
sacred plays to sheer profane comedy in ordinary life the step would
not be far nor the interval of time long. The _fabliaux_ more
particularly were farces already in the state of _scenario_, and some
of them actually contained dialogue. To break them up and shape them
into actual plays required much less than the innate love