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religious quarrels of his time, and wrote polemical works, such as the "Complainte des Milanais," "l'Entreprise de Venise," "l'Espoir de Paix," &c. He was a literary man of the greatest reputation as a pamphleteer, an orator in verse, a satirist, a director of the theatre. With all due sense of proportion, he may certainly be considered the Voltaire of the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. He had great pretensions to learning, moreover, and the portrait which is displayed at the beginning of nearly all his works is well known-Gringore in the costume of "Mère Sotte," with the motto, "Tout par raison, raison partout, par tout raison" ("Everything in reason, reason everywhere, in all things reason"). He is one of the most interesting men of letters anterior to the period of the Renaissance, and he deserves to be the subject of a detailed study, which has not yet been made. We shall return to him later on, when we deal with the drama.

This account of the poetry of the fifteenth century will not be complete without a reference to the fact that this was the age of the innumerable " Arts poétiques" and treatises on versification. More and more poetry concerned itself with technique, and explained far too much its methods. The most curious of these essays is an extremely valuable anonymous compilation published in 1499, called "Le Jardin de Playsance et Fleur de Rhétorique." The first part of the book deals with the art of poetry, and describes in the most detailed manner the rules for the different poems of a definite form, and all the various rhymes which were then used, from the rime equivoquée (æqua vox), the rhyme of several syllables, which is considered the most beautiful of all, to the rime de goret (sic), simple assonance, which is condemned with great contempt. Treatises of this kind enormously increased at the beginning of and all through the sixteenth century.

It is to be noticed that the author of this anonymous essay calls by the name of rhetoric what we know as poetry or poetics. This nomenclature is quite new. Eustache Deschamps in his "Art de dictier Chansons," in classifying the arts, names the seven liberal arts as follows: Grammar,

logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic (sic), music, astronomy; and poetry was included in the term music, and not in rhetoric. This new name explains why a whole great school of poetry in the sixteenth century was called les Rhétoriqueurs. In the second part of the "Jardin de Playsance" there is an extremely valuable anthology of all the poets of the fifteenth century, which introduces us to poets whom otherwise we should not know, and informs us concerning the taste of the age in the selections the author gives from the poets already known to us.

CHAPTER II

THE DRAMA

THE fifteenth century possessed a flourishing drama of great and varied activity. This is the period when comedy separated and differentiated itself from serious drama, even though this latter often retained the comic element. It was the period when the constitution of the theatre was regularly established by the creation of corporations or confraternities of actors and authors; it was, in fact, the period, from all points of view, not only of the adolescence, but of the full and flourishing youth of the French drama.

Let us first treat of the material constitution, so to speak, of the French theatre in the fifteenth century. The organisers and actors of the drama were composed in overwhelming majority of middle-class citizens, and also of Government officials (clerks of the Bazoche or Palace of Justice), sometimes of nobles, and even on occasion of priests. They banded themselves together into companies, societies, associations, and corporations, either for a short period or for an indefinite time, which time, in the case of one of these societies, lasted more than two hundred and fifty years. Under the auspices of a contemporary author, who was generally one of their number, these bodies increased and multiplied, bringing together actors who gave their services gratuitously in such numbers that it might have been said that a performance in those days con sisted in one half of the town's entertaining the other. They rehearsed among themselves, acted among themselves, and then returned to their ordinary commercial avocations until a new undertaking was organised.

The actors not formed into companies belonged to the middle and lower classes, and sometimes included women and little girls who took the parts of angels. Tapestries, furniture, and ornaments were generally lent by rich people of the town, and even by the churches. The stage, shallow but immense in length, was made to represent several places—for instance, a house on the right, a church on the left, a desert, a forest, a seashore, with a cave at either extremity. At the back a sort of loggia on the first floor represented Paradise, from whence the angels descended by machinery, and where, by machinery also, the souls ascended, portrayed by an actress or an actor in a long white dress. At the place where the prompter's box now stands a sort of funnel or open mouth simulated the door of hell, whence demons emerged to invade the scene. Among the divers and numerous corporations which were organised for dramatic representations the most important were the Confrères de la Passion, the Sots, or the Enfants sans Souci, and the Bazochiens. The Confrères de la Passion, after having acted without regulated authority during several years, were officially constituted on December 4, 1402, under letters patent by Charles VI. authorising them to perform under the superintendence of three officers.

They played serious and comic pieces (of which we shall later give the names) either alone or in association with the Enfants sans Souci. The representations in which they played in this way, tragic and comic combined, were called Pois Piles. The Confraternity played at the Hôpital de la Trinité for a period of one hundred and thirty-seven years.

In 1539 they left the Hôpital de la Trinité to act at the Hôtel de Flandres, Rue des Vieux-Augustins. It was then that the difficult and disturbed period of their history began. We must remember that in the middle of the sixteenth century it was no longer quite safe to personate, even in a spirit of piety, the saints, the Virgin, and God Himself, as it had been in the fifteenth century. Not only the Reformation, but especially the Renaissance, had sown the seeds of controversy and of scepticism, rendering religious spectacular displays perilous, even when they were not unconvincing and subject

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to ridicule. From 1540 onward we find either the ecclesiastical authorities or the judicial authorities constantly uneasy, and interfering with regard to the worthy Confrères. In 1542 there was a petition by the Attorney-General complaining that on the days of representation, which were Sundays, divine service was neglected even by the priests on account of the attraction of the spectacle; that holy things unworthily portrayed become objects of jest, by which both religion and faith were threatened; and that performances founded on the Old Testament incited to Judaism, &c. As a result, the performances of the Confrères de la Passion were restricted to uncanonical days. This was the first blow.

In 1543, the Hôtel de Flandres having been demolished, the Confrères were installed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, Rue Mauconseil, where they remained until the disruption of the association. In 1548 an edict was issued by Parliament at once favourable and unfavourable to the Confrères : favourable in that it gave them the exclusive monopoly of dramatic representations (certain strolling companies having begun to introduce themselves furtively into Paris); unfavourable, because it forbade the performance of pieces founded on the Old or the New Testament.

What, then, did they act until 1597? We do not know. Very likely pieces still on sacred subjects, but somewhat disguised and not bearing the same names as formerly. Possibly plays on classical subjects, which were just then coming into vogue. The monopoly was confirmed by edicts of 1552, 1560, and 1567, which proves that they required this confirmation, and that plays were being produced in all directions.

In 1597, probably to save themselves from complete annihilation, they asked for and obtained letters patent authorising them to give performances on sacred subjects. Parliament again opposed this by an edict of 1598. The King finally gave way. It was then that the Confraternity ceased to participate actively in the undertaking. They hired out their premises to a troop of comedians, who had for their dramatic manager the celebrated Hardy. The Confraternity had a good deal of trouble with the comedians. The disagreements