THE DRAMA. 



499 



Provost of Paris, doubtless at the request of the clergy of the capital, who 

 complained that their parishioners neglected the Church services to go ami 

 see the play of the Brothers of the Passion. But four years afterwards 

 King Charles VI. accorded them letters patent, dated December 4th, 1402, 

 and they were no longer interfered with in the exercise of their vocation. 

 After having obtained, by these letters patent, permission to continue their 

 plays and to show themselves, even in theatrical costume, in the streets of 

 Paris, they obtained from the monks of the Trinity Hospital (in the Rue St . 

 Denis, opposite the Rue Grenetat), a long low room, in which they opened 

 the first permanent and covered theatre which was founded in Paris, and here 



Fig. 381. The Hermit forces Robert le Diable to declare his Identity. Miniature from the 

 "Miracle de Nostre-Dame et de Robert le Dyable." Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century. 

 In the National Library, Paris. 



they gave representations every Sunday and fete day from twelve to five in 

 the afternoon. 



Long after this the mysteries and miracles continued to be represented 

 in the provinces, the places selected being consecrated ground and graveyards. 

 The Synodic Statutes of Orleans even show that the representation of scenic 

 play stook place in the cathedral, probably in front of the portico, as late as 

 1525 and 1587. The same was the case all over Europe up to the middle of 

 the sixteenth century. Under the pontificate of Innocent VIII., about 1490, 

 Lorenzo de' Medici, upon the occasion of the marriage of his daughter to a 



