THE DRAMA. 507 



i), au bourreau. 

 Meshui ( present] depescho-lc, paillart ! 



(Le bourreau Itjttte, c'est-a-dire le pend.) 



LB BOUHKF.AV. 



Le voila depesche souduin. 

 L'autre f 



Je le tiens par la main. 

 II est tendre comme rosee, 

 Le jeune enfant. 



LB BOUHHEAU, I'l SOU Vttltt. 



Tay-toi ! Tay-toi ! 

 A I'enfant : 



Mon amy, muntez apres moi, 

 Et pens-z a Dieu ! " 



Thus all styles are to be found mixed up the one with the other in the 

 great dramas of the Middle Ages, which are at once mystic and grotesque, 

 sombre and joyous, trivial and solemn. Men, angels, earthly kings, and the 

 King of kings pass in turn before the audience, and for several centuries 

 all the theatrical compositions which appear by the side of the sacred are 

 only, so to speak, detached chapters branches, to employ the term then in use. 



Tragedy did not exist in the Middle Ages, and it is a mistake to imagine 

 that the Proven9al poets or troubadours, Arnaut Daniel, Anselme Faidit, and 

 Berenger de Parasol were the principal factors of tragedy in the twelfth and 

 thirteenth centuries. This form of dramatic composition did not assume 

 definite shape until the middle of the sixteenth century, when Bai'f and 

 Thomas Sibilet produced a few imitations of the Greek tragedies, and when 

 Jodelle represented, in 1552, Cleopatra, which must be considered as the first 

 French tragedy in verse. 



Comedy had already been in existence for a considerable period, for it 

 may be said that the vein of comedy is essentially Gallic, and the nearer we 

 come to the Renaissance, the faster does this vein expand itself upon our 

 stage, which has continued to be without a rival in the way of tragedy as 

 of comedy. In the thirteenth century, Adam de la Hale, nicknamed the 

 Hunchback of Arras, produced the first French comedy, called the Jen de 

 Manage d' Adam, or the Ji-u de la Fmiller, and the first comic opera, a sort 

 of pastoral, entitled Le Jcit clc Rubin d </<> Marion, of which he composed the, 



