THE DRAMA. 



upon tin- slagi 1 ; and, as the satirical boldness of these pieces continued to 

 increase, the clerks of the Bazoche who did not conform to this order wnv 

 threatened with the gibbet. Such severities were necessarily fatal to tin- 

 soties, and at about the end of the sixteenth century they disappeared 

 altogether. 



These restrictions upon the liberty of the stage the establishment of 

 dramatic censure, and the prohibition of pieces representing sacred subjects 

 accelerated the disappearance of the ancient drama, and there then dawned a 



Fig. 389. The Abduction of Helen. Fac-simile of a Wood Engraving from the " Istoire de 1" 

 Destruction de Troye la Grant, mise par Personnaiges," by Master Jacques Millet (Paris, 

 Jehan Driart, 1498, in folio, Goth.). In the Library of M. Firmin-Didot, Paris. 



new period in dramatic art all over Europe. By the side of the mysteries, 

 which were still represented in Spain under the names of autos sacramentales, 

 appeared the brilliant dramas of Calderon and Lope de Vega. Shakspeare 

 at the same time appeared upon the English stage, and in Italy Machiavelli's 

 Mandragora revealed a modern Aristophanes. At the court of Leo X. 

 classic tragedy revived in Trissino's Sophonisba. In France, too, where there 

 was a reawakening of the souvenirs of ancient Greece and Rome, Sibilet, 



