360 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
Tutivillus scene in the play of The Judgment. Of these three, 
the farce of Mak the sheep-stealer is far and away the most im¬ 
portant ; and if the source of this play could be determined, we 
should be justified in feeling that the secular influences in the 
Towneley cycle had been practically determined. It is to the 
consideration of supposed sources and parallels for this play 
that we may now direct our attention. 
With the exhaustion of all known English parallels and 
sources for the farcical elements of Towneley (omitting merely 
the modern parallels to Secunda Pastorum which will be dis¬ 
cussed later), we should naturally turn to the continent, and 
most particularly to France, where during a period of about 
150 years, from about 1400 to 1550 or later, the type known as 
the farce flourished, for which we have approximately 150 
extant speciments in addition to about 100 pieces of types al¬ 
lied to the farce. It was Jusserand who first noticed the re¬ 
semblance between the farce in Secunda Pastorum and the in¬ 
comparable French farce of Maistre Pierre Pathelin.^^ But it 
remained for Dr. A. Banzar, about thirty years ago, to make a 
detailed comparison of the two works and claim Pathelin as the 
source of the farce of Mak.^^ So far as I am aware, the claims 
of Dr. Banzer have never been openly challenged Indeed, his 
conclusions, based in a very detailed comparison of the two 
plays, seem to have received neither approval nor rejection. 
That the way may be cleared for further investigation, it would 
seem desirable to examine Dr. Banzer’s theory with the care 
which it deserves, and so accord it either the approval or the 
rejection which every seriously proposed theory should receive. 
For purposes of clearness, the plots of the two plays entire 
may be very concisely summarized before an examination of 
Banzer’s claims. The contents of the entire Secunda Pastorum 
are as follows: 
’2 Jusserand, J. J. Le theatre en Angleterre (1881), p. 93: “L’episode n’a 
rien de biblique et rapelle le ton de I’avocat Pathelin.” 
“ Bie Farce Pathelin 'iind Hire Nachahmungen, Zeit f iir neuf. Sprachen u. 
Litt. X, 93-112. See also The Influence of French Farce upon Plays of John 
Hey wood {Mod. Phil. II, 97-124) by my colleague, Prof. Karl Young, to 
whom I am indebted for the suggestion of this study. 
