368 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Aris^ and Letters, 
French farce or, for that matter, in any other form of French 
drama. We are likely to find it, not on French soil, but in 
England itself where the sources for the rest of the cycle ma¬ 
terial have been found. 
Neither source nor satisfactory parallel to Play 13 has yet 
been discovered outside of England. Of the other two plays, 
for whose farcical elements we still lack sources or parallels 
(Plays 24 and 30) a brief word may be said in conclusion. It 
is possible that French parallels or even sources may yet be 
found for the farcical elements in these plays. Certain it is 
that parallels exist in the dramatic literature of Germany 
practically contemporary with the Towneley cycle.^^ It is 
doubtful, however, if there could have been any intimate con¬ 
nection between the respective plays in question. And even 
though this should be the case, the farcical material is of so 
slight an importance compared with that in the remaining eight 
plays of the cycle, for all of which we have English parallels, 
that the establishment of any relationship would not affect ser¬ 
iously the general conclusion that, for the secular sources of 
the Towneley plays we must look to the literature and life of 
the English people themselves. 
Note:—This paper was already in type when Dr. A. C. Baugh’s in¬ 
teresting article on The Mah Story appeared in Modern Philology, 
April, 1918, pp. 169 ff. His discovery of a fifteenth century Italian 
analogue in the forty-second novella of Le Porretane by Giovanni Sa- 
badino degli Arienti, though first published in 1483 and probably not 
composed before 1475, confirms my own conclusions regarding the 
literary connections between the Mak farce and the farce of Pathelin. 
In his own words (p. 173): “If then, as we believe, the incident can 
lay claim to no historical foundation, we are forced to conclude that 
it belongs to the province of folklore.” Thus the English Mak story, 
the French farce, and the Italian novella are simply, so far as our 
present interest is concerned, separate and varied embodiments of a 
common theme of European folklore—the adoption of a trick to con¬ 
ceal a theft. ; i ... j 
2^ For this information I am primarily indebted to an excellent unpub¬ 
lished study by Miss Sarah M. Beach. 
