Chapter VI: The Theatre

I. Origins. Civil Sources.--Mimes and
histrions--Amusements and sights provided by histrions--How
they raise a laugh--Facetious tales told with appropriate
gestures--Dialogues and repartees--Parodies and
caricatures--Early interludes--Licence of amusers--Bacchanals
in churches and cemeteries--Holy things derided--Feasts
of various sorts--Processions and pageants--"Tableaux
Vivants"--Compliments and dialogues--Feasts at Court--"Masks" 439

II. Religious Sources.--Mass--Dialogues introduced
in the Christmas service--The Christmas cycle (Old
Testament)--The Easter cycle (New Testament).
The religious drama in England--Life of St. Catherine
(twelfth century)--Popularity of Mysteries in the fourteenth
century--Treatises concerning those representations--Testimony
of Chaucer William of Wadington--Collection of Mysteries in
English.
Performances--Players, scaffolds or pageants, dresses, boxes,
scenery, machinery--Miniature by Jean Fouquet--Incoherences and
anachronisms 456

III. Literary and Historical value of Mysteries.--The
ancestors' feelings and tastes--Sin and redemption--Caricature
of kings--Their "boast"--Their use of the French tongue--They
have to maintain silence--Popular scenes--Noah and his wife--The
poor workman and the taxes--A comic pastoral--The Christmas
shepherds--Mak and the stolen sheep 476

IV. Decay of the Mediaeval Stage.--Moralities--Personified
abstractions--The end of Mysteries--They continue being performed
in the time of Shakespeare 489