an audacious
satire on the state of things; the morality, in which the very names of
the personages--Peuple Francois, Peuple Italique, Divine Pungnicion,
etc.--speak for themselves, all show this tendency; and even the _bonne
bouche_ at the end, the farce (which is altogether too Rabelaisian in
subject for description here), seems to illustrate the motto--a very
practical one--'Il faut cultiver son jardin.' Less directly the same
purpose can be traced in the _Mystere de Monseigneur Saint Loys_. This
is a picture of the ideal patriot king doing judgment and justice, and
serving God by his voyages over sea, and his punishments of blasphemers
and loose livers at home.

[Sidenote: The last Age of the Mediaeval Theatre.]

The first two quarters, and especially the first quarter, of the century
contributed plentifully to the list of mysteries, moralities, and
farces. The dates of the latter are not easy to ascertain, and it is
probable that most of them are older than the present period. The taste
for very lengthy mysteries and moralities, however, had by no means died
out, and some of the mysteries, notably those of Antoine Chevallet, are
of considerable merit. To the sixteenth century too belongs what is
probably the longest of all moralities, that on _The Just and Unjust
Man_, which contains 36,000 lines, besides the _Mundus_, _Caro_, _et
Daemonia_, and the _Condamnation de Banquet_ already described.

This school was continued, though under some difficulties, until a late
period of the century. It had two things in its favour; it was extremely
popular, and it lent itself, far more than the stately rival soon to be
discussed, to the political and social uses which had long been
associated with the stage in the mind of audiences. In Beza's tragedy of
_Abraham Sacrifiant_, a kind of union takes place between the two
styles. But even the triumph of the Pleiade did not at once abolish the
mysteries which were still legal in the provinces, which had a strong
hold on the fancy of the populace, and which some men of letters who
were themselves much indebted to the new movement, notably Vauquelin de
la Fresnaye, upheld with pen as well as with tongue. Thomas Le Coq, a
beneficed clerk of Falaise, wrote a really remarkable play, _Cain_, of
the purest mystery kind, in 1580; and the troubles of the League brought
forth a large number of pieces which approached much nearer to the
mediaeval drama, and especially to the mediaeval dram