ous
conversation of the men of Arras resumes and continues for some time,
reaching, in fact, no formal termination.

[Sidenote: _Comparison of them._]

In this odd piece, which, except the description of Marie the
deserted wife, has little poetical merit, we see drama of the
particular kind in a much ruder and vaguer condition than in the
parallel instance of _Robin et Marion_. There the very form of the
_pastourelle_ was in a manner dramatic--it wanted little adjustment to
be quite so; and though the _coda_ of the rustic merry-making is
rather artless, it is conceivably admissible. Here we are not far out
of Chaos as far as dramatic arrangement goes. Adam's announced
desertion of his wife and intended journey to Paris lead to nothing:
the episodes or scenes of the doctor and the monk are connected with
nothing; the fool or madman and his father are equally independent;
and the "meyney of Hellequin" simply play within the play, not without
rhyme, but certainly with very little reason. Nevertheless the piece
is almost more interesting than the comparatively regular farces (into
which rather later the _fabliaux_ necessarily developed themselves)
and than the miracle plays (which were in the same way dramatic
versions of the Lives of the Saints), precisely because of this
irregular and pillar-to-post character. We see that the author is
trying a new kind, that he is endeavouring to create for himself. He
is not copying anything in form; he is borrowing very little from any
one in material. He has endeavoured to represent, and has not entirely
failed in representing, the comings and goings, the ways and says, of
his townsmen at fair and market. The curiously desultory character of
this early drama--the character hit off most happily in modern times
by _Wallenstein's Lager_--naturally appears here in an exaggerated
form. But the root of the matter--the construction of drama, not on
the model of Terence or of anybody, but on the model of life--is here.

It will be for my successor to show the wide extension of this
dramatic form in the succeeding period. Here it takes rank rather as
having the interest of origins, and as helping to fill out the picture
of the marvellously various ability of Frenchmen of letters in the
thirteenth century, than for the positive bulk or importance of its
constituents. And it is important to repeat that it connects itself in
the general literary survey both with _fabliau_ and with allegory. Th