[549] Stowe, Annals, 511.
[550] The miracle-plays and popular morals have a more general prayer for the spiritual welfare of the ‘sofereyns,’ ‘lordinges,’ and the rest of their audience.
[551] Willis, Mount Tabor (1639, quoted Collier, ii. 196), describing the morality of The Castle of Security seen by him as a child, says ‘In the city of Gloucester the manner is (as I think it is in other like corporations) that when Players of Enterludes come to towne, they first attend the Mayor, to enforme him what noble-mans servants they are and so to get licence for their publike playing: and if the Mayor like the Actors, or would show respect to their Lord and Master, he appoints them to play their first play before himselfe and the Aldermen and Common Counsell of the City; and that is called the Mayor’s play, where every one that will comes in without money, the Mayor giving the players a reward as hee thinks fit, to show respect unto them. At such a play, my father tooke me with him, and made mee stand betweene his leggs, as he sate upon one of the benches, where we saw and heard very well.’ In Histriomastix, a play of 1590-1610 (Simpson, School of Shakespeare, ii. 1), a crew of tippling mechanicals call themselves ‘Sir Oliver Owlet’s men and proclaim at the Cross a play to be given in the townhouse at 3 o’clock. They afterwards throw the town over to play in the hall of Lord Mavortius.’ In Sir Thomas More (†1590, ed. A. Dyce, for Shakespeare Society, 1844) ‘my Lord Cardinall’s players,’ four men and a boy, play in the Chancellor’s hall and receive ten angels. For similar scenes cf. the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, and Hamlet, ii. 2; iii. 2.
[552] The earliest record of plays at inns which I have noticed is in 1557, when some Protestants were arrested and their minister burnt for holding a communion service in English on pretence of attending a play at the Saracen’s Head, Islington (Foxe, Acts and Monuments, ed. Cattley, viii. 444).
[553] Eustace Deschamps (†1415), Miroir de Mariage (Œuvres, in Anc. Textes franç. vol. ix), 3109 (cf. Julleville, La Com. 40):
This theatre was probably one established towards the end of the fourteenth century by the confrérie de la Passion. From about 1402 they performed in the Hôpital de la Trinité; cf. Julleville, Les Com. 61, La Com. 40.
[554] Cf. vol. i. p. 383.
[555] Register of Bishop Grandisson (ed. Hingeston-Randolph), ii. 1120. The letter, unfortunately too long-winded to quote in full, was written on Aug. 9, 1352, to the archdeacon of Exeter or his official. Grandisson says:—‘Sane, licet artes mechanicas, ut rerum experiencia continue nos informat, mutuo, necessitate quadam, oporteat se iuvare; pridem, tamen, intelleximus quod nonnulli nostrae Civitatis Exoniae inprudentes filii, inordinate lasciviae dediti, fatue contempnentes quae ad ipsorum et universalis populi indigenciam fuerunt utiliter adinventa, quendam Ludum noxium qui culpa non caret, immo verius ludibrium, in contumeliam et opprobrium allutariorum, necnon eorum artificii, hac instanti Die Dominica, in Theatro nostrae Civitatis predictae publice peragere proponunt, ut inter se statuerunt et intendunt; ex quo, ut didicimus, inter praefatos artifices et dicti Ludi participes, auctores pariter et fautores, graves discordiae, rancores, et rixae, cooperante satore tam execrabilis irae et invidiae, vehementer pululant et insurgunt.’ The ludus is to be forbidden under pain of the greater excommunication. At the same time the allutarii are to be admonished, since they themselves, ‘in mercibus suis distrahendis plus iusto precio, modernis temporibus,’ have brought about the trouble, ‘ne exnunc, in vendendo quae ad eos pertinent, precium per Excellentissimum Principem et Dominum nostrum, Angliae et Franciae Regemillustrem, et Consilium suum, pro utilitate publica limitatum, exigant quovis modo.’
[556] L. G. Bolingbroke, Pre-Elizabethan Plays and Players in Norfolk (Norfolk Archaeology, xi. 336). The corporation gave a lease of the ‘game-house’ on condition that it should be available ‘at all such times as any interludes or plays should be ministered or played.’ John Rastell’s 50s. stage in Finsbury about 1520-5 (cf. p. 184), although not improbably used for public representations, is not known to have been permanent.
[557] At Rayleigh, Essex (1550), 20s. from the produce of church goods was paid to stage-players on Trinity Sunday (Archaeologia, xlii. 287). An Answer to a Certain Libel (1572, quoted Collier, ii. 72) accuses the clergy of hurrying the service, because there is ‘an enterlude to be played, and if no place else can be gotten, it must be doone in the church’; cf. S. Gosson, Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies and Theaters, 1580 (Hazlitt, E. D. S. 134) ‘Such like men, vnder the title of their maisters or as reteiners, are priuiledged to roaue abroad, and permitted to publish their mametree in euerie Temple of God, and that through England, vnto the horrible contempt of praier. So that now the Sanctuarie is become a plaiers stage, and a den of theeues and adulterers.’ Possibly only the publication of the banns of plays in church is here complained of. Cf. also Fuller, Church History (1655), 391.
[558] Bonner’s Injunctions, 17, of April, 1542 (Wilkins, iii. 864), forbade ‘common plays games or interludes’ in churches or chapels. Violent enforcers of them were to be reported to the bishop’s officers; cf. the various injunctions of Elizabethan bishops in Ritual Commission, 409, 411, 417, 424, 436, and the 88th Canon of 1604.
[559] Kelly, 16 ‘Paid to Lord Morden’s players because they should not play in the church, xijᵈ.’
[560] Jackson-Burne, 493, citing Sir Offley Wakeman in Shropshire Archaeological Transactions, vii. 383. Such plays were performed on wagons at Shropshire wakes within the last century. The ‘book’ seems to have been adapted from the literary drama, if one may judge by the subjects which included ‘St. George,’ ‘Prince Mucidorus,’ ‘Valentine and Orson,’ and ‘Dr. Forster’ or ‘Faustus.’ But a part was always found for a Fool in a hareskin cap, with balls at his knees. He is described as a sort of presenter or chorus, playing ‘all manner of megrims’ and ‘going on with his manœuvres all the time.’ I have not been able to see a paper on Shropshire Folk-plays by J. F. M. Dovaston. G. Borrow, Wild Wales, chh. lix, lx (ed. 1901, p. 393), describes similar Welsh interludes which lasted to the beginning of the nineteenth century. The titles named suggest moralities. He analyses the Riches and Poverty of Thomas Edwards. This, like the Shropshire interludes, has its ‘fool.’
[561] Roper, Life and Death of Sir Thomas More (†1577, J. R. Lumby, More’s Utopia, vi) ‘would he at Christmas tyd sodenly sometymes stepp in among the players, and never studinge for the matter, make a parte of his owne there presently amonge them’; Erasmus, Epist. ccccxlvii ‘adolescens comoediolas et scripsit et egit.’ Bale, Scriptores (1557), i. 655, ascribes to him comoedias iuveniles. Lib. 1.’ In the play of Sir Thomas More (cf. p. 189) he is represented, even when Chancellor, as supplying the place of a missing actor with an improvised speech. Bale, ii. 103, says that Henry Parker, Lord Morley (1476-1556) ‘in Anglica sermone edidit comoedias et tragoedias, libros plures.’
[562] The Revels Account for 1511 (Brewer, ii. 1496) notes an interlude in which ‘Mr. Subdean, now my Lord of Armykan’ took part. In his Oratio ad Clerum of the same year Colet criticizes the clerics who ‘se ludis et iocis tradunt’ (Collier, i. 64). A Sermo exhortatorius cancellarii Eboracensis his qui ad sacros ordines petunt promoveri printed by Wynkyn de Worde about 1525 also calls attention to the canonical requirement that the clergy should abstain ‘a ludis theatralibus’ (Hazlitt, Bibl. Coll. and Notes, 3rd series (1887), 274).
[563] Collier, i. 46 and passim; Bernard Andrew, Annales Hen. VII in Gairdner, Memorials of Henry VII (R. S.), 103; Hall, 518, 583, 723; Kempe, 62; Revels Accounts, &c., in Brewer, passim; cf. Appendix E (viii). The Chapel formed part of the household of Henry I about 1135 (Red Book of Exchequer, R. S. iii. cclxxxvii, 807); for its history cf. Household Ordinances, 10, 17, 35, 49; E. F. Rimbault, The Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal (C. S.); F. J. Furnivall, Babees Book (E. E. T. S.), lxxv.
[564] Percy, N. H. B. 44, 254, 345. In household lists for 1511 and 1520 comes the entry ‘The Almonar, and if he be a maker of Interludys than he to have a Servaunt to the intent for Writynge of the Parts and ells to have non.’ There were nine gentlemen and six children of the chapel. The 1522-3 list of ‘Rewardes’ has ‘them of his Lordship Chappell and other his Lordshipis Servaunts that doith play the Play befor his Lordship uppon Shroftewsday at night, xˢ,’ and again, ‘Master of the Revells ... yerly for the overseyinge and orderinge of his Lordschip’s playes interludes and Dresinge [? disguisinges] that is plaid befor his Lordship in his Hous in the xij days of Xmas, xxˢ.’ This latter officer seems to have been, as at court, distinct from the ‘Abbot of Miserewll’ (vol. i. p. 418).
[565] Black Books of Lincoln’s Inn, i. 104, 119.
[566] Hall, 719; Collier, i. 103.
[567] R. J. Fletcher, Pension Book of Gray’s Inn, xxxix, 496.
[568] Hist. MSS. vii. 613. The play was to comprehend a ‘discourse of the world,’ to be called Love and Life, and to last three hours. There were to be sixty-two dramatis personae, each bearing a name beginning with L.
[569] Cf. Appendix E (v).
[570] Brewer, iv. 6788.
[571] Boase, Register of the University of Oxford (O. H. S.), i. 298.
[572] Mullinger, Hist. of Cambridge, ii. 73. Ascham, Epist. (1581), f. 126ᵛ, writing †1550 (quoted Hazlitt-Warton, iii. 304) says that Antwerp excels all other cities ‘quemadmodum aula Iohannis, theatrali more ornata, seipsam post Natalem superat.’ Speaking in The Scholemaster (ed. Mayor, 1863), 168, of his contemporaries at St. John’s (†1530-54), Ascham highly praises the Absalon of Thomas Watson, which he puts on a level with Buchanan’s Jephthah. Watson, however, ‘would never suffer it to go abroad.’ This play apparently exists in manuscript; cf. Texts (iv). Ascham himself, according to his Epistles, translated the Philoktetes into Latin (Hazlitt, Manual, 179). In The Scholemaster, he further says, ‘One man in Cambrige, well liked of many, but best liked of him selfe, was many tymes bold and busie to bryng matters upon stages which he called Tragedies.’ Ascham did not approve of his Latin metre. Possibly he refers to John Christopherson, afterwards bishop of Chichester, to whom Warton, iii. 303; Cooper, Athenae Cantab. i. 188; D. N. B. attribute a tragedy in Greek and Latin of Jepthes (1546). I can find no trace of this. It is not mentioned by Bahlmann.
[575] Mullinger, Hist. of Cambridge, ii. 627. Statute 24 of 1560, De comoediis ludisque in Natali Christi exhibendis, requires that ‘novem domestici lectores ... bini ac bini singulas comoedias tragoediasve exhibeant, excepto primario lectore quem per se solum unam comoediam aut tragoediam exhibere volumus.’ A fine is imposed on defaulters, and the performances are to be in the hall ‘privatim vel publice’ during or about the twelve nights of Christmas. On an earlier draft of this statute cf. vol. i. p. 413.
[576] Statute 36 (Documents relating to Cambridge, iii. 54); cf. Mullinger, op. cit. ii. 73.
[577] Dee, Compendious Rehearsall (app. to Hearne, Ioh. Glastoniensis Chronicon, 501), after mentioning his election, says ‘Hereupon I did sett forth a Greek comedy of Aristophanes’ play named in Greek Εἰρήνη, in Latin Pax.’
[578] J. Sargeaunt, Annals of Westminster, 49; Athenæum (1903), i. 220.
[579] Maxwell-Lyte, Hist. of Eton (3rd ed. 1899), 118 ‘pro expensis circa ornamenta ad duos lusus in aula tempore natalis Domini, xˢ.’
[580] Printed in E. S. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, 91 ‘circiter festum D. Andreae ludimagister eligere solet pro suo arbitrio scaenicas fabulas optimas et quam accommodatissimas, quas pueri feriis natalitiis subsequentibus, non sine ludorum elegantia, populo spectante, publice aliquando peragant. Histrionum levis ars est, ad actionem tamen oratorum et gestum motumque corporis decentem tantopere facit, ut nihil magis. Interdum etiam exhibet Anglico sermone contextas fabulas, quae habeant acumen et leporem.’
[581] Brewer, xiv. 2. 334 ‘Woodall, the schoolmaster of Eton, for playing before my Lord, £5.’
[582] Brown, Cat. of Venetian Papers, iv. 3. 208, 225; Brewer, iv. 3563; Hall, 735; Cavendish, Life of Wolsey (ed. Singer), 201; Collier, i. 104.
[583] Lupton, Life of Colet, 154.
[585] Warton speaks of a play by the ‘children’ or ‘choir-boys’ of St. Paul’s at a visit to Elizabeth by Mary and of another play of Holophernes ‘perhaps’ by the same children later in the year. But the dates given in his Hist. of Poetry (ed. Hazlitt), ii. 234, iii. 312, and his Life of Sir Thomas Pope (ed. 1780), 46, do not agree together, and the authority to which he refers (Machyn’s Diary, then in MS.) does not bear him out. On his bona fides cf. H. E. D. Blakiston, in E. H. Review, for April, 1896. Ward, i. 153, rather complicates the matter by adding to Holophernes a second play called The Hanging of Antioch, but even in Warton’s account this ‘hanging’ was only a curtain.
[586] Bale, Scriptores (1557), i. 700 ‘Radulphus Radclif, patria Cestriensis, Huchiniae in agro Hartfordiensi, & in coenobio, quod paulo ante Carmelitarum erat, ludum literarium anno Domini 1538 aperuit, docuitque Latinas literas. Mihi quidem aliquot dies in unis & eisdem aedibus commoranti, multa arriserunt: eaque etiam laude dignissima. Potissimum vero theatrum, quod in inferiori aedium parte longe pulcherrimum extruxit. Ibi solitus est quotannis simul iucunda & honesta plebi edere spectacula, cum ob iuventutis, suae fidei & institutioni commissae, inutilem pudorem exuendum, tum ad formandum os tenerum & balbutiens, quo clare, eleganter, & distincte verba eloqui & effari consuesceret. Plurimas in eius museo vidi ac legi tragoedias & comoedias ... Scripsit de Nominis ac Verbi, potentissimorum regum in regno Grammatico, calamitosa &
Claruit Radclifus, anno a Christi servatoris ortu 1552 ... Nescioque an sub Antichristi tyrannide adhuc vivat.’ Bale, Index, 333, has fuller titles. Some of Radclif’s plays were almost certainly in Latin, for Bale gives in Latin the opening words of each, and as Herford, 113, points out, those of the Lazarus and the Griselda clearly form parts of Latin verses. But he showed them ‘plebi.’ Professor Herford learnt ‘that no old MSS. in any way connected with Radclif now remain at Hitchin, where his family still occupies the site of his school.’
[587] Julleville, Les Com., passim. A collection of farces is in E. L. N. Viollet-le-Duc, Ancien Théâtre français (1854-7). For morals and farces at the Feasts of Fools and of the Boy Bishop abroad, and for the satirical tendency of such entertainments, cf. vol. i. p. 380. In 1427, after the feast of St. Laurent, Jean Bussières, chaplain of St. Remi de Troyes, ‘emendavit quod fecerat certum perconnagium rimarum in cimiterio dicte ecclesie Sancti Remigii; de quibus rimis fuerat dyabolus et dixerat plura verba contra viros ecclesiasticos’ (Inv. des Arch, de l’Aube, sér. G, i. 243). The fifteenth-century Dutch farces appear to have been played at the meetings of the Rederijkerkammern, and the German Fastnachtsspiele, which derive largely from folk ludi, by associations of handicraftsmen (Creizenach, i. 404, 407).
[588] Julleville, Les Com. 325.
[589] Ibid. 342. There is nothing to show the character of the French players who visited the English court in 1494 and 1495 (Appendix E, viii).
[591] The titles of the printed plays do not help, as they were probably added by the printers, and in any case ‘enterlude’ does not exclude a popular play.
[592] Hist. MSS. vii. 613.
[593] Collier, ii. 196, quotes the description by Willis, Mount Tabor (1639), and refers to other notices of the play. In Sir Thomas More (†1590, ed. A. Dyce, from Harl. MS. 7368 for Shakes. Soc. 1844) ‘my lord Cardinall’s players’ visit More’s house and offer the following repertory:
The ascription of these plays to Wolsey’s lifetime must not be pressed too literally. Of Hit Nayle o’ th’ Head nothing is known. Radclif (p. 197) wrote a Dives and Lazarus. For the rest cf. p. 189; Texts (iv). The piece actually performed in Sir Thomas More is called Wit and Wisdom, but is really an adaptation of part of Lusty Juventus. A play of Old Custome, probably a morality, was amongst the effects of John, earl of Warwick, in 1545-50 (Hist. MSS. ii. 102).
[594] Cf. Brandl, xl. The performances of Everyman given in the courtyard of the Charterhouse in 1901, and subsequently in more than one London theatre, have proved quite unexpectedly impressive.
[595] John Rastell printed †1536 Of gentylnes and nobylyte, A dyalogue ... compilit in maner of an enterlude with divers toys and gestis addyd thereto to make mery pastyme and disport; cf. Bibliographica, ii. 446. Heywood’s Witty and Witless is a similar piece, and a later one, Robin Conscience, is in W. C. Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, iii. 221. In 1527 Rastell seems to have provided for the court a pageant of ‘The Father of Hevin’ in which a dialogue, both in English and Latin, of riches and love, written by John Redman, and also a ‘barriers’ were introduced (Brewer, iv. 1394; Collier, i. 98; Hall, 723; Brown, Venetian Papers, iv. 105). A dialogue of Riches and Youth, issuing in a ‘barriers,’ is described by Edward VI in 1552 (Remains, ii. 386). On the vogue during the Renascence of this dialogue literature, which derives from the mediaeval débats, cf. Herford, ch. 2.
[596] Collier, i. 69. This notice is said by Collier to be from a slip of paper folded up in the Revels Account for 1513-4. It is not mentioned in Brewer’s Calendar.
[597] Leland, Collectanea (ed. Hearne), iv. 265; Computus for 1551-6 of Sir Thos. Chaloner (Lansd. MS. 824, f. 24) ‘Gevyn on Shrove monday to the king’s players who playd the play of Self-love ... xx⁸.’
[598] Cf. ch. xvi.
[599] There was a ‘farsche’ at Edinburgh in 1554 (Representations, s.v.). In 1558 the Scottish General Assembly forbade ‘farseis and clerke playis’ (Christie, Account of Parish Clerks, 64). Julleville, La Com. 51, explains the term. Farsa is the L. L. past part. of farcire ‘to stuff.’ Besides its liturgical use (vol. i. p. 277) ‘on appela farce au théâtre une petite pièce, une courte et vive satire formée d’éléments variés et souvent mêlée de divers langages et de différents dialectes.... Plus tard, ce sens premier s’effaça; le mot de farce n’éveilla plus d’autre idée que celle de comédie très réjouissante.’ Farce is, therefore, in its origin, precisely equivalent to the Latin Satura.
[600] Cf. vol. i. p. 83.
[601] Texts, s.v. Lyndsay. The only other fragment of the Scottish drama under James IV is that ascribed to Dunbar (Works, ed. Scot. Text Soc., ii. 314). In one MS. this is headed ‘Ane Littill Interlud of the Droichis Part of the [Play] but in another Heir followis the maner of the crying of ane playe. Both have the colophon. Finis off the Droichis Pairt of the Play. From internal evidence the piece is a cry or banes. Ll. 138-41 show that it was for a May-game:
[602] Cushman, 63, 68.
[603] No play in the first two sections of the ‘vice-dramas’ tabulated by Cushman, 55, has a vice. Of the eleven plays (excluding King John, which has none) that remain, eight can be called morals. But to these must be added Heywood’s Love and Weather, Grimald’s Archipropheta, Jack Juggler, Hester, Tom Tiler and His Wife, none of which are morals, unless the first can be so called.
[604] Cushman, 68. It has been derived from vis d’âne, and from vis, ‘a mask’; from the Latin vice, because the vice is the devil’s representative; from device, ‘a puppet moved by machinery,’ and finally, by the ingenious Theobald, from ‘O. E. jeck—Gk. εἰκαῖ, i.e. ϝικαῖ = ϝείκ = formal character.’
[605] Cf. Texts, s.v. Medwall. In Misogonos (†1560) Cacurgus, the Morio, is a character, and is called ‘foole’ and ‘nodye’ but not ‘vice.’
[606] Collier, ii. 191; Cushman, 69; cf. ch. xvi.
[607] Cf. Representations, s.vv. Bungay, Chelmsford.
[608] The ‘pleyers with Marvells’ at court in 1498 are conjectured to have played miracles. But they may have been merely praestigiatores.
[609] Cf. vol. i. p. 180.
[610] Cf. p. 197, n. 1.
[612] W. B[aldwin], Bell the Cat (1553).
[613] Krumbacher, 534, 644, 653, 717, 746, 751, 766, 775. The Χριστὸς Πάσχων (ed. by J. G. Brambs, 1885; and in P. G. xxxviii. 131) was long ascribed to the fourth-century Gregory Nazianzen. Later scholars have suggested Joannes Tzetzes or Theodorus Prodromus, but Krumbacher thinks the author unidentified. A third of the text is a cento from extant plays, mainly of Euripides.
[614] Krumbacher, 645.
[615] Teuffel, ii. 372; Cloetta, i. 3, 70; Creizenach, i. 4, 20. The Querolus (ed. L. Havet, 1880) was ascribed by the Middle Ages to Plautus himself. The Geta, if it existed, is lost.
[616] Sidonius, Carm. xxiii. 134.
[617] Cloetta, i. 14; ii. 1; Creizenach, i. 1, 486; Bahlmann, Ern. 4; M. Manitius, in Philologus, suppl. vii. 758; Ward, i. 7, quoting Hrotsvitha,
[618] Creizenach, i. 2; Ward, i. 8; Göttinger gelehrte Anzeigen (1835), 911.
[619] Creizenach, i. 17; Cloetta, i. 127; Ward, i. 6; Pollard, xii; A. Ebert, Gesch. d. Litt. d. Mittelalters (1887), iii. 314; W. H. Hudson in E. H. R. iii. 431. The plays of Hrotsvitha (ed. K. A. Barack, 1858; ed. P. L. Winterfeld, 1901) are the Gallicanus, Dulcitius, Callimachus, Abraham, Paphnutius, Sapientia. They were discovered by Conrad Celtes and edited in 1501. It is not probable that he forged them.
[620] Printed in Appendix U.
[621] Creizenach, i. 5; Cloetta, i. 38. One of the exceptionally learned men who really knew something about the classical drama was John of Salisbury (†1159), Polycraticus, i. 8 ‘comicis et tragoedis abeuntibus, cum omnia levitas occupaverit, clientes eorum, comoedi videlicet et tragoedi, exterminati sunt’; iii. 8 ‘comoedia est vita hominis super terram, ubi quisque sui oblitus personam exprimit alienam’ (P. L. cxcix. 405, 488). For the popular notion cf. Lydgate, Troy Book (ed. 1555), ii. 11, perhaps translating Guido delle Colonne:
[622] Creizenach, i. 6; Cloetta, i. 35. See the miniature reproduced from a fifteenth-century MS. of Terence in P. Lacroix, Sciences et Lettres au Moyen Âge (1877), 534.
[623] Cloetta, i. 14, has accumulated a fund of learning on this subject; cf. Creizenach, i. 9.
[624] Johannes Januensis, Catholicon (1286), quoted by Cloetta, i. 28 ‘differunt tragoedia et comoedia, quia comedia privatorum hominum continet facta, tragoedia regum et magnatum. Item comoedia humili stilo describitur, tragoedia alto. Item comoedia a tristibus incipit sed cum laetis desinit, tragoedia e contrario.’
[625] Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum maius triplex (†1250), i. 109 ‘Comoedia poesis exordium triste laeto fine commutans. Tragoedia vero poesis a laeto principio in tristem finem desinens.’ The Dante-commentator Francesco da Buti, quoted by Cloetta i. 48, illustrates this notion with an extraordinary explanation of the derivation of tragedia from τράγος; ‘come il becco ha dinanzi aspetto di principe per le corna e per la barba, e dietro è sozzo mostrando le natiche nude e non avendo con che coprirle, così la tragedia incomincia dal principio con felicità e poi termina in miseria.’ Krumbacher, 646, describes the very similar history of the terms τραγῳδία and κωμῳδία in Byzantine Greek.
[626] Boethius, who of course understood the nature of comedy and tragedy, says (Cons. Philosoph. ii. pr. 2. 36) ‘quid tragoediarum clamor aliud deflet, nisi indiscreto ictu fortunam felicia regna vertentem?’ This becomes in the paraphrase of his eleventh-century commentator Notker Labeo (ed. Hattemar, 52ᵇ) ‘tragoediae sínt luctuosa carmina. álso díu sínt. díu sophocles scréib apud grecos. de euersionibus regnorum et urbium. únde sínt uuideruuártig tien comoediis. án dîen uuir îo gehórên laetum únde iocundum exitum.’
[627] Cloetta, i. 4; Teuffel, ii. 506. Blossius Aemilius Dracontius was a Carthaginian poet. The Orestes is printed in L. Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min. (Bibl. Teub.), v. 218. There seems a little doubt whether the title Orestis tragoedia in the Berne MS. is due to the author or to a scribe. The Ambrosian MS. has Horestis fabula.
[628] Creizenach, i. 12.
[629] Ibid. i. 7; Cloetta, i. 49. The ludus prophetarum played at Riga in 1204 (p. 70) is called ‘ludus ... quam Latini comoediam vocant.’ Probably this is a bit of learning on the part of the chronicler; cf. the Michael-House instance (p. 344). For scraps from non-dramatic classical authors in liturgical plays, cf. p. 48. The ‘theatricales ludi’ of Innocent III and others (vol. i. p. 40; vol. ii. p. 99) seem to be not miracle-plays, but the Feast of Fools and similar mummings.
[630] Dante, Dedicatio of Paradiso to Can Grande (Opere Latine, ed. Giuliani, ii. 44) ‘est comoedia genus quoddam poeticae narrationis.... Differt ergo a tragoedia in materia per hoc quod tragoedia in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine sive exitu est foetida et horribilis ... comoedia vero inchoat asperitatem alicuius rei, sed eius materia prospere terminatur.’ P. Toynbee (Romania, xxvi. 542) shows that Dante substantially owed these definitions to the Magnae Derivationes of the late twelfth-century writer, Uguccione da Pisa.