THE PROGRESS OF FRENCH COMEDY. II A fair shepherdess who has a rustic lover meets the eye of a knight who passes by, is courted by him, and, as the case may be, jilts or is faithful to her swain. The dramatic capabilities of the story are obvious, but though the pastour- clle as a poem had been popular long before Adam’s days, there is no evidence that any one thought of working it out dramatically before him. In Robin et Marion the characters of the shepherdess (who is in this case a faithful shep- herdess), the lover, and the knight all appear, act and speak in their own persons : the remainder of the dramatis per- sonae being provided by the rustic neighbours of the pair who help in rescuing Marion from the knight. The piece is of course slight, and so much of the dialogue is in lyrical form that it is rather entitled to the name of a comic opera than of a comedy. But the important point about it is that it is entirely secular in subject and characters, that it is purely comic, and that its plot, slight as it is, is substantive and sufficiently worked out. The Jeu de la Feuillie {fettillie or feuillee = booth or tabernacle of boughs) is a more am- bitious and complex performance, but by no means so com- plete and perfect in form. The poet himself, his father, and some of hia friends appear in it, and, so far as it can be said to have a plot, this plot consists in the revelation of Adam’s own life (whence the piece is sometimes called the Jeu Adam) mixed with a good deal of illnatured satire on his wife, father, and friends. There is thus little systematic action, and what there is is confused still further by a strange interlude of fictitious persons who have nothing to do with the real actors. Still the piece is in the first place en- tirely secular, and in the second purely comic — two circum- stances which give it equal importance with Robin et Marion in history. In has sometimes been sought to associate with these other early pieces which have the form of debats — verse-dialogues ; but most of these latter have nothing pro- perly dramatic about them. On the other hand, rude as they are, the two pieces just discussed are in every sense comedy proper. But by an accident familiar to students of mediaeval literature they seem to have found few or no imitators. The fourteenth century passes unillumined by a single French
