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Dissertation on the Lives and Writings

in burial grounds. They borrowed, as had been usual with Geoffry of St. Albans[1], the ornaments of the church to decorate their theatre. It was always in the afternoon that these "Miracles' were represented. Women in particular thronged to them from all quarters; the entertainment was often concluded by dances; sometimes by wrestling, or tilting, a kind of play, which exercised the body, and was much in vogue among the English.

Our poet lays great blame on these entertainments, these dances, and recreations; more particularly when they engrossed a part of the sabbath. There is good reason to believe that the clerks, who were the authors, were also the performers of these theatrical pieces. To embellish their works, they gave ample scope to their imaginations, and the more marvellous their production, the more certainty of applause. Wadington, nevertheless, forbids his readers to give faith to these prodigies, falsely attributed to the saints, and considers the authors of these theatrical pieces as no other than madmen. But that which principally raises his indignation is the use of disguises, with which they were able to reprefent the whole number of the different characters of their pieces. It does not clearly appear in what they consisted. He says positively that they disguised their faces; but whether this was by masks, or merely by colours, or, in short, by putting on the form of voracious animals, to which the martyrs were often exposed, is a subject on which the author says nothing sufficiently clear for us to form a precise, and determinate opinion.

As to the minstrels or jongleurs[2] it seems that at his time theywere

  1. ↑ Math. Paris loco citato.
  2. ↑ Jongleurs. It is a word now synonymous to bateleur (a juggler) who plays sleight of hand. Formerly this name was given to a kind of minstrel, who went about singing small poems in the houses of the great, and particularly in the court of the

earls

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