[98] The British Museum library was enriched in 1845 by a very curions collection of these old comic plays, which was formed about 1560. It consists of sixty-four dramas, of which number only five or six were known before. They are exceedingly curious as pictures of early manners and amusements; very simple in construction, and containing few characters. One is a comic dialogue between two persons as to the best way of managing a wife. Another has for its plot the adventure of a husband sent from home by the seigneur of the village, that he may obtain access to his wife; and who is checkmated by the peasant, who repairs to the neglected lady of the seigneur. Some are entirely composed of allegorical characters; all are broadly comic, in language equally broad. They were played by a jocular society, whose chief was termed Prince des Sots; hence the name Sotties given to the farces.
[99] The peasants of the Ober-Ammergau, a village in the Bavarian Alps, still perform, at intervals of ten years, a long miracle play, detailing the chief incidents of the Passion of our Saviour from his entrance into Jerusalem to his ascension. It is done in fulfilment of a vow made during a pestilence in 1633. The performance lasted twelve hours in 1850, when it was last performed. The actors were all of the peasant class.
[100] An amusing instance of his classical emendations occurs in the text of Shakspeare. [King Henry IV. pt. 2, act 1, sc. 1.] The poet speaks of one who
"——woebegone
Drew Priam's curtain in the dead of night,
And would have told him half his Troy was burn'd."
Bentley alters the first word of the sentence to a proper name, which is given in the third book of the Iliad, and the second of the Æneid; and reads the passage thus:—
"——Ucaligon
Drew Priam's curtain," &c.!
[101] Marana appears to have carelessly deserted his literary offspring. It is not improbable that his English translators continued his plan, and that their volumes were translated; so that what appears the French original may be, for the greater part, of our own home manufacture. The superiority of the first part was early perceived. The history of our ancient Grub-street is enveloped in the obscurity of its members, and there are more claimants than one for the honour of this continuation. We know too little of Marana to account for his silence; Cervantes was indignant at the impudent genius who dared to continue the immortal Quixote.
The tale remains imperfectly told.
See a correspondence on this subject in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1840 and 1841.
[102] This play, Langbaine says, is written by Shakspeare.