dramatic societies continued to exist in France through the fifteenth century, and until the middle of the sixteenth. These various pieces, under the titles of farces, sotties, moralities, or whatever other names might be given to them, had become exceedingly popular at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and a very considerable number of them were printed, and many of them are still preserved, but they are books of great rarity, and often unique.[90] Of these the farces form the most numerous class. They consist simply of the tales of the older jougleurs or story-tellers represented in a dramatic form, but they often display great skill in conducting the plot, and a considerable amount of wit. The story of the sheep-stealer in the Towneley play of "The Shepherds," is a veritable farce. As in the fabliaux, the most common subjects of these farces are love intrigues, carried on in a manner which speaks little for the morality of the age in which they were written. Family quarrels frequently form the subject of a farce, and the weaknesses and vices of women. The priests, as usual, are not spared, but are introduced as the seducers of wives and daughters. In one the wives have found a means of re-modelling their husbands and making them young again, which they put in practice with various ludicrous circumstances. Tricks of servants are also common subjects for these farces. One is the story of a boy who does not know his own father, and some of the subjects are of a still more trivial character, as that of the boy who steals a tart from the pastrycook's shop. Two hungry boys, prowling about the streets, come to the shop door just as the pastrycook is giving directions for sending an eel-pie after him. By an ingenious deception the boys gain possession of the pie and eat it, and they are both caught and severely chastised. This is the whole plot of the farce. A dull schoolboy examined by his master in the presence of his parents, and the mirth produced by his blunders and their ignorance, formed also a favourite subject among these farces. One or two examples are preserved, and, from a companion of them, we might be led to suspect that Shakespeare took the idea of the opening scene in the fourth act of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" from one of these old farces. [90] The most remarkable collection of these early farces, sotties, and moralities yet known, was found accidentally in 1845, and is now in the British Museum. These were all edited in Paris as the first three volumes of a work in ten, entitled "Ancien Théatre François, ou Collection des Ouvrages dramatiques les plus remarquable depuis les Mystères jusqu'à Corneille, publié ... par M. Viollet le Duc," 12mo., Paris, 1854. It is right to state that these three volumes were edited, not by M. Viollet le Duc, but by a scholar better known for his learning in the older French literature, M. Anatole de Montaiglon.