The three dramatic societies which produced all these farces, sotties, and moralities, continued to flourish in France until the middle of the sixteenth century, at which period a great revolution in dramatic literature took place in that country. The performance of the Mysteries had been forbidden by authority, and the Bazochians themselves were suppressed. The petty drama represented by the farces and sotties went rapidly out of fashion, in the great change through which the mind of society was at this time passing, and in which the taste for classical literature overcame all others. The old drama in France had disappeared, and a new one, formed entirely upon an imitation of the classical drama, was beginning to take its place. This incipient drama was represented in the sixteenth century by Etienne Jodel, by Jacques Grevin, by Rémy Belleau, and especially by Pierre de Larivey, the most prolific, and perhaps the most talented, of the earlier French regular dramatic authors. These French dramatic essays, the farces, the sotties, and the moralities, were imitated, and sometimes translated, in English, and many of them were printed; for the further our researches are carried into the early history of printing, the more we are astonished at the extreme activity of the press, even in its infancy, in multiplying literature of a popular character. In England, as in France, the farces had been, at a rather early period, detached from the mysteries and miracle-plays, but the word _interludes_ had been adopted here as the general title for them, and continued in use even after the establishment of the regular drama. Perhaps this name owed its popularity to the circumstance that it seemed more appropriate to its object, when it became so fashionable in England to act these plays at intervals in the great festivals and entertainments given at court, or in the households of the great nobles. At all events, there can be no doubt that this fashion had a great influence on the fate of the English stage. The custom of performing plays in the universities, great schools, and inns of court, had also the effect of producing a number of very clever dramatic writers; for when this literature was so warmly patronised by princes and nobles, people of the highest qualifications sought to excel in it. Hence we find from books of household expenses and similar records of the period, that there was, during the sixteenth century, an immense number of such plays compiled in England which were never printed, and of which, therefore, very few are preserved.