The oldest surviving drama written in French (but with interspersed liturgical sentences of Latin) is of the twelfth century--the _Representation d'Adam_: the fall of man, and the first great crime which followed--the death of Abel--are succeeded by the procession of Messianic prophets. It was enacted outside the church, and the spectators were alarmed or diverted by demons who darted to and fro amidst the crowd. Of the thirteenth century, only two religious pieces remain. Jean Bodel, of Arras, was the author of _Saint Nicholas_. The poet, himself about to assume the cross, exhibits a handful of Crusaders in combat with the Mussulmans; all but one, a supplicant of the saint, die gloriously, with angelic applause and pity; whereupon the feelings of the audience are relieved by the mirth and quarrels of drinkers in a tavern, who would rob St. Nicholas of the treasure entrusted to his safeguard; miracles, and general conversion of the infidels, conclude the drama. The miracle of _Theophile_, the ambitious priest who pawned his soul to Satan, and through our Lady's intercession recovered his written compact, is by the trouvere Rutebeuf. These are scanty relics of a hundred years; yet their literary value outweighs that of the forty-two _Miracles de Notre Dame_ of the century which followed--rude pieces, often trivial, often absurd in their incidents, with mystic extravagance sanctifying their vulgar realism. They formed, with two exceptions, the dramatic repertory of some mediaeval _puy_, an association half-literary, half-religious, devoted to the Virgin's honour; their rhymed octosyllabic verse--the special dramatic form--at times borders upon prose. One drama, and only one, of the fourteenth century, chooses another heroine than our Lady--the _Histoire de Griselidis_, which presents, with pathos and intermingling mirth, those marvels of wifely patience celebrated for other lands by Boccaccio, by Petrarch, and by Chaucer. The fifteenth-century Mystery exhibits the culmination of the mediaeval sacred drama. The word _mystere_,[2] first appropriated to tableaux vivants, is applied to dramatic performances in the royal privilege which in 1402 conferred upon the association known as the _Confrerie de la Passion_ the right of performing the plays of our Redemption. Before this date the Blessed Virgin and the infant Jesus had appeared upon the scene. The Mystery presents the course of sacred story, derived from the Old and the New Testaments, together with the lives of the saints from apostolic times to the days of St. Dominic and St. Louis; it even includes, in an extended sense, subjects from profane history--the siege of Orleans, the destruction of Troy--but such subjects are of rare occurrence during the fifteenth century. [Footnote 2: Derived from _ministerium_ (_metier_), but doubtless often drawing to itself a sense suggested by the _mysteries_ of religion.]