So much for ancestor worship as the source of the drama with the _wu_ or _hsien_. Mr. Wang adduces records also of other types of actors. As early as 1818 B.C., according to a none too reliable Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-221 A.D.) record, a ruler is said to have abolished the temple rites and ceremonies and to have collected about his court clowns, dwarfs, and actors to perform amusing plays. In the more historic period of “Spring and Autumn” (770-544 B.C.) there are records of dwarfs in rôles similar to those of our court fools. They attempted to gain the favor of the rulers by their witty sayings which were often full of satire. Confucius in his capacity of prime minister saw himself forced to put to death one of these wits[6] because of his disrespectful allusions to the ruler—an action, incidentally, that seems most characteristic of the noble sage, who with all his virtues certainly was not endowed with a sense of humor. The function of these dancing, singing, play-acting dwarfs was not a religious one; “they were to amuse men, not to amuse the gods.” In a review[7] of Mr. Wang’s “History of the Drama under the Sung and Yuan Dynasties” Professor Soong calls attention to the following interesting analogies between Orient and Occident: The influence of the court fools was considerable, and on the whole salutary in China. Shih Huang-ti (255-206 B.C.), the builder of the Great Wall, was so addicted to great building enterprises that the people suffered in consequence. It was Yu Sze, the court fool, who caused the emperor to treat the people with more consideration. The successor of this mighty ruler conceived the plan of having the Great Wall painted—perhaps just a caprice on his part, perhaps in order to render the Wall less subject to the influence of the weather. Again Yu Sze dissuaded the emperor from carrying out such a costly and wasteful project. The history of Yu Meng is even more interesting. In the kingdom of Chou the family of Suen Lo Ngao had become extremely impoverished because the king had forgotten the merits of the chief of the house, a famous general. Yu Meng, the court fool, donned the armor of the defunct military leader and sang of his exploits before the royal palace; now the king could no longer refuse to recognize and recompense the merits of the family. This touching episode told by the historian in the “Biography of Court Fools” cannot but recall Will Sommer to whom “The King would ever grant what he would crave.”