In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the entertainment of the _sociétés joyeuses_ was largely dramatic. We find them, as indeed we find the participants in the strictly clerical feasts of Fools[1362] and of Boys[1363], during the same period, occupied with the performance both of miracles and of the various forms of contemporary comedy known as farces, moralities, _sotties_ and _sermons joyeux_[1364]. Of their share in the miracles the next volume may speak[1365]: their relations to the development of comedy require a word or two here. That normal fifteenth-century comedy, that of the farce and the morality, in any way had its origin in the Feast of Fools, whether clerical or lay, can hardly be admitted. It almost certainly arose out of the minstrel tradition, and when already a full-blown art was adapted by the _fous_, as by other groups of amateur performers, from minstrelsy. With the special forms of the _sottie_ and the _sermon joyeux_ it is otherwise. These may reasonably be regarded as the definite contribution of the Feast of Fools to the types of comedy. The very name of the _sermon joyeux_, indeed, sufficiently declares its derivation. It is parody of a class, the humour of which would particularly appeal to revelling clerks: it finds its place in the general burlesque of divine worship, which is the special note of the feast[1366]. The character of the _sotties_, again, does not leave their origin doubtful; they are, on the face of them, farces in which the actors are _sots_ or _fous_. Historically, we know that some at least of the extant _sotties_ were played by _sociétés joyeuses_ at Paris, Geneva and elsewhere; and the analysis of their contents lays bare the ruling idea as precisely that expressed in the motto of the _Infanterie Dijonnaise_--‘_Stultorum numerus est infinitus_.’ It is their humour and their mode of satire to represent the whole world, from king to clown, as wearing the cap and bells, and obeying the lordship of folly. French writers have aptly compared them to the modern dramatic type known as the _revue_[1367]. The germ of the _sottie_ is to be found as early as the thirteenth century in the work of that Adan de la Hale, whose anticipation of at least one other form of fifteenth-century drama has called for comment[1368]. Adan’s _Jeu de la Feuillée_ seems to have been played before the _puy_ of Arras, perhaps, as the name suggests, in the _tonnelle_ of a garden, on the eve of the first of May, 1262. It is composed of various elements: the later scenes are a _féerie_ in which the author draws upon Hellequin and his _mesnie_ and the three _fées_, Morgue, Maglore and Arsile, of peasant tradition. But there is an episode which is sheer _sottie_. The relics of St. Acaire, warranted to cure folly, are tried upon the good burgesses of Arras one by one; and there is a genuine fool or _dervés_, who, like his lineal descendant Touchstone, ‘uses his folly