as a stalking-horse to shoot his wit’ in showers of arrowy satire upon mankind[1369]. Of the later and regular _sotties_, the most famous are those written by Pierre Gringoire for the _Enfants-sans-Souci_ of Paris. In these, notably the _Jeu du Prince des Sotz_, and in others by less famous writers, the conception of the all-embracing reign of folly finds constant and various expression[1370]. Outside France some reflection of the _sottie_ is to be found in the _Fastnachtspiele_ or Shrovetide plays of Nuremberg and other German towns. These were performed mainly, but not invariably, at Shrovetide, by students or artisans, not necessarily organized into regular guilds. They are dramatically of the crudest, being little more than processions of figures, each of whom in turn sings his couplets. But in several examples these figures are a string of _Narren_, and the matter of the verses is in the satirical vein of the _sotties_[1371]. The _Fastnachtspiele_ are probably to be traced, not so much to the Feast of Fools proper, as to the spring sword-dances in which, as we have seen, a _Narr_ or ‘fool’ is _de rigueur_. They share, however, with the _sotties_ their fundamental idea of the universal domination of folly. The extension of this idea may indeed be traced somewhat widely in the satirical and didactic literature of the later Middle Ages and the Renascence. I cannot go at length into this question here, but must content myself with referring to Professor Herford’s valuable account of the cycle, which includes the _Speculum Stultorum_ of Wireker, Lydgate’s _Order of Fools_, Sebastian Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_ and its innumerable imitations, the _Encomium Moriae_ of Erasmus, and Robert Armin the player’s _Nest of Ninnies_[1372].