enough those _vagantes_ or wandering scholars, to whom so much of the interaction of learned and of popular literature must be due[309]. And in their turn many of the _débats_ were translated sooner or later into English. English literature, indeed, had had from Anglo-Saxon days a natural affinity for the dialogue form[310], and presents side by side with the translated _débats_ others--_strifs_ or _estrifs_ is the English term--of native origin[311]. The thirteenth-century _Harrowing of Hell_ is an _estrif_ on a subject familiar in the miracle plays: and for an early miracle play it has sometimes been mistaken[312]. Two or three other _estrifs_ of English origin are remarkable, because the interlocutors are not exactly abstractions, but species of birds and animals[313]. Dialogue then, in one shape or another, was part of the minstrel’s regular stock-in-trade. But dialogue by itself is not drama. The notion of drama does not, perhaps, necessarily imply scenery on a regular stage, but it does imply impersonation and a distribution of rôles between at least two performers. Is there anything to be traced in minstrelsy that satisfies these conditions? So far as impersonation is concerned, there are several scattered notices which seem to show that it was not altogether unknown. In the twelfth century for instance, Ælred, abbot of Rievaulx, commenting on certain unpleasing innovations in the church services of the day, complains that the singers use gestures just like those of _histriones_, fit rather for a _theatrum_ than for a house of prayer[314]. The word _theatrum_ is, however, a little suspicious, for an actual theatre in the twelfth century is hardly thinkable, and with a learned ecclesiastic one can never be sure that he is not drawing his illustrations rather from his knowledge of classical literature than from the real life around him. It is more conclusive, perhaps, when _fabliaux_ or _contes_ speak of minstrels as ‘doing’ _l’ivre_, or _le cat_, or _le sot_[315]; or when it appears from contemporary accounts that at a performance in Savoy the manners of England and Brittany were mimicked[316]. In Provence _contrafazedor_ seems to have been a regular name for a minstrel[317]; and the facts that the minstrels wore masks ‘with intent to deceive’[318], and were forbidden to wear ecclesiastical dresses[319], also point to something in the way of rudimentary impersonation.