that first mentioned these dances had instrumental accompaniment and became animated even to the verge of hysteria. Thus unwittingly the people of the medieval church were gathering into a loose, but by no means unformed, union the same materials as the ancients used in the creation of their drama.

The earnest Lewis Riccoboni5 holds that the Fraternity of the Gonfalone, founded in 1264, was accustomed to enact the Passion in the Coliseum, and that these performances lasted till Paul III abolished them in 1549. Riccoboni argues that not the performance was interdicted, but the use of the Coliseum. This matters not greatly, since it is perfectly certain that out-door performances of the Passion took place long before 1549. Those which were given in France were extremely interesting and in regard to them we have important records. It is established beyond doubt that near the end of the fourteenth century a company of players called the Fraternity of the Passion assisted at the festivities attendant upon the marriage of Charles VI and Isabella of Bavaria. Thereafter they gave public performances of their version of the Passion.

It was too long to be performed without rest, and it was therefore divided into several days' work. It employed eighty-seven personages and made use of elaborate machinery. There seems to be little doubt that some of the scenes were sung, and there is no question that there were choruses. The stage directions are not the least remarkable part of this play. The baptism is set forth in this wise: "Here Jesus enters the waters of Jordan, all naked, and Saint John takes some of the water in his hand and throws it on the head of Jesus." Saint John says:

"Sir, you now baptized are,
As it suits my simple skill,
Not the lofty rank you fill;
Unmeet for such great service I;
Yet my God, so debonair,
All that's wanting will supply."

"Here Jesus comes out of the river Jordan and throws himself upon his knees, all naked, before Paradise. Then God, the Father, speaks, and the Holy Ghost descends, in the form of a white dove, upon the head of Jesus, and then returns into Paradise: and note that the words of God the Father be very audibly pronounced and well sounded in three voices, that is to say, a treble, a counter-treble and a counter-bass, all in tune; and in this way must the following lines be repeated:

'Hic est filius meus dilectus,
In quo mihi bene complacui.
C'estui-ci est mon fils amé Jesus,
Que bien me plaist, ma plaisance est en lui.'"

Students are offered another choice of dates for the beginning of the performance of sacred plays in the open air in Italy, to wit, 1304. Vasari says that in this year a play was enacted on the Arno, that a "machine representing hell was fixed upon the boats, and that the subject of the drama was the perennially popular tale of 'Dives and Lazarus'." But Vasari was not born till 1512, and he neglected to state where he got his information. The latter years of the fourteenth century, at any rate, saw the open-air sacred drama in full action, and that suffices for our purpose.

CHAPTER II

THE SACRE RAPPRESENTAZIONI

Leaving D'Ancona, Vasari and the others in their confusion of dates, we find ourselves provided with a satisfactory point of departure and with some facts well defined. The drift of Provençal ideas over the borders into Lombardy may or may not have given some impetus to the growth of certain forms in Tuscany and Umbria, but at any rate it is clear that the Italian form of "Sacre Rappresentazioni" grew chiefly out of the poetic form called "Laud."

This itself was one of the products of a religious emotion. To observe it in its cradle we must go back to the beginnings of Italian literature. The seemingly endless battle between Emperor and Pope, which scarred the soul of Italy through so many years, was at that time raging between Frederick II and Innocent III and Gregory IX. The land reeked with carnage, rapine, murder, fire and famine. So great was the force of all this that the people fell into a state of religious terror. They believed that the vengeance of a wrathful God must immediately descend upon the country, and as a penance the practice of flagellation was introduced.

Against this horrible atonement came a violent reaction, and out of the reaction attempts to continue in a soberer and more rational form the propitiatory ideas of the flagellants. The chief furtherers of these reforms were lay fraternities, calling themselves Disciplinati di Gesu Cristo. From the very outset these fraternities practised the singing of hymns in Italian, instead of Latin, the church language. These hymns dealt chiefly with the Passion. They were called "Lauds" and they had a rude directness and unlettered force which the Latin hymns never possessed. Presently the disciplinati became known as Laudesi. The master maker of "Lauds" was Jacopone da Todi and his most significant production took the form of a dialogue between Mary and the Savior on the cross, followed by the lamentation of the mother over her Son. Mary at one point appeals to Pilate, but is interrupted by the chorus of Jews, crying "Crucify him!" Many other "Lauds," however, were rather more in the manner of short songs than in that of the subsequently developed cantata. The music employed was without doubt that of the popular songs of the time. It appears to have made no difference to the Italians what kind of tune they employed. They "sang the same strambotti to the Virgin and the lady of their love, to the rose of Jericho and the red rose of the balcony."

Here, then, we find a significant difference between the liturgical drama and the sacred representations. The chant, which was the musical garb of the former appears to have had no position in the latter. We shall perceive later that this difference marked a point of departure from which the entire lyric drama of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, prior to the invention of dramatic recitative by the Florentines, proceeded to move in a musical world of its own.

The sacred representations built up a method complex and pregnant without chancing upon the defining element of opera. And this result was reached chiefly, if not solely, because the ecclesiastic chant was not employed. In its stead the musical forms practised by composers of secular music and adopted by musicians of such small education as hardly to be worthy of the title of composers, makers of carnival songs and frottole, predominated and determined the musical character not only of the Sacre Rappresentazioni, but also of the secular lyric plays which succeeded them and which continued to exist in Italy even after the "stile rappresentativo" had been introduced in the primitive dramma per musica of Caccini and Peri.

A closer examination of the songs of this period and of the manner in which they affected the lyric