The earliest example of a serious secular play known to have been written in the French tongue is the _Estoire de Griseldis_ (1393); which is in the style of the miracles of the Virgin, but is largely indebted to Petrarch. The _Mystère du siege d'Orléans_, on the other hand, written about half a century later, in the epic tediousness of its manner comes near to a chronicle history, and interests us chiefly as the earliest of many efforts to bring Joan of Arc on the stage. Jacques Milet's celebrated mystery of the _Destruction de Troye la grant_ (1452) seems to have been addressed to readers and not to hearers only. The beginnings of the French regular comic drama are again more difficult to extract from the copious literature of farces and soties, which, after mingling actual types with abstract and allegorical figures, gradually came to exclude all but the concrete personages; moreover, the large majority of these productions in their extant form belong to a later period than that now under consideration. But there is ample evidence that the most famous of all medieval farces, the immortal _Maistre Pierre Pathelin_ (otherwise _L'Avocat Pathelin_), was written before 1470 and acted by the _basochiens_; and we may conclude that this delightful story of the biter bit, and the profession outwitted, typifies a multitude of similar comic episodes of real life, dramatized for the delectation of clerks, lawyers and students, and of all lovers of laughter.
In the neighbouring Netherlands many Easter and Christmas mysteries are noted from the middle of the 15th century, attesting the enduring popularity of these religious plays; and with them the celebrated series of the Seven Joys of Maria--of which the first is the Annunciation and the seventh the Ascension. To about the same date belongs the small group of the so-called _abele spelen_ (as who should say plays easily managed), chiefly on chivalrous themes. Though allegorical figures are already to be found in the Netherlands miracles of Mary, the species of the moralities was specially cultivated during the great Burgundian period of this century by the chambers or lodges of the _Rederijkers_ (rhetoricians)--the well-known civic associations which devoted themselves to the cultivation of learned poetry and took an active share in the festivals that formed one of the most characteristic features of the life of the Low Countries. Among these moralities was that of _Elckerlijk_ (printed 1495 and presumably by Peter Dorlandus), which there is good reason for regarding as the original of one of the finest of English moralities, _Everyman_.