But the first development seems to have been in Spain, where the old Romans had left their impress, and where the cruel games of the circus still survive in the form of bull-fights.  Lopez de Reuda, of Seville, first brought comedy on the stage, but Cervantes tells us that then the whole wardrobe of an actor consisted of four sheep-skins, trimmed with gilt leather, four beards, four wigs, and four shepherds’ crooks.  Nevertheless, after the classical period, Spain became the repertory for the comedians of Europe.

So far we have traced the origin of comedy as to public performance.  We now come to consider what tendencies of disposition opened the way for it, and led to its becoming a branch of literature.  The love of amusement, which is so strong in man, induced the patronage, which in early times was extended to the various kinds of professors of light arts.

In the days of Greece, as in those of Rome, there were ball-players, and mountebanks, and we may remember an occasion on which Terence complained that a rope-dancer had enticed away his audience.  In Sparta there were men who represented the tricks of thieves and impostors in dances, and whose entertainments, though poor, were superior to that of mere mountebanks.  The mimes were a still greater improvement, in which a certain amount of amusing narrative was illustrated by dances, songs, contortions, and as the name implies by mimicry.  We have seen Plato introducing mimi from Greece, and Julius Caesar interesting himself in such performers.  Our mediaeval fool has been traced to the Roman mime, who continued to please the country-people with coarse and debased representations after Rome had fallen, and comedy had perished.  Some have even given a classic origin to our pantomime, considering harlequin to be Mercury, the clown Momus, pantaloon Charon, and columbine Psyche.  The Roman Sannio and Manducus certainly somewhat corresponded to our fool and clown, the latter especially in his gormandising propensities.  But it is scarcely necessary to travel so far back, for the desire for amusement has in all countries produced an indigenous supply.

Court-jesters are heard of as early as the reign of Philip of Macedon, but they seem to have been at first little more than parasites of inferior rank and education.  In Roman times they were little more than buffoons,[49] and not very different from the mediaeval fools.  They seem to have received nicknames, and Petronius describes a very low buffoon performing antics in a myrtle robe with a belt round his waist.

As in ancient times we find Achilles singing to his lyre, so the English musicians and story-tellers were originally amateurs of high rank.  We read of King Alfred charming the Danes with his minstrelsy.  So also in the Arthurian legends Sir Kaye is represented as amusing the company; but at the time of Hoel Dha’s Welsh laws, the bard was paid, for we read that the king was to allow him a horse and a woollen garment,