Her Capitoli in verse go to incredible lengths; and the astonishing success of Aretino must not be forgotten, nor the licence of the whole Italian comic theatre of the sixteenth century.
The Calandra of Bibbiena, who was afterwards a Cardinal, and the Mandragola of Machiavelli, are evidence enough, and these were played before Popes, who were not a whit embarrassed.

Even in England the drama went very far for a time, and the comic authors of the reign of Charles II., evidently from a reaction, and to shake off the excess and the wearisomeness of Puritan prudery and affectation, which sent them to the opposite extreme, are not exactly noted for their reserve.

But we need not go beyond France.
Slight indications, very easily verified, are all that may be set down here; a formal and detailed proof would be altogether too dangerous.
Thus, for instance, the old Fabliaux--the Farces of the fifteenth century, the story-tellers of the sixteenth--reveal one of the sides, one of the veins, so to speak, of our literature.

The art that addresses itself to the eye had likewise its share of this coarseness.

Think of the sculptures on the capitals and the modillions of churches, and the crude frankness of certain painted windows of the fifteenth century.