A ''sotie'' (or ''sottie'') is a short satirical play common in 15th- and 16th-century in France. The word (compare modern ''sottise'') comes from the ''sots'', "fools", who appeared as characters in the play. In the plays, these fools would make observations and exchange thoughts on contemporary events and individuals. Shorter plays, sometimes referred to as ''parades'', need not have any plot at all, but relied simply on a detached dialogue. The genre has its origin in the

Feast of Fools Feast of Fools The Feast of Fools or Festival of Fools (Latin: ''festum fatuorum, festum stultorum'') was a feast day on January 1 celebrated by the clergy in Europe during the Middle Ages, initially in Southern France, but later more widely. Du ...

and other Carnival-related festivities. The purpose of these events was to present a world turned upside-down, in this case with the fools as fonts of wisdom. The fools were dressed in grey robes, and wore a hood with donkey ears. There is some scholarly debate over whether the ''sotie'' should be considered a separate genre from the farce or the

morality play The morality play is a genre of medieval and early Tudor drama. The term is used by scholars of literary and dramatic history to refer to a genre of play texts from the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries that feature personified concepts ( ...

, but it does have certain unique characteristics. Whereas the characters in a farce would be distinguished individuals with proper names, the characters in the ''soties'' were pure allegories. The characters had names such as "First Fool" and "Second Fool", or "Everyman", "Pilgrim" etc. Sometime there would be a leader of the fools, called "Mother Fool" (''Mère Sotte''). These allegorical protagonists were also common to morality plays, but unlike this genre, the ''sotie'' was primarily meant to entertain. The plays also had highly complex rhyme schemes, and sophisticated verse structures. The best known ''soties'' playwright is

Pierre Gringore Pierre Gringore (; 1475? – 1538) was a popular French poet and playwright. Biography Pierre Gringore was born in Normandy, at Thury-Harcourt, but the exact date and place of his death are unknown. His first work was ''Le Chasteau de Labour ...

, and the best-known play his 1511 ''Jeu du prince des sots'' (Play of the Prince of Fools). In this play, "Mother Fool" represents the papacy, and for this reason the satire was tolerated by the French king. In the 16th century, ''soties'' were banned and went out of use. The term has, however, been used also for modern works. The 20th-century author

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism ...

referred to his 1914 novel ''Les caves du Vatican'' as a ''sotie''.

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