Abstract
ASTRIKING parallel exists between the comments on human nature expounded so forceful y by Rabelais in his Five Books relating the adventures of Gargantua and Pantagruel and those expressed in French vaudevilles of the lfate seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. When the amorphous mass of the vaudeville repertory is examined and classified according to the major themes in Rabelais's work, it quickly assumes a meaningful shape. Rabelais's preoccupation with the symbolism of wine lends new significance to the multitude of vaudevilles in the drinking-song category. His philosophy of free will inherent in the founding of the Abbey of Th61Rme is restated by the eighteenth-century vaudevillistes. His contempt for marriage, his fear of cuckoldry, and his satirical, ribald approach to love pervade their songs. With great relish the later writers imitate his fantastic play with word series, phrases, and rhyming sounds. Rabelais's protests against hypocrisy, his criticism of man's weaknesses, his faith in man's finer instincts, his revelry in the pleasures of human companionship, and his delight in life itself are all echoed in the texts of the vaudevilles.
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