Vaudville

Vaudville, originally a popular song with words relating to some story of the day; whence it has come to signify a play in which dialogue is interspersed with dances and songs of this description, incidentally introduced, but forming an important part of the drama. It is usually comic. The name Vaudville is a corruption of Val de Vire, the name of a picturesque valley in the Bocage of Normandy. One Olivier Basselin, a fuller in Vire, composed about the middle of the 15th century a number of humorous and more or less satirical drinking-songs, which were very popular, and spread over France, bearing the name of their native place (Vaux de Vire).