<P> Live performances before an audience constitute a major form of entertainment, especially before the invention of audio and video recording . Performance takes a wide range of forms, including theatre, music and drama . In the 16th and 17th centuries, European royal courts presented masques that were complex theatrical entertainments involving dancing, singing and acting . Opera is a similarly demanding performance style that remains popular . It also encompass all three forms, demanding a high level of musical and dramatic skill, collaboration and like the masque, production expertise as well . </P> <P> Audiences generally show their appreciation of an entertaining performance with applause . However, all performers run the risk of failing to hold their audience's attention and thus, failing to entertain . Audience dissatisfaction is often brutally honest and direct . </P> <P> "Of course you all ought to know that while singing a good song or, or giving a good recitation...helps to arrest the company's attention...Such at least was the case with me--the publican devised a plan to bring my entertainment to an end abruptly, and the plan was, he told the waiter to throw a wet towel at me, which, of course, the waiter did...and I received the wet towel, full force, in the face, which staggered me...and had the desired effect of putting an end to me giving any more entertainments in the house ." William McGonagall (Performance artist and poet) </P> <P> Storytelling is an ancient form of entertainment that has influenced almost all other forms . It is "not only entertainment, it is also thinking through human conflicts and contradictions". Hence, although stories may be delivered directly to a small listening audience, they are also presented as entertainment and used as a component of any piece that relies on a narrative, such as film, drama, ballet, and opera . Written stories have been enhanced by illustrations, often to a very high artistic standard, for example, on illuminated manuscripts and on ancient scrolls such as Japanese ones . Stories remain a common way of entertaining a group that is on a journey . Showing how stories are used to pass the time and entertain an audience of travellers, Chaucer used pilgrims in his literary work The Canterbury Tales in the 14th century, as did Wu Cheng'en in the 16th century in Journey to the West . Even though journeys can now be completed much faster, stories are still told to passengers en route in cars and aeroplanes either orally or delivered by some form of technology . </P>

The movies would replace what form of entertainment that had been family entertainment