racter and structure of the latter. In many instances they are characterized by as much coarseness and buffoonery as are their predecessors the mysteries, although, as might be expected from the later date, and the improvement which had taken place in literary taste generally, they manifest greater skill in the use of language, and greater art in dramatic construction. Although the change in the characters of the drama from persons to personifications might seem a step backward, yet as, from the nature of these plays, there was a greater necessity for distinctiveness in the portraiture of character, they were really a step in advance of the miracle play, and no doubt in this respect paved the way for the invention of the legitimate drama. Nevertheless the pure morality, we cannot but imagine, must have been a very tedious affair indeed, and could not long have maintained its popularity, had there not been introduced into it, perhaps from the very first, scenes of buffoonery and coarse wit such as were almost invariably mixed up with the miracle play. Many of the later moralities, while still retaining their peculiar character as dramas of personification, show that vast advances had been made in the dramatic art and literary skill generally, being not unfrequently characterized by considerable force and originality of language, as well as genuine humour, while they show much insight into human nature, and power of depicting character. Still even the best of them, as compared with the regular drama, would now be considered 'stale, flat, and unprofitable,' 'tolerable, and not to be endured,' and seem as little calculated to accomplish their moral end as Richardson's Pamela. As we shall see, however, they were ere long so considerably modified in their character, as to be but a little removed from the legitimate drama. What we have said with regard to the structure of the stage, and the representation of miracle plays, applies equally well to the plays under consideration.

We have already said that, to relieve the tedium which must have been induced by the representation of the unmodified moral plays, scenes of coarse fun and uproarious buffoonery were frequently introduced; and in nearly all moral plays, the great suppliers of these articles are two staple characters in nearly all dramas of this kind, known as The Devil and The Vice. Any notice of moralities would be incomplete without a description of these characters, the latter of which is frequently alluded to by the Elizabethan dramatists. We shall take the liberty of quoting Mr. Collier's account of these two stock 'moral' characters:

'The Devil was no doubt imported into moral plays from the old miracle plays, where he figured so amusingly, that when a new species of theatrical diversion had been introduced, he could not be dispensed with: accordingly, we find him the leader of the Seven Deadly Sins, in one of the most ancient moral plays that have been preserved. He was rendered as hideous as possible by the mask and dress he wore; and from Ulpian Fulwell's Like will to Like, 1568 (and from other sources of the same kind which need not be particularized), we learn that his exterior was shaggy and hairy, one of the characters there mistaking him for "a dancing bear." His "bottle-nose" and "evil face" are mentioned both in that piece, and in T. Lupton's All for Money, 1578; and that he had a tail, if it required proof, is evident from the circumstance that the Vice asks him for a piece of it to make a fly-flap. His ordinary exclamation on entering was, "Ho, ho, ho!" and on all occasions he was prone to roaring and crying out, especially when, for the amusement of the spectators, he was provoked to it by castigation at the hands of the Vice. Malone states that "his constant attendant was the Vice," as if the Devil never appeared without him but in The Disobedient Child (n. d. but printed about 1560), and in one or two other morals he exhibited alone.

'Regarding the Vice, Mr. Douce is of opinion (with that sagacity and knowledge which distinguish him, and make difference dangerous) that the name was derived from the nature of the character; and certain it is that he is represented most wicked by design, and never good but by accident. As the Devil now and then appeared without the Vice, so the Vice sometimes appeared without the Devil. Malone tells us that "the principal employment of the Vice was to belabour the Devil;" but although he was frequently so engaged, he had also higher duties. He figured now and then in the religious plays of a later date; and in

The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalen, 1567, he performed the part of her lover, before her conversion, under the name of Infidelity: in King Darius, 1565, he also acted a prominent part, by his own impulses to mischief, under the name of Iniquity, without any prompting from the representative of the principle of evil. Such was the general style of the Vice, and as Iniquity he is spoken of by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The Vice and Iniquity seem, however, sometimes to have been distinct persons, and he was not unfrequently called by the name of particular vices.

'The Vice was wholly unknown in our "religious plays" which have hitherto gone by the name of Mysteries.

"With regard to "Moralities," it is certainly true, that in the most ancient moral plays characters of gross buffoonery and vicious propensities were inserted for the amusement and instruction of the audience; but although we hear of "the fool" in Medwall's interlude performed before Henry VIII. in 1516, such a character seems very rarely to have been specifically called "the Vice" anterior to the Reformation.

'On the external appearance of the Vice, Mr. Douce has observed, that " being generally dressed in a fool's habit," he was gradually and undistinguishably blended with the domestic fool; and there is every probability that such was the result. Ben Jonson, in his Devil is an Ass, alludes to this very circumstance when he is speaking of the fools of old kept in the houses of the nobility and gentry:

"Fifty years agone and six,

When every great man had his Vice stand by him

In his long coat, shaking his wooden dagger."

The Vice here spoken of was the domestic fool of the nobility about the year 1560, to whom also Puttenham, in his Arte of English Poesie, alludes, under the terms "buffoon or vice in plays." In the second Intermean of his Staple News, Ben Jonson tells us that the Vice sometimes wore "a juggler's jerkin with false skirts ;" and though Mr. Douce is unquestionably correct when he states that the Vice was generally dressed in a fool's habit," he did not by any means constantly wear the parti-coloured habiliments of a fool: he was sometimes required to act a gallant, and now and then to assume the disguise of virtues it suited his purpose to personate. The Vice, like the fool, was sometimes furnished with a dagger of lath, and it was not unusual that it should be gilt.

"Just preceding the mention of the " 'juggler's jerkin" by Ben Jonson, as part of the dress of the Vice, is an allusion to the ludicrous mode in which poetical justice was not unfrequently done to him at the conclusion of a moral. Tattle observes, "but there is never a fiend to carry him away;" and in the first Intermean of the same play, Mirth leads us to suppose that it was a very common termination of the adventures of the Vice, for him to be carried off to hell on the back of the Devil: "he would carry away the Vice on his back, quick to hell, in every play where he came.'

Of moral plays a considerable number are still extant, some in manuscript, and some printed. The subjects or aims of them are various, though the moral of very many, especially of the earlier ones, may be expressed appropriately in a slight modification of a well-known proverb, 'Do right and shame the devil;' or, as the epilogue attached to one of the oldest of these plays, The Castle of Perseverance, puts it

'All men example hereat may take,

To maintain the good and menden their [ways].

Thus endeth our gamys:

To save you fro sinning,
Ever at the beginning,
Think on your last ending.
Te Deum laudamus!'

Of this class are, besides the one just mentioned, Mind, Will, and Understanding, Mankind, Nature, The World and the Child, Hick Horner, Every Man, Lusty Juventus. Others are of a more general character, but still have for their aim to enforce various lessons for human conduct,—one of them, entitled The Nature of the Four Elements, being intended to bring humanity to a conviction of the necessity of studying philosophy and the sciences;' another, The longer thou livest, the more Fool thou art, written by a W. Wager, probably soon after the accession of Elizabeth, is intended to enforce the necessity of giving children a good education. One which was licensed about 1569 (but founded on one much older), and entitled The Marriage of Art and Science, has the peculiarity which belongs to no other extant play of this class, of being regularly divided into five acts, and each act into a number of scenes. Besides Art and Science,

some of the other characters are, Reason, Experience, Instruction, Study, Diligence, Will, Idleness, Ignorance, and Tediousness, a Giant the deadly foe of Science. After various adventures, Art manages to strike off the head of Tediousness and presents it to Science, to whom he is then married; Art concluding thus:

'My pain is past, my gladness to begin,
My task is done, my heart is set at rest,
My foe subdued, my lady's love possest.

I thank my friends whose help i have at need;

And thus you see how Art and Science are agreed.

We twain henceforth one soul in bodies twain must dwell:
Rejoice I pray you all with me, my friends, and fare ye well.'

Other morals of this general character are, All for Money (printed 1578), by Thomas Lupton; The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590); and Liberality and Prodigality (1602). Some of these are scarcely entitled to be called pure morals, i.e. plays in which the characters are purely allegorical, as there are introduced into them characters with personal names, often, however, representing some particular quality or abstract idea. As we cannot afford space to give a lengthened example of a pure moral play, we shall, before going further, quote Mr. Collier's analysis of one, by the famous John Skelton (14601529), the only important author, so far as is known, who attempted this kind of dramatic writing. Skelton probably wrote several plays of this kind, but the only one extant is that entitled Magnificence, written very possibly before 1509. In order to show the state of the language at the time this piece was written, we shall, in the quotation, retain the original spelling, which will offer very little difficulty to the reader :—

The moral purpose of Magnyfycence is to show the vanity of worldly grandeur. It opens with a soliloquy by Felicity, who is soon joined by Liberty; and while they are discussing the degree to which freedom ought to be allowed, Measure enters to moderate between the disputants, and enlarges on his own importance.

'Magnificence is immediately afterwards introduced, and becomes acquainted with Fancy (who calls himself Largess), with Counterfeit-countenance, Crafty-conveyance, Cloked-collusion, Courtly-abusion, and Folly, who also impose upon him under feigned names. Courtlyabusion offers to carry him to a young lady, whose virtue is not inaccessible, and whose beauty is described with some luxuriance of style:

"A fayre maystresse,

That quyckly is envyved with rudyes of the rose,
Inpurtured with features after your purpose.
The streynes of her veynes as asure Inde blewe,
Enbudded with beautye and colour fresshe of
hewe,

As lyly white to loke upon her heyre,
Her eyen relucent as carbuncle so clere;
Her mouth embawmed dylectable and mery,
Her lusty lyppes ruddy as a chery."

'Magnificence, ruined by his friends and retainers, falls into the hands of Adversity and Poverty, and the latter, in the following striking lines, contrasts the present with the former condition of Magnificence:

That was wonte to lye on fetherbeddes of downe,

Nowe must your fete lye hyer than your

crowne.

Where you were wonte to have cawdels for your hede,

Nowe must you monche mamokes and lumpes of brede.

And where you had chaunges of ryche aray, Now lap you in a coverlet full fayne that you may.

And where that ye were pomped with what that ye wolde,

Nowe must ye suffre bothe hungre and colde. With courtely sylkes ye were wonte to be drawe,

Nowe must ye lerne to lye on the strawe. Your skynne that was wrapped in shertes of raynes,

Nowe must be stormy beten with showres and raynes."

'Despair and Mischief next encounter Magnificence, and at the suggestion of the latter, ho furnishes him with a halter and a knife, he is on the point of committing suicide, when Good-hope steps in, and stays his hand; he is followed by Redress, Circumspection, and

Perseverance, and they convince Magnificence of the weakness and vanity of his former state of exaltation, and he is content to move in a humbler and happier sphere. Several attempts are made to enliven the serious part of the “interlude," by comic incident and dialogue, the burden chiefly resting upon Fancy and Folly, who on one occasion get Crafty-conveyance into their company, and persuade him to lay a wager that Folly will not be able to laugh him out of his coat; it is accomplished in the following humorous, but not very delicate

manner:

"[Here foly maketh semblaunt to take a lowse
from crafty-conveyaunce shoulder.
Fancy. What hast thou found there?
Foly. By God, a lowse.

Crafty-convey. By cockes harte, I trowe thou
lyste.

Foly. By the masse, a spanyshe moght with a gray lyste.

'The versification is varied, and the length done to lighten the burden.

Fancy. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Crafty-convey. Cockes armes, it is not so, I trowe.

[Here Crafty-conveyaunce putteth of his gowne. Foly. Put on thy gowne agayne, for nowe thou

hast lost.

Fancy. Lo, John a bonam, where is thy brayne?" of the piece required that much should be

'The moralization at the end of the piece is spoken by Redress, Circumspection, Perseverance, and Magnificence:

"And ye that have harde this dysporte and game,

Jhesus preserve you frome endlesse wo and shame."

'Skelton's aim in this moral play was against grandeur in general.'

As we have said, characters not strictly allegorical, but representative of persons, are introduced into some of the above morals, although when this innovation first took place cannot be ascertained; probably early in the sixteenth century. The earliest instance we have seen of the introduction of the representative of a person into a moral play is in the case of The Nature of the Four Elements, where a Taverner is one of the characters; and in some of the others of a not very much later date, it is attempted to invest even symbolical representatives with metaphysical as well as physical peculiarities, and to attract for them a personal interest.' In Ulpian Fulwell's Like Will to Like, not printed till 1568, besides allegorical impersonations there are characters with such names as Rafe Roister, Tom Tosspot, Philip Fleming, Cuthbert Cutpurse, etc.

Other plays, generally considered as belonging to this class, but which more nearly resemble the regular drama than any above mentioned, are Tom Tiler and his Wife, The Conflict of Conscience, Jack Juggler, Cambyses, and Appius and Virginia. Tom Tiler and his Wife is a sort of comedy, the plot of which turns on the sufferings of a husband, Tom Tiler, under the affliction of a shrewish wife named Strife. It was first printed in 1578, but was probably written some years earlier, and contains among its dramatis persona, besides Destiny, Desire, and Patience, two friends of the wife known as Sturdy and Tipple, and Tom Tiler's friend Tom Tailor. The poor henpecked husband's friend proposes to Tom to cure his shrewish wife by disguising and administering to Strife a sound beating. the shrew is brought to humble submission; a weak moment confesses the truth to his stick, 'lays load upon him' most unmercifully, until he exclaims

'O wife, wife! I pray thee save my life! You hurt me ever, I hurted you never : For God's sake, content thee.

himself in the husband's clothes, This is done to such purpose that but Tom Tiler goes home, and in own cost, for she, snatching up a

That ever Tom Tayler, that ruffian and

railer,

Was set to be at me: he had better had eat me.'

Strife. Nay, thou shalt repent thee, However, matters are brought to a happy conclusion by the intervention of Patience, who renders Tom Tiler contented with his wife, and Strife more merciful to her husband. Six songs are interspersed in various lyrical measures, but none of them, according to Collier, of peculiar merit. The Conflict of Conscience, by Nathaniel Woodes, minister of Norwich, was probably written

about 1560, and is remarkable as being one of the earliest moral plays in which a historical character is introduced. This is Francis Spiera, an Italian lawyer, who in the drama is named Philologus, and who, as the title-page expresses it, 'forsook the truth of God's gospel for fear of the loss of life and worldly goods.' Besides Spiera, other personal characters are his two sons, Cardinal Eusebius, Cacenos, a Catholic priest who speaks the Scotch dialect, etc.; the allegorical characters being Conscience, Hypocrisy, Tyranny, Sensual Suggestion, etc. Jack Juggler, which was printed about 1562, but probably written about ten years before that, resembles a moral mainly in its design, and in the fact that a 'vice' Jack Juggler is introduced,-all the other characters having personal names, as Martha Bongrace, Dame Coy, Jenkin Careaway, etc., mostly significant, and indicative of the character of the persons to whom they belong. Its main peculiarity, however, is, that it is one of the very oldest pieces in English founded on a classic original, the author professing, in his prologue, to have been indebted to Plautus's first comedy. Of the other two plays mentioned above, Cambyses and Appius and Virginia, both containing a mixture of history and allegory, the latter is superior to the former both in construction and in literary merit, though neither can boast of much of these two qualities. The latter is founded on a well-known incident in Roman history, and is called by its author, whose initials R. B. only are known, a 'tragical comedy,' the exact signification of neither of these words being yet well defined. The characters are, besides Virginius, Virginia his daughter, her mother, Judge Appius, and Claudius; Conscience, Haphazard, Justice, Rumour, Comfort, Reward, and Doctrina, and some domestics. It was written not later than 1563, and, like most plays before and for some time after this, it is in rhyme. The author apparently had no notion of dramatic propriety and decorum, as he makes Virginius well acquainted with the events narrated in the beginning of Genesis, and makes him talk of his wife and daughter going to church like Christians; one of the servants swearing 'by the mass.' Still, notwithstanding these drawbacks, it compares favourably with preceding productions of the same class, and is interesting as marking an important stage in the development of the historical drama out of the old moral play, although there was produced about the same time a drama, which, so far as the characters are concerned, is entitled to be called a regular historical play.

We cannot follow the history of moral plays further, as our only design in noticing them is to show the share they had in giving birth to the legitimate drama; and what we have said above is sufficient for this purpose, as we have brought our observations down to a point when the first regular dramas, somewhat crude in form, make their appearance. We have traced the history of the miracle play, the earliest form of the British drama, down to the period when it gave birth to the morality, although the former for a long time still continued to be represented, especially in the country districts; and we have shown how the latter gradually became modified, by admitting among its allegorical impersonations, characters representative of persons, and ultimately assumed a form which could not fail to suggest the historical drama. Like the miracle play, the morality kept the stage for long after its legitimate child had reached its vigour, one of the last and worst of its kind being The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality (1602), which was acted before Queen Elizabeth. Even in the works of some of our greatest dramatists, there are occasionally short allegorical episodes; and the best production of George Peele, David and Bethsabe (printed in the following pages), may, so far as the subject and characters are concerned, be fairly entitled a miracle play.