ans einer Dubliner Handschrift," Anglia, xxi (1899), 21-55. — Discussion: C. Davidson, "Concerning English Mystery Plays," Mod. Lang. Notes, vii (1892), 339-341.

(e) Candlemas (Childermas ?) Day (Slaughter of Innocents). Digby MS. Reprinted separately, Hawkins, vol. i, 1773; Marriott, 1838.

II. Miracle Duama

(a) Dux Maraud, "einzelrolle aus einem verlorenen drama des 14. Jh.," W. Heuser, Anglia, 30 (1907), 180 ff. (6) Croxton Play of the Sacrament. — Editions: Whitley Stokes, Transactions Phil, Soc., Appendix, 1861; J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897; O. Waterhouse, Non-Cycle Mystery Plays, 1909.

(c) Conversion of St. Paul. Digby MS. Printed sepa

rately; J. M. Manly, Specimens, i, 1897.

(d) The Conversion of Mary Magdalene. Digby MS. Reprinted in part by Pollard, Miracle Plays.

(e) Lost play of Kynge Robart ofCicylye, played at the High Cross, Chester, 1529. Stated to have been previously shown, in Henry VII's reign. Cf. Collier, i, 111-113. Play on same subject acted at Lincoln, 1453. (/) Cornish Miracle Drama. The Life of St. Meriasek, Bishop and Confessor. Ed. with a Translation and Notes by Whitley Stokes, 1872.

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY MORALITY

We have seen in the last chapter that when the Tudor era began, and for a long time after, mystery plays, more or less seriously spiritual in tone, were being produced periodically at York, Chester, Coventry, and in many other localities. There was, to be sure, already a generous infusion in all the cycles of nonreligious matter, and the connection of prelate and players was growing more and more that of the proverbial hen and goslings. Still, the break was not open, and the superficial alliance between mystery play and established religion outlived the Reformation by several decades.

Beside the mystery there had grown up, precisely whence or how no man can say, another form of religious drama: the moralityor moral play. The difference in the relation of the two types to the Church is great and significant. The mystery was based on revealed religion: it had to do with fleshand blood characters of the Old and New Testament, or in the case of its off-shoot, the miracle play, with superhuman manifestations equally concrete, and for the belief of the time equally authentic. The concern of the morality was with metaphysical theology, with abstract conceptions of good and evil,—with Vices and Virtues of paste-board. Despite the existence of a little good work in a sombre and rather morbid vein,—the probably foreign "Everyman," for example,— the strict morality is a poor and thin thing altogether. In its natural state it was constructed from the cobwebs of theoretical divinity, and it was inevitable that it should seek, even more than the sturdier mystery, to cure the anaemia of life and character by taking to itself increasingly large portions of vulgar realism and burlesque. As it did so, it became both more robust and coarser. The two or three plots that belonged to the morality repertoire were used over and over, with a smaller spiritual bias at each renovation, till finally their secularization was complete, and they remained merely as props to support a superstructure of unmixed farce.

The debt of the later drama to the mystery consists in the cultivation of general tastes and influences, rather than the evolution of specific models. But the early moralities, shapeless for the most part and artificial as they are, begin a tradition in English comedy, which, though it was almost buried in the accretion of new elements, was not interrupted till the time of the Commonwealth at least. Tragedy, on the other hand, was early crowded out of the morality; and the promise of the mystery with its many tragic potentialities —the promise also of the first stern moralities—came to nought. Hence the deplorable weakness of the earliest Elizabethan tragedy when compared with the vital, if barbarous, comedy of the same period (15581585).

The morality seems to be first mentioned under the titles of Paternoster and Creed plays,1 and in this form is of most respectable antiquity,—only half a century younger than the oldest recorded mysteries. We have Wyclif's word, supported by several later references, for the existence of a Paternoster Play "in Engliscsh tunge" at York in 1378. We know concerning the contents only that it was "a Play setting forth the goodness of the Lord's Prayer — in which play all manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn, and the virtues were held up to praise." A Creed Play,enthusiastically described as"ludus incomparabilis," is mentioned in connection with the same play-loving city in various years between 1446 and 1568. Lincoln witnessed a Indus de pater noster in 1397-1398 and on a number of later occasions. At Beverley, a city of lost plays, we learn that a Paternoster play was given in 1469, apparently on an ambitious scale, since it was presented processionally in eight pageants to each of which four or more guilds were made contributory. One pageant was assigned to each of the seven deadly sins, the last and most elaborate to "Vicious," by whom Mr. Chambers presumes frail humanity (Everyman, Mankind, Genus Humanum) to be typified. Perhaps this spectacle was, however, as much in the nature of tableaux as drama; it is hard to imagine how anything very similar to a morality play could be acted on eight separate stages. Possibly the first seven pageants represented or pictured the triumph of seven virtues over their opposites, while the last in some way summarized the effects, and gave them human application.

Since no example of these early works has been preserved, we know very little of the actual form which the morality took at its inception. The occasion of its origin, however, is not far to seek. The morality is the last expression of the great mediaeval taste for allegory. The mighty convention, which we can trace from its various beginnings in works like the "Psychomachia " of the fifth-century Prudentius, or the machinery of the courts of love, to its ambitious maturity in the "Romance of the Rose," found its last refuge in the religious drama. By the time Chaucer had attained to manhood, the new realism of Italy had pretty well driven allegory from its place in fashionable literature, — never quite to regain it till modernized and revitalized by Spenser. As usual, the professed writers of didactics inherited the form and standards of taste which the more virile profane poets had outgrown. To understand the allegorical machinery of "The Castle of Perseverance," we have only to turn, on the one hand, to the siege of the Castle of Danger by the virtues in the "Romance of the Rose," and, on the other, to the great symbolic poems of "The Owl and the Nightingale," and the "Debate of the Body and the Soul." But, of course, it is a case of contagion, not imitation: we can no more trace the morality back specifically to Prudentius or any single passage of Scripture than we can locate the final source of a mountain torrent. The earliest morality which has come down to us dates probably from the beginning of the fifteenth century. It is a fragment preserved in an Irish manuscript, but of southern English composition, andhas been named in recent times "The Pride of Life." It treats the old theme of the coming of death, — a theme by which the mediaeval mind was peculiarly affected, and which offered either the starting point or the dramatic climax of nearly all the oldest moralities. "The Pride of Life" distinguishes itself noticeably