The miracle-plays of medieval England represent but one mode of expression of that constant longing of the age to render a "literal translation of the spiritual truths into corporeal equivalents," as Symonds so well phrases it. In the early days of the art nothing but good came of the attempt. The acting was not done by that professional class which wandered over the Continent, growing more and more irreverent and indecent as the anathemas of the Church multiplied against them, and as their social status, in consequence, steadily declined. Everything connected with the earlier representations was of a sacred character-actors, authors, places and themes-so that the stage became second not even to the pulpit as an instrument of good. To be sure, these sacred dramas contained the same incongruity that marked the cathedrals, where the grotesque mingled with the sublime. The representations of Scriptural story. were mingled with melodrama, as in the parts played by blustering Herod or Noah's recalcitrant wife; or were degraded into tow comedy by the coarse words and gestures of the Devil, or into the most objectionable misappropriation of the sacred story. All such buffoonery and indecency, however, together with the profanity that stained so much of the dialogue, was entirely lost in the sacredness of the subject; the warrant of the Scriptures wiped away all sense of irreverence alike in actors and spectators. As a result, the scenes which shock or disgust modern feeling did not lessen at all the inspiration for the good and the pure received by those people whose strangely simple minds we can at present hardly comprehend.

In such an age, the old revulsion against a vicious art could find no wide acceptance. But out of unconsciousness soon grew consciousness, and out of consciousness, evil. Even in the morafity-plays, to say nothing of the interludes. which never so much as avowed moral intentions, the misuse of the drama became more apparent. The lessons taught by the personifications of good and evil, the essential feature of the original conception, came to mean less to the people

than the antics of the Devil and the Vice. The morality was then "very godly and ful of pleasant mirth," as the title-pages were wont to run. As they still further matured, the disparity between the two ingredients became more marked; there was less of the godly and more of the merry, till the didactic element sank into insignificance. For example, in Like Wil to Like quod the Devel to the Colier, although the moral expressed by the title is eventually enforced when the evil persons fall captive to the hangman, and the Vice is carried on the Devil's back "into Spain," the latter's home, while Tom Tosspot harrows the audience with his last confession and with well meant advice to parents, and while the notes of the moral song are sounding, it is nevertheless the coarse language, the drunkard's antics and the oaths which color the play and make it interesting, if interesting it could have been to any one. The same fault in Cambyses, The Nice Wanton, and many others, convinces the reader that vice was slowly sapping the life-blood of the sacred play.

As the church drama, which in origin had no connection with the old pagan games, thus grew away from its source, and became popular and secular, those familiar with the teachings of the Fathers, and cognizant of the increasingly denunciatory attitude of the church, objected more and more strongly to those elements of the old mimes retained or resuscitated in the liturgical play. Here is the connection between the early Christian sentiment against pagan exhibitions, and the sentiment of the later church against the child of its own birth. The warning words of the Fathers once more became vitalized, and their influence extended beyond the bounds of ecclesiastical circles. For just as the English people, almost independently of any classical influence, developed an artistic sense requiring a higher literary expression than the old, just so from their study of the Bible, apart from any teaching of Roman prelates, the sacrilege, profanity and coarseness of their sacred drama in its later days became manifest. And when this

sentiment is found developing, to revivify the church sentiment, we see the beginning of a condition in theatrical affairs which to a certain extent paralleled that of the Roman Empire, and which gave birth to another crusade against stage-plays.

(b) Early English Hostility of Native Growth.

In all countries these new conditions called forth some manifestation of the old spirit. In a later chapter we shall compare and contrast the main features of these various movements. For in England, owing to a marked religious bent of the people and to external conditions, the common arguments against the stage were given a peculiar reception. We have already named several Englishmen, who, with little sense of their environment, attacked the drama. But with the rise of a secular art, the old-time opposition of the Fathers assumed a native resonance, and hence added force. As early as the 13th century, we find an AngloNorman poem, Le Manuel des Pechiez, a translation from the Latin by William of Wadington, deploring the universal love of the English people for romances and tales, and particularly for miracle-plays. These exhibitions the author blamed, not merely because they occupied part of the Sabbath, but also because of their fictions in regard to the saints, and the disguises used by the actors. However obscure the exposition of this last point may seem, the author clearly had in mind some feature of the English drama. The English version of this poem, The Handlyng of Synne, made in 1303 by Robert Mannyng, took care to sanction miracle-plays only when under the direct supervision of the higher clergy. Less English than either of these were the words of Thomas Bradwardine in the 14th century, the Archbishop whose learning the Nun's Priest's Tale heralded. They sound especially faint and distant, since already the signs of a native sprung sentiment both among churchmen and laymen were visible.

For an expression of this home-nourished sentiment we look instinctively to two men of the 14th century—Langland and Wyclif. The former paid no attention to the subject; though in Piers Ploughman's Crede a friar proudly boasts that he and his fellows haunt no taverns, fairs or miracleplays. More to our purpose is Wyclif's explanation in his sermon on the sins of sight: "Ne a man synneð not in sizt, al oonli on pes two maneres [the coveting of women, or worldly goods], but whanne he is idil in his sist, and aspiep not his profit; as sum men loken to veyn plaies, and many siztis of worldli pingis, pe which profiten not to her soule, but raper doip hem harm."' This passage is slight, but significant, and into it, with our knowledge of the speaker, we are inclined to read an English feeling.

An exhaustive sermon of the same century, the work, apparently, of one of Wyclif's followers, justifies this interpretation. Without reservation the preacher censured as profanity the taking of the "most precious werkis of God in pley and bourde," as was done in the miracle-play; he saw in the plays more of the lusts of the flesh than of the breath of the spirit; he quoted the "Psauter Book" to restrain priests from even witnessing such performances,— in all which he but observed the teachings of the universal church. Nevertheless, every word that he spoke struck home to his hearers, though they knew nothing of old Rome, and no more of the world than was seen around them. The zealous preacher, with a seriousness common alike to early Christians and Puritans, argued that Christ, in reproving the woman who wept at his suffering, signified for future generations his displeasure at those tears shed in the passion plays. Verily, "Sory is not alowable byfore God, but more reprowable." With equal strength of conviction, since all "saints" admitted that the baldness of Elisha betokened Christ's passion, he instanced the fate of the boys who mocked that prophet as a warning that men "schulden not

1 Wyclif, I, 250. For slight reference see Wyclif, E. E. T. S. p. 206. 2 Reprinted in English Drama and Stage; Reliquiae Antiquae, II, 42-57.

bourden with the figure of the passion of Christ." But like all Puritan doctrine, his sermon is based far less on absurdity than on fact. In the spirit of the great Puritan poet who wished to live, "As ever in my great Task-Master's eye," he thought of the fast approaching "day of reckenynge," and called upon the people to shun the vain idleness of play-going, and give themselves instead to works of mercy.

Such words, whether inspired by foreign or native sentiment, would rouse in the rapidly sobering English mind a home-bred sense of the evil. Hatred of the church of Rome brought objection to the Catholic legends imbedded in the miracle-plays. And in Elizabeth's time, when each gentleman took pride in coining strange oaths, the sin of cursing grew more obvious, and the profanity of the dramas stood self-condemned. Moreover, as acting passed from the clergy into the hands of itinerant companies, the social evils attendant on the profession took genuine English color. Plays drew people from worship and labor, and wheedled them of their earnings. When this minister, therefore, showed his burning hatred of sloth, and of the waste on plays of money which people grudged to spend in paying "ther rente and ther dette," he must have mirrored a growing English sentiment grounded on social and economic needs. So also his belief that plays led to lechery, gluttony and other vices is no mere echo of the past. Along all these lines, the financial and social as well as the purely moral, the organized campaign of Elizabethan times was to be carried on; and as a type of the coalescence of the early Christian hostility with home-nourished English sentiment, this sermon is important.

(c) Causes of the Growth of this English Feeling.

If we so take our clew from this sermon, it must be with full consciousness that much of the early opposition to the drama arose on grounds entirely apart from questions of morality; and though all objections were soon allied, its