which is a sufficient proof that the custom of these representations was imported from abroad; but the great and rapid extension of these performances soon showed how well this mode of religious amusement accorded with the tastes and requirements of the times. Mysteries and Miracle-plays abound in the early literature of all the Catholic countries of Europe; Spain, Germany, France, Italy possess examples so abundant that a considerable library might be formed of these barbarous pieces; and the habit of seeing them represented in public has certainly left very perceptible traces in mediæval literature and art. For example, the title, the subject, and the arrangement of Dante's immortal poem are closely connected with dramatic representations of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which formed a common feature among the festivities of Florence. The Divine Comedy, the very name of which shows its relation to some theatrical performance, is nothing but a Miracle in a narrative form. These plays were composed and acted by monks, the cathedral was transformed for the nonce into a theatre, the stage was a species of graduated platform in three divisions rising one over the other, and placed near or over the altar, and the costumes were furnished by the splendid contents of the vestry of the church. It will appear natural enough, that on any of the high religious festivals, on the anniversary of any important religious personage or event, that personage or event should be represented in a visible form, with such details as either Scripture, legend, or the imagination of the author could supply. The childish and straightforward art of these old monkish dramatists felt no repugnance in following with strict literal accuracy every circumstance of the original narrative which they dramatized; and the simple faith of their audience saw no impropriety in the introduction of the most supernatural beings, the persons of the Trinity, angels, devils, saints, and martyrs. The three platforms into which the stage was divided represented Heaven, Earth, and Hell; and the dramatis personæ made their appearance on that part of the stage which corresponded with their nature. It was absolutely necessary that some comic element should be introduced to enliven the graver scenes, particularly as some of these representations were of inordinate length, there being one, for example, on the subject of the Creation and the Fall of Man, which occupied six days in the performance. Besides, the rude audience would have absolutely required some farcical or amusing episode. This comic element was easily found by representing the wicked personages, whether human or spiritual, of the drama as placed in ludicrous. situations, or surrounded by ludicrous accompaniments: thus the Devil generally played the part of the clown or jester, and was exhibited in a light half terrific and half farcical. Nor were they contented with such drolleries as could be extracted from the grotesque gambols and often baffled machinations of Satan and his imps, or with the mixture of merriment and horror inspired by horns, and tails, and hairy howling mouths: the authors of these pieces introduced human buffoons; and the modern puppet-play of Punch, with his struggles with the Devil, is unquestionably a direct tradition handed down from

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these ancient miracles in which the Evil One was alternately the conqueror and the victim of the Buffoon, Jester, or Vice, as he was called. Some idea may be formed of these ancient religious dramas from the titles of some of them which have been preserved; for the general reader is scarce likely to consult such of them as have been printed, though curious monuments of the faith and art of long-vanished ages. The Creation of the World, the Fall of Man, the story of Cain and Abel, the Crucifixion of Our Lord, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Deluge, besides an infinite multitude of subjects taken from the lives and miracles of the saints; such were the materials of these simple dramas. They are generally written in mixed prose and verse, and though abounding in anachronisms and absurdities both of character and dialogue, they sometimes contain passages of simple and natural pathos, and sometimes scenes which must have affected the spectators with intense awe and reverence. In an English mystery on the subject of the Deluge, a comic scene is produced by the refusal of Noah's wife to enter the Ark, and by the beating which justly terminates her resistance and scolding. But, on the other hand, a mystery on the subject of the Sacrifice of Isaac contains a dialogue of much pathos and beauty between Abraham and his son; and the whole action of the Mystery of the Holy Sacrament was capable of producing a strong impression in an age of childlike, ardent faith. These representations were got up with all the magnificence attainable, and every expedient was employed to heighten the illusion of the scene. Thus there is a tradition of a condemned criminal having been really crucified on the stage, in a representation of the Passion of Our Lord, in the character of the Impenitent Thief. Very evident traces of the universality of these religious dramas may be found in the early works of sculpture and painting throughout Catholic Europe. Thus the practice of representing the Deity in the costume and ornaments of a Pope or a Bishop, which appears to us an absurdity or an irreverence, arose from such a personage being generally represented, on the rude stage of the miracle-play, in a dress which was then associated with ideas of the highest reverence: and the innumerable anecdotes and apologues representing evil spirits as baffled and defeated by a very moderate amount of cunning and dexterity may easily have been generated by that peculiarity of Mediæval Christianity which pictures the wicked spirits, not as terrible and awful beings, but as mischievous goblins whose power was annihilated at the foundation of our faith. § 2. To trace the gradual changes which establish the affiliation from the early Mysteries of the twelfth century to the regular drama of modern times, is nothing else but to point out the steps by which the dramatic art, from an exclusively religious character acquired more and more of a lay or worldly spirit in its subjects and its personages. The Mysteries, once the only form of dramatic representation, continued to be popular from the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century; nay, in some pastoral and remote corners of Europe, where the primitive faith glows in all its ancient ardor, and where the manners of the people have been little modified by contact with foreign civilization,

something very similar to the Mysteries may be still seen even in the present day. In the retired valleys of Catholic Switzerland, in the Tyrol, and in some little-visited districts of Germany, the peasants still annually perform dramatic spectacles representing episodes in the life of Christ. The first stage in the process of laicizing the drama was the substitution for the Miracle-play of another kind of representation, entitled a Morality. This species of entertainment seems to have been popular from about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and gradually supplanted the exclusively religious Mystery. It is quite evident that the composition as well as the representation of these pieces was far less exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastics, who thus began to lose that influence over the popular mind which they derived from their monopoly of knowledge. Perhaps, however, it would be a more legitimate explanation of this change to say, that the spread of civilization among the laity, and the hostility which was gradually but rapidly undermining the foundations of Catholicism in England, had contributed to put an end to that monopoly; for many of our early Moralities, though the production of Churchmen, as in the case of Bishop Bale, were the production of Churchmen strongly tainted with the unorthodox opinions of the early reformers. The subjects of these dramas, instead of being purely religious, were moral, as their name implies; and the ethical lessons were conveyed by an action and dramatis personæ of an abstract or allegorical kind. Thus, instead of the Deity and his angels, the Saints, the Patriarchs, and the characters of the Old and New Testament, the persons who figure in the Moralities are Every-Man a general type or expression of humanity-Lusty Juventus - who represents the follies and weaknesses of youth — Good Counsel, Repentance, Gluttony, Pride, Avarice, and the like. The action was in general exceedingly simple, and the tone grave and doctrinal, though of course the same necessity existed as before for the introduction of comic scenes. The Devil was far too popular and useful a personage to be suppressed; so his battles and scoldings with the Vice, or Clown, were still retained to furnish forth "a fit of mirth." Our readers may form some idea of the general character of these pieces by the analysis of one, entitled The Cradle of Security, the outline of which has been preserved in the narrative of an old man who had formed one of the audience in his early childhood. It was intended as a lesson to careless and sensual sovereigns. The principal personage is a King, who, neglecting his high duties and plunged in voluptuous pleasures, is put to sleep in a cradle, to which he is bound by golden chains held by four beautiful ladies, who sing as they rock the cradle. Suddenly the courtiers are all dispersed by a terrible knock at the door, and the king, awaking, finds himself in the custody of two stern and tremendous figures, sent from God to punish his voluptuousness and vice. In a similar way the action of the Morality Lusty Juventus contains a vivid and even humorous picture of the extravagance and debauchery of a young heir, surrounded by companions, the Virtues and the Vices, some of whom endeavor in vain to restrain his passions, while others flatter

his depraved inclinations. This piece also ends with a demonstration of the inevitable misery and punishment which follow a departure from the path of virtue and religion. It is impossible to draw any strong line of demarcation, either chronological or critical, between the Mys-tery and Morality. The one species imperceptibly melts into the other; though the general points of distinction are clear and obvious enough. The Morality also had a strong tendency to partake of the character of the court masque, in which the Elements, the Virtues, the Vices, or the various reigns of nature, were introduced either to convey some physical or philosophical instruction in the guise of allegory, or to compliment a king or great personage on a festival occasion. Of this class is Skelton's masque, to which I have alluded in a former chapter, and to which he gave the title of Magnificence. A very industrious writer of these Moralities was BISHOP BALE (1495-1563), who will also be mentioned presently (p. 114) as one of the founders of our national drama.

§ 3. Springing from the Moralities, and bearing some general resemblance to them, though exhibiting a still nearer approach to the regular drama, are the Interludes, a class of compositions in dialogue much shorter in extent and more merry and farcical in subject, which were exceedingly fashionable about the time when the great controversy was raging between the Catholic church and the Reformed religion in England. A prolific author of these grotesque and merry pieces was JOHN HEYWOOD, a man of learning and accomplishment, but who seems to have performed the duties of a sort of jester at the court of Henry VIII. Heywood was an ardent Catholic; and the stage at that time was used by both religious parties to throw odium and ridicule upon the doctrines of their opponents; the Catholics delighting to bring forward Luther, Catherine de Bora, and the principal figures among the reformers, in a light at once detestable and ridiculous, and the Protestants returning the compliment by showing up the corruptions and vices of the Pope and the hierarchy. The Interludes, being short, were, it is supposed, performed either in the entr'actes of the longer and more solemn Moralities, or represented on temporary stages between the intervals of the interminable banquets and festivities of those days.

§ 4. In the preceding rapid sketch of the dramatic amusements of our ancestors, I have endeavored to give a general idea of these entertainments in their complete and normal form; that is, when the action selected for the subject of the piece was illustrated with dialogue, and the exhibitor addressed himself to the ears as well as to the eyes of his audience. It must not be forgotten that both the subjects of the Mysteries and those of the Moralities were sometimes exhibited in dumb show. A scene of Holy Writ or some event in the life of a saint was represented in a kind of tableau vivant by disguised and costumed personages, and this representation was often placed on a sort of wheeled platform and exhibited continually during those long processions which formed the principal feature of the festivities of ancient times. These tableaux vivants were also introduced into the great halls during the elaborate banquets which were the triumphs of ancient magnificence:

and thus this species of entertainment is inseparably connected with those pageants so often employed to gratify the vanity of citizens, or to compliment an illustrious visitor. These pageants, whether simply consisting of the exhibition, on some lofty platform, in the porch or churchyard of a cathedral, in the Town Hall or over the city gate, of a number of figures suitably dressed, or accompanying their action with poetical declamation and music, necessarily partook in all the changes of taste which characterized the age: the Prophets and Saints who welcomed the royal stranger in the thirteenth century with barbarous Latin hymns, were gradually supplanted by the Virtues and allegorical qualities; and these in their turn, when the Renaissance had disseminated a universal passion for classical imagery, made way for the Cupids, the Muses, and other classical personages whose influence has continued almost to the literature of our own time. Such spectacles as I have just been alluding to, which were so common that the chronicles of every European nation are filled with records of them, were of course frequently exhibited at the Universities: but in the hands of these bodies the shows naturally acquired a more learned character than they had elsewhere. It was almost universal in those times that the students should employ Latin on all official occasions : this was necessary, partly from the multitude of nations composing the body of the students, and who required some common language which they could all understand. Latin, therefore, was by a thousand different laws and regulations obligatory; and this occurred not only in the Universities, but also in many conventual and monastic societies. It was therefore natural that the public amusements of the University should partake of the same character. A large number of pieces, generally written upon the models of Terence and Seneca, were produced and represented at this time. In the great outbreak of revolt against the authority of scholasticism which preceded the Reformation, the return to classical models in dramatic composition was general, and Reuchlin boasted that he was the first to furnish the youth of Germany with comedies bearing some similarity to the masterpieces of Terence. The times of Elizabeth and James were peculiarly fertile in Latin dramas composed at the Universities; and these sovereigns, the first of whom was remarkably learned in an age of general diffusion of classical studies, while in the second erudition had degenerated into pedantry, were entertained by the students of Oxford and Cambridge with Latin plays.

§ 5. We have now traced the progress of the Dramatic art from its first rude infancy in England, and have seen how every step of that advance removed it farther and farther from a purely religious, and brought it closer and closer to a profane character. The last step of the progress was the creation of what we now understand under the term dramatic, viz. the scenic representation, by means of the action and dialogue of human personages, of some event of history or social life. As in the first appearance of this, the most perfect form which the art could attain, the influence of the great models of ancient literature must have been very powerful, dramatic compositions class them