he
story of Christ's birth was made more effective, to the eyes of a people
who could not read, by a babe in a manger surrounded by magi and shepherds,
with a choir of angels chanting the _Gloria in Excelsis_.[126] Other
impressive scenes from the Gospel followed; then the Old Testament was
called upon, until a complete cycle of plays from the Creation to the Final
Judgment was established, and we have the Mysteries and Miracle plays of
the Middle Ages. Out of these came directly the drama of the Elizabethan
Age.

PERIODS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA

1. THE RELIGIOUS PERIOD. In Europe, as in Greece, the drama had a
distinctly religious origin.[127] The first characters were drawn from the
New Testament, and the object of the first plays was to make the church
service more impressive, or to emphasize moral lessons by showing the
reward of the good and the punishment of the evil doer. In the latter days
of the Roman Empire the Church found the stage possessed by frightful
plays, which debased the morals of a people already fallen too low. Reform
seemed impossible; the corrupt drama was driven from the stage, and plays
of every kind were forbidden. But mankind loves a spectacle, and soon the
Church itself provided a substitute for the forbidden plays in the famous
Mysteries and Miracles.

MIRACLE AND MYSTERY PLAYS. In France the name _miracle_ was given to any
play representing the lives of the saints, while the _mystere_ represented
scenes from the life of Christ or stories from the Old Testament associated
with the coming of Messiah. In England this distinction was almost unknown;
the name Miracle was used indiscriminately for all plays having their
origin in the Bible or in the lives of the saints; and the name Mystery, to
distinguish a certain class of plays, was not used until long after the
religious drama had passed away.

The earliest Miracle of which we have any record in England is the _Ludus
de Sancta Katharina_, which was performed in Dunstable about the year
1110.[128] It is not known who wrote the original play of St. Catherine,
but our first version was prepared by Geoffrey of St. Albans, a French
school-teacher of Dunstable. Whether or not the play was given in English
is not known, but it was customary in the earliest plays for the chief
actors to speak in Latin or French, to show their importance, while minor
and comic parts of the same play were given in English.

For four centuries after this