boy who leads blind
Isaac; Hanan and Zethar, two of his neighbours; Abra, a girl who
assists Rebecca; and Debora, an old nurse. Esau and his servant Ragau
set forth together on a hunt. While they are gone, Rebecca urges Jacob
to secure his brother's birthright. Esau returns with a raging
appetite, and Jacob demands his birthright as the condition of
relieving him with a mess of rice pottage; he consents, and Ragau
laughs at his stupidity, while Jacob, Rebecca, and Abra sing a psalm
of thanksgiving. These things occupy the first two Acts; in the third,
Esau and his man take another hunt. The blessing of Jacob takes place
in the fourth Act; Rebecca tasking her cookery to the utmost in
dressing a kid, and succeeding in her scheme. In the last Act, Esau
comes back, and learns from his father what has occurred in his
absence. The plot and incidents are managed with considerable
propriety; the characters are discriminated with some art; the comic
portions show some neatness of wit and humour.

In the Interlude of _Godly Queen Esther_, printed in 1561, we have a
Miracle-Play going still further out of itself. One of the characters
is named Hardy-dardy, who, with some qualities of the Vice,
foreshadows the Jester, or professional Fool, of the later Drama;
wearing motley, and feigning weakness or disorder of intellect, to the
end that his wit may run more at large, and strike with the better
effect. Hardy-dardy offers himself as a servant to Haman; and after
Haman has urged him with sundry remarks in dispraise of fools, he
sagely replies, that "some wise man must be fain sometime to do on a
fool's coat." Besides the Scripture characters, the play has several
allegorical personages, as Pride, Ambition, and Adulation, who make
their wills, bequeathing all their bad qualities to Haman, and thereby
ruin him.

Of all the persons who figured in the Miracle-Plays, Herod, the slayer
of the Innocents, appears to have been the greatest popular
favourite. We hear of him as early as the time of Chaucer, who says of
the parish clerk, Absolon,

"Sometime, to show his lightness and maistrie,
He plaieth Herode on a scaffold hie."

From that time onwards, and we know not how long before, he was a sort
of staple character, no set of Miracle-Plays being regarded as
complete without him. And he was always represented as an immense
swearer and braggart and swaggerer, evermore ranting and raving up and
down the stage, and cudgelling th