e spectators' ears with the most
furious bombast and profanity. Thus, in one of the Chester series:

"For I am king of all mankind;
I bid, I beat, I loose, I bind:
I master the Moon: Take this in mind,
That I am most of might.
I am the greatest above degree,
That is, that was, or ever shall be:
The Sun it dare not shine on me,
An I bid him go down."

Thus, too, in one of the Coventry series:

"Of beauty and of boldness I bear evermore the bell;
Of main and of might I master every man;
I ding with my doughtiness the Devil down to Hell;
For both of Heaven and of Earth I am king certain."

Termagant, the supposed god of the Saracens, was another staple
character in the Miracle-Plays; who is described by John Florio as "a
great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer or ruler of the universe, the
child of the earthquake and of the thunder, the brother of death."
That Shakespeare himself had suffered under the monstrous din of these
"strutting and bellowing" stage-thumpers is shown by Hamlet's
remonstrance with the players: "O, it offends me to the soul, to hear
a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to rags, to very
tatters, to split the ears of the groundlings: I would have such a
fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod: pray you,
avoid it."

Thus much must suffice by way of indicating, in a general sort, the
character of those primitive sprouts and upshoots of the Gothic Drama
in England. Their rudeness of construction, their ingrained coarseness
of style, their puerility, their obscenity, and indecency, according
to our standard, are indescribable. Their quality in these respects
could only be shown by specimens, and these I have not room to
produce, nor would it be right or decent to do so, if I had.

But what strikes us, perhaps, still more offensively in those old
religious plays, is the irreverent and shocking familiarity everywhere
used with the sacredest persons and things of the Christian Faith. The
awfullest and most moving scenes and incidents of the Gospel history,
such as the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, were treated with what
cannot but seem to us the most shameless and most disgusting
profanity: the poor invention of the time was racked to the uttermost,
to harrow the audience with dramatic violence and stress; and it seems
to us impossible but that all the solemnity of the matter must have
been defeated by such coars