llegorical dramas.

In Miracle-Plays the Devil of course made a legitimate part of the
representation. He was endowed in large measure with a biting, caustic
humour, and with a coarse, scoffing, profane wit; therewithal he had
an exaggerated grotesqueness of look and manner, such as to awaken
mixed emotions of fear, mirth, and disgust. In these qualities of mind
and person, together with the essential malignity of which they are
the proper surface and outside, we have the germs of both Comedy and
Tragedy. For the horrible and the ridiculous easily pass into each
other, they being indeed different phases of the same thing.
Accordingly, the Devil, under one name or another, continued to
propagate himself on the stage long after his original co-actors, had
withdrawn.

On the other hand, a personage called Iniquity, Vice, or some such
name, was among the first characters to take stand in Moral-Plays, as
a personification of the evil tendencies in man. And the Vice thus
originating from the moral view of things was a sort of natural
counterpart to that more ancient impersonation of evil which took its
origin from the theological sphere. The Devil, being the stronger
principle, naturally had use for the Vice as his agent or factor.
Hence we may discover in these two personages points of mutual
sympathy and attraction; and, in fact, it was in and through them that
the two species of drama met and coalesced.

In Moral-Plays the Devil and the Vice, or at least one of them, almost
always bore a leading part, though not always under those names. Most
commonly the two were retained together; there are cases however of
each figuring apart from the other. And no pains were spared to give
the Devil as hideous an aspect as possible: he was made an out-and-out
monster in appearance, all hairy and shaggy, with a "bottle nose" and
an "evil face," having horns, hoofs, and a long tail; so that the
sight had been at once loathsome and ludicrous, but for the great
strength and quickness of wit, and the fiendish, yet merry and waggish
malignity, which usually marked his conversation. Sometimes, however,
he was endowed with a most protean versatility of mind and person, so
that he could walk abroad as "plain devil," scaring all he met, or
steal into society as a prudent counsellor, a dashing gallant, or
whatever else would best work out his ends.

As for the Vice, he commonly acted the part of a broad, rampant jester
and buffoon, full of m