mouth of the Devil, who
appears to have been for the middle ages very much what the "comic muse"
is for us moderns, it is to the _morality_ not to the _miracle_ that one
should look for the real beginnings of comedy as distinct from mere
buffoonery.

The _morality_ was not so much an offshoot as a complement of the
_miracle_. They stood to each other, as sermon does to service. To say
therefore that the _morality_ secularized the drama is to go too far; as
well might we say that Luther secularized Christianity. What it did,
however, was important enough; it severed the connexion between drama
and ritual. The _miracle_, treating of the history of mankind from the
Creation to the days of Christ, unfolded before the eyes of its
audience the grand scheme of human salvation; the _morality_ on the
other hand was not concerned with historical so much as practical
Christianity. Its object was to point a moral: and it did this in two
ways; either as an affirmative, constructive inculcator of what life
should be,--as the portrayer of the ideal; or as a negative, critical
describer of the types of life actually existing,--as the portrayer of
the real. It approached more nearly to comedy in its latter function,
but in both aspects it really prepared the way for the comic muse. The
natural prey of comedy, as our greatest comic writer has taught us, is
folly, "known to it in all her transformations, in every disguise; and
it is with the springing delight of hawk over heron, hound after fox,
that it gives her chase, never fretting, never tiring, sure of having
her, allowing her no rest." Thus it is that characters in comedy,
symbolizing as they often do some social folly, tend to be rather types
than personalities. The _morality_, therefore, in substituting typical
figures, however crude, for the mechanical religious characters of the
_miracle_, makes an immense advance towards comedy. Moreover, the very
selection of types requires an appreciation, if not an analysis, of the
differences of human character, an appreciation for which there was no
need in the _miracle_. In the _morality_ again the action is no longer
determined by tradition, and it becomes incumbent on the playwright to
provide motives for the movements of his puppets. It follows naturally
from this that situations must be devised to show up the particular
quality which each type symbolizes. We need not enter the vexed question
of the origin of plot construction; but we