opted a curious practice of echoing back
expressive 'ah's' and 'oh's' in musical reply to certain vital passages
not fitted with antiphons. Under skilful training this may have sounded
quite effective, but it is natural to suppose that, the antiphonal
extension having been made, the next stage was not long delayed.
Suitable lines or texts (_tropes_) would soon be invented to fill the
spaces, and immediately there sprang into being a means for providing
dramatic dialogue. If once answers were admitted, composed to fit into
certain portions of the service, there could be little objection to the
composition of other questions to follow upon the previous answers.
Religious conservatism kept invention within the strictest limits, so
that to the end these liturgical responses were little more than slight
modifications of the words of the _Vulgate_. But the dramatic element
was there, with what potentiality we shall see.

So much for dramatic dialogue. Dramatic action would appear to have
grown up with it, the one giving intensity to the other. The development
of both, side by side, is interesting to trace from records preserved
for us in old manuscripts. Considering the occasion first--for these
'attractions' were reserved for special festivals--we know that Easter
was a favourite opportunity for elaborating the service. The events
associated with Easter are in themselves intensely dramatic. They are
also of supreme importance in the teaching of the Church: of all points
in the creed none has a higher place than the belief in the
Resurrection. Therefore the 'Burial' and the 'Rising again' called for
particular elaboration. One of the earliest methods of driving these
truths home to the hearts of the unlearned and unimaginative was to
bury the crucifix for the requisite three days (a rite still observed
in many churches by the removal of the cross from the altar), and then
restore it to its exalted position; the simple act being done with much
solemn prostration and creeping on hands and knees of those whose duty
it was to bear the cross to its sepulchre. This sepulchre, it may be
explained, was usually a wooden structure, painted with guardian
soldiers, large enough to contain a tall crucifix or a man hidden, and
occupying a prominent position in the church throughout the festival.
Not infrequently it was made of more solid material, like the carved
stone 'sepulchre' in Lincoln Cathedral.

A trope was next composed for antip