[Footnote 32: done.]

[Footnote 33: star.]

CHAPTER III

MORALITIES AND INTERLUDES

Miracle (Bible) Plays had three serious faults, not accidental, but
inherent in them. They were far too long. Their story was well known and
strictly confined by the two covers of the Bible. Their characters were
all provided by the familiar narrative. It is true that a few additions
to the canonical list were admitted, such as Cain's servant Garcio,
Pilate's beadle, and Mak the sheep-stealer. Lively characters were also
created out of nonentities like the various Judaeans and soldiers, and
the shepherds. But these were all minors; they had no influence on the
course of the action, and the smallness of their part made anything like
a full delineation impossible. They were real men, recognizable as akin
to local types, but no more; one never knew anything of them beyond
their simplicity or brutality. Meanwhile their superiors, clothed in the
stiff dress of tradition and reverence, passed over the stage with
hardly an idea or gesture to distinguish them from their predecessors of
three centuries before.

The English nation grew tired of Bible Plays. There can be no doubt of
this if we consider the kind of play that for a time secured the first
place in popularity. Only audiences weary of its alternative could have
waxed enthusiastic over _The Castell of Perseverance_ or _Everyman_.
Something shorter was wanted, with an original plot and some fresh
characters. To some extent, as has been shown, the Saint Plays supplied
these requirements, and one is tempted to suspect that in the latter
part of their career there was some subversion of the relative positions
of the two rival types of Miracle. But what was asked for was novelty.
Both forms of the Miracle were hundreds of years old, and both had to
suffer the same fate, of relegation to a secondary place in the Drama.
In letting them pass from our notice, however, we must not exaggerate
their decline. The first Moralities appeared as early as the fifteenth
century, but some of the great Miracles (e.g. of Chester and York)
lasted until near the end of the sixteenth century. For some time,
therefore, the latter must have held their own. Indeed the former
probably met with their complete success only when they had become
merged in the Interludes.

In its purest form the Morality Play was simply the subject of the
Miracle Play writ small, the general theme of the Fall and Redempt