use. His wife allows them to look around
thoroughly, but she keeps them away from the cradle. They leave,
rather ashamed of their suspicion. As they are going out of the door,
a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends.
Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering
of the cradle, and discovers the sheep. Mak and his wife both declare
that an elf has changed their child into a sheep. The shepherds
threaten to have the pair hanged. They seize Mak, throw him on a
canvas, and toss him into the air until they are exhausted. They then
lie down to rest and are roused with the song of an angel from
Bethlehem.

To produce this comedy required genuine inventive imagination; for
there is nothing faintly resembling this incident in the sacred
narrative. These early exercises of the imagination in our drama may
resemble the tattering footsteps of a child; but they were necessary
antecedents to the strength, beauty, and divinity of movement in
Elizabethan times.

[Illustration: FOOL'S HEAD. State properties of the Vice and Fool.]

The Morality.--The next step in the development of the drama is
known as the Morality play. This personified abstractions. Characters
like Charity, Hope, Faith, Truth, Covetousness, Falsehood, Abominable
Living, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil,--in short, all the
Virtues and the Vices,--came on the stage in the guise of persons, and
played the drama of life.

Critics do not agree about the precise way in which the Morality is
related to the Miracle play. It is certain that the Miracle play had
already introduced some abstractions.

In one very important respect, the Morality marks an advance, by
giving more scope to the imagination. The Miracle plays had their
general treatment absolutely predetermined by the Scriptural version
of the action or by the legends of the lives of saints, although
diverting incidents could be introduced, as we have seen. In the
Morality, the events could take any turn which the author chose to
give.

[Illustration: AIR-BAG FLAPPER. Stage properties of the Vice and
Fool.]

In spite of this advantage, the Morality is in general a synonym for
what is uninteresting. The characters born of abstractions are too
often bloodless, like their parents. The Morality under a changed name
was current a few years ago in the average Sunday-school book.
Incompetent writers of fiction today often adopt the Morality
principle in making