The Moralities, of which sixty-five survive, dating, almost all, from
1450 to 1550, differed from the Mysteries in the fact that their
purpose was rather didactic than religious; as a rule they handled
neither historical nor legendary matter; they freely employed
allegorical personification after the fashion of the _Roman de la
Rose_. The general type is well exemplified in _Bien-Avise,
Mal-Avise_, a kind of dramatic Pilgrim's Progress, with two
pilgrims--one who is instructed in the better way by all the
personified powers which make for righteousness; the other finding
his companions on the primrose path, and arriving at the everlasting
bonfire. Certain Moralities attack a particular vice--gluttony or
blasphemy, or the dishonouring of parents. From satirising the social
vices of the time, the transition was easy to political satire or
invective. In the sixteenth century both the partisans of the
Reformation and the adherents to the traditional creed employed the
Morality as a medium for ecclesiastical polemics. Sometimes treating
of domestic manners and morals, it became a kind of bourgeois drama,
presenting the conditions under which character is formed. Sometimes
again it approached the farce: two lazy mendicants, one blind, the
other lame, fear that they may suffer a cure and lose their trade
through the efficacy of the relics of St. Martin; the halt, mounted
on the other's back, directs his fellow in their flight; by ill luck
they encounter the relic-bearers, and are restored in eye and limb;
the recovered cripple swears and rages; but the man born blind,
ravished by the wonders of the world, breaks forth in praise to God.
The higher Morality naturally selected types of character for satire
or commendation. It is easy to perceive how such a comic art as that
of Moliere lay in germ in this species of the mediaeval drama. At
a late period examples are found of the historical Morality. The
pathetic _l'Empereur qui tua son Neveu_ exhibits in its action and
its stormy emotion something of tragic power. The advent of the
pseudo-classical tragedy of the Pleiade checked the development of
this species. The very name "Morality" disappears from the theatre
after 1550.

The _sottie_, like the Morality, was a creation of the fifteenth
century. Whether it had its origin in a laicising of the irreverent
celebration of the Feast of Fools, or in that parade of fools which
sometimes preceded a Mystery, it was essentially a farce