, and the stage had to be erected in the
market-places, and out of doors.

The direction passed more and more into the hands of the laity, who
employed jongleurs, histrions, and strolling vagabonds, whose acting
included gross buffoonery, and whose profanity completely choked the
religious growth first implanted by these miracle plays. The stages, it
should be explained, were of curious construction, being divided into
three stories, the upper one containing the heavenly characters, the
middle one being for the people upon earth, and the lowest for the
denizens of hell.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century the whole Catholic world was
influenced by those reforms so necessary to the Christian Church of that
time, and so bravely contended for and gained by Luther. The
demoralisation which weakened all the church's fabric was deeply
deplored by the Catholic clergy, and we find at the close of this
century St. Philip Neri founding a congregation of priests in Rome and
drawing youths to church by dramatising in simple form such stories as
the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, etc., which were set to music in
four parts with alternate solos, first by Animuccia (a pupil of
Goudimel), and later on by the great Palestrina. These "sacred actions"
or plays were not performed in the church itself, but in an adjoining
chamber, called in Italian "oratorio," an oratory, and the title has
since then adhered to this species of sacred work.

Our girls will be pleased to know that the first oratorio, set to music
by Emilio del Cavalieri, was written by a lady, Laura Guidiccioni. It
was acted for the first time in the year 1600, probably in the oratory
of the Church of Santa Maria della Vallicella, in Rome. The name of the
work is "The Representation of the Soul and the Body." It was to be
played in appropriate costumes, and certain choruses were to be
accompanied, in a reverent and sedate manner, by solemn dances. Some of
the characters were Time, Pleasure, the World, Human Life, the Body,
etc.

As the various forms of music, already named as common to the opera and
oratorio, developed in the former, so in proportion they expanded and
became freer in the latter; those portions which had been mainly founded
upon plain song became more expressive and dramatic, and the melody
assumed a flowing and cantabile character. But whereas you would imagine
that a closer connection between the secular and sacred would be the
result of this