ncipate dramatic performances from the control
of the church.

The clergy and the religious drama.

The attitude of the clergy towards the dramatic performances which had
arisen out of the elaboration of the services of the church, but soon
admitted elements from other sources, was not, and could not be,
uniform. As the plays grew longer, their paraphernalia more extensive,
and their spectators more numerous, they began to be represented outside
as well as inside the churches, at first in the churchyards, and the use
of the vulgar tongue came to be gradually preferred. A Beverley
Resurrection play (1220 c.) and some others are bilingual. Miracles were
less dependent on this connexion with the church services than mysteries
proper; and lay associations, gilds, and schools in particular, soon
began to act plays in honour of their patron saints in or near their own
halls. Lastly, as scenes and characters of a more or less trivial
description were admitted even into the plays acted or superintended by
the clergy, as some of these characters came to be depended on by the
audiences for conventional extravagance or fun, every new Herod seeking
to out-Herod his predecessor, and the devils and their chief asserting
themselves as indispensable favourites, the comic element in the
religious drama increased; and that drama itself, even where it remained
associated with the church, grew more and more profane. The endeavour to
sanctify the popular tastes to religious uses, which connects itself
with the institution of the great festival of Corpus Christi (1264,
confirmed 1311), when the symbol of the mystery of the Incarnation was
borne in solemn procession, led to the closer union of the dramatic
exhibitions (hence often called _processus_) with this and other
religious feasts; but it neither limited their range nor controlled
their development.

Progress of the medieval drama in Europe.

It is impossible to condense into a few sentences the extremely varied
history of the processes of transformation undergone by the medieval
drama in Europe during the two centuries--from about 1200 to about
1400--in which it ran a course of its own, and during the succeeding
period, in which it was only partially affected by the influence of the
Renaissance. A few typical phenomena may, however, be noted in the case
of the drama of each of the several chief countries of the West; where
the vernacular successfully supplanted Latin as the