and his
attendant the _Vice_, of whom the latter seems to have been of native
origin, and, as he was usually dressed in a fool's habit, was probably
suggested by the familiar custom of keeping an attendant fool at court
or in great houses. The Vice had many _aliases_ (_Shift_, _Ambidexter_,
_Sin_, _Fraud_, _Iniquity_, &c.), but his usual duty is to torment and
tease the Devil his master for the edification and diversion of the
audience. He was gradually blended with the domestic fool, who survived
in the regular drama. There are other concrete elements in the
moralities; for typical figures are often fitted with concrete names,
and thus all but converted into concrete human personages.

Groups of English moralities.

The earlier English moralities[4]--from the reign of Henry VI. to that
of Henry VII.--usually allegorize the conflict between good and evil in
the mind and life of man, without any side-intention of theological
controversy. Such also is still essentially the purpose of the extant
morality by Henry VIII.'s poet, the witty Skelton.[5] _Everyman_ (pr. c.
1529), perhaps the most perfect example of its class, with which the
present generation has fortunately become familiar, contains passages
certainly designed to enforce the specific teaching of Rome. But its
Dutch original was written at least a generation earlier, and could have
no controversial intention. On the other hand, R. Wever's _Lusty
Juventus_ breathes the spirit of the dogmatic reformation of the reign
of Edward VI. Theological controversy largely occupies the moralities of
the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign,[6] and connects itself with
political feeling in a famous morality, Sir David Lyndsay's _Satire of
the Three Estaitis_, written and acted (at Cupar, in 1539) on the other
side of the border, where such efforts as the religious drama proper had
made had been extinguished by the Reformation. Only a single English
political morality proper remains to us, which belongs to the beginning
of the reign of Elizabeth.[7] Another series connects itself with the
ideas of the Renaissance rather than the Reformation, treating of
intellectual progress rather than of moral conduct;[8] this extends from
the reign of Henry VIII. to that of his younger daughter. Besides these,
there remain some Elizabethan moralities which have no special
theological or scientific purpose, and which are none the less lively in
consequence.[9]

Transition from the mo