nitaries of the Church did not
disdain to act in these plays, nor did their promoters hesitate at times
to reduce the exhibition to the level of a Punch-and-Judy show by the
introduction of puppets cleverly manipulated. The earliest of these
miracle-plays in England were performed by the various London Companies.
The Tanners, for instance, produced the Fall of Lucifer. The Drapers
played the Creation, in which Adam and Eve appeared in their original
costume,--apparently without giving offence. The Water-Drawers naturally
chose the Deluge. In the scene describing the embarkation of Noah's
family, the patriarch has a great deal of trouble with his wife, who is
determined not to go aboard. She declares that if her worldly friends are
left behind, she will stay and drown with them, and he can

"Rowe forth away when thou liste,
And get thee another wif."

Noah expostulates with her in vain, grows furiously indignant, and bids
her

"Come in, wif, in twenty devill ways,
Or alles stand thee without."

Her friends the gossips entreat her to remain with them, and have a
carousal over a "pottel full of malmsey;" but at last Shem makes a virtue
of necessity and forces her into the ark, as the following scene shows:--

"In faith, moder, in ye shall,
Whither you will or noughte."

NOE.

"Well me wif into this boate."
[_She gives him a box on the ear._]
"Haue you that for thee note."

NOE.

"A le Mary this whote,
A childre methinks my boate remeues,
Our tarrying here heughly me grieues."
[_She is forced into the ark._]

The earliest of these representations, so far as has been discovered,
dates back to the twelfth century, and is known as the Feast of Asses. In
these exhibitions, Balaam, superbly habited and wearing an enormous pair
of spurs, rode a wooden ass, in which the speaker was concealed. The ass
and the devil were favorite characters. The former sometimes appeared in
monkish garb and brayed responses to the intonations of the priests,
while the latter, arrayed in fantastic costumes, seems to have been the
prototype of clown in the pantomime. As late as 1783 the buffoonery of
this kind of exhibition continued. An English traveller, describing a
mystery called the "Creation" which he saw at Bamberg in that year,
says:--

"Young priests had the wings of geese tied on their shoulders to
personate ang