he saints in Paradise, the intermediate state of
the good after death. On the third were mere men yet living in the
world. On one side of the lowest stage, in the rear, was a fearful
cave or yawning mouth filled with smoke and flames, and denoting
hell. From this ever and anon would issue the howls and shrieks of
the damned. Amidst hideous yellings, devils would rush forth and
caper about and snatch hapless souls into this pit to their
doom.46 The actors, in their mock rage, sometimes leaped from the
pageant into the midst of the laughing, screaming, trembling
crowd. The dramatis personoe included many queer characters, such
as a "Worm of Conscience," "Deadman," (representing a soul
delivered from hell at the descent of Christ,) numerous "Damned
Souls," dressed in flame colored garments, "Theft," "Lying,"
"Gluttony." But the devil himself was the favorite character; and
often, when his personified vices jumped on him and pinched and
cudgelled him till he roared, the mirth of the honest audience
knew no bounds. For there were in the Middle Age two sides to the
popular idea of the devil and of all appertaining to him. He was a
soul harrowing bugbear or a rib shaking jest according to the hour
and one's

45 Halliwell's edition of the Harrowing of Hell, p. 18.

46 Sharp, Essay on the Dramatic Mysteries, p. 24.

humor. Rabelais's Pantagruel is filled with irresistible
burlesques of the doctrine of purgatory. The ludicrous side of
this subject may be seen by reading Tarlton's "Jests" and his
"Newes out of Purgatorie." 47 Glimpses of it are also to be caught
through many of the humorous passages in Shakspeare. Dromio says
of an excessively fat and greasy kitchen wench, "If she lives till
doomsday she'll burn a week longer than the whole world!" And
Falstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose,
avows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light
lost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same
flaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was "a black
soul burning in hell fire." In this element of mediaval life, this
feature of mediaval literature, a terrible belief lay under the
gay raillery. Here is betrayed, on a wide scale, that natural
reaction of the faculties from excessive oppression to sportive
wit, from deep repugnance to superficial jesting, which has often
been pointed out by philosophical observers as a striking fact in
the psychological history of man.