l, corresponding to that of
manhood. In them respectively the supernatural, the theological, the
positive predominates. The first went out of fashion soon after the
middle of the fifteenth century, the second continued for about one
hundred and fifty years, the third still remains. By the miracle play is
understood a representation of Scripture incidents, enacted, however,
without any regard to the probabilities of time, place, or action, such
subjects as the Creation, the fall of man, the Deluge, being considered
as suitable, and in these scenes, without any concern for chronology,
other personages, as the Pope or Mohammed, being introduced, or the
Virgin Mary wearing a French hood, or Virgil worshipping the Saviour.
Our forefathers were not at all critical historians; they indulged
without stint in a highly pleasing credulity. They found no difficulty
in admitting that Mohammed was originally a cardinal, who turned heretic
out of spite because he was not elected Pope; that, since the taking of
the true cross by the Turks, all Christian children have twenty-two
instead of thirty-two teeth, as was the case before that event; and that
men have one rib less than women, answering to that taken from Adam. The
moral play personifies virtues, vices, passions, goodness, courage,
honesty, love. The real play introduces human actors, with a plot free
from the supernatural, and probability is outraged as little as
possible. Its excellence consists in the perfect manner in which it
delineates human character and action.

[Sidenote: Miracle plays, their character.] The miracle play was
originally introduced by the Church, the first dramas of the kind, it is
said, having been composed by Gregory Nazianzen. They were brought from
Constantinople by the Crusaders; the Byzantines were always infatuated
with theatrical shows. The parts of these plays were often enacted by
ecclesiastics, and not unfrequently the representations took place at
the abbey gate. So highly did the Italian authorities prize the
influence of these exhibitions on the vulgar, that the pope granted a
thousand days of pardon to any person who should submit to the pleasant
penance of attending them. All the arguments that had been used in
behalf of picture-worship were applicable to these plays; even the
Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension were represented. Over illiterate
minds a coarse but congenial influence was obtained; a recollection,
though not an understandin