g of sacred things. In the play of "the Fall
of Lucifer," that personage was introduced, according to the vulgar
acceptation, with horns, and tail, and cloven hoof; his beard, however,
was red, our forefathers having apparently indulged in a singular
antipathy against hair of that colour. There still remain accounts of
the expenses incurred on some of these occasions, the coarse quaintness
of which is not only amusing, but also shows the debased ideas of the
times. For instance, in "Mysteries," enacted at Coventry, are such
entries as "paid for a pair of gloves for God;" "paid for gilding God's
coat;" "dyvers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven."
In the play of the "Shepherds" there is provision for green cheese and
Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the
birthplace of our Saviour. "Payd to the players for rehearsal: imprimis,
to God, ii_s._ viii_d._; to Pilate his wife, ii_s._; item, for keeping
fyer at hell's mouth, iii_d._" A strict attention to chronology is not
exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councillors
to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears
by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is
only constrained so to do by a sound cudgelling administered by the
patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly
directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a
stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems
not to have been very exacting, since in the play of "the Fall of Man"
Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one of the chief incidents is the
adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circumstances might be related,
impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the
times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state
improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful
ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes,
and at last succeeded in excluding these exhibitions from consecrated
places. After dwindling down by degrees, these plays lingered in the
booths at fairs or on market-days, the Church having resigned them to
the guilds of different trades, and these, in the end, giving them up to
the mountebank. And so they died. Their history is the outward and
visible sign of a popular intellectual condition in process of passing
away.

[Sidenote: Moral plays,