Their subject was fundamentally the same; placed in a series, they could
unroll no larger theme, as could the individual scenes of a Bible-play.
For ambitious town festivals, therefore, they were too short. Few public
bodies considered it worth their while to adopt them; and as a
consequence only one or two have been preserved for our reading.

Those that remain with us, however, contain qualities which may make us
wonder why they did not receive greater recognition. It may be that we
misjudge the extent of their popularity, though survival is usually a
fairly good guide. Certainly they shared, or borrowed, some of the
'attractive' features of their rivals: there was not lacking a liberal
flavour of the horrible, the satanic, the coarse and the comical.
Moreover, they possessed much greater possibilities for purely dramatic
effect. The cohesion of incidents was firmer, the evolution of the plot
more vigorous, the crisis more surprising, the opportunities for
originality more plentiful. The very fact that they could not easily be
welded together as scenes in a larger play is a testimonial to their
art. They are more complete in themselves. They are, that is to say, a
further stage on the way to that Elizabethan drama which only became
possible when all idea of a day-long play had been discarded in favour
of scenes more single and self-contained. The sacredness, also, of the
saintly narrative was less binding than that of the Bible story. Those
who had a compunction in caricaturing or coarsening the unholy or
nameless people of the Scriptures would feel their liberty immensely
widened in a representation of the secular and heathen world which
surrounded their saint. This is clearly seen in the _Miracle of the
Sacrament_, where the figure of Jonathas the Jew is portrayed with
distinct originality. His long recital of his wealth in costly jewels,
and the equally lengthy statement by Aristorius, the corruptible
Christian merchant, of his numerous argosies and profitable ventures,