restricted to Bible story for their themes, but the popular character of
their work is everywhere apparent in the manner in which the material is
handled and the characters conceived. The Noah of the Deluge plays is an
English master joiner with a shrewish wife, and three sons who are his
apprentices. When the divine command to build an ark comes to him, he
sets to work with an energy that drives away "the weariness of five
hundred winters" and, "ligging on his line," measures his planks,
"clenches them with noble new nails", and takes a craftsman's delight in
the finished work:

This work I warant both good and true.(4)

In like manner, the Shepherds of the Nativity plays are conceived and
fashioned by men who, fortunate in that they knew nothing of the
seductions of Arcadian pastoralism, have studied at first hand the habits
and thoughts of English fifteenth-century shepherds, and paint these to
the life.

Thus, at the close of the Middle Ages, narrative, lyric and dramatic
poetry seemed firmly established among the people. Not unmindful of
romance, it was grounded in realism and sought to interpret the life of
the peasant and the artisan of fifteenth-century England. The Renaissance
follows, and a profound change comes over poetry. The popular note grows
fainter and fainter, till at last it becomes inaudible. Poetry leaves the
farmyard and the craftsman's bench for the court. The folk-song,
fashioned in to a thing of wondrous beauty by the creator of Amiens, Feste
and Autolycus, is driven from the stage by Ben Jonson, and its place is
taken by a lyric of classic extraction. The popular drama, ennobled and
made shapely through contact with Latin drama, passes from the provincial
market-place to Bankside, and the rude mechanicals of the trade-guilds