from the diversity among the separate plays but also from the violent
intrusion of the comedy and the farce which the coarse taste of the
audience demanded. Sometimes, in the later period, altogether original and
very realistic scenes from actual English life were added, like the very
clever but very coarse parody on the Nativity play in the 'Towneley' cycle.
More often comic treatment was given to the Bible scenes and characters
themselves. Noah's wife, for example, came regularly to be presented as a
shrew, who would not enter the ark until she had been beaten into
submission; and Herod always appears as a blustering tyrant, whose fame
still survives in a proverb of Shakspere's coinage--'to out-Herod Herod.'

The manner of presentation of the cycles varied much in different towns.
Sometimes the entire cycle was still given, like the detached plays, at a
single spot, the market-place or some other central square; but often, to
accommodate the great crowds, there were several 'stations' at convenient
intervals. In the latter case each play might remain all day at a
particular station and be continuously repeated as the crowd moved slowly
by; but more often it was the, spectators who remained, and the plays,
mounted on movable stages, the 'pageant'-wagons, were drawn in turn by the
guild-apprentices from one station to another. When the audience was
stationary, the common people stood in the square on all sides of the
stage, while persons of higher rank or greater means were seated on
temporary wooden scaffolds or looked down from the windows of the adjacent
houses. In the construction of the 'pageant' all the little that was
possible was done to meet the needs of the presentation. Below the main
floor, or stage, was the curtained dressing-room of the actors; and when
the play required, on one side was attached 'Hell-Mouth,' a great and
horrible human head, whence issued flames and fiendish cries, often the
fiends themselves, and into which lost sinners were violently hurled. On
the stage the scenery was necessarily very simple. A small raised platform