writers to teach the principles of Christian living in a more direct and
compact fashion than was possible through the Bible stories of the
Mysteries. In its strict form the Morality Play was a dramatized moral
allegory. It was in part an offshoot from the Mysteries, in some of which
there had appeared among the actors abstract allegorical figures, either
good or bad, such as The Seven Deadly Sins, Contemplation, and
Raise-Slander. In the Moralities the majority of the characters are of this
sort--though not to the exclusion of supernatural persons such as God and
the Devil--and the hero is generally a type-figure standing for all
Mankind. For the control of the hero the two definitely opposing groups of
Virtues and Vices contend; the commonest type of Morality presents in brief
glimpses the entire story of the hero's life, that is of the life of every
man. It shows how he yields to temptation and lives for the most part in
reckless sin, but at last in spite of all his flippancy and folly is saved
by Perseverance and Repentance, pardoned through God's mercy, and assured
of salvation. As compared with the usual type of Mystery plays the
Moralities had for the writers this advantage, that they allowed some
independence in the invention of the story; and how powerful they might be
made in the hands of a really gifted author has been finely demonstrated in
our own time by the stage-revival of the best of them, 'Everyman' (which is
probably a translation from a Dutch original). In most cases, however, the
spirit of medieval allegory proved fatal, the genuinely abstract characters
are mostly shadowy and unreal, and the speeches of the Virtues are extreme
examples of intolerable sanctimonious declamation. Against this tendency,
on the other hand, the persistent instinct for realism provided a partial
antidote; the Vices are often very lifelike rascals, abstract only in name.
In these cases the whole plays become vivid studies in contemporary low
life, largely human and interesting except for their prolixity and the
coarseness which they inherited from the Mysteries and multiplied on their
own account. During the Reformation period, in the early sixteenth century,