The connection between the productions of our ancient and more modern
stage, such as it existed at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, is
even more slightly evidenced by the drama which conies last in our
volume, the main features of which bear only a distant resemblance to
our drama, while it was still under the trammels of allegorical
impersonation. Nevertheless, the likeness is to be traced without
difficulty; and when we find such a character as Honesty most
prominently engaged from the beginning to the end of the performance (to
say nothing of the introduction of the representative of the principle
of evil in two passages), the mind is carried back to a period of our
theatrical history when such characters were alone employed on our
stage. Honesty has no necessary connection with the plot, nor with its
development, beyond the exposure by his means of fraud, flattery, and
hypocrisy: he bears no relation, however distant, to any of the parties
engaged in the performance, and seems to have been designed by the
unknown author as a sort of running commentator and bitter satirist upon
the vices and follies of mankind. On the other hand, the chief
characters among the _dramatis personae_ are real and historical, and
King Edgar and Bishop Dunstan, with Ethenwald and Alfrida, may be said
to figure prominently throughout. The Knight, the Squire, and the
Farmer, who make their appearance further on, are clearly embodiments of
the several classes of society to which they appertain. Thus, although
the "Knack to know a Knave" makes a nearer approach to comedy than any
of the four dramas which precede it, it still by no means entirely
discards the use of personages of a description which, many years
earlier, engrossed our stage. Characters and scenes of life and manners
are blended with others supported only by conventional impersonations,
in which the dialogue is not intended to advance the plot, but merely to
enforce a lesson of morality, probity, or discretion.