Introduction of the Comic Element in the Miracle Plays.—­While the old drama generally confined itself to religious subjects, the comic element occasionally crept in, made its power felt, and disclosed a new path for future playwrights.  In the Play of Noah’s Flood, when the time for the flood has come, Noah’s wife refuses to enter the ark and a domestic quarrel ensues.  Finally her children pull and shove her into the ark.  When she is safe on board, Noah bids her welcome.  His enraged wife deals him resounding blows until he calls to her to stop, because his back is nearly broken.

The Play of the Shepherds includes a genuine comedy, the first comedy worthy of the name to appear in England.  While watching their flocks on Christmas Eve, the shepherds are joined by Mak, a neighbor whose reputation for honesty is not good.  Before they go to sleep, they make him lie down within their circle; but he rises when he hears them begin to snore, steals a sheep, and hastens home.  His wife is alarmed, because in that day the theft of a sheep was punishable by death.  She finally concludes that the best plan will be to wrap the animal in swaddling clothes and put it in the cradle.  If the shepherds come to search the house, she will pretend that she has a child; and, if they approach the cradle, she will caution them against touching it for fear of waking the child and causing him to fill the house with his cries.  She speedily hurries Mak away to resume his slumbers among the shepherds.  When they wake, they miss the sheep, suspect Mak, and go to search his house.  His wife allows them to look around thoroughly, but she keeps them away from the cradle.  They leave, rather ashamed of their suspicion.  As they are going out of the door, a thought strikes one of them whereby they can make partial amends.  Deciding to give the child sixpence, he returns, lifts up the covering of the cradle, and discovers the sheep.  Mak and his wife both declare that an elf has changed their child into a sheep.  The shepherds threaten to have the pair hanged.  They seize Mak, throw him on a canvas, and toss him into the air until they are exhausted.  They then lie down to rest and are roused with the song of an angel from Bethlehem.

To produce this comedy required genuine inventive imagination; for there is nothing faintly resembling this incident in the sacred narrative.  These early exercises of the imagination in our drama may resemble the tattering footsteps of a child; but they were necessary antecedents to the strength, beauty, and divinity of movement in Elizabethan times.

[Illustration:  FOOL’S HEAD.  State properties of the Vice and Fool.]

The Morality.—­The next step in the development of the drama is known as the Morality play.  This personified abstractions.  Characters like Charity, Hope, Faith, Truth, Covetousness, Falsehood, Abominable Living, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil,—­in short, all the Virtues and the Vices,—­came on the stage in the guise of persons, and played the drama of life.