up a boy from the audience,—­an incident designed to “bring down the house.”  Lucifer having gone out, his three victims appear in gay apparel; they dismiss Conscience; Will dedicates himself to lust; all join in a song, and then proceed to have a dance.  First, Mind calls in his followers, Indignation, Sturdiness, Malice, Hastiness, Wreck, and Discord.  Next, Understanding summons his adherents, Wrong, Slight, Doubleness, Falseness, Ravin, and Deceit.  Then come the servants of Will, named Recklessness, Idleness, Surfeit, Greediness, Spouse-breach, and Fornication.  The minstrels striking up a hornpipe, they all dance together till a quarrel breaks out among them, when the eighteen servants are driven off, their masters remaining alone on the stage.  Just as these are about to withdraw for a carouse, Wisdom enters:  Anima also reappears, “in most horrible wise, fouler than a fiend,” and presently gives birth to six of the Deadly Sins; whereupon she perceives what a transformation has befallen her, and Mind, Will, and Understanding learn that they are the cause of it.  They having retired, Wisdom opens his mouth in a long speech; after which the three dupes of Lucifer return, renounce their evil ways, and Anima is made happy in their reformation.

These two pieces have come down to us only in manuscript. A Goodly Interlude of Nature is a Moral-Play written by Henry Medwall, chaplain to Archbishop Morton, which has descended to us in print.  It is in two parts, and at the end of the first part we learn that it was played before Morton himself, who became Primate in 1486, and died in 1500.  Like the two foregoing specimens, it was meant to illustrate the strife of good and evil in man.

There are several other pieces in print dating from about the same period.  One of them, printed in 1522, and entitled The World and the Child, represents man in the five stages of infancy,—­boyhood, youth, maturity, and infirmity.  Another of them, called Hick Scorner, deserves mention chiefly as being perhaps the earliest specimen of a Moral-Play in-which some attempt is made at individual character.  The piece is somewhat remarkable, also, in having been such a popular favourite, that the phrase “Hick Scorner’s jests” grew into use as a proverb, to signify the profane scurrility with which certain persons treated the Scriptures in the reign of Elizabeth.

“The Necromancer, written by Master Skelton, Laureate,” came from the press in 1504, having been played before the King at Woodstock on Palm Sunday.  The piece is now lost; but a copy was seen by Warton, who gave an account of it.  As the matter is very curious, I must add a few of its points.  The persons are a Conjurer, the Devil, a Notary Public, Simony, and Avarice.  The plot is the trial of Simony and Avarice, the Devil being the judge, and the Notary serving as assessor.  The Conjurer has little to do but open the subject, evoke the Devil, and summon the court.  The prisoners are found guilty, and ordered off straight to Hell:  the Devil kicks the Conjurer for waking him too early in the morning; and Simony tries to bribe the Devil, who rejects her offer with indignation.  The last scene presents a view of Hell, and a dance between the Devil and the Conjurer; at the close of which the former trips up his partner’s heels, and disappears in fire and smoke.