The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art is the title of a piece probably written early in Elizabeth’s reign.  Moros, the hero, is represented as an ignorant and vicious fool, thinking of nothing but ballads and songs, and constantly singing scraps of them.  Discipline finds him venting this humour, and reproves him; Piety and Exercise add their efforts to reform him, but discover him to be as much knave as fool.  The two latter hold him while Discipline lays on the whip, till he affects contrition; but he is soon wheedled into a relapse by Idleness, Incontinence, and Wrath, who, however, profess to hold him in contempt.  Wrath gives him the Vice’s sword and dagger, and they all promise him the society of Nell, Nan, Meg, and Bess.  Fortune then endows him with wealth; he takes Impiety, Cruelty, and Ignorance into his service; Impiety stirs him up against “these new fellows,” that is, the Protestants, and he vows to “hang, burn, and kill” them without remorse.  When they are gone, People enters, complaining of the hero’s cruelty and oppression, but runs off in a fright as soon as he returns.  God’s Judgment then comes and strikes him down; Confusion follows; they strip off his “goodly gear,” and put on him a fool’s coat.  Being required by Confusion to go with him he replies,—­

    “If it please the Devil me to have,
    Let him carry me away on his back.”

We are left to infer that Confusion, who is the Devil of the piece, takes him at his word.

The Marriage of Wit and Science is the earliest known instance of a Moral-Play regularly distributed into five Acts, and these again into scenes.  The allegory is quite elaborate and wire-drawn; and the piece has something of humour in the matter, and of melody in the versification. Like Will to Like, Quoth the Devil to the Collier, printed in 1568, has some rude approaches to individual character; which is my reason for noticing it.  Nichol Newfangle, though in fact the hero, enacts the Vice, and is armed with the wooden dagger; among his friends are Ralph Royster, Tom Tosspot, Philip Fleming, Pierce Pickpurse, and Cuthbert Cutpurse, who have some lines of individual peculiarity.  To these are added several allegorical personages, as Good Fame, Severity, Virtuous Life, and Honour.  Lucifer also figures in the piece; Newfangle claims him as godfather, and is at last carried off by him. The Conflict of Conscience is worthy of notice as being one of the earliest germinations of the Historical Drama.  The hero, though called Philologus, is avowedly meant for Francis Speira, an Italian lawyer, who, it is said, “forsook the truth of God’s Gospel, for fear of the loss of life and worldly goods.”  The characters of the piece are partly historical, partly allegorical.