The English Moral Plays 315 
I can not allé say; 
but to pe erthe I knele a-down, 
bobe with bede & orisoun, 
& aske myn absolucioun. (1477—95) 
Shrift then has power to absolve Mankind: 
I bee a-soyle, with myldé mod, 
of al bat pou hast ben ful madde, 
In forsakynge of pyn aungyl good, 
& pi fowle flesche pat pou hast fadde, 
be werld, be deuyl bat is so woode, 
& folwyd pyne aungyl bat is so badde. 
to Jhesu Crist pat deyed on rode, 
I restore bee a-geyn ful sadde; 
noli peccare! 
& all be goode dedys bat pbou haste don, 
& all pi tribulacyon, 
stonde bee in remyssion : 
posius noli viciare. (1523—35) 
Thus the conflict between man’s good and evil inclinations was 
represented concretely on the stage. The subjective forces that in 
reality belong to man himself in the most personal sense were 
transformed by the poet into visible, external forces operating upon 
man as they obeyed, on the one hand, the call of God, or, on the 
other, the interests of the World and the Flesh. Such a transform- 
ation, although not congruous to the truest understanding of sin, 
was essential to the allegorical method of exposition, and was 
therefore widespread in the didactic literature of the Middle Ages. 
Many abstract treatises, to be sure, were written in which the 
analysis and synthesis of ethical traits, such as the “seven gifts of 
the Holy Spirit,” were carried to the last degree. This was the 
method of Thomas Aquinas, whose Summa Theologica remains the 
greatest monument of this sort of composition. But the more vital 
mode of treating such themes was the allegorical. The motives 
and impulses of man’s own heart were taken from him, and, 
clothed in flesh and blood, given him again for companions. 
This extended moral play, however, does not stop, as many did, 
with this one general representation of the struggle that rages in 
man’s heart. The story of Mankind’s life is carried further through 
a series of allegorical episodes which had been early popular in 
Christian didactic poetry. The first is a more specific embodiment 
of the conflict between virtue and vice. Mankind, after gaining 
