344 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
possibilities might really be is shown in the Debate of the Carpenter’s 
Tools. A mutiny arises in the shop when half the tools declare 
their master to be too shiftless and unsteady to deserve their support. 
The other tools, however, although they cannot deny that their 
master 
loves gode ale so wele 
That he berfore his hod wyll selle, 
Fore some dey he wyll vii? drinke, (75—77) 
are still true to his interests. This simple dramatic complication 
is thereupon carried by the poet to a distinct climax when, after 
the “crow,” the “pleyne,” and the “squyre” have decided to seek 
a better master, the carpenter’s wife breaks in, with curses on the 
priest who bound her “ prentys,” 
And i myght, so wold 1. (266) 
A fuller knowledge as to the minstrels’ methods of reciting these 
popular pieces might possibly disclose a connection between the 
debate and the drama in matters other than form. There is slight 
evidence here and there in contemporary records that some minstrels 
used gestures, facial masks, and, wherever ecclesiastical law was not 
rigorously enforced, clerical robes to aid them in impersonating the 
participants in the debates.!. There is also no reason for rejecting 
as impossible the assumption that sometimes two or more minstrels 
carried on the debate. Jantzen, moreover, calls attention to several 
early German plays that are simply slight modifications of debates, 
and-I shall point out bits of similar literature embedded in English 
morality plays.2. But traces of such direct borrowing are rarely 
found; for the substance of the typical debate was too trivial to 
serve the serious didactic purpose of the drama, and the larger part 
of the repertoire of the minstrels has been lost. Nevertheless, since 
these same minstrels were also agents in spreading the seeds of 
the actual drama, one can realize the strength of the debate’s un- 
seen influence in charging the spirit of the twelfth and thirteenth 
centuries with dramatic instinct. 
In this same general way the debate contributed to the rise of the 
morality plays. It had always shown a capacity for personification. 
The déyos dixacog and Aoyos &dixos of Aristophanes’ Clouds are embodi- 
ments of moral abstractions like those which acted on the medieval 

1 Chambers, 1. 81—83. 
2 Jantzen, 92—95. See below 346, 354. 
3 Tbid., 22; Herford, 22. 
