346 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
moralities of the sixteenth century. His interludes, Witty and Witless 
and Of Gentleness and Nobility, which are only dramatized dialogues, 
were not too remote from the allegorical plays to exert upon them 
an influence. In the Play of Love, one of the characters takes the 
familiar part of the vice, and the contention carried on by The 
Lover Loved, The Lover not Loved, The Woman Beloved not 
Loving, and Neither Loving nor Loved, was doubtless imitated by 
the author of A// for Money in the strife among Learning without 
Money, Learning with Money, Money without Learning, and Neither 
Money nor Learning. Other more significant specimens, though, of 
the debate are to be found in these plays. The two characters 
Wealth and Health, in the play that bears their names, carry on a 
perfectly obvious dispute in which one belittles the other and praises 
himself, and then come to an agreement in time to scoff at the 
pretensions of Liberty, who would uphold his own title to prece- 
dence. Formal judges are sometimes appointed by the disputants. 
In Magnificence, Liberty debates with Felicity to prove that he 
should not be subject, as Felicity has maintained, to external control, 
and Measure, who has been appointed judge, decides against his 
claims.!. In several plays it is the vice who starts the dispute, and 
acts as arbiter. Contempt, the vice of The Coblers Prophecie, brings 
the three representatives of the social orders, Landed Gentry, Courtier, 
and Scholar, into argument; in Like Will to Like, Nicholas New- 
fangle hears Tom Tosspot and Ralph Roister debate their claim to 
the title, “the verier knave.”2 But even these formal debates play 
no essential part in the plays. For this reason the dispute in King 
Darius is of greater importance. Told to name and defend what 
they regard as the strongest influence upon man, one disputant 
suggests and upholds wine, a second, the king, and the third, woman. 
The last contestant is awarded the decision because he has spoken 
without flattery or deceit--a moral ending of the incident which 
Equity and Charity carry further in a final admonition and a 
religious song. But even here, where the debate is fused with the 
didactic lesson, it cannot be said to influence largely the action of 
the play. 
Of the religious motifs that were tributary to the main current 
of the allegorical drama, the least important and the most remote 
from the theme of the Psychomachia is the legend of Antichrist. 
The legend, to be sure, foretells a great world-struggle with 
Antichrist, the incarnation of all the vices. But it is because the 

1 24-162. 2 317-26. 
