The English Moral Plays 351 
the cup of oil, and by Justice with sword and scales, sings a song, 
indicated in the text simply by the words, “alto consilio,” which, 
from her attendants’ response, “ This is the faith that gives life and 
overpowers death; those who believe it are not damned,” must be 
a recognition of the Trinity. Such attempts to convey abstract 
truth on the stage are characteristic of the morality plays. 
Equally characteristic of the moralities are the parts assigned to 
the personifications in the development of the plot. Hypocrisy 
undertakes to seduce laymen, and Heresy to mislead the clergy. 
With them is associated the group of Hypocrites, who represent 
half allegorically a type. On the other hand, at the end of the 
play Holy Church receives the mortals who have been rescued by 
the two prophets from their subjection to Antichrist, and brought 
back to the true faith. On either side, these are the parts soon to 
be conventionalized in the morality play. Had the legend been 
more often handled in this way by the dramatists, it would rank 
as one of the more important influences upon the allegorical drama ; 
as it is, it may be regarded as a slight, but independent, contributory 
influence. 
The other religious allegories that were incorporated into the 
morality plays, usually in dependence upon the theme of the Psycho- 
machia, may be handled in chronological sequence. The first is the 
motif of the Dance of Death, which was so widely used in the 
literature and art of medieval Europe. The coming of Death to 
summon to judgment King and Bishop, Courtier and Scholar, 
Merchant and Peasant, was painted on the walls and windows of 
churches, as at Liibec and Salisbury, on the walls of graveyards, 
as in the Dominican convent at Basle, in illuminated service-books, 
and in Switzerland even on bridges and the facades of private 
houses. The earliest known treatment of the Dance of Death is a 
short Latin poem of the early fourteenth century, in which re- 
presentatives of the different orders of society, in due order, utter 
complaints on death and go to suffer the ordeal. Death itself does 
not appear, yet the poem reminds one of the medieval dramas, like 
the Prophet Play, whose actors come upon the stage one by one, 
speak their parts, and disappear.1 It is thought that the literary 
treatment of the theme had its origin in the tableaux vivants that 
were so popular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in 
France and Flanders.2. The earliest extant texts, it seems, enable 

1 Male?, 390-91. Male’s whole discussion of the Dance of Death should 
be read as the latest treatment of the subject. 
2 Seelmann, 11-21; Creizenach, 1. 461—62. 
