360 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
patron of the New Learning as well as the Defender of the Faith. 
The change could not but be reflected in the moral play—for the 
first time with any degree of force in Skelton’s long play, Magnif- 
wcence. The author was himself a priest, familiar with the trad- 
itions and institutions of the church; but he was also an educator 
and /itterateur who lived only a few years before the full glory of 
the early Renaissance in England. Skelton’s play, therefore, combines 
the old and the new. It retains the form of the typical morality, 
but in content and style gives evidence of the disintegration of the 
religious drama in the new currents of thought.’ 
Skelton in this play abandoned the role of theologian to take 
up that of moral adviser; the lesson he teaches is not holiness, but 
prudence; the end he seeks is not salvation in the world to come, 
but happiness and prosperity in this. The story tells how King 
Magnificence is persuaded to cashier Measure for a new adviser, Lib- 
erty, and to follow the evil counsel of four base courtiers, Coun- 
terfeit Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Cloaked Collusion, and 
Courtly Abusion. By them the resources of the country are impaired, 
and the honor of the king tarnished. Finally, however, the king is 
reclaimed by four virtues, Good Hope, Redress, Circumspection, and 
Perseverance. For the material of this ethical-political play Skelton 
had to look away from the writings of churchmen to those of 
philosophers and satirists. His sources were twofold—the Ethics of 
Aristotle and the Narrenschiff of Brandt. The former he used freely, 
as it was modified in the English versions of the pseudo-Aristotelian 
Secreta Secretorum, in Occleve’s Regement of Prynces, or perhaps 
in Skelton’s own Speculum Principis. Striking peculiarities of the 
play are directly traceable, as Ramsay has shown, to these royal 
handbooks. Skelton’s second source, the Warrenschiff, had already 
served as model for his Bowge of Court, and he turns to it again 
in those passages of the play that exhibit the abuses of the court. 
He found in his source even the names of the four courtiers. But 
more important still, as Herford has shown, he learned from Brandt 
to substitute for the allegorical character types of real men and 
women. Magnificence, then, marks the beginning of the break-up 
of the allegorical drama.? 
But the drama was not yet to be wholly lost to religion; before 
its vogue was outlived new need for its service arose. The church 

1 The best study of this play is that of Ramsay, who has edited it 
for the E.E.T.\S. His introduction contains also much matter on the 
general history of the plays. 
2 Ramsay, Introduction, Pt. 1, sect. 7. Herford, 350—52. 
