The English Moral Plays 361 
universal, whose doctrines and exhortations it had long been the 
drama’s mission to popularize, was shattered by the great schism of 
the sixteenth century, and a long religious war was begun between 
Rome and the reformers. More than ever before, argument and 
invective entered into ecclesiastical literature. Naturally, the moral 
play was remodeled to meet the changed conditions. Where 
it had been before simply the support of religion in general and 
right living, it now became, without any radical diversion of purpose, 
a weapon used alike by both parties in the controversy. Despite 
the innovations of Skelton, therefore, the play remained a while 
longer the obedient servant of the church, and allegory on the 
stage was saved from disuse. 
The new tendency in its early stage is well exemplified by John 
Bale’s Three Laws. As in the miracle-plays, God himself appears ; 
but it is to establish at the beginning the authority of the three 
Laws, and to restore them, at the close, to their ordained spheres. 
To these ends the presence of God was at least felt in all true 
moralities. The other characters are strictly allegorical, and the 
action involves the familiar struggle between the good and the 
evil. Indeed, in this play three conflicts instead of one, in three 
separate episodes, are carried through. God has ordained the Law 
of Nature, the Law of Moses, and the Law of Christ as his emissaries 
on earth. But Infidelity corrupts the first through his children, 
Sodomy and Idolatry; the second, through Avarice and Ambition ; 
the third, through False Doctrine and Hypocrisy. In the action 
itself, none of the temptation and none of the fruits of sin are 
exhibited. The three Laws in due order state didactically their 
mission in the world, the Law of Moses, for example, expounding 
the Commandments; they are answered by the vices sent to tempt 
them, finally Infidelity announces their fall. Although the traditions 
of the morality have been thus altered, The Three Laws adheres 
in the main to the structural and didactic principles of the type. 
At the end, the powers of evil are overcome and punished by 
Vindicta Dei, and God restores the Laws to their original power. 
Bale, however, while keeping easily within the bounds of tra- 
dition, has used the morality for a new purpose—not primarily 
as a sermon on holiness, but as a weapon in religious contro- 
versy. His play is a coarse and bitter attack upon the Papacy. At 
the end, in reviewing the course of events. the author states that 
the Laws were corrupted respectively “by the Sodomites, Pharisees, 
and Papists most wicked.” The truth, however, is that his religious 
bigotry so got the better of his sense of historic truth that all the 
