362 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
evil characters of the play are represented as children of the Roman 
church. Infidelity upholds the time when men never read the Bible 
or talked of Paul, and the corrupters of the Law of Moses, declaring 
that the clergy and the people must be kept in ignorance, frame 
a new, and supposedly Popish, creed. But Bale directs his attack 
not primarily against the “draffish ceremonies” of the Roman 
church, or the political opposition of Reginald Pole to the policies of 
the admired King Henry; with a coarse vituperation that has never 
been exceeded, he assails, without much concern for truth, the gross 
immorality of the Roman priests. This is the new mission that the 
old-time morality was now given to perform—the new wine poured 
into the old bottles. 
The moral play, however, as it continued its activity in religious 
controversy, could not long retain unmodified the traditions of the 
sacred drama. The Reformation was a broad movement which in- 
volved political and economic, as well as religious, matters; espe- 
cially in England, such questions as the disposition of church pro- 
perties, the reception of Papal legates, the very authority of the 
King, were made the points at issue. Hence the plays that under- 
took to support one’side or the other were forced to admit a con- 
sideration of secular things, where before abstractions had been 
supreme. Accordingly, the dramatists substituted for the indefinite 
scene and occasion of the older plays a more definite setting; they 
surveyed for criticism the policies of real men. In these ways the 
allegorical drama underwent secularization. 
Ramsay has expounded very consistently the historical significance 
of Skelton’s Magnificence. Magnificence is in general intended to 
represent the characteristics and tendencies of King Henry—generous, 
open-hearted, but susceptible to evil counsel. The six evil advisers 
who encourage him in his course to ruin embody the traits and 
policies of Wolsey, whose extravagance emptied the treasury and 
humbled England abroad. The saner characters represent the 
leaders of the old nobility, who stood in opposition to the upstart, 
and Circumspection is supposed to represent King Henry VII. The 
allegory is by no means manifest; but doubtless the audiences of 
the time saw readily the political drift of the plot.’ 
By a modification of the type somewhat similar to that already 
discussed, Bale made his King john half morality and half chron- 
icle history. Instead of localizing the plot in the England of his 
own time, as Skelton did under the cloak of allegory, Bale selected 

1 Vagnificence, Introduction, Pt. 1, sect. 9. 
