372 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
George Wapull followed the example of these plays in his late 
morality, The Tyde Taryeth No Man. But where those plays 
preached reform on national issues that were the concern of the 
Court and Parliament, this later play handles civic abuses that fell 
within the jurisdiction of the aldermen and the Council. The 
proverb that stands as the title is misinterpreted by the vice, 
Corage, as an excuse for selfishness and greed, and by it he in- 
cites his followers to a covetousness that brings suffering to faithful 
London tenants, to a greed that drags spendthrift gallants into the 
toils of usurers, and to a disobedience that hurries young girls into 
imprudent marriages. The editor of the play pertinently calls 
attention to the recognition of these abuses by reformers like 
Stubbes and Lodge. But the means employed by Wapull were 
those long familiar to the moral dramatist. Christianity is re- 
presented as dishonored and enervated by the abuses of the 
citizens; she complains against the wrongdoers; and eventually is 
rescued by the intervention of Faithful Few, who represents sound 
middle-class citizenship and authority. 
The fragments that remain of two plays of this same intent! may 
give place in this discussion to the later plays, The Three Ladies 
of London, and The Three Lords and the Three Ladies of London. 
The allegorical characters who appear at the opening of the first of 
these plays are not markedly different from the characters of other 
moralities. Dissimulation, Fraud, Usury, and Simony go to London, 
and there make suit to the three ladies, Love, Conscience, and 
Lucre. But the play soon introduces civic questions. In their 
service of Lady Lucre the four inaugurate, or at least contribute 
to, certain economic evils that England was then burdened 
with. They connive at the exportation of necessary commodities 
in exchange for the most frivolous baubles; they raise the rents 
in London till Englishmen have to crowd into tenements, as the 
people of France and Flanders do; they incite tradesmen to petty 
dishonesty, and lawyers to grosser frauds, and in general sow 
corruption in the state.2 The movement of the play suggests a 
great city pageant rather than a morality. The scenes where the 
three Lords of London, the three Lords of Spain, and the three 
Lords of Lincoln—all allegorical—respectively offer themselves as 
suitors to the three Ladies, whom Judge Nemo has reclaimed, are 

* Albion Knight, and Somebody, Avarice, and Minister. Both fragments 
have been reprinted. See Chambers, 2. 461; Brandl, lix. 
2 278—79, 305-6, 326—44. 
