378 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
Even though a humanist may have been also enough of a theologian 
to appreciate all this, that would do little to recommend his in- 
struction to the unlettered audiences of his day. The lessons of 
the school were no more popular than those of the church. This 
the author seemed himself to realize, for to the title proper he 
added the statement: “if ye list, ye may leave out much of the sad 
matter,... and then it [the play] will not be past three-quarters of 
an hour of length.” To ward off dulness he introduces Sensual 
Appetite to interrupt the lecture of Studious Desire with his merry 
Wellerism, 
Well hit, quoth Hykman, when that he smote 
His wife on the buttocks with a beer-pot, (15) 
and to draw Humanity to the dissipations so familiar to playgoers 
of the day. Not much, it is true, of the Psychomachia remains ; 
Humanity is one of those easy-going mortals always ready to follow 
a chance companion. After having listened attentively to the 
pedagogues, he follows Sensual Appetite to enjoy at the inn a 
three-course dinner—a term that the taverner fails to understand— 
and to revel with Nell and Jane. From the supper that he orders, 
Experience is able to draw him back to his lesson, but only to 
lose him again before the evening’s dancing and song. These 
scenes justify the term “merry” that the author applies to the play ; 
in fact, instead of bringing to the action a serious moral conflict, 
they serve only as a sort of counter-irritant to the didactic matter 
that the uncultured would think “sad.” 
The change of spirit that marks this dramatic product of the 
New Learning is further traceable in the admission of Natura Na- 
turata that Sensual Appetite has its place in man’s character, and 
that only its overindulgence is baneful : 
Though it be for thee full necessary 
For thy comfort sometime to satisfy 
Thy sensual appetite, 
Yet it is not convenient for thee 
To put therein thy felicity 
And all thy whole delight. (44—45) 
Medieval asceticism here gives way at least a trifle to the sensuous 
enjoyment of life that the Renaissance revived. This same point 
is more fully elaborated in the earlier morality, Mature, where 
Sensuality is represented as an indispensable part of man’s psychic 
being, embracing sense-perception and temperate carnal desires. 
As Brandl has shown, these distinctive features of the play were 
