384 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
the philosophy of Aristotle; but in this play the honor accorded it 
springs from the intellectual, rather than from the moral, interests 
of the time. 
The increasing influence of the New Learning upon the sacred 
drama left its impress upon the literary style of the plays. The 
coming of conscious art into dramatic composition is easily trace- 
able. In its easy flow of verse and effective handling of dialogue, 
John Redford’s Wit and Science gives promise of the future; Ca- 
listo and Melibwa, though less of a morality, is still more a work 
of literature. But it is in their lyric parts that the later moralities 
showed their most decisive advance. The serious plays had trusted 
exclusively to Latin hymns for their musical effects; later plays 
were furnished with rude songs in the vernacular; the efforts of 
the humanists responded to the impulse of the new lyric poetry. 
A detailed analysis of metrical structure would be beyond the 
scope of this chapter?; it will suffice to refer to the song, Buy a 
Broom in The Three Ladies of London, the two-part song of Wit 
and Science, the four-part song of Mary Magdalene, and the suc- 
cessive lyrics of Zom Tyler, to illustrate the rise of lyric power in 
the dramatic poets. — 
The story of these humanistic plays foretells plainly and unmis- 
takably the disintegration of the moral play in the new and broader 
dramatic movement of the Elizabethan age. This will be traced 
somewhat in detail in the next chapter. But just as the satirical 
political plays were kept from their free development by the call 
of the Reformation for a continuance of the old type, so these 
humanistic plays were shackled by the adoption of the story of the 
Prodigal Son and of the idle pupil as the most suitable material. 
Otherwise these early English dramatists would have more often 
remodeled with English setting and English characters the comedies 
of Plautus and Terence, as the author of jack Juggler did the 
Amplutruo of Plautus. As it was, allegory might give way largely 
to reality; the indefinite moral struggle might be made more con- 
crete by placing it in the school or home; but the nature of the 
parable of the Prodigal Son made necessary the retention of the 
serious didactic spirit of the old religious play. 
This fact we see exemplified in the latest and best of English 
school-plays, Gascoigne’s Glasse of Gouernement, where allegory has 
entirely disappeared. Two rich burghers of Antwerp have each 

1 Ramsay gives some attention to the metrical structure of the moral 
plays (MWagnificence, li—]xx). 
