386 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
acquainted during his university career with the works of the Con- 
tinental humanists, and possibly having learned to know their work 
more intimately while in the service of the Prince of Orange in 
the Low Countries.1_ He drops the allegorical element of the Eng- 
lish sacred drama, and, like the Continental humanists, deals alto- 
gether with human types. He abandons, too, the imperfectly con- 
structed verse of his contemporaries, and writes in the style of 
the Elizabethan /itterateur a prose that contains marks of incipient 
Euphuism. He constructs his drama, finally, in acts and scenes, 
with metrical choruses between the acts. The Glasse of Gouerne- 
ment, indeed, is more advanced in structure and characterization 
than any other play thus for considered. Yet in framework it 
resembles Bien Avisé, Mal Avisé, one of the oldest and purest of 
the French moralities, where, instead of a single central figure, 
as in the English pattern, two contrasted characters convey the 
moral lesson. One may say, then, that Gascoigne availed himself 
of all that the new literature had to teach in structure and style, 
and profited wisely from the richer experience and learning of the 
Renaissance, without sacrificing any essential element of the Eng- 
lish morality except allegory, and none of the essential elements of 
the Continental religious play. Because their interests thus held 
them to a serious didactic theme closely akin to that of the 
typical morality, the English humanists did not abandon as readily 
as one would expect the dramatic traditions of their past. 
CuapterR VIII.—SkcunaRizATION AND DISINTEGRATION OF THE Morat Ptay. 
The zeal of the controversial playwrights in upholding the pro- 
paganda of their churches, and the concern of the humanists in 
the welfare of youth, made possible for the time being a partial 
conformity with the technique and spirit of the moral play. The 
Reformation and the Renaissance bent, but did not at first break, 
the line of the drama’s development. Yet even the most serious 
of these propagandists’ dramas opened wider the door to tendencies, 
already felt to a degree, that were inherently destructive to the 
type. Instead of presenting a general, unlocalized allegory of human 
life, the controversial play dealt necessarily with the policies of 
real men, as well as with dogma, and the educational play with 
the interests of the teacher and the school. The one brought to 

1 Herford, 159. 

