388 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
eventual conversion at the end, the dogma of the moral play has 
been largely obscured by the spirit of realistic comedy. 
More and more boldly, even impudently, the comedy of real life 
asserted its right first to recognition, then to equality, and finally, 
under new influences, to independent existence. Even later plays 
might still profess, as did Fulwel’s Like Will to Like, to exhibit, 
“not onely what punishment followeth those that wil rather followe 
licentious liuing, then to esteeme & followe good councel: and 
what great benefits and commodities they receiue that apply them 
vnto vertuous liuing and good exercises”; but the profession rings 
false. How much respect did Fulwel desire for prosy Virtuous 
Living as he comes into the company of cutpurses and tipplers with 
the edifying exclamation, “O gracious God, how wonderful are thy 
works?” The dramatist is showing the same weariness of piety 
and the same preference for wickedness that later distinguished 
Restoration comedy, and his purely perfunctory moral is at once 
forgotten. 
The forms in which this realism appeared in the morality were 
varied. Youth and Hickscorner, after the hero of each has deserted 
Charity for Riot, Pride, and his sister Lechery, become stories of 
thievery and hanging that merit the title of sixteenth-century 
Beggars’ Opera. In Nature realism appears in a breezy sketch of 
London’s houses of prostitution, gaming-tables, and the fashions of 
the gentleman. In The Life and Death of Mary Magdalene the 
fashions of the fine lady, who curses her tailors for the “most 
bungarliest tailers in this countrie” that her overgarment should 
set so poorly, and her waist appear no smaller, and who talks of 
curling irons, hair dyes, perfumery, and the like, attract most at- 
tention. The outcome of this growing interest in the world is found 
on the title-page of Tom Tyler and His Wife. With the theological 
abstractions who acted the earlier plays compare these: Destiny, 
a sage person; Desire, the vice; Tom Tyler, a labouring man; 
Strife, Tom Tyler’s wife; Sturdy, a gossip; Tipple, an ale-wife ; Tom 
Tayler, an artificer; and Patience, a sage person.” Then compare 
with the seriousness of the earlier plots the bourgeois simplicity 
and vulgarity of the story of this tradesman who would tame his 
shrewish, drunken wife. 
Here, in fact, the juncture is reached where morality gives place 
almost entirely to farce. In France, from the very beginning of the 
sixteenth century, the sotie and the farce had been cultivated side 
by side with the mzstére and the moralité; the Enfants sans souct, 
like the Confréres de la Passion, obtained their letters patent from 

