The English Moral Plays 397 
worldly affairs, the inference should not be drawn that the religious 
allegory was legislated by dramatic managers summarily from the 
stage, or that patrons of the new play were never edified by the 
old. The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, which was 
given before Queen Elizabeth in 1600, synchronously with 
Romeo and Juliet, Henry IV, and the Merchant of Venice, proves 
the contrary. In this late survival, the fortunes of Money, first 
at the hands of Prodigality and his riotous companions, then in the 
penurious care of Tenacity (Avarice), dull almost as the per- 
functory discourses of Vertue and Equity, bring only two scenes of 
interest. The postilion beating at the tavern door to awake the 
host and hostess, and the scene in the court-room, opened with 
boisterous legality by the crier and the clerk—these are interesting 
bits of real comedy; but the dull didacticism of the play as a whole 
shows the tenacity with which the morality clung to its existence. 
Besides showing that the moral play was never arbitrarily re- 
legated to the literary scrap-heap, this late survival of the type 
reveals one direction in which the morality spent part of its force. 
The allegory teaches, instead of spiritual morality, only a single 
lesson in conduct—prudence and honesty. A majority of the French 
moralities, a type less clearly detined than in England, restrict them- 
selves to non-religious advice, to the natural, rather than the spiritual, 
virtues.1. Such, for example, is the Condamnation des Banquets. 
But this restriction, when found in an English play, is a mark of 
decadence. That would be our verdict on The Trial of Treasure, 
which exhibits the transiency of earthly wealth. Just and his friend, 
Sapience, agree that 
Treasures here gotten are uncertain and vain, 
But treasures of the mind do continually remain, 
(275) 
while Lust, led by Inclination, gives himself up to Lady Treasure 
and her brother, Pleasure. Lust and Just naturally come into dis- 
agreement, and actually wrestle upon the stage—so low had the 
holy war degenerated. But instead of a spectacular conversion, 
the audience was greeted at the end with a warning example. God's 
Visitation takes from Lust his companion, Pleasure, and Time re- 
moves Treasure, 
For like as all things in time their beginning had, 
So must all things in time vanish and fade. (297) 

1 Mortensen, 137. 
