398 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
Then Time returns “with a similitude of dust and rust,” all that re- 
. mains of Lust and Treasure, to prove the impermanence of earthly 
things. 
Such lessons in worldly wisdom, that belong rather to the phi- 
losopher than to the preacher, could veer still further from the 
morality’s beaten path by dispensing altogether with allegory for 
situations and characters belonging strictly to farce. The author 
of Thersites, working on the idea that “the greatest boesters are 
not the greatest doers,” exhibits an arrant braggart, Herod-like 
in his vanity, terrified by a helpless snail, and sent whimpering 
behind his mother’s skirts by the threats of a single soldier. This 
modification of the norm resembles the type of play known in France 
as the Histoire, a narrative used to illustrate some particular truth 
or maxim of conduct.1. Such dramatic enforcement of homely pro- 
verb need not have departed from the old religious type. The 
late Elizabethan morality, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool 
Thou Art, was a revision by Wager of some old, full-scope moral 
play. The hero, Moros, first appears as a mischievous boy, fond 
of games and boyish pranks and popular songs—‘a witlesse Boy, 
Singing and bellowing likea dawe.” For travestying the good lesson 
that Discipline would teach him, he is whipped several times. Then 
as he grows older, he leaves his idle pastimes, and, under the guid- 
ance of Idleness and Incontinence, gives himself up to gambling 
and vice. At this period of his life his friends are the papistical 
advisers, Ignorance and Fortune. Lastly he appears as an old man 
swearing vengeance on Discipline. But God’s Judgment, who oddly 
addresses the sinner first with the proverb that suggested the title, 
overcomes him, and Confusion carries him to the Devil. Wager 
in handling this proverb used the mold of the full-scope play, and 
wrote in the spirit of the school-dramatists to illustrate the need of 
discipline in the home and school. He shot his bolt, too, against 
Catholicism, at a time when Protestantism was in the ascendant, 
and when the Marian persecution was still fresh in men’s minds.” 
All this indicates that such lessons of worldly prudence might have 
been handled without sacrifice of moral purpose. That this and 
* other plays, therefore, do betray a weakening of religious spirit is 
proof that the days of the morality were numbered. 
To preserve some such vestige of the didactic purpose of the 
morality as that found in T7hersites, was second nature even to 
the direct imitators of Roman comedy. Calisto and Melbea, a play 

1 Mortensen, 127. 2 1361, 1512, 10e2e.7 Gee 
