CHARACTERISA TION IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 335 



we can assert of a passion - play character what the 

 nursery rhyme tells us of the child, that 



When it was good, it was very, very good, 

 And when it was bad, it was horrid. 



To distinguish between good and evil was to the man of 

 the Middle Ages no hard task. All deeds and all beliefs 

 were already classified in a rigid code, and obedience or 

 disobedience to this code constituted goodness or bad- 

 ness. This point must always be borne in mind when 

 we consider the readiness with which mediaeval man con- 

 demned his opponents to eternal damnation. 1 He felt 

 as certain in his judgment of what was good and evil as 

 he considered the great Judge would be at the time of the 

 catastrophe with which he concluded the great world- 

 drama. He left no place for individual thought or indi- 

 vidual conduct ; each man must think and act as his 

 fellows, and for a time society undoubtedly prospered 

 under this strict socialism. With such a view of life no 

 growth of character seems possible. Christ and the 

 Virgin are so very good and pure, Satan, Judas, and 

 Pilate so very wicked, that all finer shades of character- 

 isation disappear, and, from the standpoint of the higher 

 drama of to-day, we have parts but no characters. 



There is another distinction also between the modern 

 and the mediaeval dramas to which we have already 

 drawn attention, namely, the actor of to-day renders his 



1 Thus iu the Alsfelder Spiel (C, p. 36) Satan comes to tempt Christ in the 

 garb of a Lollard. In the Townley Mystery, Extractio Animarum, the devil 

 Tutivillus says he is now ' Master Lollar. ' The same devil occurs in more than 

 one German play, and there is here again evidence of that cosmopolitan element 

 in the plays to which I have before referred. 



