COUNTRY FAIRS AND REVELS. 
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all child's -play is dramatic; wherever therefore there have been 
men, there have been mimics, and some rude dramatic sport over 
affairs of life has been a favourite amusement. The Church seized 
on this element of human character, and taught Scripture history 
and Scripture mysteries ; afterwards preached sermons on abstract 
morality in plays. Many years after our drama was matured relics 
of its old ways lingered in the places of its birth, and to Bartholo- 
mew Fair they clung so long that there perhaps took place the last 
performance of a " miracle play " in this country. In very early 
times the monks acted Scripture stories in their churches. Some 
written in Latin are extant ; they were the dramas of the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries, and entertained both prince and peasant. 
They came into England with the Normans, and passed from Latin 
into French for the amusement of the Court, then were performed 
in English for the entertainment and instruction of the people. 
Legends of the saints were at first the chief subjects treated, 
and these formed the true "miracle plays." Dramatic stories 
taken out of Scripture were "mysteries," and later came the 
"moralities," which discussed moral truths upon the stage by the 
personification of virtue, and by examples out of history, where- 
with the human interest in plays began, and out of which our 
modern drama so rapidly developed in the age of the revival of 
letters, and ripened into form and expression of that rare genius 
in which the England of Elizabeth was so rich. So it happened 
that before King Herod, Pilate, and the mediaeval devil had 
been banished from fairs, Shakespeare had written, and Ben Jonson 
had turned Bartholomew Eair into a comedy. It was to represent 
the creation in a mystery play at fairs that the first " wild beast 
show " was collected ; for one of the dramatic effects of this play, 
according to an old stage direction, was to represent the creation of 
beasts by sending among the excited crowd as great a variety of 
strange animals as could be brought together, and to create the 
birds by sending up a flight of pigeons. 
We can well understand how the influence of fairs was increased, 
and the profit too, by the proper arrangement of these and other 
amusements, in an age when a dreary routine of work, almost 
amounting to slavery, held nearly the whole population bound in 
ignorance. The popular fair of the neighbourhood must have 
been the great holiday of the year to thousands of poor people, 
whose only relaxation was on such an occasion ; and having 
