One interesting feature of these plays is the frequent appearance of Angels and Devils on the stage. This accustomed the audience to the entrance of the supernatural, in solid form, into the realm of the natural; and paved the way for those most substantial ghosts which showed themselves so much at home on the Elizabethan stage. We should be not far wrong, perhaps, in describing the later introduction of the Senecan Ghost into English drama as an innovation only in name: the supernatural had been a familiar factor in heightening dramatic interest long before The Misfortunes of Arthur or The Spanish Tragedy were written.—Of the Devils even more may be said. Their picturesque attire,[19] their endless pranks (not set down in the text), their reappearance and disappearance at the most unexpected times, their howls and familiar 'Harrow and owt! owt and alas!' were a constant delight, and preserved their popularity unexhausted for two hundred years, securing for them a place in the later forms of drama when the Miracles were supplanted by Moralities and Interludes. The Devil's near cousin, Herod, attained to a similar reputation and longevity. Has even modern melodrama quite lost that immortal type of the ranting, bombastic tyrant and villain?

The women in the play deserve notice. With the exception of Noah's wife, who was commonly treated in a broadly humorous vein, the principal female characters possess that sweet naturalness, depth and constancy of affection, purity and refinement which an age that had not yet lost the ideals of chivalry accepted as the normal qualities of a good woman. The mothers, wives, and daughters of that day would appear to have been before all things womanly, in an unaffected, instinctive way. Isaac (in the Chester Miracle Play), thinking, in the hour of death, of his mother's grief at home, says, 'Father, tell my mother for no thinge.' When Mary is married (Coventry Play) and must part from her mother, they bid farewell in this wise:

Anna. I pray the, Mary, my swete chylde,
Be lowe[20] and buxhum[21], meke and mylde,
Sad and sobyr and nothyng wylde,
And Goddys blessynge thou have....

Goddys grace on you sprede,
ffarewel, Mary, my swete fflowre,
ffareweyl, Joseph, and God you rede[22],
ffareweyl my chylde and my tresowre,
ffarewel, my dowtere yyng.[23]

Maria. ffarewel, fadyr and modyr dere,
At you I take my leve ryght here,
God that sytt in hevyn so clere,
Have you in his kepyng.

The heartbroken words of Mary at the foot of the Cross have already been quoted. In the reconciliation between Joseph and Mary (Scene 12), in Mary's patient endurance of Joseph's bad temper on the journey to Bethlehem (Scene 15), in the mother's unrestrained misery at the loss of the boy Jesus and rapture on finding Him in the Temple (Scene 20), in the two sisters' forced cheerfulness by the bedside of the dying Lazarus and their sorrow at his death—nor do these by any means exhaust the number of favourable instances—there may be seen the basic elements, as it were, which, more deftly handled and blended, gave to the English stage the world's rarest gallery of noble women.

Darkness and grief are so woven into the substance of the Bible narrative that we should indeed have been surprised if the tragic note had not been sounded often throughout the play. That it could be sounded well, too, will have been seen from various references and from the Scene of Abraham's Sacrifice. Nevertheless, tragedy is a less interesting, less original, less English element than the comedy which pops up its head here, there, and everywhere. It is really a part of that absence of dramatic rules already indicated, this easy conjunction of tragedy and comedy in the same scene. English audiences never could be persuaded to forgo their laugh. After all, it was near neighbour to their tears throughout life; then why not on the stage? A funeral was not the less a warning to the living because it was rounded off with a feast. Nor was Jesus on the Cross robbed of any of the majesty and silent eloquence of vicarious suffering by the vulgar levity of those who bade him 'Take good eyd (heed) to oure corn, and chare (scare) awey the crowe'. The strong sentiment of reverence set limits to the application of this humour. Only minor characters were permitted to express themselves in this way. The soldiers at the Sepulchre, the Judaeans at the Cross, the 'detractors' in Scene 14, certain mocking onlookers in Scene 40, these and others of similar stage rank spoke the coarse jests that set free the laugh when tears were too near the surface.—These common fellows, by the way, are the prototypes of the familiar Citizens, Soldiers, Watch, of a later date: the Miracles were fertile in 'originals'.—Some characters there were, however, more individual, more of consequence than these, who attained to an established reputation for their humour. The Devil's pranks have been referred to; Joseph's rusticity also; and the obstinacy of Noah's wife has been obscurely hinted at. Her gift lay in preferring the company of her good gossips to the select family gathering assembled in the Ark, and in playing with Noah's ears very soundingly when at length she was forcibly dragged into safety. Two short extracts from the Chester Miracle will illustrate her humour.

(1)

Noye. Wyffe, in this vessel we shall be kepte,
My children and thou; I would in ye lepte.

Noyes Wiffe. In fayth, Noye, I hade as leffe thou slepte!
For all thy frynishe[24] fare,
I will not doe after thy reade[25].