It must not be supposed that, in subjects like these, the drollery of the scene was accidental; but, on the contrary, the mediæval artists and popular writers gave them this character purposely. The demons and the executioners—the latter of whom were called in Latin tortores, and in popular old English phraseology the “tormentours”—were the comic characters of the time, and the scenes in the old mysteries or religious plays in which they were introduced were the comic scenes, or farce, of the piece. The love of burlesque and caricature was, indeed, so deeply planted in the popular mind, that it was found necessary to introduce them even in pious works, in which such scenes as the slaughter of the innocents, where the “knights” and the women abused each other in vulgar language, the treatment of Christ at the time of His trial, some parts of the scene of the crucifixion, and the day of judgment, were essentially comic. The last of these subjects, especially, was a scene of mirth, because it often consisted throughout of a coarse satire on the vices of the age, especially on those which were most obnoxious to the populace, such as the pride and vanity of the higher ranks, and the extortions and frauds of usurers, bakers, taverners, and others. In the play of “Juditium,” or the day of doom, in the “Towneley Mysteries,” one of the earliest collections of mysteries in the English language, the whole conversation among the demons is exactly of that joking kind which we might expect from their countenances in the pictures. When one of them appears carrying a bag full of different offences, another, his companion, is so joyful at this circumstance, that he says it makes him laugh till he is out of breath, or, in other words, till he is ready to burst; and, while asking if anger be not among the sins he had collected, proposes to treat him with something to drink—
Primus dæmon. Peasze, I pray the, be stille; I laghe that I kynke.
Is oghte ire in thi bille? and then salle thou drynke.
—Towneley Mysteries, p. 309.
And in the continuation of the conversation, one telling of the events which had preceded the announcement of Doomsday says, rather jeeringly, and somewhat exultingly, “Souls came so thick now of late to hell, that our porter at hell gate is ever held so close at work, up early and down late, that he never rests”—
Saules cam so thyk now late unto helle,
As ever
Oure porter at helle gate
Is halden so strate,
Up erly and downe late,