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Home  »  Volume V: English THE DRAMA TO 1642 Part One  »  § 26. Effects of Humanism on Mysteries and Moralities

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume IV. Prose and Poetry: Sir Thomas North to Michael Drayton.

III. The Early Religious Drama

§ 26. Effects of Humanism on Mysteries and Moralities

For the rest, moralities continued to deal with the old subject—man, as an object of contention between the good and the bad qualities of the soul. Such was the theme of Like will to Like, by the schoolmaster Ulpian Fulwell (printed 1568), and of the lost play, The Cradle of Security, where, as we have seen in the case of The Pride of Life, the typical representative of humanity appears as a king; he is subdued by Luxury and other female personifications, who lay him in a cradle and put on him a mask with a pig’s snout.