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The moralities were enacted in court-yards or
palaces, the characters generally being personated by students, or
merchants from the guilds. A great improvement was also made in the length
of the play, which was usually only an hour in performance. The public
taste was so wedded to the devil of the mysteries, that he could not be
given up in the moral plays: he kept his place; but a rival buffoon
appeared in the person of _the vice_, who tried conclusions with the
archfiend in serio-comic style until the close of the performance, when
Satan always carried the vice away in triumph, as he should do.
The moralities retained their place as legitimate drama throughout the
sixteenth century, and indeed after the modern drama appeared. It is
recorded that Queen Elizabeth, in 1601, then an old woman, witnessed one
of these plays, entitled "The Contention between Liberality and
Prodigality." This was written by Lodge and Greene, two of the regular
dramatists, after Ben Jonson had written "Every Man in his Humour," and
while Shakspeare was writing Hamlet.


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