In the English plays now remaining, these scenes are, on the whole, less frequent, and they are usually more closely connected with the general subject. The earliest English collection that has been published is that known as the "Towneley Mysteries," the manuscript of which belongs to the fifteenth century, and the plays themselves may have been composed in the latter part of the fourteenth. It contains thirty-two plays, beginning with the Creation, and ending with the Ascension and the Day of Judgment, with two supplementary plays, the "Raising of Lazarus" and the "Hanging of Judas." The play of "Cain and Abel" is throughout a vulgar drollery, in which Cain, who exhibits the character of a blustering ruffian, is accompanied by a _garcio_, or lad, who is the very type of a vulgar and insolent horse-boy, and the conversation of these two worthies reminds us a little of that between the clown and his master in the open-air performances of the old wandering mountebanks. Even the death of Abel by the hand of his brother is performed in a manner calculated to provoke great laughter. In the old mirthful spirit, to hear two persons load each other with vulgar abuse, was as good as seeing them grin through a horse-collar, if not better. Hence the droll scene in the play of "Noah" is a domestic quarrel between Noah and his wife, who was proverbially a shrew, and here gives a tolerable example of abusive language, as it might then come from a woman's tongue. The quarrel arises out of her obstinate refusal to go into the ark. In the New Testament series the play of "The Shepherds" was one of those most susceptible of this sort of embellishment. There are two plays of the Shepherds in the "Towneley Mysteries," the first of which is amusing enough, as it represents, in clever burlesque, the acts and conversation of a party of mediæval shepherds guarding their flocks at night; but the second play of the Shepherds is a much more remarkable example of a comic drama. The shepherds are introduced at the opening of the piece conversing very satirically on the corruptions of the time, and complaining how the people were impoverished by over-taxation, to support the pride and vanity of the aristocracy. After a good deal of very amusing talk, the shepherds, who, as usual, are three in number, agree to sing a song, and it is this song, it appears, which brings to them a fourth, named Mak, who proves to be a sheep-stealer; and, in fact, no sooner have the shepherds resigned themselves to sleep for the night, than Mak chooses one of the best sheep in their flocks, and carries it home to his hut. Knowing that he will be suspected of the theft, and that he will soon be pursued, he is anxious to conceal the plunder, and is only helped out of his difficulty by his wife, who suggests that the carcase shall be laid at the bottom of her cradle, and that she shall lie upon it and groan, pretending to be in labour. Meanwhile the