These primeval dramas are not inconsiderable objects in the philosophy of literary history. In England,[7] and probably throughout Europe, they long kept their standing; they linger in Italy, and still possess devout Spain. Not long since at Seville they had their mysteries adapted to the seasons--the Crucifixion for Good Friday, and the Nativity for Christmas, and the Creation whenever they chose; and a recent editor of the plays of Cervantes assures us, that these _Autos Sacramentales_ still form a source of amusement and edification to the pilgrims at the Shrine of St. Jago de Compostella, which it seems still receives such visitors.[8] These scriptural plays were known in England before 1119; they formed public performances in the metropolis in 1180. They were then confined to the monasteries, and when the audience required the space, they were exhibited in churches, and sometimes even in cemeteries. So true it is that the first theatres were churches and the first actors churchmen. Some reprobated the sight of the priestly character, or the "fols clers," "mad clerks," in their grotesque disguisings; if they were sanctioned by one pope, they were condemned by another. The clergy, except on some rare occasion, when exhibiting before royalty or nobility,[9] were at length not reluctant to yield their places to a new race of performers. In the metropolis they never lost their control over these representations, for they consigned them to the care of their inferior brethren, the parish clerks; but in provincial towns it was not long ere the people themselves discovered that they, with some little assistance from the neighbouring monasteries, were competent to take them into their own hands. The honest members of guilds or corporations, of mechanics and tradesmen, formed themselves into brotherhoods of actors, ambitious of displaying their mimetic faculty to their townsfolk. The play had now become the people's play, and the scale of the representation widened at every point; it was to be acted in an open plain, and it was to extend sometimes through eight days.[10] Such was the concourse of spectators, and indeed the performers were themselves a crowd. All were anxious to show themselves in some part, and such a play might require nearly a hundred personages. In a miracle-play, the whole life of a saint, from the cradle to martyrdom, was displayed in the same piece; the youth, the middle-age, and the caducity of the eminent personage required to be enacted by three different actors, so that there were the first, the second, and the third Jacob, to emulate one another, and provoke bickerings; townsfolk when acting, it appears, being querulously jealous. Something of scenical illusion was contrived, and what in the style of the green-room is termed "properties"[11] was attempted, by the description we find in the directions to the actors, and by the mischances which occurred to the unpractised performers by their clumsy machinery.