[1] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 195, 8vo edition; but it has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically, this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer, another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 572. The dramatist, however, was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the present occasion. [2] TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM, LACTANTIUS, CYPRIAN, and others, have vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubtless the invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of the puritanic denouncement against "stage-plays" and "play-goers." The Fathers furnished ample quotations for PRYNNE in his "Histriomastix." It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amusement is necessary to the happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic art. See a curious tract, "The Stage Condemned," which contains a collection of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, "Sur les Théâtres," does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman. [3] "Tiraboschi," iv. [4] These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the Gothic poem of Dante--his Hell, his Purgatory, and his Paradise--was an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which often fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as in the year 1739, a mystery of _The Damned Soul_, acted by living personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin; we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.--Spence's "Anecdotes," 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-shows, and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and elsewhere. [5] See the note and this extraordinary blunder in _Fabliaux_, ii. 152. [6] Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed collections see note to "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p. 352.--ED.]