The Netherlands. In the neighbouring Netherlands many Easter and Christmas mysteries are noted from the middle of the 15th century, attesting the enduring popularity of these religious plays; and with them the celebrated series of the Seven Joys of Maria--of which the first is the Annunciation and the seventh the Ascension. To about the same date belongs the small group of the so-called _abele spelen_ (as who should say plays easily managed), chiefly on chivalrous themes. Though allegorical figures are already to be found in the Netherlands miracles of Mary, the species of the moralities was specially cultivated during the great Burgundian period of this century by the chambers or lodges of the _Rederijkers_ (rhetoricians)--the well-known civic associations which devoted themselves to the cultivation of learned poetry and took an active share in the festivals that formed one of the most characteristic features of the life of the Low Countries. Among these moralities was that of _Elckerlijk_ (printed 1495 and presumably by Peter Dorlandus), which there is good reason for regarding as the original of one of the finest of English moralities, _Everyman_. Italy. In Italy the liturgical drama must have run its course as elsewhere; but the traces of it are few, and confined to the north-east. The collective mystery, so common in other Western countries, is in Italian literature represented by a single example only--a _Passione di Gesù Cristo_, performed at Revello in Saluzzo in the 15th century; though there are some traces of other cyclic dramas of the kind. The Italian religious plays, called _figure_ when on Old, _vangeli_ when on New, Testament subjects, and differing from those of northern Europe chiefly by the less degree of coarseness in their comic characters, seem largely to have sprung out of the development of the processional element in the festivals of the Church. Besides such processions as that of the Three Kings at Epiphany in Milan, there were the penitential processions and songs (_laude_), which at Assisi, Perugia and elsewhere already contained a dramatic element; and at Siena, Florence and other centres these again developed into the so-called (_sacre_) _rappresentazioni_, which became the most usual name for this kind of entertainment. Such a piece was the _San Giovanni e San Paolo_ (1489), by Lorenzo the Magnificent--the prince who afterwards sought to reform the Italian stage by paganizing it; another was the _Santa Teodora_, by Luigi Pulci (d. 1487); _San Giovanni Gualberto_ (of Florence) treats the religious experience of a latter-day saint; _Rosana e Ulimento_ is a love-story with a Christian moral. Passion plays were performed at Rome in the Coliseum by the _Compagnia del Gonfalone_; but there is no evidence on this head before the end of the 15th century. In general, the spectacular magnificence of Italian theatrical displays accorded with the growing pomp of the processions both ecclesiastical and lay--called