The _moralities_ corresponded to the love for allegory which manifests itself in so many periods of English literature, and which, while dominating the whole field of medieval literature, was nowhere more assiduously and effectively cultivated than in England. It is necessary to bear this in mind, in order to understand what to us seems so strange, the popularity of the moral-plays, which indeed never equalled that of the miracles, but sufficed to maintain the former species till it received a fresh impulse from the connexion established between it and the "new learning," together with the new political and religious ideas and questions, of the Reformation age. Moreover, a specially popular element was supplied to these plays, which in manner of representation differed in no essential point from the miracles, in a character borrowed from the latter, and, in the moralities, usually provided with a companion whose task it was to lighten the weight of such abstractions as Sapience and Justice. These were the Devil and his attendant the _Vice_, of whom the latter seems to have been of native origin, and, as he was usually dressed in a fool's habit, was probably suggested by the familiar custom of keeping an attendant fool at court or in great houses. The Vice had many _aliases_ (_Shift_, _Ambidexter_, _Sin_, _Fraud_, _Iniquity_, &c.), but his usual duty is to torment and tease the Devil his master for the edification and diversion of the audience. He was gradually blended with the domestic fool, who survived in the regular drama. There are other concrete elements in the moralities; for typical figures are often fitted with concrete names, and thus all but converted into concrete human personages. Groups of English moralities.