I have alluded to the distinctively national note that characterizes the comic contributions to the sacred plays, and I find that my opinion is confirmed by the examples cited by Klein and Creizenach. The French mystery poets, while they develop, like the English, the comic quality of the shepherd scenes, introduce the drinking and dicing element _ad lib._,--and sometimes the drabbing; they make, moreover, a specialty of the humour of deformity, a characteristic which appears nowhere in the English plays. The Germans, in their turn, elaborate a humour peculiar to themselves,--elephantine, primitive, and personal. They seem to get most run out of reviling the idiosyncrasies of Jews, whose dress, appearance, manners, and speech they caricature,--even introducing Jewish _dramatis personæ_ to sing gibberish, exploit cunning, and perform obscenities under the names of contemporary citizens of the hated race. In general a freer rein seems to have been given to the sacrilegious, grotesque, and obscene on the Continent than in England. In the _Passion_ of A. Greban (before 1452), Herod orders Jesus into the garb of a fool; and in some of the German plays the judges dance about the cross upon which the Saviour hangs. Much of the ribaldry was of course impromptu, and on that account the more grotesque; as in the story related by Bebel of how a baker playing the part of Christ in the _Processus Crucis_ bore the gibes of his tormentors with admirable composure, until one actor Jew insisted upon calling him a corn thief,--"Shut up," retorted the Christ, "or I'll come down and break your head with the cross." There is, of course, an occasional license in the English plays, such as the dance about the cross in the Coventry; but the excess of ribaldry, _grotesquerie_, and _diablerie_ does not assault the imagination as in the continental mysteries. =4. The Contribution of Later "Marvels" and Early Secular Plays= The advance which remained to be made upon the quality of play presented in the miracle cycle before England could have an artistic comedy were threefold: _first_, from the collective to the single play; _second_, from the reproduction of traditional or accidental events to the selection of such as possessed significance and continuity; and _third_, from the employment of the remote in material and interest to the employment of the immediate and familiar.