Of the half-dozen morals that made for the development of constructive or interpretative comedy, one of the earliest (about 1400) and most important was the _Castell of Perseverance_. In the quality of its dramatic devices it sustains a close relation to the Digby _Magdalene_,--the siege of the Castell by the Seven Deadly Sins, and their repulse under the roses which the Virtues have discharged. It also makes use of characters already prominent in the eleventh Coventry play, the _Pax_ and _Misericordia_, who there, as here, intercede for mankind. Collier calls this a well-constructed and much varied allegory, and says with good reason that its completeness indicates predecessors in the same kind. It is itself an early treatment of a fruitful theme, variously handled in later plays like Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_, and in narratives like _The Holy War_. Though the abstractions are not of a highly dramatic character, still one or two of them,--for instance _Detractio_, the Vice, who is a cousin of the Coventry Backbiter, and of _Invidia_, "who dwellyth in Abbeys ofte," foreshadow the comedy of manners and satire, that is to say, the comedy of criticism. Other morals or moral interludes of the constructive kind, which I must forbear to describe, even though they contributed in one way or another to the improvement of dramatic consciousness or skill, are the _Pride of Life_, of antiquity perhaps as high as the preceding; the _Wisdom that is Christ_, 1480-1490, a comedy in the mediæval sense, insomuch as it portrays the ultimate triumph of a hero in his contest with temptation; _Mundus et Infans_, printed 1522, but written perhaps by the beginning of the century, which, beside giving us a vivid satirical picture of low life, makes a twofold contribution to the technique of comedy,--an iteration of crises in plot, and a sequence of changes in the character of the hero; Skelton's _Magnyfycence_, 1515-1523, significant for "vigour and vivacity of diction," and his _Nigromansir_, written somewhat earlier, which, though now lost, appears by Warton's account to have contributed, by its attack upon ecclesiastical abuses, to the beginnings of satirical comedy; the _Moralle Play of the Somonynge of Everyman_, printed before 1531, but of uncertain date of composition,--a tragedy to be sure, but "one of the most perfect allegories ever formed." All these, even when not purposively comic or even entertaining, assist the dramatic presentation of an imaginative ideal; occasionally also, though less directly, they contribute to dramatic satire and the portrayal of manners.