The manner of presentation of the fifteenth-century moralities did not differ from that of the contemporary miracle-plays. The manuscript of the _Castle of Perseverance_ contains a prologue delivered by _vexillatores_ after the fashion of the _Ludus Coventriae_ and the Croxton _Sacrament_. There is also, as in the Cornish mysteries published by Mr. Norris, a diagram showing a circular ‘place’ bounded by a ditch or fence, with a central ‘castel’ and five ‘skaffoldys’ for the principal performers. Under the castle is ‘Mankynde, is bed’ and near it ‘Coveytyse cepbord.’ The scaffolds are the now familiar _loca_ or _sedes_. The scantier indications of more than one of the other moralities proper suggest that they also were performed in an outdoor ‘place’ with _sedes_, and a similar arrangement is pointed to by the stage directions of the _Mary Magdalen_. Nor could the moralities dispense with those attractions of devils and hell-fire which had been so popular in their predecessors. Belial, in the _Castle of Perseverance_, is to have gunpowder burning in pipes in his hands and ears and other convenient parts of his body; _Anima_, in _Mind, Will and Understanding_, has little devils running in and out beneath her skirts; and in _Mary Magdalen_, the ‘prynse of dylles’ enters in ‘a stage, and Helle ondyr-neth that stage.’ The later moralities, of which the sixteenth century affords several examples, were presented under somewhat different conditions, which will be discussed in another chapter[446]. Allusions to the ‘morals at Manningtree,’ however, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, suggest that moralities may have continued in out-of-the-way places to hold the open-air stage, just as miracle-plays here and there did, to a comparatively late date. Actual examples of the more popular type of morality from the sixteenth century are afforded by Skelton’s _Magnificence_ and by Sir David Lyndsay’s _Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis_, shown successively at Linlithgow in 1540, on the Castle-hill at Cupar of Fife in 1552, and in the Greenside at Edinburgh about 1554. This remarkable piece differs in many ways from the English moralities. The theme consists of the arraignment of the estates of the realm before _Rex Humanitas_. Various ‘vycis’ and allegorical personages appear and plead, and the action is enlivened by farcical interludes for the amusement of the vulgar, and wound up by a sermon of ‘Folie,’ which points rather to French than to English models[447]. The flight of time is also shown by the fact that the _Satyre_ aims less at the moral edification with which the fifteenth-century plays contented themselves, than at the introduction of a sharp polemic against abuses in church and state. Skelton’s _Magnificence_ had also, not improbably, some political bearing. To this matter also I return in another chapter[448].