Miracle-plays and moralities ranked amongst the most widespread and coloured elements, century after century, of burgher and even of village life. It is not surprising that their subjects and their methods exercised a powerful influence upon other manifestations of the mediaeval spirit. The share which their vivid and sensuous presentations of religious ideas had in shaping the conceptions of artists and handicraftsmen is a fascinating topic of far too wide a scope to be even touched upon here[449]. But a few pages must be devoted to indicating the nature of their overflow into various pseudo-dramatic, rather than strictly dramatic, forms of entertainment. One of these is the puppet-show. It has been pointed out, in speaking of the liturgical drama, that the use of puppets to provide a figured representation of the mystery of the Nativity, seems to have preceded the use for the same purpose of living and speaking persons; and further, that the puppet-show, in the form of the ‘Christmas crib,’ has outlived the drama founded upon it, and is still in use in all Catholic countries[450]. An analogous custom is the laying of the crucifix in the ‘sepulchre’ during the Easter ceremonies, and there is one English example of a complete performance of a Resurrection play by ‘certain smalle puppets, representinge the Persons of Christe, the Watchmen, Marie and others.’ This is described by a seventeenth-century writer as taking place at Witney in Oxfordshire ‘in the dayes of ceremonial religion,’ and one of the watchmen, which made a clacking noise, was ‘comonly called Jack Snacker of Wytney[451].’ This points to the use of some simple mechanical device by which motion was imparted to some at least of the puppets. A similar contrivance was produced by Bishop Barlow to point a sermon against idolatry at Paul’s Cross in 1547 and was given afterwards to the boys to break into pieces[452]. More elaborate representations of miracle-plays by means of moving puppets or _marionnettes_ make their appearance in all parts of Europe at a period when the regular dramatic performances of similar subjects were already becoming antiquated, nor can they be said to be even yet quite extinct[453]. Most of them belong to the repertory of the professional showmen, and it will be remembered that some form or other of _marionnette_ seems to have been handed down continuously amongst the minstrel class from Roman times[454]. In England the puppet-shows were much in vogue at such places as Bartholomew Fair, where they became serious rivals of the living actors[455]. The earliest name for them was ‘motions[456].’ Italian players brought ‘an instrument of strange motions’ to London in 1574[457]. Autolycus, in _The Winter’s Tale_, amongst his other shifts for a living, ‘compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son[458].’ Ben Jonson, in _Bartholomew Fair_, introduces one Lanthorn Leatherhead, a puppet-showman, who presents in