Another far-reaching inheritance from the miracle plays was derived from their treatment of tragic themes and situations and from their pervading seriousness of purpose. Their purpose was ethical and religious edification; their theme the tragedy of sin; their situations were derived from the stories of Cain, Lucifer, Judas, John the Baptist, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion. If no formal tragedy resulted, and if in inculcating the triumph of righteousness the stories of the worthies and the martyrdoms of the saints took rather the cast of tragicomedy, it was nevertheless of great significance for later tragedy that, generations before Seneca became known with his bloody stories and sententious philosophy, the drama had been the vehicle for ethical instruction and for the presentation of the most terrible and pitiful events. The miracle plays had long familiarized men with tragic action, tragic conceptions in the drama, and tragic power in the treatment of situation. The tragic was often mingled with the comic. The dramatists mixed edification with amusement. The restraints of the sacred narrative were thrown aside for a moment, and in Herod, or Noah's wife, or the shepherds awaiting the announcement of the birth of the Messiah, opportunities were taken for the introduction of realistic portraiture of contemporary life. Horse-play and buffoonery or racy comedy often contrasted incongruously with events of momentous importance. This mixture of the comic and tragic survived in the popular drama despite the opposition of the humanists. It was indeed characteristic of medieval and Elizabethan manners and taste, and marks another important departure from classical precedent. We to-day are perhaps as near to the Athenians as to the Elizabethans in this respect. At all events, for the appreciation of Elizabethan tragedy, we sometimes need to reassert a childish and uncultivated disregard for the rapid changes of emotional tone, a liking for tears and laughter close together; or, perhaps there is ground for saying, we need to recognize the validity of the medieval taste for a comic contrast and relief in tragedy, and to accept in art the incongruities and grotesqueness of actual life.