Termagant, the supposed god of the Saracens, was another staple character in the Miracle-Plays; who is described by John Florio as “a great boaster, quarreller, killer, tamer or ruler of the universe, the child of the earthquake and of the thunder, the brother of death.”  That Shakespeare himself had suffered under the monstrous din of these “strutting and bellowing” stage-thumpers is shown by Hamlet’s remonstrance with the players:  “O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to rags, to very tatters, to split the ears of the groundlings:  I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod:  pray you, avoid it.”

Thus much must suffice by way of indicating, in a general sort, the character of those primitive sprouts and upshoots of the Gothic Drama in England.  Their rudeness of construction, their ingrained coarseness of style, their puerility, their obscenity, and indecency, according to our standard, are indescribable.  Their quality in these respects could only be shown by specimens, and these I have not room to produce, nor would it be right or decent to do so, if I had.

But what strikes us, perhaps, still more offensively in those old religious plays, is the irreverent and shocking familiarity everywhere used with the sacredest persons and things of the Christian Faith.  The awfullest and most moving scenes and incidents of the Gospel history, such as the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, were treated with what cannot but seem to us the most shameless and most disgusting profanity:  the poor invention of the time was racked to the uttermost, to harrow the audience with dramatic violence and stress; and it seems to us impossible but that all the solemnity of the matter must have been defeated by such coarseness of handling.

But, indeed, we can hardly do justice either to the authors or the audiences of those religious comedies; there being an almost impassable gulf fixed between their modes of thought and ours.  The people were then just emerging from the thick darkness of Gothic barbarism into what may be termed the border-land of civilization.  As such, their minds were so dominated by the senses, that they could scarce conceive of any beings much more than one grade above themselves.  A sort of infantile unconsciousness, indeed, had possession of them; so that they were really quite innocent of the evils which we see and feel in what was so entertaining to them.  Hence, as Michelet remarks, “the ancient Church did not scruple to connect whimsical dramatic rites with the most sacred doctrines and objects.”