Traditional fairy tales include many disturbing, violent stories, but their sharp edges are often softened by magic, timely rescues, and the prevailing power of
virtue over evil.
Morality plays, based on scriptural themes and dramatized for the illiterate masses of the Middle Ages the struggle of good with
evil, embodied in the various characters
virtues such as innocence, beauty, kindness, and patriotism in their triumph
over vices such as sloth, ugliness, gluttony, lying, and cheating.