That they were long drawn out, cumbersome, disjointed and quite without dramatic design has also been indicated.

Their real significance as forerunners of opera lies in their insistent employment of certain materials, such as verse, music and spectacular action, which afterwards became essential parts of the machinery of the lyric drama.
Indeed in the profusion of spectacular interludes one finds much that resembles not only opera, but also the English masque and sometimes even the French pastoral.

Yet close examination will convince any student of operatic history that almost every form of theatrical performance, from the choral dance to the most elaborate festival show, exerted a certain amount of influence on the hybrid product called opera.

For example, between the acts of "Saint Uliva," which required two days for its presentation, the "Masque of Hope" was given.

The stage directions say: "You will cause three women, well beseen, to issue, one of them attired in white, one in red, the other in green, with golden balls in their hands, and with them a young man robed in white; and let him, after looking many times first on one and then on another of these damsels, at last stay still and say the following verses, gazing at her who is clad in green." The story of Echo and Narcissus was also enacted and the choir of nymphs which carried off the dead youth had a song beginning thus: "Fly forth in bliss to heaven, Thou happy soul and fair." On the other hand some few sacred plays showed skill in the treatment of character.