In its stead the musical forms practised by composers of secular music and adopted by musicians of such small education as hardly to be worthy of the title of composers, makers of carnival songs and frottole, predominated and determined the musical character not only of the Sacre Rappresentazioni, but also of the secular lyric plays which succeeded them and which continued to exist in Italy even after the "stile rappresentativo" had been introduced in the primitive dramma per musica of Caccini and Peri.
A closer examination of the songs of this period and of the manner in which they affected the lyric character of the sacred plays and the succeeding secular dramas may be postponed until we have permitted ourselves a glance at the character of the sacred plays as literary products and have taken into account the manner of their performance.
The Disciplinati di Gesu began by intoning their lauds before a crucifix or the shrine of some saint.

Presently they introduced antiphonal singing and in the end dialogue and action.

By the middle of the fourteenth century the laud came to be called "Divozione." After being written in a number of meters it finally adhered to the _ottava rima_, the stanza generally used in the popular poetry of the fifteenth century.

It was the custom to sing these dramatic lauds or "Divozioni" in the oratories.

Every fraternity had a collection of such lauds and that they were performed with much detail is easily ascertained.
Records of the Perugian Confraternity of San Domenico for 1339 show that wings and crowns for angels, a crimson robe for Christ, black veils for the Maries, a coat of mail for Longinus, a dove to symbolize the Holy Ghost and other properties had been used.