Once they have discovered and punished the thieves, the storyline switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of Christ by an angel, and going to Bethlehem to offer the true Child gifts.

He paints a portrait of his wife as a loud, heavy-drinking, alternately abusive and sentimentally pious, whale-sized woman.

Mak tries to gain sympathy from the shepherds by explaining how his wife is a lazy drunk who gives birth to too many children.

He heads back to his cottage and trades insults with Gill, his wife, who firmly believes that Mak will be hanged for the theft and comes up with a plan for hiding the sheep – she will put it in an empty cradle and pretend that it is her newborn child, and that she is loudly, painfully in labor with its twin, so that the shepherds will quickly give up any search.

With despair at their catastrophic ill fortune, the shepherds realize a sheep is missing and go to search Mak's house.

When they remove the swaddling clothes they recognize their sheep, but decide not to kill Mak but instead roll him in canvas and throw him up and down, punishing him until they are exhausted.

When they have left Mak's cottage, the biblical story proper begins – the Angel appears and tells them to go to "Bedlam" (Bethlehem) to see the Christ child.

They wonder at the event, chastising each other for their collective delay, and then go to the manger where Mary (Mother of Jesus) welcomes them and receives their praise for her mildness.

They each address the Child in turn, beginning by praising His authority and His creation of all things in tones of reverence and awe, but each comically shifting mid-speech to cooing, gushing baby talk, since they are addressing an adorable baby, whom Coll, Gib, and Daw respectively give "a bob of cherries," a bird, and a ball ("Have and play thee withal, and go to the tennis!")

In 1903, Gayley and Alwin Thaler published an anthology of criticism and dramatic selections entitled Representative English Comedies.

A sixth play, The Killing of Abel is also thought to have been heavily influenced by him if not exclusively written by him, along with The Last Judgment, to which he contributed at least half.

However, scholars and literary critics find it useful to hypothesize a single talent behind them, due to the unique poetic qualities of the works ascribed to him.

[7] Depending on the area of the performances, the plays were performed in the middle of the street, on pageant wagons in the streets of great cities (this was inconvenient for the actors because the small stage size made stage movement difficult), in the halls of nobility, or in the round in amphitheatres, as suggested by current archaeology in Cornwall and the southwest of England.

[11] Some have seen the folk-origins of the story as contributing to an extended reflection on class-struggle and solidarity in light of immediate and eternal realities,[10][12][13] while others have emphasized the theological dimension, in which 15th century England is mystically conflated with first-century Judaea and the Nativity with the Apocalypse.

What begins to emerge in Mack's article is that he feels that the play is not only sophisticated, but the comedic aspects are there to enhance the rest of the text.