Alliterative place name lists in early drama

The alliterative place-name list, which seems to have started out as a bombastic verbal tour de force calculated to show up the moral failings of the character who employs it or who is its target, became a theatrical convention which changed chimerically over a century and a half. It shows that a convention is not a dead motif, but something that can be conveniently adapted to serve whatever end the playwright desire