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 I
 
 PLAYS OF OUR 
 FOREFATHERS
 
 
 
 Hell-Mouth and Interior, from a Fresco at Stratfortl-upon-Avon 
 From "A indentation <>n th- Pageants or Urania tic Mysteries 
 Anciently Performed at Cuvtiitrv"
 
 PLAYS OF OUR 
 FOREFATHERS 
 
 AND SOME OF THE 
 
 TRADITIONS UPON 
 
 WHICH THEY WERE 
 
 FOUNDED 
 
 EY 
 
 CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY 
 
 LITT.D., LL.D. 
 
 Professor of the English Language and Literature 
 in the University of California
 
 Copyright, 
 By Fox, DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 
 By DUFFIELD & COMPANY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY MESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
 
 College 
 Library 
 
 G, 9-5 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 I HAVE hoped that the reading public might be inter- 
 ested in the mediaeval drama, not only as an instance of 
 the development of literary art, but as a chronicle of the 
 ideals and traditions, the religious consciousness, the 
 romance and humour of times that seem to be remote, 
 but after all are modern in a myriad surprising ways, and 
 human to the core. To laugh and weep, to worship 
 and to revel for a season, in the manner and spirit of 
 our ancestors, were infinitely more pleasing than the 
 pride of controversy or the pursuit of scientific ends. 
 If I have sometimes used mere reverence, fellow-feeling, 
 and imagination to reconstruct these plays and times, I 
 trust the scholar will sympathise and condone ; if I have 
 in places turned source-hunter and advocate, I know the 
 genial reader will skip. 
 
 My indebtedness to authorities is, I think, sufficiently 
 indicated in the body of the book. For the prepara- 
 tion of the index I take great pleasure in expressing my 
 obligation to my former pupil and present colleague, 
 Mr. G. A. Smithson, of the University of California. 
 
 BERKELEY, July 20, 1907.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA p AGE 
 
 The Disappearance of the Ancient Drama I 
 
 The Germ of the Modern : Religious 2 
 
 The Occasion : Festivals. of the Church 5 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 
 
 From the Resurrection Trope 14 
 
 From the Christmas Trope 24 
 
 From Tropes of Advent, Ascension, and Pentecost 28 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 
 
 The Feast of the Ass 33 
 
 The Feast of Fools 47 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BOY BISHOP AND THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 
 
 The Boy Bishop 54 
 
 Plays of Holy Innocents and St. Nicholas 61 
 
 The Girl Abbess and the Nuns' Plays 66 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN SATIRE AND WONDER 
 
 The Softie and the Farce 70 
 
 English Revels of Misrule 72 
 
 The Miracles de Nostre Dame 75
 
 viii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 From Church to Guild 83 
 
 Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi 90 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SECULAR REPRESENTATION OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 Regulation by the Crafts 95 
 
 Methods of Presentation 99 
 
 Properties and Expenses 105 
 
 Authorship 108 
 
 Contemporary Allusions 1 1 1 
 
 The Spectators 113 
 
 The Passing of the Miracles 115 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE COLLECTIVE STORY OF THE CYCLES 
 The Collective Story of the Cycles 1 1 8 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 The Cornish 1 26 
 
 The Manuscripts of the York and Other Cycles 128 
 
 The Dates of Composition : The Chester 128 
 
 The York 133 
 
 The Towneley or Wakefield 133 
 
 The Ludus Coventriae or N-Town Plays 135 
 
 The Digby, Beverley, Lincoln, and Other Plays .... 139 
 
 The Comparative Scope of the Cycles 141 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 The Early Infusion of the Comic 144 
 
 Illustrated by the Earlier Plays of Cornwall, Chester, N-Town, 
 c '49
 
 CONTENTS ix 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS OF HUMOUR AND REALISM p AGE 
 The York Schools of Humour and Realism 153 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 
 
 His Relation to the Schools of York 161 
 
 To the School of Humour 166 
 
 To the School of Realism 173 
 
 His Masterpiece ; and Other Attributions 1 80 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 
 
 Especially in the Ludus Coventrise and the Middle Period of 
 the York 191 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF PATHOS AND SUBLIMITY 
 The Elements of Pathos and Sublimity 198 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATER MIRACLES 
 
 The Allegorical, Mock-Ideal, Sensational 205 
 
 Especially of the Digby Plays 207 
 
 The Devil, Deadly Sins, and Vice 208 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 
 
 History and Method of Presentation < . 213 
 
 Their Character as Compared with the English 216 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CURIOUS TRADITIONS IN THE CYCLES 
 
 The Angelic Hierarchy and the Fall of Lucifer 224 
 
 The History of the " Angelic Orders " 228 
 
 The History of the " Fall of Lucifer " 236
 
 x CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE OIL OF MERCY AND THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Mission of Scth and the Promise of the Oil 247 
 
 The Three Kernels and the History of the Cross- Wood . . . 249 
 The Sources of the Stories 256 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 THE OIL OF MERCY AND THE HARROWING OF HELL 
 
 The Legend from the Gospel of Nieodtmtu 260 
 
 Dramatic Use by the Cycles 265 
 
 Biblical, Apocalyptic, and Other Sources 265 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 THE COMING OF ANTICHRIST 
 
 The Prophecy in the Chester Play, the Cursor Mundi, etc. . . 272 
 Its Origin and Growth 274 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES TO MORALS, AND OF 
 MORALS TO INTERLUDES 
 
 Miracles and Morals 279 
 
 Morals and Interludes 283 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 SOME OF THE OLDER MORALS 
 Some of the Older Morals 293 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 LESS-KNOWN SURVIVALS OF THE MORAL INTERLUDE 
 
 Controversial Playi 30x3 
 
 Artistic Variations of the Stock, Introductory to the Drama of 
 
 Character and of Humours 302
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 SOME LESS-KNOWN FORERUNNERS OF ROMANTIC COMEDY 
 
 PAGE 
 Some Less-Known Forerunners of Romantic Comedy . . . . 315 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A. Observations on the Sources of the Cycles 323 
 
 B. The Advertisement of Levity 334 
 
 INDEX 
 
 339
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Hell- Mouth and Interior Frontispiece 
 
 From a fresco at Stratford-upon-Avon 
 A Scene of Torture in a Passion Play, Facing page 8 
 
 From a picture by Albrecht Diirer 
 
 The End of the World 12 
 
 The Virgin and Child, the Adoration of the Magi, and 
 
 the Massacre of the Innocents 24 
 
 Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles 30 
 
 A Monument to a Boy-Bishop 56 
 
 St. Nicholas and the Schoolboys 64 
 
 " Miracle a" une femme que Notre Dame gar da de la mer 
 
 au Mont Saint-Michel" 76 
 
 Robert the Devil at the Emperor's Court 80 
 
 A Pageant 88 
 
 A Pageant 102 
 
 Pilate's Club or Mall 106 
 
 The Sacrifice of Isaac 126 
 
 Devil with Hammer, from a fresco at Stratford-upon-Avon . . . 138 
 The Elect Who Have Lived Before and Those Who 
 
 Have Lived After the Deluge 168 
 
 Devils and Cauldron 178 
 
 The Meeting of the Magi and Herod, the Massacre of the 
 
 Innocents, and the Flight into Egypt 1 94 
 
 The Passion Play at Valenciennes in 1547 216 
 
 Enoch and Elias witnessing of the Lord before Antichrist . . 232 
 
 " Et vidi stellam de ccelo cfcidisse" 238 
 
 The Defeat of the Dragon and the Proclamation of the 
 
 Reign of the Lord 240 
 
 Michael overthrows the Dragon 242 
 
 Christ harrowing Hell 262 
 
 Enoch, Elias, and the Antichrist 272 
 
 The Massacre of Enoch and Elias . . . 274 
 
 The Death of Antichrist and Ascension of Enoch and Elias . . 276 
 
 Everyman 288 
 
 Death 290 
 
 Characters in " Hycke-Scorner " . . 296
 
 PLAYS 
 
 OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAiMA 
 
 WHEN, in the earlier centuries of the Christian era, 
 the law and order, the social forms, refinement, and 
 art of classical civilisation were submerged by the flood 
 of barbaric invasion, it was only natural that the ancient 
 drama should likewise disappear. Greek tragedy had, 
 indeed, long ago degenerated into rhetoric and ethical 
 bombast ; and Roman comedy had yielded, as a popular 
 amusement, to the brutal and spectacular orgies of the 
 Coliseum, the obscenities and ineptitudes of dancers, 
 mimics, and jugglers. But among the cultivated the 
 masterpieces themselves were still a source of delight, and 
 might yet, had Roman civilisation been suffered to work 
 out its own reform, have served as models for the 
 recrudescence of the ancient stage. Under the barbarian 
 rulers of the dismembered empire, they persisted merely 
 as manuscripts in one and another ecclesiastical library 
 or religious muniment-room of Europe. 
 
 But the dramatic instinct of mankind survives its prod- 
 ucts. It is perennial : when thwarted here it bubbles
 
 2 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 elsewhere unexpected. For as it is innate in man to 
 imitate, so especially to imitate the actions and passions 
 of man. In the folk-festivals of our Norse and Teu- 
 tonic ancestors, and in the lays of the mediaeval minstrel, 
 the desire for dramatic representation struggled for an 
 outlet; it found expression, crude and lewd and personal, 
 in those survivals of the southern mime which lent 
 sporadic laughter to the merry-makings of castle and 
 court all through the ages known as dark and mediaeval ; 
 it posed sincere, ascetic, awkward, in the dramatic off- 
 spring of the humanist, when now and again some 
 cloistered devotee of ^Eschylus, Euripides, or Terence 
 sought to inspire his pagan models with the breath of 
 Christian belief, or to convert the material of the classics 
 into modern incident, character, and device. Plautus 
 (in whose comedies, with those of Terence, St. Jerome 
 was wont to seek refreshment after strenuous seasons 
 of fasting and prayer) was imitated in a Querolus, and 
 probably in a Geta, as early as the fourth century. 
 Terence, the dear delight of the mediaeval monastery, 
 was in the tenth pruned of his pagan charm and naugh- 
 tiness, and planted out in six persimmon comedies by 
 a Saxon nun of Gandersheim, Hrosvitha, comedies 
 of tedious saints and hircine sinners and a stuffy Latin 
 style. And in that same century a tragedy of the 
 Suffering Christ was patched up of lines from ^Eschylus 
 and Euripides. This is the X/HOTOS irao^eup long 
 attributed to Gregory Nazianzene, but now assigned 
 by scholars to Johannes Tzetzes, some six hundred 
 years later, or to some other Snug or Rowley of the time. 
 But this lacked body as those artistic flavour. All are 
 rechauffes. 
 
 Neither the lingering rites of a decadent superstition,
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIAEVAL DRAMA 3 
 
 such as furnished forth the festivals of Saxon spring and 
 harvest, nor lifeless adaptation of the classics, could satisfy 
 the dramatic instinct of a civilisation groping, to be sure, 
 but none the less advancing, toward an ideal of richer 
 content, religious and social. To be effective, vital, 
 drama must represent spiritual conflict or the jostle 
 of social adjustment. The former kind of play is tragedy ; 
 the latter, comedy. Just as Greek tragedy was religious 
 in its matter, essence, and aim, so must the tragedy of 
 early Christian civilisation, if it is to endure, have its germ 
 and spiritual effect in things religious. As the plays of 
 -flischylus, Sophocles, and Euripides sprang from myths 
 of conduct, aspiration, mystery, the Promethean 
 struggle with destiny, the Dionysiac quest of immortality, 
 the Heraclean assertion of man's ideal strength; the con- 
 flict of law, human and divine, in Antigone, of love and 
 life in Alcestis, of lust and chastity in Hippolytus, so 
 must the tragedy of the new era have its roots in the 
 springs of Christian feeling : it must breathe the air of 
 Christian ritual ; flower in Christian legend, scripture, 
 romance ; have its fruitage in ideals of conduct character- 
 istic ot a Christian age. As the dramatic spectacle of the 
 Greek, dealing with mysteries of the religious life, aimed 
 to transmute that Fear of the unknown, which gripes the 
 untutored heart, into a reverent resignation to the inevi- 
 table, and to substitute for the hopeless Pity aroused by 
 unmerited suffering the consolation of frailty and inno- 
 cence triumphant over mortality, so must the drama of 
 God-in-man, the tragedy of a human Saviour, purify 
 mankind not by terror of retribution from without, 
 but by fear of God within the heart ; not alone by pity 
 for sorrows inexplicable and intimate, but by sympathy 
 with the suffering brotherhood of man. What Christian-
 
 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 ity teaches, the tragedy of a Christian civilisation must 
 present in the symbolic form of actual lives, characters, and 
 conflicts : inward righteousness, outward charity. 
 
 And as the comedy, too, of Greeks and Romans showed 
 that not all mistakes in social conduct are necessarily 
 fatal, and not all apparent successes final, so the comedy 
 of a Christian age must show how in the realm of con- 
 vention the joyous heart may triumph over untoward 
 circumstance ; how wit and humour, sharp-shooters of 
 the band of Mirth, may rout battalions of ignorance and 
 sham and self-conceit. Indeed, we should expect to find 
 that in the drama of the Christian religion, where mercy 
 tempers justice, Fear and Hope shall meet together, 
 Pity and Mirth shall kiss each other. And our expecta- 
 tion will not be disappointed. 
 
 It was not until the church of the Dark Ages had be- 
 gun to emphasise in its religious functions the dramatic 
 element lying at the core of its ritual and its faith, and to 
 realise that the latter could be best inculcated by drama- 
 tising the former, the faith emphasised by staging the 
 ritual, it was not until then that the modern drama 
 was born. This has been said by hundreds. In what 
 follows let me, for the sake of brevity, quote : 
 
 " The climax of a tragedy in life was [from the first] 
 recognised in the marvellous self-sacrifice of Christ. 
 Around the Eucharist, the memorial of thanksgiving 
 for that death and resurrection, grew up the Christian 
 worship. As a fit approach to that solemn feast, various 
 acts of preparation were introduced, until, as a result, an 
 established mode of procedure, a formal liturgy, ex- 
 pressed the devotion of the disciple not less by action 
 than by word." * But, so long as the feast remained a 
 1 Davidson : English Mystery Plays, p. 6.
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA 5 
 
 mere memorial, a thanksgiving, purely symbolical, the 
 element capable of arousing " dramatic " emotion was 
 lacking ; for dramatic emotion centres not about a mem- 
 ory, a doctrine, an idea, but about an action, a suffering, 
 a Presence. If the illusion of another's agony is pre- 
 sented as real and immediate, the onlooker, by sympa- 
 thetically re-enacting in his own imagination that agony, 
 feels the pity and the fear that are distinctively tragic. 
 When in the ninth century, by the formulation of the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, the bread and wine of 
 the Eucharist came more generally to be regarded as the 
 real body and blood of Christ, no longer a mere memo- 
 rial, but a sacrifice for our sins, then began "the dra- 
 matic development of the liturgy in all countries of the 
 Roman Catholic faith. This is more than coincidence," 
 continues the writer. " It is cause and effect. The 
 dramatic element, hitherto lacking in the Christian 
 liturgy, was now present through a belief that aroused 
 the most intense emotions in the worshipper. Day after 
 day the devout among the clergy saw the Son of God 
 offered up, a present sacrifice for their sins. What act 
 of more awful import could be imagined ! And when 
 the church services, following the incidents of his life, 
 came around to the dates of his death and resurrection, 
 what longing must have possessed them to present vividly 
 to the ignorant and heedless multitude those moments 
 now stored for them with such sacred meaning ! " 
 
 Once the idea of impressing the public mind by means 
 of dramatic representation with the significance of any 
 portion of the church ritual had taken root, its branch- 
 ing and flowering were but a question of opportunity and 
 constructive imagination. The opportunity was at hand 
 in the succession of holy days appointed to be observed
 
 6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 by the ecclesiastical calendar; while the scriptures ap- 
 pointed to be read for the various fasts and festivals of the 
 year, as well as the legends of the saints celebrated on 
 their respective days, afforded such material for imagina- 
 tive elaboration as the meanest invention could not fail 
 to grasp, or succeed utterly in spoiling. The materials, 
 moreover, whether biblical or legendary, were already a 
 property of the popular consciousness ; just as the myths 
 out of which Athenian tragedy had proceeded were 
 familiar in plot, character, and sentiment because trans- 
 mitted as articles of belief for generations before they 
 became articles of dramatic edification. 
 
 The four Sundays in Advent, of which the first would 
 fall between November 27 and December 3, set before 
 the church the majesty of the person and of the king- 
 dom of the coming Lord ; to the creative imagination 
 they offered alluring material for dramatic treatment : 
 Christ riding into Jerusalem upon the ass, and cleansing 
 the Temple of its money-changers ; the healing of the 
 lepers and the restoring of sight to the blind ; the min- 
 istry of John bearing witness, and of Elijah and the 
 prophets ; the mystery of the Second Coming, " The 
 Kingdom of God is nigh at hand " ; the parable of 
 the Virgins wise and foolish, with its thrilling cry, 
 " Behold, the Bridegroom cometh " ; the rehearsal of the 
 signs that shall precede the last Judgment, and the lurid 
 history of the Man of Sin, the Antichrist whose name 
 and threatened reign were facts that gripped the mediae- 
 val heart with dread. The numerous legendary festivals 
 of this season were regarded by the common folk as a 
 foretaste of the revels of Christmas ; they afforded 
 in themselves a varied fabric for literary or proces- 
 sional commemoration. St. Cecilia's, St. Clement's, St.
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIAEVAL DRAMA 7 
 
 Catherine's, St. Andrew's, crowded the end of Novem- 
 ber ; and St. Nicholas' and St. Lucy's, together with 
 that greater festival of the Conception of the Blessed 
 Virgin, gave colour to the opening weeks of the month 
 following. The first of these December feasts, that of 
 St. Nicholas on the sixth, afforded especial provoca- 
 tion to the lovers of dramatic entertainment. For on 
 that day fell the election in many schools and church- 
 choirs of the Boy Bishop ; and there, ready to the hand 
 of clerical playwrights and mimetic boys, were legends, 
 unsurpassed for wit and wonder, of the patron saint of 
 schoolboys and of travellers whom schoolboys always 
 love. St. Thomas' day on the twenty-first would revive 
 the story of his incredulity. The twenty-fifth with the 
 Nativity of our Lord, the twenty-sixth with the martyr- 
 dom of St. Stephen, the twenty-seventh with the de- 
 voted service and miraculous escapes of St. John the 
 Beloved, and the twenty-eighth with the massacre of the 
 Holy Innocents, could not escape dramatic celebration. 
 The last, or Childermas, was, moreover, the special day 
 of the Boy Bishop, and concluded the period of his 
 rule. 
 
 January opens with the Circumcision of our Lord ; 
 Twelfth Day, or Old Christmas, follows on the sixth, and 
 presents the Epiphany of Christ to the Gentiles, the 
 beautiful story of the Star and the manifestation of the 
 Babe to the three kings of Orient. On the first Sunday 
 after Epiphany the gospel commemorates the manifesta- 
 tion of our Lord's glory in the Temple, his dispute with 
 the Doctors ; and on the second Sunday there is read the 
 beginning of his miracles at the marriage of Cana in Gali- 
 lee. Passing minor festivals, though one and another, like 
 St. Fabian's and St. Agnes', had its processions and plays,
 
 8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 we come finally, on the twenty-fifth, to the Conversion 
 of St. Paul, which of course found expression in many 
 an early play. 
 
 With Candlemas on the second of February comes 
 the festival of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and 
 there is recalled to memory the rejoicing of the aged 
 Simeon and Anna for the light that should lighten the 
 Gentiles. Then between the fourth of that month and 
 the tenth of March, with Ash Wednesday begins the 
 Lenten observance of the fasting in the wilderness and 
 the temptation by the devil, a subject for many a miracle 
 play. During March, St. David in Wales, and St. 
 Patrick in Ireland, would doubtless be celebrated by 
 pomp if not by plays. On the twenty-fifth of the month 
 the story of the angelic messenger and the Annunciation 
 stood ready to the poet's hand. Between March 15 
 and April 18, the sixth Sunday in Lent calls nowadays 
 for the narrative of the last days of the Passion and the 
 tragedy of the Crucifixion, but in the ancient English 
 Church the Benediction of the Palms took place before 
 the Holy Communion, with plain reference to the com- 
 memoration of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem : 
 "And much people took branches of palm trees, and 
 went forth to meet him, and cried Hosanna : Blessed is 
 the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord." After an acolyte had read the lesson of the en- 
 campment of the Israelites by the palm trees of Elim, 
 and a deacon that of the triumphal entry from St. John, 
 palm branches were laid upon the altar, for the exor- 
 cism and blessing of the priest; then the procession 
 passed round the church, singing Hosannas and dis- 
 tributing the branches. From this service and cele- 
 bration on the first day of Holy Week it was an easy
 
 A Scene of Torture in a Passion Play, from a picture by Albrecht Dtirer . 
 From "A History of Theatrical Art"
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA 9 
 
 and inevitable step to the dramatisation of the scriptural 
 event. 
 
 Every day of Holy Week affords by its lessons and 
 gospel distinctive material for the Drama of the Passion. 
 Scene follows scene in cumulative series, the conspiracy 
 of the Jews, the anointing by the Magdalene, the be- 
 trayal, the institution of the Lord's Supper on Maundy 
 Thursday, the culminating tragedy of Good Friday. 
 Then the dramatic rebound, with the harrowing of hell, 
 and the conversion of tragedy into comedy divine with 
 the triumph of the Resurrection, and the various ap- 
 pearances of the risen Master to the Maries and the 
 disciples. 
 
 Easter falls between March 22 and April 25 ; but 
 always on April 23 a pleasing diversion of interest from 
 the scriptural to the popular and patriotic would be 
 created by the festival of St. George, about whose legend 
 many a play and mumming was devised. Forty days 
 after Easter somewhere, that is, between April 30 
 and June 3 the services of Holy Thursday would 
 recall the glorious mystery of the Ascension ; and ten 
 days later the gospel of Whitsunday would suggest, as it 
 still does in Florence and many another Italian town, 
 the representation of the descent of the Holy Ghost. 
 We read that in the middle of the sixteenth century at 
 Whitsuntide, in St. Paul's Cathedral, they still symbolised 
 the marvel " by letting a white pigeon fly out of a hole in 
 the midst of the roof of the great aisle. The pigeon, with 
 a long censer which came down from the same place 
 almost to the ground, was swung up and down at such a 
 length that it reached with one sweep almost to the west 
 gate of the church, and with the other to the choir stairs ; 
 the censer breathing out over the whole church and the
 
 io PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 assembled multitude a most pleasant perfume from the 
 sweet things that burnt within it." * May 3 commemo- 
 rates the invention of the Holy Cross, but no play that 
 I know of grew out of that legend. The significance 
 of Trinity Sunday one week after Whitsunday com- 
 memorating as it does a dogma rather than an historical 
 event, does not lend itself to dramatic presentation. But 
 the festival of Corpus Christi on the succeeding Thursday 
 (/. . between May 21 and June 24), even though it also 
 celebrates a dogma, that of the Real Presence of our 
 Lord in the consecrated host, became, soon after it was 
 confirmed by Clement V in 1311, the occasion of most 
 of the cyclic performances of England. For the doc- 
 trine of transubstantiation is in its essence materialistic, 
 and the purpose of the Corpus Christi procession was 
 from the first to awaken dramatic interest in the Holy 
 Wafer, elevated every Sunday at the most solemn and 
 thrilling moment of the mass, and borne through the 
 streets once a year to be adored by attendant guilds 
 and expectant crowds of citizens. About this, the cen- 
 tral doctrine of a Christianity made material, the pa- 
 geants of all sacred narrative might, and did, readily 
 cluster. 
 
 The offices for the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 
 June 24, and for the ministration and martyrdom of 
 Saints Peter and Paul, June 29 ; also for various festi- 
 vals of July, that of the Visitation of the Blessed Vir- 
 gin Mary to Elizabeth on the second, of St. Margaret on 
 the twentieth, St. Mary Magdalene on the twenty- 
 second, and St. James the Greater (of Compostella) on 
 the twenty-fifth, were all suggestive of incidents, scrip- 
 
 1 Lombarde, Topographical Dictionary, c. 1570; in Hone'i Ancient 
 Afysteries.
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIEVAL DRAMA n 
 
 tural or legendary, capable of histrionic treatment. But 
 of July festivals, that which was destined to be of most 
 importance in the history of the English drama was St. 
 Anne's of the twenty-sixth ; for, in the fifteenth and 
 sixteenth centuries, the cyclic plays (especially those deal- 
 ing with the tradition of the Virgin) of several English 
 towns were transferred to that day as preferable to the 
 day of Corpus Christi. In August the scriptural narra- 
 tive again is illustrated by the festival of the Transfigu- 
 ration on the sixth, and that of the beheadal of St. John 
 the Baptist on the twenty-ninth ; while the traditional 
 history of the church is perpetuated in the festivals of 
 St. Lawrence and St. Bartholomew. Interesting sub- 
 jects, though I know of no liturgical plays or later 
 miracles founded upon them, are commemorated in 
 September, by the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy 
 Cross on the fourteenth, by St. Matthew's day on 
 the twenty-first, and St. Cyprian's (the Cyprianus ad 
 leones of the Decian persecution) on the twenty-sixth. 
 The festivals, on the other hand, of the Nativity of the 
 Blessed Virgin, the eighth, and of St. Michael and All 
 Angels, the twenty-ninth, undoubtedly contributed, the 
 former to the development of the St. Anne plays, the 
 other to the dramatisation of the legend of the war in 
 heaven, and of the several scriptures and traditions, like 
 that of Tobit, in which angelic presences ministered 
 to man. 
 
 Though many saints are celebrated in October, St. 
 Remi, St. Faith, St. Denys, King Edward the Confessor, 
 St. Etheldreda, St. Luke, Sts. Simon and Jude, and 
 St. Crispin, only the last of these, the shoemaker, and 
 his brother Crispinian, seem to have received dramatic 
 honours north of the English Channel. As patrons of
 
 12 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the gentle craft the twain were revered by every shoe- 
 maker; but the feast of their martyrdom, the twenty- 
 fifth of the month, was celebrated with especial zest in 
 Dublin, of which city they were the tutelar saints. Con- 
 cerning Edward the Confessor, though he is preeminently 
 the national saint of England, plays do not appear to 
 have been made ; but pageants in his honour upon his 
 day, October 13, are of frequent record. Of the individ- 
 ual saints of the first three weeks in November, Martin, 
 Bishop and Confessor, the beloved of beggars, who 
 covered the shivering Lord with half of his cloak, is 
 alone provocative of dramatic idealisation. But even 
 that honour he appears with characteristic modesty to 
 have declined ; so we know him best by homely associ- 
 ations, those of Old New Year's day, Martlemas beef, 
 and apples and goodies for children. The distinctive fes- 
 tival of the month is that of All Saints, or Hallowmas, 
 in its universal commemoration of martyrs one of the 
 most beautiful, in its forecast of the Day of Doom the 
 most awful, in the calendar of the church. The epistle 
 for the day is fraught with dramatic significance. It is 
 of the sealing of the servants of God, of them which 
 have come out of great tribulation, and have washed 
 their robes and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb; it emphasises the happier side of the general 
 doom. This side the mediaeval playwrights did not 
 utterly neglect ; its dark counterpart is prominent in the 
 miracle of the Judicium with which the great religious 
 cycles close. 
 
 Most of these festivals, in spite of their different 
 degrees of antiquity, have given impetus to some pageant 
 or other of the cyclic miracles by which the drama was 
 revived for the populace of the middle ages ; or they
 
 ORIGIN OF THE MEDIAEVAL DRAMA 13 
 
 have contributed both material and occasion to one or 
 another of the numerous independent plays of saints, of 
 which, though few have survived, records remain in 
 municipal documents or in literary reference at the 
 present day.
 
 i 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 
 FROM THE RESURRECTION TROPE 
 
 As in the liturgy the germ of dramatic development 
 rests in the sacrifice of the mass, so in the calendar of 
 the church the dramatic climax is reached on Good 
 Friday with the gospel of our Lord's death upon the 
 cross. For that most solemn of events in human his- 
 tory the agony of the preceding days of Holy Week has 
 been a cumulative preparation, and of that Sacrifice the 
 triumph of Easter is the only compensatory, the divinely 
 dramatic, outcome. From the ceremonies attending the 
 rituals of these days Good Friday and Easter and 
 from the tropes, by which in simple dialogue the words 
 of the scriptural participants were distributed among 
 the officiating priests, the first great dramas of our fore- 
 fathers sprang. The crucifixion itself was in earlier days 
 regarded as too sacred and painful a subject to admit 
 of active representation ; but with the joyful theme of 
 Christ's resurrection the case was altogether different; 
 and the ritual dialogue of the Easter celebration was con- 
 sequently the first to take on dramatic accessories and 
 form. There had been, indeed, as Mr. Chambers, in his 
 admirable work upon the " Mediaeval Stage," 1 points out, 
 dramatic arrangement of ceremonial processions at a very 
 early date. When, for instance, the clergy were about 
 
 VoL 11, pp- 4- 7-
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 15 
 
 to dedicate a church, they would form in rank and ap- 
 proach it, singing, " Lift up your gates, O ye rulers, and 
 be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of 
 Glory shall come in." From within there would issue 
 a scornful voice asking, " Who is this King of Glory ? " 
 as from an evil spirit, say, some malign and lingering 
 deity of pagan cult, " Who is this King of Glory ? " 
 Whereat the ranks of the Christian God would thunder 
 in reply, " The Lord of Virtues ; he is the King of Glory." 
 And then the doors of the church would be flung open, 
 and, " as the procession swept through, he who had been 
 concealed within would slip out, quasi fugiens, to join the 
 train," the ceremonial counterpart, this fugitive, of the 
 folk-gods, or devils, which writhe in gargoyles of stone 
 from under the eaves of mediaeval convent, church, and 
 college. From early times the ritual of divine service 
 had indulged in dramatic illustration : the mimetic 
 dropping of the Lenten veil at the words of the scripture, 
 " The veil of the temple was rent in twain " ; and the 
 washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, and the parting 
 of the seamless vestment on Good Friday, and so on. 
 
 From the Concordia Regularis of St. Ethelwold, drawn 
 up between 965 and 975 for ceremonials of the church 
 in Winchester, we still possess a description of the 
 most dramatic of these early rituals, the celebration 
 for Good Friday. The Latin version is given by Mr. 
 Chambers; also a graphic translation and exposition of 
 the whole : " St. Ethelwold directs that on Good Friday 
 all the monks shall go discalceati, or shoeless, from Prime 
 'until the cross is adored.' In the principal service of 
 the day, which begins at Nones, the reading of the Passion 
 according to St. John and a long series of prayers are 
 included, then a cross is made ready and laid upon a
 
 16 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 cushion a little way in front of the altar. It is unveiled, 
 and the anthem c Behold the wood of the cross ' (Ecce 
 lignum cruets) is sung. The abbot advances, prostrates 
 himself, and chants the seven penetential psalms. Then 
 he humbly kisses the cross. His example is followed 
 by the rest of the monks and by the clergy and congre- 
 gation." The ancient custom, this, of Creeping to the 
 Cross. 
 
 The ritual of St. Ethelwold then proceeds : " Since 
 on this day we celebrate the laying down of the body of 
 our Saviour, if it seem good or pleasing to any to follow 
 on similar lines the use of certain of the religious, which 
 is worthy of imitation for the strengthening of faith in 
 the unlearned vulgar and in neophytes, we have ordered 
 it in this wise. Let a likeness of a sepulchre be made 
 in a vacant part of the altar, and a veil stretched on a 
 ring which may hang there until the adoration of the 
 cross is over. Let the deacons who previously carried 
 the cross come and wrap it in a cloth in the place where 
 it was adored. Then let them carry it back, singing 
 anthems, until they come to the place of the monument, 
 and there having laid down the cross as if it were the 
 buried body of our Lord Jesus Christ, let them say an 
 anthem. And here let the holy cross be guarded with 
 all reverence until the night of the Lord's resurrection. 
 By night let two brothers or three, or more if the throng 
 be sufficient, be appointed who may keep faithful wake 
 there chanting psalms." 
 
 The ceremony of the burial, or Depositio Crucis y is fol- 
 lowed by the Missa Prtssanctificatorum, the Good Friday 
 communion with a host not sanctified that day but 
 specially reserved from Maundy Thursday ; and there 
 is no further reference to the sepulchre until the order 
 for Easter day itself is reached, when St Ethelwold 
 directs that, " before the bells are rung for Matins, the sac- 
 ristans are to take the cross and set it in a fitting place."
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 17 
 
 This example is significant because it shows us the 
 ecclesiastical ceremonial passing into the dramatic by 
 means of pantomime and interjected song. That which 
 follows, from St. Ethelwold's ritual for the third Nocturn 
 at Matins on Easter morning, is of even greater historical 
 interest, for it displays an advance within the ceremonial 
 to dramatic dialogue itself: 
 
 While the third lesson is being chanted, let four 
 brethren vest themselves. Let one of these, vested in 
 an alb, enter as though to take part in the service, and 
 let him approach the sepulchre without attracting atten- 
 tion, and sit there quietly with a palm in his hand. 
 While the third respond is chanted, let the remaining 
 three follow, and let them all, vested in copes, bearing 
 in their hands thuribles with incense, and stepping 
 delicately (pedetemptim) as those who seek something, 
 approach the sepulchre. These things are done in 
 imitation of the angel sitting in the monument (the 
 sepulchre), and women with spices coming to anoint the 
 body of Jesus. When, therefore, he who sits there be- 
 holds them approach him like folk lost and seeking some- 
 thing, let him begin in a dulcet voice of medium pitch to 
 sing Quern qu<eritis (in sepulchro, o Christicol<e\ And 
 when he has sung it to the end, let the three reply in 
 unison, 
 
 Jesum Nazarenum (crucifixum, o c<elicol<e). 
 
 So he 
 
 Non est hie, surrexit sicut pradixerat. 
 //<?, nuntiate quia surrexit a mortuis. 
 
 At the word of this bidding let those three turn to the 
 choir and say, 
 
 Alleluia ! resurrexit Dominus.
 
 i8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 This said, let the one, still sitting there and as if recalling 
 them, say the anthem, 
 
 Venite et vidcte locum. 
 
 And saying this, let him rise, and lift the veil, and 
 show them the place bare of the cross, but only the 
 cloths laid there in which the cross was wrapped. And 
 when they have seen this let them set down the thuribles 
 which they bare in that same sepulchre, and take the 
 cloth and hold it up in the face of the clergy, and, as if 
 to demonstrate that the Lord has risen, and is no longer 
 wrapped therein, let them sing the anthem, 
 
 Surrexit Dominus de sepulchro, 
 
 and lay the cloth upon the altar. When the anthem is 
 done let the prior, snaring in their gladness at the triumph 
 of our King, in that having vanquished death he rose 
 again, begin the hymn, 
 
 Tt Deum laudamus. 
 And this begun, all the bells chime out together. 1 
 
 Here then, though the dialogue is yet of chant and 
 hymn, the drama of the Christian era, with action, speech, 
 and stage direction, is born. 
 
 The dialogue here presented is what was known as a 
 trope, that is to say, a paraphrase or adaptation of the 
 gospel or of the introit (the antiphon and psalm appointed 
 for the opening of the Mass of the day). Continental 
 tropes of this kind we still possess from the century pre- 
 ceding ; and one of these, included in a manuscript of the 
 Benedictine abbey of St. Gall, is said to be the simplest 
 and the earliest in existence. If so, the trope in the 
 
 1 Chambers, Medieval Stage, II, 1 5, 308.
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 19 
 
 Winchester ritual is probably a survival of the same, or 
 of as early an original. The content of the St. Gall 
 trope of the Resurrection is as follows : 
 
 Angels. Whom seek ye in the tomb, O worshippers of 
 
 Christ? 
 Three Maries. Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified, O 
 
 Heavenly Ones. 
 
 Angels. He is not here, for he is risen as he said. 
 Go now, announce that he has risen from 
 the tomb. 
 
 Resurrexi. 
 
 The Latin, like that of Winchester, is the Latin of the 
 gospels in the Vulgate : the elaborations upon the gospels 
 are, in both, almost imperceptible. Indeed it is difficult 
 to resist the conjecture that Easter tropes of some kind 
 were in existence in the Christian church as early as the 
 responsive chant, or antiphon, itself; that is to say, as 
 early as the beginning of the fourth century. 
 
 There are also tropes still existent opening with the 
 words " Whom seek ye " (>uem qu<eritis) for Christmas 
 and Ascension Day. They are not so early in manu- 
 script, and are manifestly not so early of composition. 
 They are imitations, whereas the former was a close para- 
 phrase of the scriptural text. Still they are of great 
 importance; for as out of the Easter >uem grew a cycle 
 of plays covering the history not only of the resurrection 
 but of the whole passion of Christ, so from the Christ- 
 mas trope and its accompanying ceremonial grew a cycle 
 of the Nativity which in time extended itself backward to 
 the creation of the world ; while, on the other hand, from 
 the Ascension >uem proceeded a series that presented,
 
 ao PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 with scriptural and legendary scene, the history of the 
 saints from Pentecost to the day of doom. 
 
 To these secondary germs of cyclical miracles I shall 
 return later. Here, a few words about the further 
 development of the Resurrection play. First, it was 
 enlarged by the assignment of separate speeches to each 
 of the Maries, and to the angels; then, by the addition 
 of other characters, the two disciples Peter and John ; 
 then, by the composition of deeply pathetic, and soon 
 exquisitely lyrical, laments (QT planet us) for the Maries as 
 they approached the sepulchre ; then by supplementary 
 scenes of Mary Magdalene and the gardener, and Mary 
 Magdalene and the disciples, and of the Pilgrims journey- 
 ing to Emmaus. So on, working in that direction 
 inevitably toward the crowning mystery of the Ascension. 
 Following the other course, the lament of the Maries 
 before the tomb was soon preluded by the much more 
 pathetic lamentation of the mother of our Lord before 
 the cross, and by the response of the dying Saviour and 
 the dialogue between his mother and St. John. From that 
 offshoot of the original planctus budded plays of the 
 whole crucifixion, the burial, and the harrowing of hell, 
 for the close of Holy Week ; and likewise of events 
 immediately preceding: plays of the Passion from 
 Gethsemane to the Crucifixion ; of the Mount of Olives 
 and the Last Supper, and so on back to the Entry into 
 Jerusalem. Dates are, I hope, unnecessary : Creizenach, 
 Mone, Julleville, Chambers, Du Meril, Davidson, will 
 supply them in detail. Suffice it to say that developed 
 tropes and germinal dramas on these subjects, less and 
 less by way of song and more by way of versified speech, 
 are of record from the ninth century to the thirteenth ; 
 and that scenes of the great drama of the Passion or of
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 21 
 
 the Resurrection, like the Lament at the Cross, and the 
 Pilgrims, were acted, the former in Lichfield, the latter 
 at the Benedictbeuern monastery as early as the twelfth 
 century. A complete Passion play was presented in 
 Siena about 1200; in 1220 we hear of a play of the 
 Resurrection, and that outside the church in the church- 
 yard, at Beverley in Yorkshire. And, in 1244, of a play 
 of Passion and Resurrection, both performed in Padua. 
 
 Of the Beverley Resurrection play of 1220 a story is 
 told in the series of the Historians of the Church of York, 
 so quaint and at the same time so rich in historical 
 association that I cannot pass it by. Mr. Leach, in his 
 illuminating article on Some English Plays and Players, has 
 translated it; and I follow him somewhat closely: 
 
 It happened that one summer in the church-yard of St. 
 John's Church, on the north side, there was a representa- 
 tion, as usual, by masked performers (larvatorum) of the 
 Lord's Resurrection [not "Ascension," as Mr. Leach, by 
 some slip, has it] in words and acting. A large crowd 
 of both sexes was assembled, led there by different im- 
 pulses, some for the sake of mere pleasure or wonder, 
 others for the holy purpose of stimulating their devotional 
 feelings. But since there was little chance of a desirable 
 position for seeing, especially in the case of very short 
 people (because the crowd stood round the players in a 
 dense ring), a good many went into the church, some to 
 pray, some to see the pictures more closely, and others 
 to while away the day in any kind of recreation or con- 
 tentment that might offer. Some youths when they got 
 inside happened to find a door half open which gave 
 access to the steps up to the top of the walls. With 
 boyish light-heartedness they climbed up and went to 
 the vaults and galleries (the clerestory and triforium) on 
 the top of the church to get, I suppose, through the 
 lofty windows of the towers, or any apertures there might
 
 22 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 be in the stained-glass window, a better view of the garb 
 and gestures of the performers, and to hear their speeches 
 more easily, like Zaccheus when he climbed up the 
 sycamore tree. Some one, however, told the sextons 
 what the youths were doing, and as they were afraid that 
 the boys would make holes in the windows for the sake 
 of seeing the performers, they at once gave chase, and 
 by dint of heavy blows made them retreat. But some 
 of the lads, seeing the punishment inflicted on their com- 
 panions, to avoid falling into the hands of their pursuers 
 fled to regions still higher, and clambered above the 
 great cross then standing by St. Martin's altar. One of 
 them, as he was looking down, placed his foot on a block 
 of stone, which suddenly gave way and fell with a loud 
 crash on the stone pavement and was broken into frag- 
 ments. The lad, frightened at the noise, lost his hold 
 and fell also to the ground, and lay senseless and as if 
 dead. The bystanders wept, the parents tore their hair 
 and wailed. But God did not suffer the church, dedi- 
 cated in the honour of him and his confessor (Saint John 
 of Beverley, Archbishop of York), to be polluted by the 
 shedding of human blood ; but wishing it to enjoy 
 greater sanctity for the future, and at the same time to 
 give testimony to the truth which was then being shown 
 in the representation of the Resurrection, in the sight of 
 all those present he raised up the youth supposed to be 
 dead, whole, without the smallest injury in any part of 
 his body. Thus it happened that those who could not 
 through the multitude of people be present at the repre- 
 sentation outside the church, saw a more marvellous 
 proof of the resurrection inside; and not only of the 
 resurrection, but also of the Lord's passion. 
 
 This was written in the first quarter of the thirteenth 
 century. Human nature, of course, was the same then 
 as it is now: crowds will not stand back; people of low 
 stature will seek other amusements or even take to say- 
 ing their prayers if the stalwarts in front shut off all view
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 23 
 
 of the stage; boys will climb and break windows, the 
 police will garnish zeal with folly; accidents will happen, 
 bystanders weep, and parents, broken-hearted, tear their 
 hair. Miraculous escapes still awaken a sensation of 
 mystery and awe, sometimes a vague sense of gratitude 
 to something unknown; but they are somewhat differ- 
 ently reported nowadays. 
 
 In to-day's paper, July 6, 1906, I read: 
 
 Special Despatch to the Chronicle. 
 
 CHICAGO. "Goo-goo-goo!" gurgled Baby Providence 
 Blanda, as she waved her little arms and tried to tell a 
 gathering crowd how it felt to fall four stories and alight 
 unhurt, comfortably seated on a hard cement sidewalk. 
 
 When neighbours who had heard of the accident came 
 to the Blanda home to-day to help the mother make ar- 
 rangements for the funeral, they were amazed to see the 
 fourteen-months-old baby prattling to herself in one 
 corner of the room, while visitors chatted of its strange 
 escape from death. 
 
 Leonard Warner, two years of age, floated from a third- 
 story window at 427 Twenty-fifth street on a window 
 screen to-day. The right arm of the child was wrenched, 
 but this was the only injury. The little boy was trying 
 to catch a noisy bluefly that had flown against the screen. 
 He leaned against the screen, which fell. The boy, lean- 
 ing on the screen, arrived at the sidewalk without change 
 of position. [No comment.] 
 
 Six hundred and seventy-six years ago they were a 
 credulous people, and they had ecclesiastics for reporters. 
 The reporter of 1230, says Mr. Leach, "improves the 
 occasion: 'The stone falling without the intervention of 
 man [query and surprise !] plainly indicates the Lord's 
 incarnation from a virgin ; the fall of both, viz. stone and 
 man, signified his passion as man and God. The stone
 
 2 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 broken in the fall was the type of the ram slain ; and the 
 youth, the type of Isaac remaining unharmed. And in 
 like manner as the fall was in His humanity a sign of His 
 passion, so his miraculous rising was in his Godhead a sign 
 of His resurrection.' ' 
 
 Truly the times have changed, and signs and wonders 
 and scriptural exegesis and the annalists with them. 
 
 FROM THE CHRISTMAS TROPE 
 
 The Christmas series had its germ, as was said above, 
 in an imitation of the Easter trope. The Christmas trope 
 is of the quest of the Shepherds, and begins : 
 
 Quern qutfritis in pr*sepe, pastor es, dicite ? 
 
 The Latin is given by Gautier, Du Meril, and others. I 
 translate 
 
 On Christmas day let two deacons be prepared, clad in dal- 
 matics, and behind the altar let them say : 
 
 Whom seek ye in the manger, Shepherds, say ? 
 
 Let two choir-boys reply : 
 
 The Saviour, Christ the Lord, a babe wrapped in swad- 
 dling clothes, according to the word of the Angel. 
 
 Then the deacons : 
 
 The child is here, with Mary his mother, concerning 
 whom in prophecy Isaiah foretold : Lo, a Virgin shall 
 conceive and bring forth a Son. Now, proclaiming, tell 
 that He is born. 
 
 Then the Cantor shall say in a shrill voice : 
 
 Alleluia, alleluia. Now we know in truth that Christ 
 is born on earth ; of whom, sing all ye, saying with 
 the prophet, Christ is born.
 
 g 
 S 

 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 25 
 
 This trope is from a St. Gall manuscript which Mr. 
 Chambers assigns to the eleventh century. It is found 
 also in a brief Officium Pastorum which, in the fourteenth 
 century, formed part of the Christmas service in Rouen 1 , 
 and it was followed, on Epiphany, by an Officium Trium 
 Regum much more elaborate. The trope must have been 
 of much earlier composition than either of these manu- 
 scripts, for an Orleans play of the twelfth century, in which 
 it appears, has amalgamated the stories of the star, the 
 Magi, Herod, the shepherds, and the birth in the manger, 
 and has already passed from the church to the gates of the 
 monastery. The trope form must even have preceded a 
 still earlier manuscript of the tenth century of Freising ; 
 for there, also, the fusion of stories has taken place and the 
 ceremonial element has given way to the dramatic. Nor is 
 this all, the episode of Herod in the Orleans and Frei- 
 sing plays points to a common original, for neither of these 
 was borrowed from the other. Both of them, moreover, 
 are succeeded by a play of the Massacre of the Innocents, 
 which likewise indicates a common source. As early 
 therefore as the tenth century, maybe earlier, there were 
 developed at various places on the continent at least three 
 Christmas plays : the Shepherds, the Magi, and the Inno- 
 cents ; and these plays had so far left the ceremonial trope 
 behind that they were already acted outside of the church 
 and apart from the service. The common material for 
 these and succeeding plays is of course the scriptural 
 account; but it is most interesting to observe that the 
 scriptural participants in these early plays Herod, 
 scribes, wise men of the East, Herod's messenger, 
 soldiers, mothers of Israel have already developed the 
 features that characterise them in the popular cycles of 
 1 Du Meril, Orig. Lat. t p. 147.
 
 26 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the later middle ages: the messenger fawns, the Herod 
 blusters, the soldiers counsel, and the counsellors tremble, 
 here as there. Even the fictitious personalities of the 
 English popular miracles of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries are already upon the stage. The midwives of 
 the Chester and so-called Coventry cycles, and Herod's 
 son of the cycle of York, figure in the plays of Orleans 
 and Freising, and in the common source of both, per- 
 haps as early as the year 9OO. 1 Liturgical plays of 
 the same kind exist in English in a manuscript of the 
 fifteenth century belonging to Shrewsbury School; but 
 they too are undoubtedly the successors of developed 
 tropes of much earlier date. All through the thirteenth 
 century English ecclesiastics were thundering against 
 the participation of clerks in regular orders in the 
 outdoor miracles which were the offspring of liturgical 
 drama; and in the Lichfield statutes of 1188-98 such 
 liturgical dramas, both of the Shepherds and the Resurrec- 
 tion, are mentioned as a thoroughly established institution 
 for Christmas and Eastertide. Plays of the Shepherds 
 and the Three Kings are customary in York in 1255. 
 
 The Christmas cycle, like that of Easter, grew by 
 gemination. It was but an easy step backward to the 
 dramatisation of the betrothal of Mary and Joseph, 
 the annunciation, and so forth ; and also of the sermon 
 against the Jews, Pagans, and others, ascribed to St. 
 Augustine and read in the Christmas season. For here 
 the Hebrew prophets and pagans, such as the Sibyl, who 
 was supposed to have written the Signs of Judgment (of 
 which we shall later have something to say), and Virgil, 
 who foretold the Golden Age, are called upon to witness 
 
 1 The Rouen, Freising, and Orleans plays are reprinted in Davidson, 
 Engl. Mystery Plays t pp. 50, ft Jfy.
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 27 
 
 of the coming Christ. From a collective play of the 
 Prophets (and one such, in Latin, of the e eventh century, 
 still exists), 1 the passage was inevitable to individual 
 plays of the more romantic or historically attractive 
 characters among them : and so sprang into being about 
 1 1 60 the Dante! of one Hilarius, probably an English- 
 man, who wrote in Latin with French refrains ; and a 
 scene between the Sibyl and the Roman emperor (a relic 
 of which is still embedded in one of our cyclic miracles) ; 
 as well as plays of Nebuchadnezzar, David, Gideon, 
 Moses, and other heroes, with more or less reason in- 
 cluded in this or that " prophetic procession." 
 
 But by this time the interest had been transferred from 
 prophecy to history; and the dramatist might as well 
 go back at once to Isaac and Rebecca, and the sacrifice 
 of Isaac, and Cain and Abel, and Adam. And so our 
 ancestors reasoned and did. A famous Norman-French, 
 maybe Anglo-Norman, play of the twelfth century called 
 the Ordo representations Ad*, written for public and 
 open-air performance, begins with Adam, takes in Cain 
 and Abel, and includes the Prophets. What more it in- 
 cluded we don't know, for the rest is lost. When, in 
 Regensburg, in 1195, a play of the Creation of the 
 World and the Fall of Lucifer was given, the backward 
 development of the historical cycle was complete. 
 
 The play of Adam is historically interesting because 
 evidently an outgrowth of a processional representation 
 of the Prophets, and as such a connecting link between 
 the church sermon and the popular drama. It is also 
 remarkable for dramatic originality, invention of real- 
 istic episodes, and adaptation of characters and their 
 " lines " to the edification of the peasant beholders for 
 
 1 Mystere da Prophetes du Christ of Limoges ; in Du Meril, p. 1 79.
 
 28 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 whom it was intended. Adam is manifestly conscious 
 not only of responsibility, but of a certain superiority 
 to the fair-faced and care-free lass who makes responsi- 
 bility only too difficult for him. The devil is a hand- 
 some, wily, truly seductive young gallant, who flatters 
 Eve not only on the score of beauty, but of her wo- 
 manly instinct, how could Adam, he insinuates, who 
 has refused to eat the tempting fruit of knowledge him- 
 self, possibly be deemed an arbiter in matters of taste ? 
 Cain is the close, calculating, irreverent churl whose 
 character is stamped on all succeeding versions of his 
 part. The Jews of the synagogue by no means suffer 
 the prophets of Christ to make out their case without 
 due opposition, and Balaam appears upon his ass but 
 Balaam is too entertaining a possibility to be discussed 
 as a mere accessory to any procession. Here he plays 
 no very impressive role ; but having appeared, he must 
 be accorded dramatic treatment by himself and that 
 presently. 
 
 FROM TROPES OF ADVENT, ASCENSION, ETC. 
 
 So far the materials for a world-cycle had been 
 furnished by the scriptures appropriate to the festivals 
 of Christ's birth and his resurrection. There remained 
 but one step to complete the movement, and that was 
 suggested by the scriptures appropriate to Advent, Holy 
 Thursday, and Whitsun Day. Of these the first cele- 
 brates the entry of our Lord into Jerusalem, and so 
 connects the story of his birth and active career with 
 that of his passion and resurrection. It also, indirectly, 
 connects his resurrection with the whole after-story of 
 the church militant ; for the collects, introits, and scrip-
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 29 
 
 tures of Advent sound the cry not merely of the first 
 Coming of our Lord in humiliation and grace, but of 
 his second Coming in glory and judgment : " Behold 
 the Bridegroom cometh " ; " The kingdom of God is 
 nigh at hand " ; " Make straight the way of the Lord " ; 
 " Behold, O people of Sion, the Lord will come to save 
 the nations." And there proceed, accordingly, from 
 the celebration of the Advent season dramas of the Wise 
 and Foolish Virgins, and of the Man of Sin, the Anti- 
 christ, who is to trouble the nations before the day of 
 that second advent of the Lord. 
 
 A specimen of the former, called The Bridegroom 
 or Sponsus, opening 
 
 Adest sponsus qui est Christus ; vigilate virgines 
 
 is preserved in a manuscript of about 1 1 50 from Limoges. 1 
 It is written in a mixture of Latin and the vernacular 
 French, and is well adapted by action alone to terrify 
 the simple, and by the music of its verse to impress the 
 learned. As in the parable, the foolish virgins turn in 
 despair, 
 
 Wail, O caitifs, we have slept too long, 
 
 from the wise who have but oil sufficient for themselves 
 to the sellers of oil, who in turn send them back to their 
 wise sisters and to God, 
 
 Go, seek your sisters sage, and pray them by God the 
 glorious, for succour of their oil, Faites o tost y queja venra 
 I'espos. 
 
 The foolish ones come, weeping, to the marriage-door ; 
 
 1 See Creizenach, I, 77. Texts in Romania xxii j Du Meril, Orig. 
 Lat., 233-237.
 
 jo PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 but the Bridegroom has arrived, and turns them away 
 
 with 
 
 Amen dico> vos ignosco, nam caretis famine, 
 
 >uod qui perdunt , procul pergunt bujus aulae limine. 
 
 Lamentation, devils, and eternal woe ! 
 
 Of the Antichrist legend, the earliest dramatisation is 
 in Latin by a German poet of the Tegernsee, and 
 probably of a date near 1160. Of the legend and its 
 origin I shall later give an account ; the text of the 
 drama may be found at the end of the Shakespeare 
 Society's edition of the Chester Plays, and in more 
 recent publications. 1 The play is some six hundred lines 
 in length, and is written with tremendous force and de- 
 cided constructive skill. With its pomp of emperors 
 and kings ; its display of the signs and wonders by which 
 the Antichrist wins recognition of his Messiahship ; its 
 presentation of classes and abstract ideas, virtues, and 
 vices under characteristic names : hypocrite, synagoga, 
 ecclesia, gentilitas ; its Devil, the son of a devil, com- 
 missioning vices, Heresy and Hypocrisy, to seduce the 
 innocent; with its use of legend, scripture, history, 
 morality, symbol, and marvel, all in one, it may justly be 
 regarded as the founder of a new species of drama destined 
 to flourish in other countries, though not till two cen- 
 turies later: a combination of the miracle and the moral 
 play. Here it interests us as an Advent contribution 
 to the development of the Judgment series. 
 
 Similarly, the service for Holy Thursday or Ascension 
 Day lent itself to the dramatisation of the later events of 
 Christian story. In the eleventh century a processional 
 trope of the Ascension, beginning 
 
 1 From Fez, Thesaurus t Antcdat. Nevus., II, 187. See Creizenich,
 
 EVOLUTION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 31 
 
 Quern creditis super asfra ascendisse, Christicol* ? 
 Resp. Christum qui surrexit de sepulchro, O c#licol<e. 
 
 was used in the church of St. Martial at Limoges ; * and 
 in an English troper of Canterbury, of equal antiquity, we 
 find a variant, opening Quern cernitis ascendisse super astra ? 
 Dramatic representations were soon elaborated out of 
 these, and were, undoubtedly, soon combined with those 
 of Whitsun Day, which falls but ten days after Holy 
 Thursday. Indeed the Whitsun celebration of the 
 descent of the Holy Ghost rapidly assumed, because of its 
 seasonable date in May or early June, a leading place 
 among the spectacular festivals of the year. And to- 
 gether with the display of the symbols of the Pentecost, 
 which obtained all over Europe, there came to be pre- 
 sented on Whitsun Day, and the days following, perform- 
 ances which covered a half or the whole of the history of 
 holy writ. The earliest record preserved of such a per- 
 formance is from Cividale in Italy, where, on the Pentecost 
 and the two succeeding days of 1298, there was acted a 
 " representation of the Play of Christ, viz. His passion, 
 resurrection, ascension, the advent of the Holy Ghost, the 
 coming of Christ to judgment, by the clergy of the town." 
 Here was a sequence in one of all elements of the latter 
 half of the cycle. And in 1303, according to the same 
 chronicle, 2 the former and the latter parts are at last 
 brought into conjunction : " In the year 1303," says 
 Giuliano, " there was performed by the clergy, or chapter 
 of the city, a representation ; or, rather, representations 
 were performed as follows : first of the Creation of our 
 first parents ; then of the Annunciation of the Blessed 
 
 1 Gautier, Les Tropaires, 219. 
 
 2 Giuliano da Cividale, Cronaca Friulana from D'Ancona, and 
 Muratori, in Chambers, I, 77.
 
 32 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Virgin, the Nativity and many other matters; then of 
 the Passion and the Resurrection, the Ascension and the 
 Descent of the Holy Spirit, and of Antichrist and other 
 matters; and finally of the Coming of Christ to Judg- 
 ment. And sermons were preached in the cathedral 
 church on the feast of the Pentecost and the two days 
 following." 
 
 Thus from collect, introit, lesson, or gospel, to proces- 
 sional and trope ; from trope to liturgical drama ; from 
 that to a series of sacred dramas ; and from the three 
 great series, the Nativity and its prophetic prologue, 
 the Resurrection and its antecedent Passion, the Ascension 
 and its sequel to the Second Coming of Christ, from 
 these three series to the cosmic cycle, gradually and 
 imperceptibly the miracle plays of the middle ages grew, 
 gaining in stature and in favour with the people ; and in 
 due proportion losing favour with the church to which 
 they owed their birth. 
 
 Not every play, of course, could trace its genealogy to 
 the twin egg of liturgy and festival. Once sacred perform- 
 ances had become common, some were made for the 
 festival without reference to the trope, and vice versa; 
 and presently plays of saints or of biblical lore were 
 composed for an occasional emergency or for edification ; 
 finally for amusement alone.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 33 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 THE INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 
 
 THE FEAST OF THE Ass 
 
 I HAVE already said that Balaam deserves a section to 
 himself. He and his ass especially the ass were 
 destined to play sad havoc with certain sacred festivals in 
 which at first they had played an innocent and even laud- 
 able part. Once the donkey thrust his head within the 
 church-door, liturgy, festival, and drama were lost in the 
 stupor of his ears or the bathos of his braying. He 
 began, I think, with Balaam and the procession of 
 Prophets, proceeded with the Magi, and then with the 
 Virgin, who unwarily rode him into Egypt, and ended 
 with Christ himself in the once solemn, nay, even tri- 
 umphant, Palm Sunday approach to Jerusalem. The 
 Prophets, the Flight into Eygpt, and the Entry, he turned 
 into festivals of his own, variously denominated, but 
 always feasts of parody, irreverence, frequently of drunk- 
 enness and obscenity. Without doubt some of the pro- 
 fanity and pagan practice which characterised these orgies 
 was a survival of prechristian rites by which Teutons 
 and Celts, even Romans as well, had been wont to 
 welcome the approach of spring or propitiate that of 
 winter ; but the favouring occasion in lands and among 
 peoples called Christian was the appearance of a donkey 
 in the church. 
 
 3
 
 34 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The sixth century sermon of the Pseudo-Augustine 
 against Jews, Pagans, and Arians, in which the proph- 
 ets were summoned to bear witness of Christ, may 
 have been the innocent promoter of the scandal. For, 
 though the preacher himself refrained from enlisting 
 Balaam among the prophets, and though we have no 
 manuscript authority for the appearance of the Aramaean 
 in that role as a dramatic character before the eleventh 
 century, Balaam's pretension to the honour was inevitable ; 
 and his pre-eminence, if once he were admitted, was 
 irresistible. As soon as the prophets of Christ's Coming 
 stepped out of the sermon into a ceremonial procession, 
 Balaam slipped into the throng. You could not suppress 
 him : he had a vested and even prior right. What earlier 
 and more explicit prognostication of the Messiah than 
 his "I shall see Him, but not now: I shall behold 
 him, but not nigh : there shall come a Star out of Jacob, 
 and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the 
 corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth " ? 
 Indeed, he must have joined the ecclesiastical procession 
 in the gorgeous ritual of Christmas, or the Circumcision, 
 or Epiphany or the octave of Epiphany, long before the 
 date of his earliest surviving witness. And where Balaam 
 marched, his ass marched under him. The Mystery of 
 the Prophets of Christ of Limoges, 1 eleventh century, 
 which dramatises the pseudo-Augustinian sermon of the 
 sixth, does not present a Balaam ; but that does not pre- 
 clude the probability of earlier adaptations which did 
 present him but have not survived: even this mystery 
 varies somewhat the prophets of the original sermon, 
 what may others have done ? 
 
 1 Du Meril, Qrigines Latines, 179.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 35 
 
 The earliest appearance of the Ass in a ritual called 
 by his name we shall presently examine. He is, how- 
 ever, pervasive of burlesques of ecclesiastical ceremonial ; 
 and it is not always easy to determine the exact excuse 
 for his presence when the name of the festival has not 
 been preserved. We are told that under the dissolute 
 Michael III of Constantinople (842-867) one Theoph- 
 ilus, a buffoon of the court, was invested in the robes 
 of the patriarch ; and that, attended by twelve roysterers 
 whom he called his metropolitans, clad also in ecclesi- 
 astical vestments, he desecrated the sacred vessels of the 
 altar and parodied the holy communion. Then that, 
 mounted on a white ass, on the day of a solemn festival, 
 and with his train, in which the Emperor himself figured, 
 ie met the true patriarch at the head of the clergy and 
 by licentious shouts and obscene gestures disordered that 
 procession. 1 This escapade may have been a burlesque 
 of the processio prophetarum conducted by the true patri- 
 arch, or of the Entry into Jerusalem, or it may have been 
 unpremeditated devilry. At any rate, the ass is in evi- 
 dence ; and also the revulsion against the straitness of 
 religious ceremony. 
 
 There is a tradition to the effect that about the mid- 
 dle of the eleventh century Heribert IV persuaded the 
 clergy of the Vermandois to suppress the Feast of the 
 Ass. This tradition has been doubted ; but in a manu- 
 script of the years 1160-1180 which used to be in the 
 cathedral library of Beauvais 2 there was preserved until 
 the seventeenth century the ritual of the Feast itself 
 Fesfa Asinaria. It was a development of the officium or 
 service for the eve of the Circumcision, *. e. for New 
 
 1 Gibbon, IV, 206 ; and Chambers, 1,328. 
 
 2 Chambers, I, 285.
 
 36 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Year's eve ; and it is described by French writers as late 
 as the eighteenth century. The date of its composition 
 was shown by the fact that it closed with a prayer for 
 Louis VII and his queen, Adele. This first manuscript 
 has disappeared, but a second of about half a century 
 later has recently been discovered in the British Museum 
 by Mr. Chambers, who describes it in his Mediaeval Stage. 
 From the accounts of the two manuscripts the service 
 may be to some extent reconstructed. 
 
 At the first vespers the Cantor intoned in the middle 
 of the nave a hymn of the day of gladness : " Let no 
 sour-faced person stay within the church ; away on this 
 day with envy and heartache, let all be cheerful who 
 would celebrate the feast of the ass" 
 
 Lux hodie, lux laetitiae, me judice tristis 
 Quisquis erit, removendus erit solemnibus istis, 
 Sint hodie procul invidiae, procul omnia maesta, 
 Laeta volunt, quicunque colunt asinaria 1 festa. 
 
 After lauds all marched from the cathedral to welcome 
 the ass which stood in waiting at the great door. The 
 door being then shut, each of the canons stood with bot- 
 tle of wine and glass in hand while the Cantor chanted 
 the Processional of Drink, Conductus ad Poculum : 
 
 "Solemnise, O Christ, the Kalends of January, and as 
 King acknowledged, receive us at Thy nuptials " 
 
 Kalendas Januarias 
 Solennes, Christe, facias, 
 Et nos ad tuas nuptias, 
 Vocatus rex, suscipias. 
 
 One may picture the pause, the beast in his priestly 
 trappings encircled by hilarious celebrants, the popping 
 
 1 The second Beauvais has prasentla.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 37 
 
 of corks and gurgling of wine, the toasting of "my lord, 
 the Ass," the quaffing of deep draughts. Suddenly the 
 door is thrown open, and up the aisle the procession 
 streams, conducting the Ass with song : 
 
 Orientis partibus 
 Adventavit Asinus, 
 Pulcher et fortissimus 
 Sarcinis aptissimus. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, car chantez, 
 Belle bouche, rechignez, 
 Vous aurez dufoin assez 
 Et de Vavoine a plantez. 
 
 Amen dicas, Asine, (hie genuflect ebatur) 
 Jam satur de gramine, 
 Amen, Amen, itera, 
 Aspernare vetera. 
 
 Hez va, hez va ! hez va, hez ! 
 Bialx, Sire Asms, car chantez ; 
 Vous aurez dufoin assez 
 Et de l J avoine a plantez. 
 
 Nine stanzas in all, of which these are the first and last ; 
 while the following is a translation of the whole, not all 
 sophisticated, I hope, nor altogether slavish : 
 
 Out of the regions of the East 
 The Ass arrives, most potent beast, 
 Piercing our hearts with his pulchritude, 
 And for our burdens, well endued. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, come sing and say, 
 Open your gorgeous mouth and bray : 
 Tou shall have hay, your fill alway, 
 Tou shall have oats, to boot, to-day !
 
 38 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Slow is he upon his feet, 
 
 Mortal slow, unless you beat 
 
 Him with a stick, and strike in his sides 
 
 Spurs that no mortal ass abides. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 He, in the mountains of Sichen, 
 Nurtured of old was, near Reuben: 
 The waters of Jordan he forded 'em, 
 Came a-prancing to Bethlehem. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 See him, with his generous ears, 
 Sprout of yoke-enduring years, 
 Most egregious Ass is he, 
 Lord of Asses, certainly. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 Fawns are nowhere when he leaps, 
 Does nor kids, on parlous steeps ; 
 Nor the Midian dromedary 
 When he marches, velox, very. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 Frankincense, Arabian gold, 
 Myrrh of Saba, now, behold, 
 His the virtue asinine 
 Bore within the church divine. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 While your carts, all kinds, he drags 
 Full of fardels, packs, and bags, 
 Still his philosophic jaw 
 Triturates the patient straw. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 Barley grinds he with its beard, 
 Feasts on thistles, purple-speared,
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 39 
 
 Thrashes in his own back-yard 
 Corn from stubble, chewing hard. 
 
 Hez, Sire Asnes, etc. 
 
 Say Amen, most reverend Ass, (they kneel) 
 Now your belly 's full of grass : 
 Bray Amen, again, and bray; 
 Spurn old customs down the way. 
 
 Hez va ! hez va ! hez va ! hez ! 
 Open your beautiful mouth and bray ; 
 A bottle o hay, and the devil to pay, 
 And oats a-plenty for you, to-day. 
 
 This is the " Prose " of the Ass, a chant interpolated 
 into the regular service, and itself the central feature 
 of the Asinaria as distinguished from its cognate festum 
 stultorum. Of that Feast of Fools, which came to be 
 amalgamated with the ceremony of the Ass, the distinc- 
 tive features are the transference of the precentor's staff 
 to a subdeacon who has been chosen domlnus festi, 
 bishop, pope, or king of fools, and the singing of what is 
 called a Prose of Fools. Provision is made for the trans- 
 ference in the Beauvais qfficia ; but for the ceremony in 
 full, and as the climax of the vespers of the second day, 
 we shall have to turn to another ritual, the Officium 
 Circumcisionis of the cathedral of Sens. In several ways 
 it supplements, in others abridges, the more primitive 
 ritual of Beauvais. 
 
 The Sens Officium was probably written by Pierre de 
 Corbeil, who had been associated with the famous Eudes 
 de Sully, bishop of Paris, in an attempt to reform the 
 riotous ceremony of the Circumcision in Notre Dame, in 
 the year 1199. This Pierre de Corbeil was afterward 
 bishop coadjutor of Lincoln, and he died archbishop of
 
 40 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Sens. While he retained the Prose of the Ass for first 
 vespers in his ritual for Sens, it is possible that he did not 
 admit the beast within the church edifice ; and it is certain 
 that he eliminated the drinking-bout before the pro- 
 cessional. 
 
 It appears to have been the custom for the sub- 
 deacons and secular clergy of the lower orders to hail 
 with unseemly mirth the singing of that verse of the 
 Magnificat on New Year's eve which runs Deposuit 
 potcntes de sede^ "He hath put down the mighty from 
 their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek," and 
 to construe too literally the transference of the staff of 
 authority from precentor to subdeacon by which the 
 sacred lesson was symbolised. Bells had been irregularly 
 jangled before the service, masks prepared, and so forth ; 
 now clerks and subdeacons repeated, ad nauseam^ the 
 Dfposuity with ribaldry and shouting; changed places 
 and probably vestments with the canons ; sat in their 
 stalls ; burlesqued the service, and marched out of church 
 to a drinking song. According to Dom Grenier, the 
 censing for the day of the feast was done with pudding 
 and sausages ; but in all probability this sacrilege had 
 nothing to do with the ritual itself and was of later 
 origin. 
 
 In this feast elements had met" which could not but 
 react in disorder, irreverence, tomfoolery, riot. From 
 that sobering and uplifting clause, "He hath put down 
 the mighty," proceeded the opportunity for inversion of 
 status, the celebration of the essential equality of men. 
 And, since that was exactly the conception underlying the 
 jovial festival of the Roman Kalends, of exactly the same 
 season of the year, through the window leaped nature 
 reassured. At the Kalends from the first to the third
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 41 
 
 of January, there had been illumination and decoration 
 of houses, revelry in the streets, disguises and maskings, 
 men parading in women's clothes and in the skins of 
 animals. There had been gift-giving, and drinking and 
 gambling, master with man. Now in the feast of the 
 Deposal of the Mighty, from an early date known as 
 the Feast of Fools, there were included not only these 
 customs of pagan Rome, but customs inherited from bar- 
 barian ancestors of the west unconscious reminiscences 
 of festivals propitiatory of animals and vegetables and 
 gods. Hence the dancing, the drinking, the exchanging 
 of clothes, the turning of them inside out, and the 
 parading as beasts. 1 
 
 On the other side, as I have said, from the association 
 of a certain prophet of Christ with the rites commemo- 
 rative of Christ's nativity and youth, sprang that ridi- 
 cule of the sublime which made of the Feast of the 
 Circumcision, and soon of Christmas and Holy Innocents' 
 Day, a Festival of Asses as well. 
 
 That Balaam is to be blamed for the introduction of 
 the ass, and that the Magi have a responsibility only less 
 alarming, appears from an examination of the constant 
 factor in all the Fool-Ass rites : the song in honour of 
 that beast. It has been thought by some that the open- 
 ing words, Orientis partibus, indicate an east European 
 birthplace for the ceremony, say Constantinople, where 
 from the ninth century to the twelfth ecclesiastical festi- 
 vals were disgraced by orgies. But this is not at all 
 likely. The first, third, and fifth stanzas of the song 
 point directly and only to Balaam : the origin is there- 
 fore in the prophets' procession of the early church. Of 
 
 1 See Fowler's Roman Festivals, " Kalends of January," " Saturnalia," 
 "Lupercalia."
 
 42 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 course the Asinus came orientis partibus : his master 
 Balaam did the same. " Balak the king of Moab hath 
 brought me from Aram," he says, " out of the mountains 
 of the east." 1 Of course the dromedaries whom the 
 Asinus surpasses in speed are those of Midian, for Midian 
 and Moab are interchangeable in the scripture account. 
 And where else are Moab, Midian, and Aram but sub 
 Reuben? I trust the reader will not press me concerning 
 Sichen or Shechem, I refer him to the goliard who 
 wrote the song : he had a right to his little joke, even to 
 the extent of positing Shechem on the coast of Bohemia, 
 if he pleased. 
 
 So much for the responsibility of Balaam ; that of 
 the Magi is confined to the sixth stanza, and in all 
 probability was of later attribution. But it is only natu- 
 ral that not having camels, and having already discovered 
 the qualifications of the ass, the celebrants of Epiphany 
 should have early transferred to the latter animal the 
 privilege of bearing the gifts of the Three Kings into 
 the church. 
 
 As early as the thirteenth century, and the first half 
 of it, the Ass derives added dignity from the festival of 
 the octave of Epiphany when the flight of the Virgin 
 into Egypt was commemorated. "It was customary in 
 Beauvais, every year, on the 14 January, to represent the 
 Virgin in this episode by the most beautiful girl in the 
 city. She was placed on an ass richly caparisoned, and 
 an infant was set in her arms. Thus mounted she pre- 
 ceded the Bishop and his clergy, and they all went in 
 grand procession from the cathedral to the parish church 
 of St. Stephen. On entering the chancel, they ranged 
 themselves on the gospel side of the altar. The mass 
 1 Numbers xxiii, 7.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 43 
 
 immediately commenced; and the introit, the Lord have 
 mercy upon us, the Gloria Patri, the Creed, and other parts 
 of the service were terminated by the burden of Hin-ham, 
 Hin-ham, Kin-ham, in imitation of the braying of an ass. 
 But what is most suprising," says Du Cange in this 
 account of the ceremony, " the officiating priest, instead 
 of saying If a missa est at the end of the mass, concluded 
 by singing three times Hin-ham, Hin-ham, Hin-ham." 1 
 Hone, in his account, adds that the audience brayed in 
 reply, and that during the performance hymns were 
 sung in praise of the Ass. 2 In a play of Herod, which 
 was early acted at Autun and other places, the Flight 
 into Egypt was without doubt included ; and since Herod 
 is but the connecting link between the visit of the Magi 
 and the Flight, a play covering this portion of the 
 Nativity would introduce the Ass both at the beginning 
 and at the end. 
 
 During the fourteenth century this period of the rule 
 of Herod at Autun was called the Feast of Fools. At 
 Rouen, however, the Procession of the Prophets took 
 place on Christmas eve, and was called the Processio 
 Asinorum. Of this ceremony there survives a fourteenth- 
 century Latin ordinarium, 3 beginning Nota, Cantor : si Fes- 
 turn Asinorum fiat y processio ordinetur post Terciam. Si non 
 fiat Festum, tune fiat processio, ut nunc pr*enotetur. And 
 the rubric proceeds to order the march of the prophets 
 and the building of a furnace in the middle of the nave 
 of the church. The furnace is for the Three Children, 
 and is to be lighted with lint and tow the scene for a 
 
 1 Hone's account is based on this of Du Cange, Glossarium, under 
 " Festum Asinorum.' ' 
 
 a Hone, Anc. Myst., 162. 
 
 8 In Du Cange, G/ossarium, " Festum Asinorum.*'
 
 44 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 play growing out of the presence of Daniel and Nebu- 
 chadnezzar among the prophets. Here, also, the Balaam 
 episode has its little play : 
 
 Two messengers from King Balak shall say : " Balaam, come 
 and do thus." 
 
 Then Balaam, in fine clothing (ornatus), sedens super 
 asinam, 1 spurs on his feet, shall hold the reins and drive the 
 spurs into the Ass ; and a youth having wings and brandish- 
 ing a sword shall stand in the way of the Ass. Then one 
 within the Ass shall say, 
 
 " Why dost thou lacerate poor me with thy spurs ? " 
 
 When this is said, the Angel shall say to him, 
 
 " Cease from doing the command of King Balak ! " 
 
 Similarly in a thirteenth-century text of Laon, the 
 drama of Balaam closes the Processio Prophetarum. 
 
 In Germany, and elsewhere on the continent, the 
 donkey invaded still another festival, that of Palm 
 Sunday. On that day, as Naogeorgus tells us, 2 "the 
 anniversary of Christ's riding into Jerusalem, a wooden 
 ass, with an image on it, being placed on a platform with 
 wheels, and dressed up, was drawn by the people bearing 
 boughs and branches of palm to the church door. On 
 its arrival there the priest blessing the branches, con- 
 verted them into assurances for a year against loss or 
 damage by tempest ; and then, prostrating himself before 
 the ass, he lay on his face till another priest roused him 
 by the application of a rod of the largest size. On his 
 rising, two others fell on their faces and sang in that posi- 
 
 1 Hence the name of the festival," says Du Cange. 
 * Kirchmeycr, transl. by Barnaby Googe : in N. Shakespeare Society, 
 I. 33*-
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 45 
 
 tion ; afterwards, standing and pointing at the figure on 
 the ass, they announced that olive-boughs were strewn 
 before him because he had come to redeem the faithful. 
 This ended, the ass with the figure being moved along, 
 the people cast branches before both ; and the dummy 
 was drawn into the church in procession, the priests going 
 before. The people followed, struggling for the holy 
 boughs over which the pageant had passed. The whole 
 being concluded, the boys went to the church in the 
 afternoon, and bargained with the sexton for the use of 
 the ass, which they drew through the streets, singing 
 verses and gathering money, bread, and eggs from the 
 people." 
 
 Here again is an entertaining example, not only of the 
 pervasive quality of the beast, and of his virtue to adorn 
 with nonsense all that he touched, but also of that 
 attempt at idealising pagan folk-festivals into Christian 
 ceremonies which long ago Gregory the Great had advised 
 his missionaries to make. For the venerable Bede tells 
 us that Gregory was, originally, of the opinion that 
 Augustine should destroy all idols, groves, and temples 
 of the savage Britons whom he proposed to christianise. 
 But after this first Archbishop of Canterbury had reached 
 the scene of his activities he received word from the Pope 
 that the policy was to be of another kind. The temples 
 and the groves and festivals need not be destroyed, but 
 the idols must be. The temples should be sprinkled 
 with holy water, and relics of sacred objects set in them 
 to take the place of the idols in the worship of the 
 folk. As for the oxen that our ancestors were wont to 
 immolate to their heathen gods, they should now be 
 sacrificed in commemoration of Christian mysteries and 
 miracles. The huts of branches that the Britons were
 
 46 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 used to erect during the pagan rites might still be built 
 about the temples, thus transformed into churches, on the 
 day of their dedication, or on the festivals of the martyrs 
 whose relics they contained. Thus the rustic folk, while 
 still continuing to kill their cattle and celebrate their 
 solemnities as of yore, might do so with a feasting that 
 had become religious. 
 
 In the Palm Sunday festival described above, the flag- 
 ellation of the priest and other officiants was, in fact, a 
 survival of an ancient folk-rite by which at Eastertide 
 the spirit of winter or of death was expelled from the 
 symbolic representative of the Old Year ; and the deck- 
 ing with palms or green branches of willow unconsciously 
 perpetuated the symbolic ritual of the newly awakened 
 spirit of vegetation, the Mother of Months ; the Anna 
 Perenna of the Romans as of the Gauls. These pagan 
 ceremonies were taken up into the beautiful pageant of 
 the Hosanna; and similarly the pagan practice of retain- 
 ing the withered branches of one spring- festival till the 
 beginning of the following spring, was perpetuated under 
 the custom of blessing on Ash Wednesday the ashes of 
 the palms over which the benediction had been pro- 
 nounced the Palm Sunday of the year before. 
 
 Brand, in his Popular Antiquities^ insinuates that the 
 Palm-donkey custom was prevalent in England ; but 
 Mr. Chambers, whose authority is greatly to be respected, 
 holds otherwise. It may, by the way, interest the reader 
 to know that the bones of the real Ass which was ridden 
 by Christ into Jerusalem may yet be exhumed in Verona. 
 For, according to a legend of somewhat dubious ancestry, 
 the animal " came ultimately to that city, died there, was 
 buried in a wooden effigy at Sta. Maria in Organo, and 
 honoured by a yearly procession." Unfortunately the
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 47 
 
 matter is in dispute, some saying that this was the ass 
 of one Silenus. 1 
 
 Of course this illustrious animal figured from earliest 
 times in representations of the Nativity. He stood in 
 primitive mummery, rudely joined or carved or painted, 
 in company with the ox, beside the manger of the Infant. 
 His role in such a play as the My s fere de la Nativite 
 du Christ? of which a thirteenth-century manuscript is 
 preserved by the Benediktbeuern monastery in Bavaria, 
 is significant for its diverse possibilities. The Ass makes 
 his entry with Balaam, who chants the words "A star 
 shall arise from Jacob" (and one may imagine that 
 here, as in a certain Hamburg play of the Three Kings, 
 the star hangs in sight and the donkey discovers it). 
 He next has opportunity to assist at the birth in the 
 stable in company with Joseph, who sits by in habitu 
 honesto et prolixa barba. The star again appearing, the 
 Ass shifts to the service of the adoring Magi. Soon 
 afterwards he plays a plodding part in the flight into 
 Egypt prcecedens Maria asinum; and finally bears the 
 wonder-working Child through the realms of the Egyp- 
 tian king, idols, priests, and rulers falling in submis- 
 sion at his approach. 
 
 To this Benediktbeuern Mysfire de la Nativite we 
 shall have occasion to revert in our consideration of still 
 another festival, that of the Boy Bishop. 
 
 THE FEAST OF FOOLS 
 
 It has already been remarked that in the Officia Cir- 
 cumcisioniSy or rituals for New Year's eve and New Year's 
 day of Beauvais and Sens, provision was made not only 
 
 1 Chambers, I, 333. 2 Text in Du Meril, 187.
 
 48 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 for the glorification of the Ass, but for the exaltation, in 
 burlesque, of the year-long despised subdeacons of the 
 church. Their opportunity came with the transfer of 
 the precentor's staff, or bacillus, when on the last evening 
 of the Old Year the Magnificat was sung : " The mighty 
 he hath put down (deposuit) from their seats, and hath 
 exalted those of low degree." Out of this transfer grew 
 the Feast of Fools, a tripudium, in its conception distinct 
 from that of the Ass, but speedily, and at as early a 
 date, perhaps, marked with similar riot. The sub- 
 deacons were an unconsidered order, neither fish, flesh, 
 nor fowl, nor yet good red herring. They were not to be 
 ranked with priests and deacons of regular orders, nor 
 were they allowed the secular privileges of choir boys or 
 of the laity. Beletus, 1 a French ecclesiastic and dig- 
 nitary, writing before 1 1 80, calls them incertus ordo, and 
 says that having no fixed and appropriate festival, as 
 deacons, priests, and even choir boys had, they had seized 
 upon this chance and were celebrating it officio confuso, at 
 the Circumcision, or Epiphany or the octave of Epiphany. 
 That is to say, on January I, January 6, or January 14. 
 The Feast of the Ass was the levelling of man and brute ; 
 the Feast of the Deposuit was the levelling of ecclesiastical 
 orders, soon of all order. The " precentor," probably 
 the dominus festi, the lord of revels of the year just ter- 
 minated, hands over the baculus, the symbol of his author- 
 ity, to his newly elected successor, representative of the 
 subdeacons, lord of the jollification of the incoming year. 
 Immediately there takes place (as long ago in the New 
 Year's feast of pagan Rome) a rapturous topsy-turvy of 
 degrees, a reign of the unconsidered. The subdeacons, 
 howling 
 
 1 De Divin. Offic., Cap. 72, in Du Cange, /. v. Kalend*.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 49 
 
 Novus annus hodie 
 Monet nos laetitias 
 
 Laudes inchoare, 
 Felix est principium 
 Finem cujus gaudium 
 
 Solet terminate, 
 
 and so on, assume the vestments of their superiors, and 
 take the places of the canons in the stalls. 
 
 This Novus annus hodie, or the well-known Ltetemur 
 gaudiiSy or a similar chant for the investment of the 
 lord of the feast with the baculus, was used as the Con- 
 ductus ad Bacularium ; and was, I suppose, the " Prose of 
 Fools " as distinguished from that of the Ass ; though 
 sometimes the Orientis partibus is identified with the 
 Feast as its proper prose. 
 
 " In France, at different cathedral churches," says 
 Hone, describing this upheaval of the undercrust, "there 
 was a Bishop or an Archbishop of Fools elected ; 
 and in the churches immediately dependent upon the 
 papal see, a Pope of Fools. These mock pontiffs had 
 usually a proper suite of ecclesiastics, and one of their 
 ridiculous ceremonies was to shave the precentor of 
 Fools upon a stage erected before the church in the 
 presence of the populace, who were amused during the 
 operation by his lewd and vulgar discourses accompanied 
 by actions equally reprehensible. They were mostly 
 attired in the ridiculous dresses of pantomime players and 
 buffoons, and so habited entered the church, and per- 
 formed the service accompanied by crowds of laity in 
 masks, representing monsters, or with their faces smutted 
 to excite fear or laughter, as occasion might require. 
 Some of them personated females or panders or wander- 
 ing actors, and practised wanton devices. During divine 
 
 4
 
 50 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 service they sang indecent songs in the choir, ate rich 
 puddings at the horn of the alter, played at dice upon it 
 by the side of the 'priest' while he celebrated Mass, 
 incensed it with smoke from old burnt shoes ; and, with 
 unblushing effrontery, ran leaping all over the church. 
 The ' Bishop ' or ' Pope of Fools ' performed the service 
 habited in pontifical garments, and gave his benediction ; 
 when it was concluded he was seated in an open carriage, 
 and drawn about to different parts of the town followed 
 by a large train of clergy and laymen, and by men stark- 
 naked hauling carts laden with filth which they threw 
 upon the populace that was assembled to see the proces- 
 sion. These licentious festivities were called the De- 
 cember Liberties. They were always held at Christmas 
 time or near to it, but were not confined to one particu- 
 lar day ; and they seem to have lasted through the chief 
 part of January." 
 
 This account, which I have varied somewhat from 
 Hone's by returning to the original, is derived from an 
 indignant expostulation addressed by the Faculty of The- 
 ology of the University of Paris in the year 1445 to the 
 prelates of the church ; * and it brought about something 
 of a reform, one of a series of Augean purgations, none 
 of which, however, dispensed with the need of one still 
 newer and more Herculean. The ecclesiastical history 
 of France teems with remonstrances, spasmodic reforms, 
 and relapse. In spite of inhibition and modification the 
 custom ran its course, joining hands by the year 1200, 
 maybe earlier, with the orgy of the Ass; diffusing its 
 amalgamated bulk over half of December and January, 
 drawing in its train the erstwhile sweet and stately 
 procession of the choir boys for Innocents' day ; and, 
 
 1 Du Cange, /. v. Kalend*.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 51 
 
 blasphemous, drunken, often obscene, parading Europe 
 and degrading its rituals till the end of the sixteenth, 
 nay, even the middle of the seventeenth century. No 
 wonder the Archbishop of Sens, Louis, writing in 
 1445, sa Y s tnat a ^ observers should tremble and blush 
 at the enormity of the sacrilege by which a decorous 
 and pleasant festival graced by the name of our Lord 
 had been turned into an obscenity : a Festum fatuorum y 
 videlicet coagulatio malorum hominum exultantium in rebus 
 pessimis. 
 
 This feast, as I have already said, was in its origin 
 entirely independent of the jollifications which immedi- 
 ately attended Christmas. The deacons had their anni- 
 versary from vespers to vespers on Christmas day and 
 the succeeding day of St. Stephen, since Stephen himself 
 was a deacon ; the priests had theirs on the festival of St. 
 John the Evangelist, December 27 ; and the choir boys 
 theirs on the commemoration of the Massacre of the Holy 
 Innocents, December 28. 1 Thus from very early times 
 the services of the three days after Christmas were the 
 seemly prerogative of their respective officiants. From 
 the beginning of the tenth century notices survive of 
 these observances with much the same ecclesiastical pro- 
 cedure as that which marked the transfer of authority 
 in the festival of the subdeacons. But the procedure 
 of the Christmas tripudia was dignified in its incep- 
 tion ; it anticipated historically the festival of subdeacons ; 
 and it never attained, even in its abuse, so infamous 
 a notoriety. The latter celebration, on the other hand, 
 though it is not noticed before 1180 or thereabouts, had 
 even then acquired its derogatory sobriquet : it is for 
 Beletus thefestum subdiaconorum quod vocamus stultorum ; 
 1 Du Cange, /. v. Kalend<e, quoting Beletus, Cap. 1 20.
 
 52 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 then the "ftstum fatuorum, most accursed day, on which so 
 many enormities and disgraceful practices are wont to be 
 tolerated." In 1212 it is the "festum follorum when the 
 staff is received," and in 1230 the " feast of the fatuous 
 or of the New Year's staff." By 1222, and even earlier 
 at Sens and Beauvais, we notice that it has sucked into 
 its whirlpool the asinaria ftsta into which the Procession 
 of the Prophets had lapsed ; later we begin to read of the 
 Feasts of Fools or of Asses. In 1246 at Nevers we find 
 that the Feast of Fools has swallowed also the Boy 
 Bishop and his festival of Innocents' day; and by 1360 
 that, in Germany, the fool-master of the staff is lord of 
 asses and boy bishop as well. This is at Mosburg, where 
 one of the New Year carols for the scholars' "bishop" 
 begins 
 
 Gregis pastor Tityrus 
 Asinorum dominus 
 Noster est episcopus, 
 and ends 
 
 Ventremur Tityrum 
 
 >ui nos proptcr baculum 
 
 In vitat ad fpulum. 1 
 
 Similarly the festivals of St. Stephen, St. John the 
 Evangelist, Epiphany, and the octave of Epiphany, 
 even those of earlier occasion, St. Catherine's, St. 
 Clement's, and St. Nicholas', were drawn into the 
 vortex, and shared the obloquy of the Feast of Fools. 
 So we meet with the Archbishop of Innocents, alias 
 "stultusy" and the Episcopus fatuus vel Innocentium y the 
 Fool-bishop, the Ass-archbishop, and other such combi- 
 nations of the original elements evendown to 1645. 
 
 1 See Chambers, I, 320, for the whole song; and passim for factt 
 here cited.
 
 INVASION OF THE HUMOROUS 53 
 
 In England the career of the festival was not so lurid. 
 Introduced in all probability by Pierre de Corbeil about 
 the beginning of the thirteenth century, when he was 
 coadjutor of Lincoln, it was forbidden, in 1236, by 
 Bishop Grosseteste of that diocese as " a vain and filthy 
 recreation hateful to God and dear to devils " ; and, in 
 1 23 8, as " an execrable custom permitted in certain 
 churches, by which the feast of the Circumcision is 
 defiled." 1 In both cases the ceremony is specified by 
 name, festum stultorum. It survived, however, until 
 1390; for, during his visitation of Lincoln in that year, 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Courteney, 
 " was credibly informed that vicars and clerics of that 
 church are still by way of disturbing divine service on 
 the day of the Circumcision, assuming the garb of lay- 
 men, indulging with uproar, and foolish harangues and 
 games, in what are commonly and fitly called festa 
 stultorum" He therefore "forbids vicars now, and for 
 all time to come, and all other servants of the church, to 
 take part in such rites and in their public drinkings and 
 other unseemly practices." 2 On the margin of this 
 order, 3 in the Chapter Act Book, " a sarcastic vicar has 
 written ' Harrow barrow ! Here goes the Feast of 
 Fools (hie subducitur festum stultorum]' ' The burlesque 
 of the " King of Fools," held in Beverley on New Year's 
 eve and day, had disappeared in 1391, and as a sop for 
 refraining from the antiqua consuetude, the subdiaconi et 
 clericl de secunda forma were allowed a special " gorge " for 
 the occasion. 
 
 1 Grosseteste, Epistolee : original quoted in Chambers, I, 322. 
 
 2 Lincoln Statutes, from original in Chambers, I, 322. 
 8 Leach, in Furnivall Miscellany, p. 222.
 
 54 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BOY BISHOP AND THE ST. NICHOLAS 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 THE Benediktbeuern Mystery of the Nativity, of which 
 we spoke in connection with the Feast of the Ass, is 
 strangely comprehensive of material, historical as well as 
 dramatic. It not only presents us with the pageant of the 
 prophets, St. Augustine, the Sibyl, etc., Balaam and the 
 Ass, and the high priests disputing, with the scene of 
 the Annunciation and the visit to Elizabeth, the nativity, 
 the star, the three Magi, Herod and the shepherds, 
 devils and angels, the massacre of the innocents, and with 
 the rest as already related ; it also introduces, for the 
 first time as a dramatised personality, a character already 
 famous in Christmas ritual, the Boy Bishop, Episcopus 
 Puerorum y a character destined to long-lived popularity 
 in ceremonial, burlesque, and tradition in England and 
 on the Continent alike. In this mystery the Episcopus 
 Puerorum plays, indeed, no extended part : he rebukes 
 the High Priest and the Jews for their unbelief in the 
 miraculous birth, and refers the prophets to St. Augus- 
 tine for verification of their predictions ; l but the man- 
 ner of his dramatic appearance points to the religious 
 quality of his origin. His character was familiar to the 
 church from remote times. He is the acknowledged 
 leader of the choir boys in their festivals of St. Nicholas 
 
 1 See text in DuMeril, p. 191.
 
 THE BOY BISHOP 55 
 
 and Holy Innocents. As the earliest record of such 
 festivals Chambers cites a passage in which Ekkehard 
 tells of the pleasure that King Conrad I had in viewing 
 the procession of the choir boys on Innocents' day of 
 the year 911, at the monastery of St. Gall : " It would 
 be a long story to tell what pleasures he had by day and 
 night, especially in the procession of the children ; and 
 he was amazed at their discipline, for though he had 
 ordered that apples should be strewn before them down 
 the middle of the aisle, not even the tiniest lad broke 
 ranks or stretched his hand out to get one." In the 
 Winchester troper of the last part of the tenth century 
 provision was made for the participation of the choir 
 boys in the services from first to second vespers, and 
 mention is made of their festivals by writers of the two 
 centuries succeeding ; notably by Beletus, who says 
 that as the deacons had their St. Stephen's day, and the 
 priests their day of St. John, so to complete the Christ- 
 mas triduum, " the choir boys, that is the least of age 
 and rank, had the festival of the Holy Innocents for a 
 tripudium or jollification." From the beginning of the 
 thirteenth century at York certain duties are recorded as 
 imposed upon the leader of the boys, the Little Bishop, 
 Scholars' Bishop, or Boy Bishop. From the same cen- 
 tury copies survive of the service performed by the Boy 
 Bishop and his child dignitaries in French churches on 
 the third day after Christmas ; * and from the fourteenth 
 century we have the ritual as practised in Salisbury 
 Cathedral. 2 There was a Boy Bishop there before 1222, 
 and at St. Paul's before 1225. 
 
 Nothing can be found of the puerile or irreverent in 
 
 1 Texts in Du Cange, Kalend<e. 
 fl Text in Chambers, II, p. 282.
 
 56 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the ceremonies and processions as first provided by 
 the church for the festival of Holy Innocents. But 
 on the continent, and in a much milder sense in Eng- 
 land, abuses from without invaded the celebration, 
 turbulence, disguisings, profane plays, and mockery of 
 divine worship. That such should be the case is not at 
 all surprising when we consider that similar ceremonies 
 intrusted to older heads had speedily succumbed to the 
 temptation ; and that the causa causans of the Boys' 
 "high jinks" was precisely that which underlay the jolli- 
 fications of subdeacons, deacons, and priests, a natural 
 reaction against the artificial restraint of the ecclesiastical 
 year. As a whole, however, the reign of the Boy Bishop 
 was less obnoxious to criticism than that of the Lord of 
 Asses or the Abbot of Fools ; and it certainly preserved 
 in England, France, and Germany, for a longer period 
 the integrity of its original religious tradition. 
 
 Though the choir boys elected their Bishop on the 
 eve of St. Nicholas, December 5 (probably the ancient 
 season of their festival), his duties in most places did not 
 begin till the eve of Holy Innocents, after the festivals 
 of deacons and priests were concluded. Excellent ac- 
 counts of the ceremony and the service which was in 
 Latin, of course are supplied by Du Cange, Hone, and 
 Chambers ; but since Mr. Leach 1 has dealt principally 
 with the English custom, I shall draw, in what follows, 
 upon him. At the Deposuit the bishop or dean or abbot 
 changed places with the Boy Bishop ; and canons, arch- 
 deacons, and so forth, similarly exchanged with the corre- 
 sponding dignitaries of the boys. In the recessional 
 the Boy Bishop came last, as of highest dignity, while 
 the real dignitaries were turned into candle-holders, 
 4 " The Schoolboys' Feast," Fortnightly, Jan., 1896.
 
 A.Monument to a Boy-Bishop 
 From "Ancient Mysteries Described'
 
 THE BOY BISHOP 57 
 
 incense-bearers, and the like. In the Salisbury office, 
 there being no altar of St. Nicholas convenient, the Boy 
 Bishop with his train marched to the altar of the Trinity 
 and All Saints, and there began the chant Centum quad- 
 raginta : " One hundred and forty-four thousand who were 
 redeemed from the earth, the first-fruits of God and the 
 Lamb " (Revelation), referring to the children killed by 
 Herod ! Then followed the " verse " sung by three 
 boys : " These were redeemed from all, because they 
 were not defiled with women ; for they have remained 
 virgins. Therefore they reign with God, and the Lamb 
 with them." The Boy Bishop, continues Mr. Leach, 
 like a real bishop censed the altar and the image of the 
 Saint. The Boy Precentor began the anthem of St. 
 Mary. Then the Boy Bishop took his seat, and recited 
 the verse, " Thou art beautiful in form beyond the sons 
 of men (Speciosus forma pro filiis hominum}\ and since 
 this verse was directed in response by the choir to him, it 
 called for the requirement in the York Minster Statutes 
 that the Boy Bishop was to be the senior boy, "so 
 long as he was sufficiently good-looking." Afterwards 
 the Boy Bishop blessed the people and clergy, and then, 
 being saluted as Prince of the Church, he concluded the 
 service in the usual way. On Innocents' day all ser- 
 vices, even the Mass, were conducted by him and his 
 quasi priests ; he even preached a sermon (which was, 
 of course, written for him). 
 
 Each evening of the celebration, supper was provided 
 to the " Bishop " and his train by the real dignitaries. 
 There were contributions levied in church, and by bands 
 which paraded the streets, the proceeds of which went to 
 the " Bishop." There were dances at night, and disguis- 
 ings, and plays, all in the church. For the next fortnight
 
 58 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the Boy Bishop, with a staff composed of chaplain, 
 steward, and choristers, went a-horseback, on visitation of 
 his "diocese," levying tribute (and no joke was it either) 
 from the gentry and the clergy around. The receipts 
 for York in 1396 came, according to present values, 
 to $875, with two or three gold rings, silk purses, and 
 silver spoons to boot. After the Boy Bishop had en- 
 tertained his schoolfellows with all the hot birds they 
 could eat and cold beer they could drink, and paid his 
 other episcopal expenses, he had some $400 left. Mr. 
 Leach, who clings to the tradition discredited by many, 
 that the Eton " Montem " is a relic of the Boy Epis- 
 copate, tells us that in the last years of its existence it 
 used to yield the " Captain" ^1000 gross! 
 
 To " bishop " it was therefore a profitable custom to 
 the senior boy, as well as joyous for his comrades and 
 attractive to the people. For the lads it was the only 
 holiday of the year, actually so, since school vacations 
 were not invented till the eighteenth century, for the 
 people, an opportunity to behold the rising generation in 
 the trappings of maturity and dignity, or in the perform- 
 ance of more or less amusing buffoonery. It also afforded 
 an outlet for the play-acting instinct, natural to the young 
 of all species. And since this festival was probably as 
 much a festival of St. Nicholas as of the Holy Inno- 
 cents, some of the numerous miracles by which the genial 
 Bishop of Myra had endeared himself to boys and girls, 
 merchants and travellers and thieves, would, of course, be 
 presented by the lads, in dramatic form, within or without 
 the church. For Nicholas had been the patron of school- 
 boys ever since that happy day in the fourth century when 
 some lover of marvels invented the story of how the 
 bishop and saint had discovered in a brine-tub the bodies
 
 THE BOY BISHOP 59 
 
 of three lads who on the way to school had been mur- 
 dered by the keeper of their inn ; and of how he had 
 brought the bodies back to life in spite of the fact that 
 they were already cut into pieces, salted, and disguised 
 as pickled pork. This was before the day of tinned 
 meats ; but the methods of the packing-houses were, even 
 then, not above suspicion. The cleric who unearthed 
 the scandal has never lacked votes nor been able to 
 decline the honours thrust upon him. Guilds of St. 
 Nicholas, as well as plays of St. Nicholas presented by 
 them, were rife in the middle ages. The presumption is 
 but natural that the celebration, as well as the election of 
 the Boy Bishop or " Nicholas " Bishop, was formerly held 
 upon his day. At Winchester the Boy Bishop was, in 
 1461, called Episcopus Nicholatensis ; and of that name the 
 Eton Episcopus Nihilensis, or Bishop of Nothing, of a 
 century later, would appear to be merely a humorous 
 corruption. As time passed, however, the authorities 
 in most places found it convenient to amalgamate the 
 festivities of St. Nicholas and the Holy Innocents ; and 
 hence the election on the former day of the boy who 
 should officiate as Bishop on the latter. A Boy Bishop 
 of such function and prerogative was elected not only in 
 the choir-schools attached to cathedrals and important 
 churches, but in secular schools, and in choirs connected 
 with parish churches as well ; and wherever church or 
 school was associated with St. Nicholas the name " Nich- 
 olas Bishop " was likely to be preferred. 
 
 Turning to France, 1 we find that at Rouen the service- 
 book for the day was practically the same as that already 
 cited from Salisbury. At Toul, the provisions for the 
 attendant ceremonial seem to have been somewhat more 
 1 Du Cange, Kalendee.
 
 60 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 elaborate, and explicit mention is made of the presenta- 
 tion of plays. It is also significant that here the election 
 of the Boy Bishop for the coming Holy Innocents' was 
 made as early as the first Sunday in Advent; that is, just 
 before St. Nicholas' day. The subdeacons, according to 
 the Statutes of 1497, assist in the election, and with the 
 other "Innocents," singing Te Deum laudamus and ringing 
 bells, they conduct the Bishop-elect to the cathedra 
 behind the altar of the Virgin and there enthrone him. 
 On Innocents' day he performs the usual services and, in 
 addition, riding to the monasteries of the town, offers 
 prayer and receives from each a fee of eighteen denarii for 
 its equivalent. The canons of the cathedral must year 
 by year, according to seniority, defray the expenses of a 
 supper, and provide the " bishop " with horse, gloves 
 (chirotecis\ and biretta. If the canon of the year, he 
 upon whom the " bishop " of the year previous has be- 
 stowed the customary pileum romarini (rosemary cap) as 
 the symbol of his appointment, fails in the performance 
 of his duties, personally or by substitute, the boys and 
 subdeacons are authorised to erect a scarecrow in the 
 middle of the choir, a black cope over a rake (raustro for 
 rastro\ in mockery of him, to remain there at their 
 pleasure. And until the offender makes amends for his 
 contempt of the choir he is cut off from all ecclesias- 
 tical emoluments. After vespers of Innocents' day the 
 Episcopus Innocentium marches with his posse through 
 the streets, accompanied by mimes and trumpets. On the 
 octave of the Innocents a similar march is had to the church 
 of St. Genevieve, with service consisting of her antiphon 
 and collect. Afterwards the company is entertained, at the 
 hospital attached to the church, with cake, apples, nuts, 
 etc. ; and officers are appointed to collect all fines for
 
 THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 61 
 
 violations of discipline in connection with the perform- 
 ance of divine service, during the ensuing year, and to 
 apply them to the defrayal of the expenses of the next 
 great dinner on the day after Innocents'. On that same 
 day every year plays were furnished, if the weather per- 
 mitted : moralities or miracles or farces, and like amuse- 
 ments, but they had always to be decent (omnia cum 
 hone state). 
 
 PLAYS OF HOLY INNOCENTS AND ST. NICHOLAS 
 
 Of these representations the subjects would inevitably 
 be suggested by the occasion : hence undoubtedly the 
 numerous notices still preserved, even outside of the 
 great cycles, of plays of the Massacre of the Innocents, or, 
 as it is sometimes phrased, of the Children of Israel (Ludus 
 Filiorum Israel). We read of one at Cambridge, and 
 another at Constance, at an early date. They were both, 
 in all probability, acted by youths. Plays of St. Nicholas 
 could readily be adapted to suit the festival of the 
 Innocents, since intervention on behalf of the young was 
 the characteristic role of the saint. His miracles would 
 grace either feast. That they graced his own, we know. 
 In the Fleury manuscript of the thirteenth century four 
 such plays exist; and in one of them, which may be 
 called Kidnapped, a character explicitly informs us that 
 "to-morrow will be St. Nicholas' day, whom all Chris- 
 tians should devoutly cherish, venerate, and bless, In 
 crastino erit festivitas Nicolai." 
 
 The bare outline of the miracle itself is given in Vora- 
 gine's legend of the saint : the Fleury play elaborates 
 it prettily. 1 Little Deodatus accompanies his parents 
 
 i Du Meril, Orig. Lot. du Theatre, 276.
 
 62 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 to the church of St. Nicholas, whose festival the father, 
 Getron, was wont annually to celebrate. During the 
 service the worshippers are attacked by the soldiers of a 
 predatory king. Deodatus, separated from his parents, 
 is carried off by the soldiers, and becomes cupbearer 
 to the king. His majesty, Marmorinus, is, of course, 
 a pagan, a worshipper of Apollo ; and finding that the 
 little cupbearer still trusts for rescue to the God of the 
 Christians, he ridicules his prayers. By a shift of scene 
 we are recalled to the parents. They search for the 
 child in vain. Euphrosyne, the mother, bewails her 
 evil fortune. Her attendant women, striving to console 
 her, urge her to appeal to God and his dearly beloved, 
 Nicholas. She does so. A year passes, and, with her 
 husband, she arranges for a special feast in honour of the 
 saint. On the day of the festival the parents and their 
 friends are seated at table. Meanwhile, in his far distant 
 palace, Marmorinus too is feasting in his pagan way. 
 The little Deodatus, summoned to serve the king, sighs 
 heavily, remembering that just one year ago he was torn 
 from his father and mother. The king upbraids him ; 
 tears are useless ; there is no rescue so long as he desires 
 to hold him there. Then enters One in the likeness of 
 St. Nicholas and whisks away the little cupbearer with 
 his cup of spiced wine in his hand (scyphum cum recentario 
 vino tenentem), and setting him down outside his father's 
 house, mysteriously disappears. " Lad, whither away," 
 says a citizen passing by, "and who gave thee that gor- 
 geous cup all filled with wine ? " " This is whither- 
 away," replies the lad, " and no farther do I go. Praise 
 and glory to St. Nicholas, who hath restored me." Out 
 from the table spread with bread and wine that clerks 
 and paupers might refresh themselves, runs the mother
 
 THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 63 
 
 to her child, and hugs him and kisses quern s<epius 
 deosculatum amplexetur and returns thanks, 
 
 Sintque patri nostro perpetu* 
 Nicolao laudes et gratia, 
 Cujus erga Deum oratio 
 Nos adjuvit in hoc negotio I 
 
 And all the choir responds with the chant 
 
 Copios<e caritatis 
 Nicolae pontifex, etc. 
 
 This play was intended for performance by boys. And 
 one may assume that the miracle of the Three Schoolboys 
 restored to life by St. Nicholas, and that of the Three Fam- 
 ished Girls saved from lives of shame, and that of the 
 Barbarian, or travelling Jew, contained in the same manu- 
 script collection, 1 were intended for similar production 
 on the festival of Santa Claus. These, like that which 
 has preceded, are wholly in Latin, and of the simplest 
 kind, such as youngsters could commit to memory with 
 no feeling of resentment toward the charitable saint. 
 Of the miracles of St. Nicholas the most amusing, how- 
 ever, is not all in Latin, but partly in French. It is 
 ascribed to that Hilarius who, as we have already said, 
 was probably an Anglo-Norman. He was of the twelfth 
 century, and, like other cultivated ecclesiastics and school- 
 masters of his day, he frequently journeyed to and fro 
 across the Straits of Dover. His play is well known : a 
 Barbarian (it is from another play that we learn his na- 
 tionality) who is setting forth on business entrusts his 
 treasure to the keeping of a shrine of St. Nicholas, order- 
 ing the saint, somewhat cavalierly one might say, to see 
 to it that there shall be no cause for complaint upon 
 
 1 All in Du Meril.
 
 64 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 his return. As soon as the foreigner is out of sight, 
 tramps, fures transeuntes, make off with the booty. 
 " Hard luck," cries Barbarus, who had merely stepped 
 round the corner 
 
 Gravis sors ft dura ! 
 Hie reliqui plura, 
 Sed sub mala cur a : 
 
 Des I quel damage / 
 >ui pert la sue chose, purque if enrage ? 
 
 " I do well to be angry. I left more than a hundred 
 things in charge of this thief of a saint. Ha, Nicholax, 
 if you don't disgorge my chose, you '11 catch it." Then up 
 with his whip 
 
 By God, I swear to you 
 Unless you " cough up" true, 
 You thief, I '11 beat you blue, 
 
 I will, no fear ! 
 So hand me back my stuff that I put here! 
 
 Then St. Nicholas shall go to the robbers and say to them : 
 " Ye wretches, what would you ? When you stole the 
 treasure committed to my care, was not I beholding you ? 
 Now I have taken a thrashing for them, and my credit 
 is no longer worth a denier. Out with the stolen goods 
 at once : 
 
 And if you don't do as I say, 
 
 I '11 see you both hanged in a day 
 
 On the cross in the square : 
 Your filching, and fobbing, and face, 
 Your scandalous deeds of disgrace 
 
 I '11 tell to the populace, there ! " 
 
 The robbers, fearful, bring back the goods, which when 
 he finds, Barbarus in alternate gasps of Latin and un- 
 digested French exclaims,
 
 St. Nicholas and the Schoolboys 
 From "Ancient Mysteries Described"
 
 THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 65 
 
 Unless my sight deceives me 
 
 I Ve got 'em now ; 
 I don't care who believes me, 
 
 'T is marvel still, I vow, 
 
 or words to that effect. He then approaches the image 
 of St. Nicholas, and gives thanks : 
 
 Supplex ad te venio 
 
 Nicholax ; 
 Nam per te recipio 
 Tut icei que tu gardas ; 
 
 and more. Beatus NicholauSj appearing then, bids him 
 give thanks to God alone. And the Barbarian repents 
 of his sins and becomes a Christian, instanter, believing 
 that God Almighty, whose kingdom is without end, will 
 blot out his iniquity. 
 
 Other such miracles there are : none in English, how- 
 ever. But it is impossible to imagine that they did not 
 abound in the libraries of choir-masters and classical: 
 schools. The Golden Legend alone furnishes subjects for 
 a dozen or two of the children's saint, beginning eveni 
 with the antedental and predisponent events of his most 
 continent life, " Then the first day that he was washed 
 and bained, he addressed him," says the Legend, " right up 
 in the bason, and he would not take the breast nor the 
 pap but once on the Wednesday, and once on the Friday, 
 and in his young age he eschewed the plays and japes of 
 other children," which undoubtedly accounts for his 
 accumulated, adult sympathy with the nonsense of eternal 
 youth. 
 
 In 1541 a proclamation of Henry VIII forbade the 
 gathering of children for festivals of St. Nicholas, Holy 
 Innocents, St. Catherine, St. Clement, and the like, where 
 
 5
 
 66 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 boys dressed themselves up to counterfeit bishops, priests, 
 women, and others of mature years. And from that 
 time on, save for a space under Queen Mary, the festivals 
 waned in importance and distinction. Still, as late as the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century there are traces in 
 England of a "license" on Innocents' day, by which 
 children are allowed to play in the churches. On the 
 continent we hear of a Bishop of Fools or of Innocents, 
 until 1585, at Aix. And in 1645, at Antibes, Innocents' 
 day was celebrated not by boys, but by Franciscans, in 
 the old-fashioned riotous manner, with exchange of status 
 between clergy and laymen, and of garments, the sacer- 
 dotal vestments being turned inside out ; with censing by 
 ashes and with all the other topsy-turvydom of the 
 Fools' Feast in the middle ages. 1 This is an absorption 
 of the children's festival by that of the grown-up Fools. 
 But whether independently or in connection with the 
 Feast of Fools or that of Asses, it persists till the six- 
 teenth century in at least a dozen cathedral towns of 
 France. Mr. Chambers cites cases, indeed, of its con- 
 tinuance as late as the eighteenth century, one at Lyons, 
 another at Rheims ; and he quotes from Cherest, 2 that 
 even in the nineteenth at Sens, the choir boys still play 
 at being bishops on Innocents' day, and name the "arch- 
 bishop " fine. Odd that the latest survival should be in 
 the cathedral from which we derive the earliest complete 
 ritual of the Asses ' Feast. 
 
 THE GIRL ABBESS AND THE NUNS' PLAYS 
 
 If subdeacons and choir boys, not to speak of orders 
 more elevated, had their annual excursions into joy, why 
 
 1 Hone, from Thiers, Traiti des Jeux, p. 449. 
 * Fete des Innocents, etc., p. 81.
 
 THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 67 
 
 not the cloistered nuns as well ? Their devotions, fasts, 
 and penances were even more monotonous and severe 
 than those of subdeacons and choir boys ; and they were 
 but human after all. Not only could Chaucer's Madame 
 Eglentyne entune the service in her nose full seemly, she 
 could also smile and swear genteelly, and speak a certain 
 Anglo-French, and bear herself daintily at meat, and 
 counterfeit the cheer of court, and wear with grace her 
 corals and her brooch : 
 
 And sikerly she was of great disport 
 And ful pleasaunt, and amiable of port. 
 
 Like Prioress, like novice, and like nun. And so we 
 rejoice in that notice of Du Cange, 1 which informs us that 
 the Fes turn B. M. Magdalen* was celebrated ludibriis 
 atque ineptiis y with " revels and tomfoolery," among the 
 year-long quiet little nuns, the moniales, after the fashion 
 of the Kalends among the clerics. And we entertain the 
 somewhat sacrilegious hope that the fulmination, in 1245, 
 of Archbishop Odo of Rouen against some of his ob- 
 streperous convents, was not too efficacious in the event. 
 "Item," says he, "We forbid you in future to practise 
 the usual follies on the festivals of Holy Innocents and 
 St. Mary Magdalene ; we mean, dressing yourselves up 
 in the garments of seculars, and indulging in dances 
 (choreas ducendo] either among yourselves or with out- 
 siders." I have my doubts whether the little nuns of 
 Villars, for instance, were tripping it with wantonness 
 other than that of youthful exuberance, or at any time 
 with persons of the other sex. The chores, aforesaid, 
 were more probably stately evolutions in some presenta- 
 tion, by song and acting, of sacred history : perhaps the 
 
 1 Under Fest. Magd. and Kalenda.
 
 68 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 spectacle of Rachel weeping for her children, or the 
 aureate history of the Magdalene. Hence the assumption 
 of unconventual garb and the co-operation of lay-folk. 
 But again the moniales of the nunnery of Villars are 
 warned by the archbishop that the songs in which they 
 indulge on the festivals of St. John and the Innocents 
 are scurrilous, and their jocosity too great, extending to 
 farces, burlesque chants (conductis) like the Prose of the 
 Ass, and what Mr. Leach translates "frivolous motets" 
 (motulis). And they are ordered to behave " more 
 decorously and more devoutly in the future." Perhaps 
 the rigorous Odo was justified after all. Those " motets " 
 have a suspicious flavour : they remind us of the crackers 
 and fools' caps of Christmas to-day, with their versicles 
 of perilous rhyme ! But a nun 's a woman for a' that 
 And in England, even, it seems that a slip of a convent- 
 girl would seize her chance to be natural at least once a 
 year. In 1275 the Archbishop of Canterbury writes to 
 the Abbess of Godstow that she must not suffer in her 
 nunnery what was elsewhere permitted, viz. that on 
 Innocents' day the girls should conduct the divine 
 service. 1 There were, indeed as late as 1526, " Girl 
 Abbesses " in England, corresponding to the Boy Bishops ; 
 for in that year a Christmas " abbess " was elected at the 
 nunnery of Carrow. In France the election of a Girl 
 Abbess on St. Catherine's and Holy Innocents' still 
 obtained, at the Abbaye aux Bois, Faubourg St. Germain, 
 as late as 1773.* The celebration of the Christmas 
 triduum would naturally lead the women, when celebrating 
 it, to an imitation of the excesses of deacons, priests, and 
 choir boys ; so also their celebration of the day assigned 
 
 1 Leach, Fortnightly, Jan., 1 896. 
 * Chambers, I, 362.
 
 THE ST. NICHOLAS PLAYS 69 
 
 to subdeacons, New Year's or Twelfth Day or St. 
 Hilary's which passed into the Feast of Fools. It 
 was inevitable that they should make of the Feast of St. 
 Catherine, November 25, or of Mary Magdalene, July 
 22, a festival peculiar to themselves, with adaptations of 
 the tripudies of their ecclesiastical brothers.
 
 7 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN SATIRE AND 
 WONDER 
 
 SOTTIE AND FARCE 
 
 OF the outcome of the ecclesiastical burlesques in social 
 and literary life a few words only can be said here. The 
 subject has been fascinatingly discussed by Herford, 
 Julleville, Chambers, and others. Nobody has yet ex- 
 hausted it. 
 
 To the ecclesiastical ceremonials of Asses, Fools, and 
 Boy Bishops we owe the founding of certain secular 
 societies which prosecuted the exposure of folly with 
 such success as to make its various shades and degrees 
 the object of widespread consideration in the later middle 
 ages ; and to these societies is most emphatically due the 
 development, at that time, of certain typical characters 
 prominent in literature, dramatic and satirical. Concern- 
 ing the extent to which the familiar figure of court fool 
 and of the fool of the Elizabethan stage was influenced 
 by these by-products of the church service it would be 
 unsafe to hazard a guess : the question is sub judice y and 
 is likely to remain there for some time yet. But that 
 the joyous monologues of a Launcelot Gobbo, or of the 
 Adam of the Looking-Glass, and the Coomes of Porter's 
 Two Angry Women, derive, though unconsciously, from 
 the sermons joyeux of the later " society of fools " I have 
 no doubt
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN SATIRE 71 
 
 Petit de Julleville * tells us that " if there is any kind 
 of comedy whose origin is to be sought in the burlesque 
 solemnities of the church it is the sottie. The sots are 
 the celebrants of the Feast of Fools after they have been 
 ejected from the church and have reorganised themselves 
 in the public place to continue the festival. The confrerie 
 of the sots is the Feast of Fools secularised. For the par- 
 ody of hierarchy and ecclesiastical liturgy they substitute 
 the parody of all society." They founded all over 
 France, and elsewhere, a number of societes joyeuses : for 
 instance, the Enfants sans souci of Paris, with their officials, 
 the Prince des Sots and the Mother-Sot; the Connards 
 or Cornards of Dijon, and so on. They also founded 
 societies of clerks of the Basoche, law-clerks attached 
 to some one or other of the municipal parliaments. 
 These societies were both fraternal and dramatic. Their 
 dramatic function had the twofold aim of amusement 
 and satire. Their satires in dramatic form, or softies, 
 ridiculed life political, social, religious, municipal, intellec- 
 tual, carnal, everything under the sun : sometimes 
 grossly 1 ; sometimes with wit and moral force, as in the case 
 of the Gens Nouveaux, where the pretensions of the young 
 to revolutionise the civil polity are reduced to an absurdity; 
 or as in the Prince des Sots of Gringore, where the simony 
 of Pope Julius II is scourged. To the diffusion of 
 softies throughout Europe one may readily trace the crop 
 of fool-literature that succeeded. Hence, therefore, in 
 large part, if not entirely, proceed the Ship of Fools, the 
 Mirror of Fools, and all such masterpieces of the Wir- 
 ekers, Brandts, and Barclays, hence also the Hicks- 
 corners and similar dramatic interludes, more satiric and 
 amusing than moral and didactic. 
 
 1 Le Theatre en France, p. 61.
 
 72 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Another style of literary effort cultivated by these 
 successors of Fool Abbots and Boy Bishops was the 
 sermon joyeux t or merry monologue. This, says Julleville, 
 is born in the Feast of Fools. He who first, in the 
 debauch of the festival, thought of mounting the pulpit 
 and with a bacchanalian impromptu making a parody of 
 the preacher, delivered the first sermon joyeux. Later the 
 buffoon-preacher, ejepted from the Church, took refuge 
 in the theatre, and continued to parody there with im- 
 punity the religious discourse. He retained the text 
 taken from scripture, but twisted its meaning, discussed 
 it under sophistical headings, and mimicked shrewdly 
 the fashion of the scholastic chair. To this monologue 
 we may trace, as I have said, the dramatic lineage of 
 many a fool's soliloquy of the Elizabethan stage : the 
 mock wisdom and the sapient nonsense of Touchstones, 
 Mileses, Slippers, and that ilk. Such monologues are, 
 indeed, the distant source in history of the " stunts " 
 nowadays to be heard on the vaudeville stage, side- 
 splitting when not heart-breaking. 
 
 From the softies of the Care-free Children of France 
 and the farces of the clercs de la Basoche, such as the 
 immortal Maltre Pathelin and Fernet who Goes to the 
 Wme y the merry interludes of the English Heywood and 
 Rastell undoubtedly drew, at times, inspiration, charac- 
 ter, and incident. And similarly the " witty dialogues " of 
 England in the early sixteenth century availed themselves 
 of the d'ebats and disputations of the preceding century in 
 France. 1 
 
 ENGLISH REVELS OF MISRULE 
 
 Orders of fools, somewhat after the French fashion, 
 exist not only in the satiric and dramatic literature of 
 1 See Pollard's "John Heywood" in Rep. Engl. Com., pp. 3-16.
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN SATIRE 73 
 
 England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but 
 in society from a date earlier still. Mr. Chambers quotes 
 from the register of Bishop Grandison " under the date 
 July u, 1348, a mandate to the archdeacon and dean of 
 Exeter and the rector of St. Paul's, requiring them to 
 prohibit the proceedings of a certain t sect of malign 
 men ' who call themselves the ' Order of Brothelyng- 
 ham.' These men," says the bishop, "wear a monkish 
 habit, choose a lunatic fellow as abbot, set him up in the 
 theatre, blow horns, and for day after day, beset in a 
 great company the streets and places of the city, captur- 
 ing laity and clergy, and exacting ransom from them ' in 
 lieu of sacrifice.' This they call a Indus , but it is sheer 
 rapine." Christmas maskings and mummings were com- 
 mon with court and guild from the latter half of the four- 
 teenth century down, not without the grotesque garbing 
 of fools, the local satire and the riot that characterised 
 thejeux des fous across the channel. " Lords of Misrule " 
 who are manifest kin to the Prince des Sots and like him 
 descended from the dominus, the mock abbot or bishop 
 or pope of the old subdeacons* feast, were regularly ap- 
 pointed for Christmas revels at court in the reigns of 
 Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Edward VI. During the 
 same period at the Universities, the yearly season of 
 feasting and games was ruled by a Lord of Misrule 
 whether under the designation of King of Beans or 
 Christmas Lord, Prince of the Revels or King of the 
 Feast of the Nativity. And at the Inns of Court he 
 persists as King of Cockneys, Lieutenant, or Prince of 
 Purpoole, well into the seventeenth century. It was on 
 one of these revels of Innocents' day, when Mr. Henry 
 Helmes of Norfolk was Prince of Purpoole at Gray's 
 Inn, that "a company of base and common fellows was"
 
 74 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 brought in and performed "a Comedy of Errors like to Plau- 
 tus his Men*chmus." l These revels of the town and col- 
 lege appear to be reflected in the mummers' plays of the 
 common folk, though the latter are of much earlier and 
 more distinctly pagan origin. Or was it the folk-festival 
 that had affected the revels of the cultured class ? Was 
 there a connection, for instance, between the " Lord of 
 Pool," whose name the Pickle Herring of the Revesby 
 Plow Boys' play assumes, and this " Prince of Purpoole " 
 of Christmastide in Gray's Inn? 
 
 The reign of the " Abbot of Bon Accord " in Aberdeen 
 is parallel to that of the English Lords of Misrule. 
 Sometimes he is called " Abbot of Unreason ; " and from 
 1440 to 1565 he dominates the Haliblude plays of 
 Christmastide, or rides with Robin Hood and Little 
 John in honour of the Queen of May. So elsewhere in 
 the Scotland of the sixteenth century, at Linlithgow 
 and Leith. Every lover of Sir Walter Scott has in mind 
 the revels of Father Howleglas, the learned Monk of 
 Misrule and Right Reverend Abbot of Unreason, at 
 St. Mary's of Kennequhair, with St. George and the 
 dragon and the lovely Sabaea, Robin Hood and Little 
 John and hobby-horse, and the whole rout of mad gro- 
 tesque mummers ; and how Roland Graeme struck his 
 poniard into the sawdust paunch of the irreverent ruler 
 of the feast. 
 
 Of this kind of foolery we find little recorded evidence 
 in the miracle plays, even when they have passed into the 
 hands of the laity ; but the spirit of the nonsense peeps 
 between the lines in the Chester foolery of the " Boye 
 and the Pigge when the kinges are gone," the "cast- 
 ing up" of staff and sword, and the bombast of Herod ; 
 1 Chambers, I, 417.
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN WONDER 75 
 
 in the unwritten rubrics of Noah's recalcitrant wife, and 
 of Balaam and his Ass; in the comic interludes of the 
 shepherds, Trowle and Mak, and of the ale-wife whom 
 even Christ would not harrow out of hell ; in the vain- 
 glorious Watkyn of the Massacre play and in all that 
 ebullition of the boisterous which attended the amateur 
 performance of scriptural plays, no matter how sacred in 
 their inception. 
 
 THE MIRACLES DE NOSTRE DAME 
 
 In France, the burlesque of ecclesiastical festivals re- 
 sulted in the literature of crude comedy and satire of which 
 I have spoken. The secularisation of saints' plays pro- 
 duced during the fourteenth century a species of dramatic 
 literature of which no counterpart ever existed in England. 
 I refer to the Miracles de Nostre Dame. 1 Of these Mary- 
 plays an immense Corpus still exists, the mummy of a 
 mediaeval Frankenstein. They are the offspring of imag- 
 ination unrestrained and vulgar, superstitious beyond the 
 wildest nightmare of paganism, mystical, sombre, roman- 
 tic, disgusting, tormented, begotten of priestcraft upon 
 ignorance. Still, though abhorrent to the religious senti- 
 ment of any age, they are priceless as the pathetic self- 
 revelation of a perverted spirituality, as the record of an 
 aspect of aesthetic and religious consciousness no less 
 morbid than the contemporary ideals of the true sons of 
 the Church were sane, elevated, and beautiful. To the 
 historian of social phenomena the collection is an inex- 
 haustible museum ; and to the psychologist and the lit- 
 erary investigator a palace of surprises and of somewhat 
 surreptitious delight. 
 
 1 Ed. Gaston Paris et Ulysse Robert, for the Societe des Anciens 
 Textes Francois, 7 vols. Paris, 1876-1893. From a manuscript of the 
 early fifteenth century.
 
 76 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 These Mary-plays were, as I have said, a product of 
 the secularisation of the saints' plays. To what degree 
 of elaboration, both heroic and farcical, a miracle of 
 St Nicholas might be carried had been shown already 
 in the beginning of the thirteenth century by a poet of 
 Arras, Jean Bodel by name. Departing from the ordi- 
 nary run of miracles attributed to the saint, he invented 
 an episode of international and religious significance, 
 nothing other than an encounter of Christians and 
 Mussulmans in which the Crusaders, though heartened 
 to the fight by an angel from heaven, are defeated and 
 with one exception left dead on the field of battle. This 
 victory of the unbelievers fulfils part of a prophecy made 
 by their idol before the hour of conflict. In the remain- 
 der of the prophecy the idol had foreshadowed his own 
 doom. That is now to be fulfilled through the instru- 
 mentality of St. Nicholas. Before an image of the saint 
 left on the field of carnage kneels the surviving Christian. 
 Haled into the presence of the victorious king, and 
 questioned what the object of his homage may be, he 
 announces the singular virtue of the saint, that in his 
 keeping all treasures are safe. The king tests the truth 
 of the story by opening the doors of his treasury, and 
 placing the riches therein under the sole charge of the 
 holy image; and " Prudhomme," the Christian, sets his 
 life on the outcome. Earlier in the play a tavern has 
 been discovered. In it now we behold three jolly tipplers 
 testing without stint a much-vaunted vintage : then, alas, 
 finding no sou in their pockets with which to pay the 
 shot. They resolve on rifling the king's treasury, succeed 
 in so doing, St. Nicholas to the contrary, notwith- 
 standing. Back to the tavern with their chest of 
 treasure, then more swilling of the full bowl, and then
 
 B 3 
 
 S fej 
 
 o
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN WONDER 77 
 
 a drunken sleep. To them thus fuddled appears the 
 spirit of the holy Bishop and orders restitution. With 
 due detail of plot and manners this is made : the " Prud- 
 homme's " life is saved, St. Nicholas vindicated ; the king 
 and his court are converted, and the idol Tervagant is 
 dispossessed and disowned. 
 
 Bodel's treatment of his theme is notable for its skilful 
 interweaving of the heroic and the picaresque in plot, the 
 romantic and the contemporary commonplace in manners. 
 He uses the " wonder " not so much for religious as for 
 esthetic purposes, not to excuse but to enhance the 
 elements of profane and spectacular interest. This is 
 the characteristic also of Rutebeuf's Theophile^ a mira- 
 cle of the end of the thirteenth century which dramatised 
 the famous legend of how a priest sold his soul to the 
 devil, and was converted and restored to salvation by the 
 intercession of the Virgin Mary. Not the conscious, 
 but the unintentional, characteristic. The Theophile aims 
 to exalt the worship of the Virgin ; but the Theophile 
 and the collective Miracles of Our Lady existed and 
 persisted because the crowd found delight in legends 
 and romances which in their human interest had, gener- 
 ally speaking, nothing to do with the scriptural or eccle- 
 siastical history of the mother of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The Mariolatry of the eleventh century had, as Creiz- 
 enach says, 1 produced by the beginning of the twelfth a 
 host of stories of the miraculous intervention of the 
 Virgin on behalf of the afflicted who venerated her, or of 
 the wanton, lawless, or criminal who, repentant, placed 
 themselves under her protection. By the end of the 
 fourteenth century many of these stories, some, indeed, 
 from the apocryphal gospels and the legends of the 
 1 Gescbicbte des neueren Dramas, I, p. 143.
 
 78 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 saints, but more from mediaeval chansons des gestes y 
 fabliaux, and romances familiar to common folk or 
 courtly circle, had found their way into dramatic form, 
 and were presented before large audiences, not only in 
 Paris, but in various provincial cities, by the Puys or 
 semi-religious, semi-artistic associations of the several 
 localities. Under colour of the worship of the Virgin, 
 these fraternities made their music, recited and sang their 
 rondels of extravagant but often exquisite adoration, and 
 produced their Miracles of the Mother of our Lord. 
 In them she is helpless no longer, no longer broken- 
 hearted or even pathetic, but victorious, majestic, magi- 
 cal, and gracious, a vision of superhuman chastity and 
 beauty : a fusion of faery-queen and saint and Goddess, 
 as unconscious frequently as the first of a moral law, or 
 as the second of a physical, or as the third of any kind 
 of limitation in the performance of a superhuman desire. 
 
 The subjects of the plays are sometimes heroic, but 
 more often simply human ; they are always of the kind 
 that moves the heart and stirs the blood of country-folk ; 
 the characters are historical or pseudo-historical, legendary, 
 or poetically invented ; the time is careless of chronology, 
 and the scene of distance and locality ; the manners are 
 of the day of the composition, and so are the details; but 
 the spirit is romantic in the zenith. The atmosphere 
 is surcharged and sultry, save when relieved by some 
 rare flash of satire. There is little of the real comic, 
 and less of the permanently tragic : for conciliation is 
 very easy, repentance is to change your jerkin or your 
 stomacher, and atonement is a dose of ecclesiastical salts 
 and senna. 
 
 Of how Ndtre Dame succours the afflicted or the 
 wrongly accused, among her worshippers, the following
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN WONDER 79 
 
 are examples. Once a citizen's wife, long childless, had 
 been blessed with a son in answer to her prayers directed 
 to the Virgin. Exhausted by the pains of child-birth, 
 she falls asleep while bathing the babe, and he is drowned 
 in the tub. The mother is accused of child-murder and 
 condemned to the stake. But the husband prays before 
 a picture of the Virgin ; she descends from heaven and 
 comforts him ; and when the mother, about to be burned, 
 begs for one last look at her child, it is restored to life 
 in her arms ! Such also is the story of the Marquise de 
 la Gaudine, who, by the accusation of her husband's uncle, 
 to whom her husband had entrusted her during his 
 absence from home, is tried for unfaithfulness to her 
 marriage vow, and condemned to burn ; but by the 
 command of Our Lady, whose votary the Marquise was, 
 the husband fought a Voutrance with his false uncle and 
 defeated him, and so established the innocence of his 
 wife. And again, there is the miracle of the Bishop, who 
 for his faith in the august merit of Our Lady was banished 
 to the desert, and there buffeted by many devils, who left 
 him for dead ; but the Mother of God appeared to him 
 faint and perishing for thirst, and gave him a golden 
 vessel filled with milk from her own breasts : " Plain est 
 du kit," she says 
 
 " Plain est du lait de mes mamelles 
 Dont le fil Dieu vierge allaitay ! " 
 
 And again, the marvellous escape of the prevost, whom, 
 at the request of St. Pris, her worshipper, the Virgin 
 delivered from Purgatory. And the story of how the 
 Princess Isabel, parading in man's garb and armour, is 
 disengaged from a very embarrassing situation, by being 
 temporarily transformed to a man !
 
 8o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Of the grace of the Virgin to repentant sinners we 
 have stories even more astounding to the moral sense 
 at any rate, if not to the physical or the religious. Of 
 how an Abbess, painfully strict with her nuns, falls in love 
 with her clerk, Perrot ; and of how, when she is with 
 child by him and is to be tried by the Bishop, she calls 
 upon Our Lady for help, and is not only delivered of 
 the child by miracle, but by some juggle of moral prob- 
 ability is promoted, after a lime-light repentance, to a 
 higher position in the church than she had held before. 
 Says the Bishop : " It appears, indeed, that you are a 
 holy woman ; and therefore I wish you to be mistress of 
 the Abbey of Mons : you shall no longer be abbess here ; 
 it is too mean an estate for such as you ! " Or again, of 
 how the wife of the king of Portugal kills the sene- 
 schal of the king and her own female cousin, for which 
 she is condemned to burn, and how when she has turned 
 this double-dyed murderess in a gush of penitence, 
 to the Virgin, Our Lady preserves her. And of the 
 many misdeeds of Robert the Devil, and of his penance, 
 and how Our Lady takes pity upon him, secures forgive- 
 ness for him, and has him married to the emperor's 
 daughter. A still more edifying instance of romantic 
 justice is afforded by the miracle of St. John the Hairy, 
 a hermit who, tempted by the devil, seduces a princess 
 and then throws her down a deep well. After seven 
 years of penance, spent in crawling through the forest on 
 all fours, he is caught like some wild animal by the king's 
 huntsmen and taken before his majesty, the father of the 
 lost princess. As the inquiry is beginning, a new-born 
 babe identifies the " hairy " as a saint and calls on him 
 for baptism. This incident in his favour, John con- 
 fesses ; and the king, with all the sentimental noncha-
 
 Robert the Devil at the Emperor's Court 
 From "A History of Theatrical Art"
 
 SECULAR BY-PRODUCTS IN WONDER 81 
 
 lance of Shakespeare's worst comedy-heroes, forgives him 
 on the sufficient ground that God has done so already. 
 God and Our Lady show their high esteem by descend- 
 ing from heaven and helping the hirsute hypocrite to 
 raise the princess from her seven year's decomposition. 
 She comes up smiling at her seducer's call ; and he is 
 rewarded with a bishopric ! 
 
 Other interesting miracles are that of St. Jehan : " Cy 
 commence un miracle de Nostre Dame de Saint Jehan 
 Crisothomes et de Anthure, sa mere, conment un roy lui 
 fist couper le poing et Nostre Dame lui refist une 
 nouvelle main," a modern version of Joseph and Poti- 
 phar's wife ; and that of the nun who left her abbey to 
 elope with a knight. After they had had two beautiful 
 children, Notre Dame appeared to her, whereupon she 
 returned to the abbey; and he became a monk, aban- 
 doning with the utmost equanimity the children whom 
 she had asked him to care for : 
 
 " Dame, je S9ay bien qu'ilz sont notres : 
 En la garde Dieu les lairay." 
 
 If I mistake not, this is the basis of Maeterlinck's 
 Sister Beatrice, and John Davidson's Nun. There is 
 also an example of Our Lady's retributive anger in the 
 story of the mother of a pope who was so swollen with 
 pride for him and her two other sons who were cardinals, 
 that she thought herself greater than Our Lady. And 
 so she was punished and then forgiven by the Mother 
 of Grace. 
 
 Though these subjects of imaginative or historic fic- 
 tion, and of fictitiously embroidered history, offered far 
 wider scope than did the subjects of the scriptural 
 mysteries for deploying character, developing technique, 
 
 6
 
 82 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 and enhancing the various esthetic kinds of interests, 
 it would be hard, as Petit de Julleville has told us, to 
 indicate with precision any dramatic progeny of their 
 distinctive type. They are the mirage of an over- 
 heated emotional atmosphere. Though romantic, they 
 lack artistic truth and humour. They yielded place to 
 the drama of more serious intent and more genuine 
 humour provided by the mysteries, and to that of satiric 
 purpose, realistic method, and biting wit which was the 
 offspring of the Christmas triduum, the farce of the 
 confraternities of fools.
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 83 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 
 FROM CHURCH TO GUILD 
 
 WITH the miraculous Mary-plays of France, the Eng- 
 lish miracle plays are not to be confounded. Like the 
 French mysteres, their material is primarily scriptural ; 
 their origin, as we have seen, is liturgical. 
 
 Mr. Leach, in his contribution to the Furnivall Mis- 
 cellany on English Plays and Players, says that from first 
 to last, both at Lincoln and at Beverley, " the miracle 
 plays were in the hands of the civic authorities and the 
 craft guilds, assisted, of course, by the secular clergy, but 
 with no mention of monks or regular canons," and again 
 that the origin of the English play must be sought in the 
 same quarters, not " in country monasteries and among 
 the religious, professionally so called." To prove this, 
 he relates the account, from a writer of about 1220, of a 
 contemporary representation of the Lord's Resurrection, 
 already quoted in this book. That representation was 
 given, as usual, by masked performers, not in the church 
 but in the churchyard, "a customary institution, there- 
 fore, long before the foundation of the feast of Corpus 
 Chris ti led to the concentration in one play of the vari- 
 ous religious dramas already presented to the public." 
 Mr. Leach is probably right in concluding that since 
 there were no monks in Beverley or near it, this was
 
 84 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 not a monkish play. But this isolated instance of about 
 1 220 does not prove, nor do Mr. Leach's instances of 
 municipal control from the middle of the next century, 
 that the regular clergy, /.*., monks and friars, had nothing 
 to do with the origin of the English play ; nor that the 
 plays at Lincoln and Beverley were from first to last in 
 the hands of the civic authorities, merely " assisted " by 
 the secular clergy. These two towns do not stand for 
 all England; and all that is proved is that, in these 
 towns, as we already knew was the case in other towns, 
 the guilds had control of the plays after the middle of 
 the fourteenth century ; and that as early as 1 220 the 
 Resurrection Play, evidently of the kind ordinarily 
 acted in the church, is acted in the churchyard for lack 
 of room in the ecclesiastical edifice. It is reasonable to 
 suppose that this play was written by the secular clergy, 
 not the people, and that, if any assistance in acting was 
 given at all, it was given by the people to the clergy, and 
 not vice versa. 
 
 Of course, the popular development of the miracle 
 plays was largely due to their representation extra fores at 
 an early period in their career, and to the speedy co-oper- 
 ation of laymen and the gradual control by the muni- 
 cipality. But we cannot be at all sure that monks did 
 not sometimes participate in the preparation of these 
 plays. For not to speak of the internal evidence of 
 occasional ecclesiastical authorship, which may as prob- 
 ably have been monkish as not, we have at this day 
 dramatic offices which were written and used by monks 
 both before and after the conquest ; we know that it was 
 found necessary, according to the Annales Burtonenses, to 
 forbid abbots and monks, as early as 1258, to witness 
 plays (if the plays were profane, that is but a stronger indi-
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 85 
 
 cation of monastic fondness for the art) ; and we are told 
 that a Carmelite friar called Robert Baston was a well- 
 known playwright in 1314, and that one William Melton 
 of the Friars Minors was, in 1426, most influential in 
 the regulation of the Corpus Christi plays at York. The 
 latter is denominated in the city registers Professor Pa- 
 gin<e Sacr<e> which I would still persist in translating 
 Professor of Holy Pageantry, although a critic of my 
 Historical Account of English Comedy 1 asserts that the 
 Sacra Pagina could not possibly have been anything 
 but " Holy Writ." Considering that numerous manu- 
 script pageants close with the words Explicit Pagina, one 
 cannot readily abandon the surmise that Melton was one 
 of those who from time to time (like Robart Croo of 
 Coventry ), revised, or perhaps even composed, paging 
 for the public. What contribution, if any, this eloquent 
 preacher made to the York cycle we do not know, nor 
 whether Baston contributed. The latter was of Scar- 
 borough, and a man of note, for he accompanied Ed- 
 ward II on his expedition into Scotland ; and it is 
 recorded by Bale that he was the author not only of poems 
 and rhymes, but of Trag<edi< et Com<edi<e Vulgares. Of 
 course, these may have been narratives ; otherwise, I 
 suspect with Collier that plays in the vulgar written by 
 a friar would most probably be miracles. The story of 
 Higden's connection with the Chester plays as author, 
 translator, or adapter, has recently received additional 
 confirmation. And it is not at all unlikely that another 
 monk, Sir Henry Francis, added to them, or revised. 
 But while we need not accept vague rumours of monkish 
 authorship, accumulated evidence would certainly indicate 
 its occasional existence. These considerations make me 
 1 Atbenaum t Aug. i, 1903.
 
 86 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 chary of eliminating monkish participation altogether; 
 also of accepting the conjecture of municipal control 
 "from first to last." 
 
 To the secular clergy is undoubtedly due most of the 
 credit for popularising the religious spectacles. The 
 Manuel de Pechiez of the first half of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury attributes not only the contrivance but the acting of 
 miracles to " Us fous clers, " who performed them not 
 only for purposes of devotion in the church, which was 
 permissible, but, which was reprehensible, before crowds 
 in public squares and churchyards ; and Robert le 
 Brunne, in his English version of the Manuel in 1303, 
 holds up for like reprobation the acting of such sacred 
 subjects " by clerks of the order" on the public ways 
 and greens. It was a sacrilege to convert the mysteries 
 of the passion, properly represented in the church for 
 purposes of devotion, to material of amusement and un- 
 holy gain. From the beginning of the second quarter of 
 the fourteenth century mention is still frequently made 
 in contemporary literature of miracles as " clerkes pleis " 
 and of clerks as actors in them. I have no doubt that 
 about this period, if not somewhat earlier, the guilds 
 were beginning to co-operate with the clergy in proces- 
 sional pageants, and possibly in formal plays, of the Cor- 
 pus Christi ; but as yet guilds had nothing like complete 
 control. As late as 1378 we find a close religious 
 corporation, that of the scholars and choristers of St. 
 Paul's, resisting the encroachment of laymen upon their 
 privilege of enacting Old Testament histories at Christ- 
 mas time ; and the corporation appears to have been 
 successful. 
 
 Whether monks at any time had a hand in the incep- 
 tion or performance of these plays may remain an open
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 87 
 
 question. We may be sure, however, that the craft plays 
 as we have them are the result of collaboration through 
 generations by the secular clergy of collegiate churches, 
 parish clerks, town clergy, town clerks, secular clerks of 
 the universities, and grammar-school masters, 1 and by 
 the occasional guild playwright and the craftsman impro- 
 viser. Such participation as the cloistered orders may 
 have had is more than counterbalanced by the long-con- 
 tinued collaboration of the secular and the lay. 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that after the in- 
 dustrial crafts had taken them up these miracles ceased to 
 be cultivated by the clerical and semi-clerical orders, or to 
 be acted in ecclesiastical precincts. The guild of which 
 we first are informed that its functions were to cultivate 
 processional and artistic as well as devotional and phil- 
 anthropic ends was semi-clerical rather than secular. It 
 is that of the Parish Clerks of London, incorporated by 
 Henry III about 1240. Of these clerks, Hone, in his 
 Ancient Mysteries, says that they were under the patronage 
 of St. Nicholas, and that it was an essential part of their 
 profession not only to sing, but to read, an accomplish- 
 ment almost solely confined to the clergy ; so that, on 
 the whole, they seem to come under the denomination 
 of a semi-religious fraternity. " It was anciently cus- 
 tomary," Hone tell us, " for men and women of the 
 first quality, ecclesiastics and others who were lovers of 
 church music, to be admitted into this corporation ; and 
 they gave large gratuities for the support and education 
 of many persons in the practice of that science. Their 
 public feasts were frequent, and celebrated with song and 
 music." According to Warton their profession, employ- 
 ment, and character naturally dictated to this spiritual 
 1 See Leach, Furn. Misc., p. 233.
 
 88 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 brotherhood the representation of plays, especially those 
 of the spiritual kind. We do not know how early this 
 semi-religious guild took to acting ; but it is certain that 
 in 1391 they had been playing cyclic miracles at Skinners' 
 Well (Clerkenwell ) for many years, since they enjoyed, 
 at that time and place, the presence of the king, queen, 
 and nobles of the realm during a performance which was 
 of great 'eclat and lasted for three days. In 1409 the 
 Clerkenwell plays were still so popular that " most part 
 of the nobility and gentry of England " attended during 
 a dramatic cycle which lasted eight days. It is note- 
 worthy that Stow, the historian, calls these interludes at 
 Skinners' Well of 1391 an "example of later time," 
 informing us that " of old time " the parish clerks of 
 London were accustomed yearly to assemble at Clerkes' 
 Well near by, " and to play some large history of Holy 
 Scripture." Since Clerkenwell is mentioned by Fitz- 
 stephen in his description of London as a place fre- 
 quented by scholars and youth, I think it practically 
 certain that the sacred plays of which he elsewhere speaks 
 as acted in London, between 1170 and 1182, were played 
 then by these parish clerks and at the same place. 
 
 As to the purely industrial guilds, we have earlier 
 mention of their participation in secular than in religious 
 processions and the pageants that attended them. " Tri- 
 umphant shows," as Stow calls the " royal entries " into 
 London and other great towns, consisted of processions 
 in which some citizens rode and others presented " pa- 
 geants and strange devices." Davidson, in his English 
 Mystery Plays, argues that these pageants were, in Eng- 
 land as in France, stationary, and so continued until the 
 sixteenth century. But most of his examples are drawn 
 from France. While the pageants in 1236 in London for
 
 > 
 
 a _.
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 89 
 
 Eleanor of Provence may have been stationary, those in 
 1293 for Edward I were presented by the guild of fish- 
 mongers, moving through the streets. Of the pageants 
 in 1377 for Richard II, some were progressive, others 
 stationary. I see nothing to prove that such pageants 
 were, in England, taken from the Bible story at an 
 earlier date than 1430, though they may have been to 
 some extent in France. As to the dramatic quality of 
 the shows, though they were at first, after the fashion of 
 the French, bas-reliefs of living figures, they rapidly took 
 on the braver qualities of the mumming and masking; and 
 as to the mumming and masking, we know that they be- 
 fore long added to themselves speech and gesticulation like 
 the regular drama. Lydgate, for instance, accompanied 
 with verses the allegorical pageants for Mayings and royal 
 entries in 1430 and after. It is largely because the guilds 
 of the city could not well afford to support religious plays 
 in addition to these expensive shows, that the London of 
 those days did not contribute as much to the develop- 
 ment of the religious drama as did the provinces. 
 
 The procession out of which grew most of the cyclic 
 craft-plays was, as we know, that of Corpus Christi. In 
 this gorgeous religious parade both clergy and laity 
 marched, and in the pageants representing the principal 
 events in sacred history, they undoubtedly at first co- 
 operated a powerful means for the secularisation of 
 the scriptural drama. These pageants, falling more ex- 
 clusively into the hands of the crafts, must have gained 
 in importance so rapidly as to imperil the success of the 
 procession itself. For we notice that in 1327, only six- 
 teen years after the re-enforcement of the Corpus Christi 
 celebration by the Council of Vienne, there was founded 
 in London a fraternity of Corpus Christi of the Skinners'
 
 9 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Company, the express function of which was to foster 
 the religious procession. Semi-religious guilds similar to 
 that of the London Skinners are recorded as existing in 
 Coventry, Cambridge, and in Leicester 1348-9. In 
 York, it was not until 1426 that the pageants displayed 
 by the industrial guilds or crafts were finally separated 
 from the religious processions. That the semi-religious 
 fraternities did not, however, confine themselves to pro- 
 cessional activity appears from the history of the Parish 
 Clerks of London. It is thought by some, indeed, that 
 the Ludus Filiorum Israel, Cambridge, 1350, was acted 
 by the Corpus Christi guild of that town, but I agree 
 with Davidson and his authorities that it was more likely 
 a school play. The next religious plays, acted by the 
 crafts, of which I have been able to find notice are the 
 Corpus Christi cycles of Beverley, in 1377, and of York, 
 in 1378, and the Paternoster Play of York, in 1384, 
 acted by a special fraternity ; but at those dates the plays 
 were evidently of long standing. Though we cannot 
 trust the traditional attribution of the Chester plays to 
 1268, it is probable, as I have elsewhere shown, that the 
 popular presentation of them was in the hands of the 
 guilds before 1352, and maybe as early as 1327. We 
 must not imagine, however, that the church took its 
 hand altogether off the plays. In many places the 
 clergy of the collegiate church or cathedral continued to 
 co-operate as a guild ; for instance, the Dean and Chapter 
 of Lincoln Cathedral as late as 1483. 1 
 
 WHITSUNTIDE AND CORPUS CHRISTI 
 
 So long as these dramas were given within the church, 
 they could, of course, be presented, at any season of the 
 1 Leach, Furn. Mist., p. 225.
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 91 
 
 year and on the appropriate festival. But when they 
 began to pass from the church to the court in front, 
 and to the churchyard and street and public green, the 
 consideration of climate influenced the choice of season. 
 We hear of plays presented out of doors even in the 
 winter at a few places : for instance, the plays of the 
 scholars of St. Paul's, about 1378, which were given 
 " publickly " by the clergy at Christmas, and sometimes, 
 probably, in the yard ; and plays performed at Christmas 
 in Chester, several times during the sixteenth century. 
 Of processional guild plays of the Nativity presented on 
 Candlemas (February 2), in Aberdeen, we have records 
 running from 1442 to 1533 ; and at other places of out- 
 door Easter plays even when Easter fell early in the 
 year. But, in general, the holy days of late spring and 
 of summer were naturally preferred for such events ; and 
 individual plays, and cycles in part or in whole, are re- 
 corded as occurring in various districts at such clement 
 seasons as Holy Cross day (May 3), St. John Baptist 
 day (June 24), St. Anne's day (July 26), St. Bartholomew's 
 day (August 24), during the fourteenth, fifteenth, and 
 sixteenth centuries. The favourite season, however, 
 from the beginning of the fourteenth century, for sacred 
 representations in England as well as Italy, was Whitsun- 
 tide ; and in Chester the cyclic miracles were commonly 
 called Whitsun plays, even during the sixteenth century, 
 though they may have been played in the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth on Corpus Christi. In New Romney, also, dur- 
 ing the fifteenth century, and in Norwich during the 
 sixteenth, Whitsuntide continued to be the season of 
 miracles. 
 
 After Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne, in 
 1311, had revived the purpose of Urban IV, and made
 
 92 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 a universal Christian feast of Corpus Christi the Thurs- 
 day after Trinity Sunday that came to be, broadly on 
 the continent, and especially in England, the day for 
 pageants of Christian history and belief. For various 
 reasons : the festival celebrates the central, most concrete 
 and most dramatic conception of the liturgical service, 
 the Real Presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament ; 
 it seizes also the most thrilling moment for commemora- 
 tion, the elevation of the consecrated Host, the sacri- 
 fice made for man ; it provides that the Host be borne 
 in monstrance with all pomp, dignity, and ceremony out 
 from the Holy of Holies and through the streets of the 
 city ; it rejoices in a mass and office as beautiful as they 
 are appropriate and imposing, a liturgy fashioned by 
 three of the most poetic ecclesiastics of a most poetic pope- 
 ritualist of a century steeped in mystic contemplation, 
 creative of symbol and gorgeous with ceremonial. John 
 of Mount Cornelio originated the service, St. Bonaventura 
 and St. Thomas Aquinas revised it. From the last of 
 these, the Seraphic Doctor, alone, it received its final form, 
 its inimitable " Lauda Sion " and its exquisite hymns ; and 
 from Urban IV its extension to the church catholic. The 
 festival stirred the sense both of civic solidarity and of that 
 wider communion of the saints which is the church univer- 
 sal. Archbishop and acolyte, cleric and layman, mayor 
 and craftsman, not of one city or diocese or province, but 
 of every corner of the spiritual principality of the catholic 
 world, on that day marched in ecstatic procession to honour 
 the church invisible, visible in the flesh, the God incar- 
 nate, manifest in the Host. History and prophecy were 
 fused in one moment, and that the present. The season, 
 too, was the most propitious of the year, the end of May 
 or within the first four and twenty days of June. It was
 
 TRANSITION OF LITURGICAL PLAYS 93 
 
 but natural, therefore, that the guilds taking part in this 
 annual solemnity, rivalling one the other in the demon- 
 stration of industrial splendour and civic pride, should 
 gradually undertake to present in pantomimic pageant or 
 dumb-show some part of that scriptural history which 
 all were celebrating, and to present it by a scene appro- 
 priate to the function of the individual guild. And it 
 was but a question of time that these "pageants " or floats 
 upon wheels, should become the stage for acting and 
 speaking performers of plays formerly liturgical, but 
 now rapidly assuming popular features and vernacular 
 speech. 
 
 After 1311, then, the collective miracles, whether 
 played on this eventful day or not, were generally called 
 Corpus Christi plays ; in many parts of England, north 
 and south, they were, indeed, performed upon that day : in 
 York, for instance, for two hundred years beginning with 
 1378, during the first fifty in connection with the 
 ecclesiastical procession, after that separately, the proces- 
 sion being deferred to the next day ; in Beverley from 
 about the same date of beginning till 1 520, from Richard 
 II to Henry VIII ; in Ipswich, sometimes procession, 
 sometimes plays, from 1325 till 1520; also at Bungay 
 and Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk ; in Newcastle from 
 the fourth year of Henry VI to the third of Elizabeth, 
 and in Kendal of Westmoreland as late as 1612. In 
 Coventry, also, in Wakefield or its neighbourhood, in 
 Lancaster and Louth, Preston, Salisbury, Worcester, and 
 other places, of which lists have been given by Miss Lucy 
 Toulmin Smith and Mr. Chambers, the plays were long 
 acted on that day. Of course, the custom was not uni- 
 form. In Aberdeen, as I have said, the play-seasons 
 were Candlemas for the Nativity, and Corpus Christi for
 
 94 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the " Halyblude " or Passion ; in Dublin, for processions 
 and sometimes plays, St. George's day (April 23), and 
 Corpus Cbristi; and at Chelmsford, Midsummer day. 
 In Lincoln the play-season varied; but after 1500 it 
 generally fell on the day of St. Anne.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 95 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE SECULAR REPRESENTATION OF THE 
 ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 REGULATION BY THE CRAFTS 
 
 CONCERNING the regulation of the Corpus Christi plays, 
 various notices are extant. Mr. Leach says of the Bev- 
 erley : " Among the digests [and orders is an Ordinance 
 of the Play of Corpus Christi in 1390. It was then 
 f ordered by the whole community that all the craftsmen 
 (artifices) of Beverley, viz. Mercers, Tanners, Masons,' 
 and thirty-three other companies of trades or mysteries 
 [ministeriaj wisteria, trades] * shall have their plays and 
 pageants ready henceforth on every Corpus Christi Day 
 in fashion and form according to the ancient customs of 
 the town of Beverley, to play in honour of the Body of 
 Christ, under the penalty of 40 shillings for every craft 
 that fails.' ' This is evidently a re-enactment of an old 
 law. " Certain it is that the crafts themselves had long 
 before taken an official part in the Corpus Christi Play. 
 For another Order recites how in 1377 the Keepers of 
 the Town and the Tailors consented in the ' Gild Hall 
 * that all the Tailors of Beverley should be personally 
 present at the yearly accounts made of their pageants of 
 the Play of Corpus Christi, and in their castle on 
 Monday in the Rogation Days ; but any free tailor, not in 
 the livery of the craft, should pay to the expenses of the
 
 96 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 castle only.' The castles were wooden stages in which 
 the crafts sat to see the procession of the shrine of St. 
 John of Beverley go by on Monday in Rogation week." 
 Elsewhere Mr. Leach gives a list of the Gubernacio Ludi 
 Carports Christi from the original on the fly-leaf of the 
 Great Gild Book, beginning with the Tylers and the 
 Fallinge of Lucifer, the Saddelers and the Making of 
 the World ; and ending with the Prestes and the Coro- 
 nation of Our Lady; the Merchaunts and Domesday. 
 Thirty-five acts in all, as compared with fifty-seven at 
 York in 1415; thirty-two at Wakefield in the reign of 
 Henry VI ; forty-two at Coventry, and twenty-five at 
 Chester in the last decade of the sixteenth century. 
 " Some attempt," he says, " was made to adapt the char- 
 acter of the scene to be performed to the nature of the 
 craft carried on by the performers. Thus the Priests at 
 Beverley (as at Lincoln) presented The Coronation of 
 the Virgin while the Cooks everywhere performed The 
 Harrying of Hell, called 'the coks pageant' because 
 they were in the habit of taking things out of the fire ; 
 and the Watermen found the Ark, or Noe's Shippe ; 
 the Bakers the maundy (the Last Supper on the Thurs- 
 day of Passion Week, when Christ gave his last * mandate ' 
 to the disciples)." I don't find, by the way, that the 
 Cooks everywhere played The Harrowing: they didn't 
 in York. But the attempt at appropriate distribution 
 was undoubtedly made. In York a certain humorous 
 affinity of guild and play leaps to the eye, as when the 
 Shipwrights devote themselves to the Construction of the 
 Ark, the Fishmongers to The Flood, the Chandlers to the 
 Shepherds and the Star, the Goldcrafts to the Three Kings, 
 the Nailors and Sawyers to the Massacre of the Innocents, 
 and the Barbers to the Baptism of Jesus. The system
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 97 
 
 of co-operation among the guilds obtained in nearly all 
 places where such cycles were performed : in Chester, 
 Coventry, Newcastle, Lincoln, etc. In Lincoln, how- 
 ever, the cathedral chapter always retained an active 
 connection with the performance, and the Guild of St. 
 Anne directed ; while in London the presentation was 
 in the hands, generally speaking, not of crafts at all, but 
 of the clerks in minor orders, especially those of the 
 Guild of St. Nicholas. 
 
 The right to present a certain subject by way of a play 
 on Corpus Christi day was granted to the guild by the 
 municipality, and for the proper performance of its 
 function the guild was responsible to the corporation 
 under penalty of fine. " According to the Annals," says 
 Mr. Chambers, 1 "part of the charges of the plays was met 
 (in Coventry) by the enclosure of a piece of c common ' land 
 (possibly to build pageant houses upon). Otherwise they 
 fell wholly upon the crafts, to some one of which every 
 artisan in the town was bound to become contributory 
 for the purpose. The principal crafts were appointed by 
 the Leet to produce the pageants ; and with each were 
 grouped minor bodies liable only for fixed sums, varying 
 from 3^. 4^. to i6s. %d. In 1501 an outside craft, 
 the Tilemakers of Stoke, is found contributing $s. to a 
 pageant." Of external contribution and co-operation there 
 are in Wakefield and elsewhere many examples. " These 
 combinations of crafts varied considerably from time to 
 time. Within the craft the necessary funds were raised, 
 in part at least, by special levies. Strangers taking out 
 their freedom were sometimes called upon for a contri- 
 bution. Every member of the craft paid his ' pagent 
 pencys.' In several crafts the levy was is." 
 
 1 Med. St., II, 35 8 -359. 
 7
 
 98 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 As the performances, because of civic pride or guild 
 rivalry, grew in size, length, and magnificence, the expense 
 became more and more burdensome; and we conse- 
 quently note frequent entries of fines imposed upon 
 neglectful or rebellious companies, and of petitions from 
 some crafts for amalgamation with others more wealthy, 
 or for entire relief. "In 1539 the mayor of Coventry, 
 writing to Cromwell, told him that the poor commoners 
 were at such expense with their plays and pageants that 
 they fared the worse all the year after." In numerous 
 instances individuals are fined for neglect of duty in 
 respect of the annual plays. Several cases from Beverley 
 are cited by Mr. Leach. "On June 18, 1450, five 
 fishers were made to put down 8j. each for not playing 
 their play on Corpus Christi Day, and ordered to have 
 their pageant ready by Palm Sunday next at the latest. 
 On May 24, 1452, Henry Cowper, a 'webster' or 
 weaver, because he did not know his part (nesciebat ludum 
 suutri) on Corpus Christi Day, in spite of the proclama- 
 tion by the common bellman, forfeited 6s. %d. to the 
 commonalty." He had only %s. 4^. ; so they took the 
 fourpence and warned him not to forget his lines another 
 time. Fortunate Henry! In 1456 the Dyers are 
 threatened because they were not ready with their 
 pageant, which was to have come first in the cycle. And 
 in 1459 the Butchers had a narrow escape of a 40^. fine 
 for being tardy with their play. In 1520-21, the alder- 
 man of the painters, Richard, fitly surnamed Trollopp, 
 got a pecuniary trouncing from the governors because 
 this company's play, The Three Kings of Cologne (Magi), 
 was badly and confusedly played in contempt of the 
 whole community, before many strangers" This must 
 have been a source of peculiar mortification to the Pro-
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 99 
 
 motion Committee of the town of Beverley, especially 
 as that committee, consisting of the Board of Governors, 
 had " spent no less than 451. 3^. on themselves and other 
 gentlemen at the time of the Corpus Christi Play." 
 Mr. Leach cynically concludes that the fines were a set- 
 off for the bill at the tavern. The Coventry Leet Book 
 and Records indicate that a similarly significant share of 
 the public moneys went to assuage thirst, not only of 
 pageant-drawers, and actors between station and station, 
 but of the magnificoes. Those inland towns are really 
 very warm between Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi. 
 
 That a company was wont to entrust the management 
 of its pageant to some responsible person is shown by 
 occasional entries in their books ; for instance, in Beverley, 
 1391, when John of Arras, a "hayrer," gave surety for 
 himself and his fellow craftsmen " to play a play called 
 Paradise . . . during his life, at his proper cost"; and 
 in Coventry, 1453, when Thomas Colclow, a skinner, ar- 
 ranged with the Smiths to have the rule of their pageant 
 for twelve years ; the keepers of the craft to dine with 
 Colclow every Whitsun week, each master to pay him 4^., 
 and he, Colclow, to have 46^. 8^/., yearly for his labour ; 
 and in 1591, at Coventry, when Cappers, Mercers, and 
 Drapers made a similar arrangement with a gentleman 
 of some standing in the community, a certain Thomas 
 Massye, who describes himself as "a branche of the 
 Barony and Knighthood of Massyes Dunham in 
 
 Cheshire." l 
 
 METHODS OF PRESENTATION 
 
 On June 26, 1449, it was ordered in Beverley 
 " that the pageants of Corpus Christi be assigned to 
 
 1 Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries, an- 
 ciently performed at Coventry, pp. 1 5, 75.
 
 ioo PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 be played as under : viz. at the North Bar ; by the 
 Bull-ring ; between John Skipworth and Robert Couke 
 in Highgate ; at the Cross Bridge ; at the Fishmarket ; 
 at the Minster Bow, and at the Beck. Similar di- 
 rections concerning the successive stations for pageants 
 are preserved in the annals of York 1 and of other 
 municipalities. 
 
 The manner of presentation of the cyclic miracles by 
 the crafts or guild-companies of the town is, however, 
 best given in an account written by Archdeacon Rogers, 
 who died in I595> and saw the Whitsun plays performed 
 at Chester in the preceding year. The account is quoted 
 by Wright in his edition of the Chester plays, and has 
 been reprinted by nearly every writer on the subject. I 
 must therefore be pardoned for repeating it anew; but 
 I do not see how the reader can dispense with it 
 
 "The time of the year they were played," says he, 
 "was on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in Whitsun 
 week. The manner of these plays were, every company 
 had his pageant or part, which pageants were a high 
 scaffold with two rooms, a higher and a lower, upon four 
 wheels. In the lower they apparelled themselves, and in 
 the higher room they played, being all open on the top, 
 that all beholders might hear and see them. The places 
 where they played them was in every street. They 
 began first at the abbey gates ; and when the first pageant 
 was played, it was wheeled to the High Cross before the 
 mayor, and so to every street; and so every street had 
 a pageant playing before them at one time. And when 
 one pageant was ended, word was brought from street to 
 street, that so they might come in place thereof, exceeding 
 orderly ; and all the streets have their pageants afore them, 
 1 Drake's History of Tor k.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 101 
 
 all at one time, playing together. To see which plays 
 was great resort ; and also scaffolds and stages made 
 in the streets in those places where they determined to 
 play their pageants." Again, elsewhere, the Archdeacon 
 says : " The manner of which plays was thus : they were 
 divided into twenty-four pageants, according to the com- 
 panies of the city ; and every company brought forth 
 their pageant, which was the carriage or place which they 
 played in. And they first began at the Abbey gates, 
 and when the first pageant was played at the Abbey 
 gates, then it was wheeled from thence to Pentice, at the 
 High Cross, before the mayor; and before that was 
 done the second came, and the first went into the Water- 
 gate Street, and from thence into the Bridge Street ; and 
 so, one after another till all the pageants were played, ap- 
 pointed for the first day ; and so likewise for the second 
 and the third day. These pageants or carriages was a high 
 place made like a house with two rooms, being open on 
 the top : the lower room they apparelled and dressed 
 themselves [in] , and [in] the higher room they played. 
 And they stood upon six wheels. And when they 
 had done with one pageant in one place, they wheeled 
 the same from one street to another." 
 
 Archdeacon Rogers describes the pageant as having 
 but two " rooms." Strutt, however, in his Manners and 
 Customs^ says that in the beginning of miracle playing 
 " what is now called the stage did consist of three plat- 
 forms or stages, raised one above the other: on the 
 uppermost sat the Pater Calestis, surrounded with his an- 
 gels ; on the second appeared the holy saints and glorified 
 men ; and the last and lowest was occupied by mere 
 men, who had not yet passed from this transitory 
 life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this
 
 102 PLAXS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy 
 cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames; 
 and when it was necessary the audience was treated with 
 hideous veilings and noises, as imitative of the howlings 
 and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relent- 
 less demons. From this yawning cave the devils them- 
 selves constantly ascended to delight and to instruct the 
 spectators : to delight, because they were usually the 
 greatest jesters and buffoons that then appeared ; and to 
 instruct, for that they treated the wretched mortals who 
 were delivered to them with the utmost cruelty, warning 
 thereby all men carefully to avoid the falling into the 
 clutches of such hardened and remorseless spirits. But 
 in the more improved state of the theatre, and when 
 regular plays were introduced, all this mummery was 
 abolished, and the whole cavern and devils, together with 
 the highest platform before mentioned, entirely taken 
 away," leaving the upper and lower stages as described by 
 Archdeacon Rogers. Strutt gives no authority for his 
 three platforms ; and, as Thomas Sharp has said in his 
 famous Dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries, he must have 
 had reference to a fixed stage such as was ordinarily used 
 in France. The description would not conform to the 
 needs of a movable pageant. Still, there may have been 
 for exceptional plays distinct and exceptional forms of 
 vehicle; and in some parts of England -r- Cornwall, for 
 instance the performance was stationary. 
 
 Of the latter arrangement the following account is 
 given by Edwin Norris l : " We have no notice of the 
 performance of the Cornish plays earlier than that of 
 Richard Carew, whose survey of Cornwall was first 
 printed in 1602. In his time they were played in regu- 
 
 1 Ancient Cornish Drama, II, 453.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 103 
 
 lar amphitheatres, and the account he gives is well worth 
 extracting, as it affords a vivid picture by one who was 
 in all probability an eyewitness, over three centuries ago. 
 * The Guary miracle, in English, a miracle play, is a 
 kinde of Enterlude, compiled in Cornish out of some 
 scripture history, with that grosseness which accompanied 
 the Romanes vetus Comedia. For representing it, they 
 raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open field, having 
 the Diameter of his enclosed playne some 40 or 50 foot. 
 The Country people flock from all sides, many miles off, 
 to hear and see it ; for they have therin, devils and 
 devices, to delight as well the eye as the eare ; the players 
 conne not their parts without bookes, but are prompted 
 by one called the Ordinary, who followeth at their back 
 with the booke in his hand, and telleth them softly what 
 they must pronounce allowd. Which manner once gave 
 occasion to a pleasant conceyted gentleman, of practicing 
 a merry pranke : for he undertaking (perhaps of set 
 purpose) an actor's roome, was accordingly lessoned 
 (beforehand) by the Ordinary, that he must say after 
 him. His turn came : quoth the Ordinary, Goe forth 
 man, and shew thyselfe. The Gentleman steps out upon 
 the stage, and like a bad clarke in scripture matters, 
 cleaving more to the letter than the sense, pronounced 
 those words allowd. Oh, sayes the fellowe softly, you 
 marre all the play. And with this his passion, the actor 
 makes the audience in like sort acquainted. Hereon 
 the prompter falles to flat rayling and cursing in the 
 bitterest terms he could devise : which the Gentleman 
 with a set gesture and countenance still soberly related, 
 untill the Ordinary, driven at last into a madde rage, was 
 faine to give over all. Which trousse, though it brake 
 off the Enterlude, yet defrauded not the beholders, but
 
 io 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 dissmissed them with a great deale more sport and 
 laughter, then 20. such Guaries could have afforded." 
 
 The plan of a huge Cornish amphitheatre for station- 
 ary miracles is given by Dr. Borlase in his Natural His- 
 tory of Cornwall, published in 1758. " It exhibits," says 
 Mr. Norris, "a perfectly level area of 130 feet diameter; 
 this was surrounded by a continued earthern mound, 
 eight feet high, having seven turf benches on the inside ; 
 the top of the mound or rampart was seven feet in width. 
 A peculiar feature of this Round was a pit in the area, 
 described as c a circular pit, in diameter thirteen feet, deep 
 three feet, the sides sloping, and halfway down a bench 
 of turf, so formed as to reduce the area of the bottom to 
 an ellipsis ': this hollow was connected with the circular 
 benches by a shallow trench, four feet six inches wide, 
 and one foot in depth ; the length is not given in the 
 text, but the scale shows it to have been forty feet : 
 where it reaches the side a semicircular breach ten feet 
 in diameter is made in the benches. Borlase suggests 
 that the hollow pit might have generally served for 
 representing Hell, and that in the drama of the Resur- 
 rection it might have served for the Grave. The trench 
 he conjectures to have aided in representing the Ascen- 
 sion, but he does not clearly shew how this was done." 
 
 Returning to the vehicle of two stages, we find from 
 the inventory of the Cappers' pageant at Coventry, 
 " The Resurrection and Descent in Hell," that the lower 
 portion (wheels, etc.) was concealed by painted cloths or 
 tapestry work ; and that Hell-mouth was also of painted 
 canvas stretched upon a framework. From behind the 
 scene which represented, as in a drawing given by Hearne 
 from an ancient calendar, 1 a dragon with wide-open chaps, 
 1 See copies in Sharp and Hone.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 105 
 
 advanced the white (or "savyd"), and the black (or 
 "dampnyd") souls, as if issuing from the insides of the 
 monster. The charge for making a new Hell-head of 
 this kind in 1542 was 8s. id., and evidently one or more 
 persons attended it to open or shut the mouth, or to 
 display flames as projecting. 
 
 PROPERTIES AND EXPENSES 
 
 In Sharp's collection of accounts for the craft-plays of 
 Coventry, we find payments for the men, sometimes 
 eight, sometimes twelve, who drew the vehicles from 
 station to station ; also for the drinks that they consumed ; 
 also for the structures in which these " pageants " were 
 housed between celebrations, and for the repair of the 
 pageants of the various companies. 
 
 The Smiths' Company of Coventry makes payments, 
 between 1449 and 1585, in connection with its Pageant 
 of the Trial, Condemnation, and Crucifixion of Christ, in 
 varying sums for such items as the cross with a rope to 
 draw it up and a curtain hanging before it ; gilding the 
 pillar and the cross ; two pair of gallows ; mending of 
 imagery ; a standard of red buckram ; and other prop- 
 erties of like description. In the matter of dress it pays in 
 different years : for six skins of white leather for God's gar- 
 ment, 1 8^.; for making of the same garment, iod. ; for 
 mending a cheverel (peruke) for God, and for sewing of 
 God's coat of leather, and for making of the hands to the 
 same coat, lid. ; for a girdle for God, 3^. ; for a new sud- 
 ere (the Veronica) for God (i.e., Christ), jd. For Herod, as 
 follows : for painting the falchion and Herod's face, lod. 
 for mending of Herod's head, and a mitre and other 
 things, 2J. ; for a slop for Herod ; for " assadyn " ( gold- 
 foil) for Herod's crest and falchion, etc. For Pilate's
 
 io6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 wife ; for mending of dame Percula's garments, 'jd. ; to 
 reward Mistress Grimsby for lending of her gear for 
 Pilate's wife, I id. The following payments, also, are var- 
 iously enlightening: For refreshment during the second 
 rehearsal in Whitsun week, 1490 : ". . . Item in brede, Ale 
 and Kechyn . . . ij* iiij ; item for ix galons of Ale . . . xviijd ; 
 item for a Rybbe of befe and j gose . . . vi d . Payd to 
 the players for corpus xpisti daye : Imprimis to God . . . 
 ij*; item to Caiaphas iij*iiij d ; item to Heroude iij*iiij d ; 
 item to Pilatt is wyffe. . . ij 1 ; item to the Bedull. . . iiij d ; 
 item to the devyll and to Judas xviij d ; item to Pilatte . . . 
 iiijV From which we learn that the principal character 
 was Pilate ; that next to him came Herod and Caiaphas ; 
 and that Christ and Judas were held in lighter dramatic 
 esteem. 
 
 In what precedes some indication has been made of 
 accoutrements and stage properties. Characters were 
 particularised by dress as much as by utterance. The 
 Pilate of the Coventry Smiths' play always had a green 
 coat and made use of a mall and balls. His mall was a 
 club with a stuffed head ( leather and wool, about a foot 
 and a half long) which served partly fora sign of au- 
 thority but more for beating his companions and 
 the public. The balls were perhaps the insignia of office ; 
 but more likely, since they, too, were of leather, they 
 served for interludes of juggling. The margin of the 
 Chester plays is studded with stage directions such as 
 " fluryshe," " cast up," " sworde," when ranting kings 
 like Balaak and Herod are on the boards. The " caste- 
 up " is hardly of anything internal : it may be of the staff 
 (sceptre) or of the balls. Such nonsense seemed requisite 
 to offset the intense and unfamiliar strain of gazing upon 
 royalty even though illusionary. So, when the three kings
 
 Pilate's Club or Mall 
 
 From "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries 
 Anciently Performed at Coventry"
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 107 
 
 leave Herod, we can hear the Chester bumpkins draw in 
 the breath lingeringly ; and we read in the margin the 
 solicitude of the author or stage-manager " The boye and 
 pigge when the hinges are gone" 
 
 Herod is represented in helmet and painted visor or 
 mask, and an elaborate gown of blue satin. His helmet 
 (or crest) and the falchion, probably borne before him, 
 are tricked with silver, gold, and green foil. In his hand 
 he holds a sceptre. Judas is distinguished by red hair 
 and beard. The devil, like Pilate, has a club ; he wears 
 also a mask and is clad in leather, probably black. In 
 Chester he seems to have retained his archangelic feathers, 
 but they are "all ragger and rent." He sometimes 
 enters with Ho, ho, ho ; and in moments of consternation 
 cries Oute, harrow. But few exclamations and still fewer 
 buffooneries are assigned to him by the miracle-writers 
 themselves. Of these the actor is generally the inventor. 
 Mary the Virgin and the " two side Maries " have 
 crowns (flowered), and something spelled " roles," 
 which Sharp would like to translate " pads over which 
 to comb the hair," but discouraging second thought 
 the " roles " were painted and why cover a " role " 
 that had engrossed two whole pence in the painting? 
 For the angels there are wings and albs, and suits of gold 
 skins ; for God in Doomsday, a coat of leather and a red 
 " sendal " or throne, and a pair of gloves. But then, 
 nearly everybody had gloves ; even the demons could 
 quote gloves to serve their purpose, and coats and hose, 
 and " points," and a great deal of hair. This play of 
 Doomsday, by the way, of the Drapers of Coventry, 
 furnishes an important new item introduced in 1556 of 
 a " yerthequake. " It was composed of a barrel with 
 " wordys " (which may mean " wards ") and a pillar for
 
 io8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the wordys, which cost jj. 4^. This is pretty reasonable 
 for an earthquake, as is 4^. for attending it, and id. for 
 covering it. It was probably local, of merely eighth or 
 tenth rank, and with no lateral movement. How the 
 earthquake was brought about, or why they " painted 
 the pillar," is not quite lucid. But we don't know much 
 more about earthquakes of our own. The Drapers had 
 the advantage of us in that they had " worldes " not 
 simply to quake but burn, three of them for every 
 year. 
 
 A good deal of money is laid out for music : trumpets, 
 organs, regals. Regular payments are also made by all 
 companies for keeping the play-book or " original ; " and 
 for "bearing" it at rehearsals and performances, that 
 is, for prompting. Also for the preparation of new copies. 
 One Robert Croo at Coventry, for instance, was a famous 
 copyist and reviser between 1535 and 1562, as well as 
 something of actor, stage-factor, and theatrical tailor. 
 Geo. Bellin, too, was a copyist of Chester plays ; and 
 John Parfre and Miles Bloomfield of the Digby series. 
 
 AUTHORSHIP 
 
 About the authors of the plays we know little. 
 After the miracles had reached cyclic proportions and 
 passed under guild control, the playwrights were some- 
 times clerks in secular orders, sometimes fellows of 
 colleges, sometimes country schoolmasters, sometimes im- 
 promptu poets or poet-actors of the city, company, or 
 craft. The name even of the jolly clerk of Wakefield 
 whom I elsewhere call the master-playwright of that 
 cycle has vanished from memory. Concerning the au- 
 thorship of the Chester plays, dispute still exists ; but 
 the evidence for Randall, or Randulf Higden, a monk
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 109 
 
 of St. Werburgh's, and for the~year 1328, has recently 
 gained in weight. The probabilities are that his contri- 
 bution was largely of adaptation and translation ; the 
 latter from Latin sources, and early French mysteries. 
 At Beverley we come across an entry of payment in 1423 
 to one " Master Thomas Bynham, a friar preacher, for 
 making and composing the banns " (banes, announce- 
 ments) which were proclaimed before the Corpus Christi 
 plays of that year. But he did not write the plays. 
 Lydgate, who lived about the same time in the Benedic- 
 tine Abbey of Bury in Suffolk, is said to have written 
 miracle plays ; but we have no proof. At Lincoln the 
 Chapter of the Cathedral makes provision in 1488 for 
 a certain Robert Clarke because " he is so ingenious in 
 the show and play called the Ascension, given every year 
 on St. Anne's day." And in 1517 Sir Robert Denyar is 
 appointed priest of the Guild of St. Anne " he promising 
 yearly to help in bringing forth and preparing the pa- 
 gents in the guild." * Marriott, 2 quoting Warton, tells 
 us of a payment for a Miracle Play, in 151 1, to a brother- 
 hood priest, called John Hobarde, by the churchwardens 
 of Basingstoke. Basingstoke turns out, however, to be 
 Basingbourne, and the miracle play to be the play- 
 book, which Hobarde may merely have kept for them, 
 or loaned to them, or copied for them. We can only 
 hope that he wrote it. In 1521, as Mr. Leach again 
 tells us, a Grammar School Master of Lincoln suggests 
 to the mayor that a foundation be made of a chantry 
 priest in St Michael-on-Hill to be appointed by the 
 mayor and commonalty after Dighton's death with a 
 
 1 Leach, in Furn. Misf., pp. 225, 226. 
 
 2 Marriott, Engl. Mir. PL, XLIX j Warton, Hist. Engl. Poet., Ill, 
 327.
 
 no PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 proviso that the appointee " shall yearly be ready to help 
 to the preparing and bringing forth the procession of 
 St. Anne's day." This looks as if Dighton were the 
 recognised playwright and stage-manager in 1521. Still 
 later, in the same century, another schoolmaster, Ralph 
 Radcliffe of Hitchin, was writing miracle plays and pre- 
 senting them in a theatre contrived by himself; but 
 neither his plays, since they were probably in Latin, nor 
 the Jephtha of one John Christopherson, in Latin and 
 Greek, can be regarded as within the scope of our discus- 
 sion. While the polemic Bale was Bishop of Ossory he 
 wheedled some " protestant Irishmen " more probably 
 young clerks and students of his own importing into 
 presenting two of his insufferables, God's Promises and 
 John the Baptist, at Kilkenny, at the Market Cross on 
 the day of the accession of Queen Mary. The bishop had, 
 wittingly or not, seized his last chance for that kind of 
 thing; but the Irish the real ones in the audience 
 did n't think much of the performance. In 1567 another 
 schoolmaster, Thomas Ashton, presented his own version 
 of the Passion of Christ in the quarry at Shrewsbury ; 
 and in 1584 John Smythe, a Coventry lad who had been 
 a Scholar at St. John's, Oxford, since 1577, wrote a play, 
 'The Destruction of Jerusalem, for the crafts of Coventry. 
 The latter was to take the place of the scriptural miracles, 
 against which protestant reaction had, by that time, set 
 in. It was based upon Josephus, and was played with 
 great spectacle and repeated as late as 1591. That was 
 the last craft-performance of Coventry and one of the 
 last in England. The William Jordan who wrote the 
 Creation of the World, in 1611, was merely a compiler of 
 the older Origo Mundi, and can therefore in no sense 
 be regarded as a creator of this kind of drama.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES in 
 
 CONTEMPORARY ALLUSIONS 
 
 But though the miracles, like the contemporary bal- 
 lads, are largely anonymous, they are not unconsidered 
 by writers of contemporary fame. Mention of miracle 
 plays, or allusion to them, is frequent in the literature of 
 Englishmen from that famous poem of William of Wad- 
 dington written in French of the later thirteenth century, 
 and translated by Robert Mannyng of Brunne in the 
 early fourteenth, down to the dramas of John Heywood 
 and William Stevenson, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. 
 Waddington denounces especially the participation of 
 clerks masked and disguised, in outdoor representations 
 of sacred subjects. These he calls "miracles"; but he 
 approves of liturgical dramas the Resurrection or the 
 Nativity played in the divine service in the church, and 
 "pur plus aver devocioun." Denunciation, even more 
 violent, still exists in a sermon, of the later years of the 
 fourteenth century, which recognises no advantage in 
 acted plays of any place or any kind. The Wyclifite 
 author of this homily holds that to take "the most 
 precious workes of God in play and bourde" is blas- 
 phemy pure and simple. He applies the name " miracle- 
 playing " to dramas not only of Christ but of his saints ; 
 and he shows acquaintance with plays of Christ's passion 
 and resurrection, of Antichrist and of the day of doom. 
 Langland, likewise, makes a friar minor, in Piers Plow- 
 man s Crede, boast 
 
 We haunten no tavernes, ne hobelen abouten ; 
 At marketes and miracles we meddle us never. 
 
 Chaucer, on the other hand, has meddled with miracles 
 more than once to make his characters real and of the
 
 H2 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 spirit of the age. His "joly Absolon " of the Miller s 
 Tale is a typical parish-clerk, who " after the Schole of 
 Oxenford " can trip and dance and " pleyen songes on 
 a small rubible "; nay more 
 
 Sometyme, to shewe his lightnesse and maistrye, 
 He pleyeth Her odes on a scaffold hye. 
 
 The Wife of Bath makes her 
 
 visitaciouns 
 
 To vigilies and to processiouns, 
 To preching eke and to these pilgrimages, 
 To pleyes of miracles and manages. 
 
 The 
 
 Miller that for-dronken was al pale 
 So that unnethe upon his hors he sat 
 
 had doubtless learned to rant at Corpus Chris ti play. He 
 it was that would not wait for all the Host would say : 
 
 Ne abyde no man for his curteisye, 
 
 But in P Hates Vois he gan to crye, 
 
 And swore by armes and by blood and bones, 
 
 " I can a noble tale for the nones." 
 
 And this " noble tale" itself of Nicholas and the Carpen- 
 ter's wife, what is it but a miracle turning on a prophecy of 
 " Nowelis flood," a miracle suggested not by Genesis at 
 all, but by the pageant of Chester, York, or Wakefield ? 
 
 " Hastow not herd," quoth Nicholas, "also 
 The sorwe of Noe with his felawshipe, 
 Ere that he might e gete his wyf to shipe ? 
 Him had he lever, I dar wel undertake, 
 At thilke tyme, than alle his wetheres blake, 
 That she hadde had a ship herself all one." 
 
 One cannot read the Canterbury Tales without suspecting 
 that the familiarity displayed by the simpler character with
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 113 
 
 scriptural event and legend is supposed to be derived from 
 plays rather than directly from the services of the church. 
 
 John Heywood's Pardoner, too, of the Four PP. , when 
 he visits hell and is welcomed smilingly by the devil 
 that kept the gate, explains their odd acquaintance in the 
 way most obvious to his auditors 
 
 He knew me well; and I at laste 
 Remembered hym syns longe tyme past : 
 For, as good happe wolde have it chaunce, 
 Thys devyll and I were of olde acqueyntaunce, 
 For oft in the play of Corpus Cristi 
 He had played the devyll at Coventry. 
 
 And the " devyll " himself may be supposed to allude 
 to the opening play of the cycle when he congratulates 
 his mortal friend on an opportune arrival, on this the 
 anniversary of their Founder, 
 
 For this daye Lucy fer fell 
 Which is our festyvall in hell. 
 
 Later testimony of this kind is so common that it need 
 not be quoted. 
 
 THE SPECTATORS 
 
 During the palmy days of these wonderful represent- 
 ations, the audiences, as we have already noticed, were 
 not limited to craftsmen and their families, or clerics, or 
 simple folk from the surrounding countryside. Kings, 
 queens, princes, and nobles attended the plays at Skin- 
 ners' Well ; lords and ladies assisted sometimes with 
 money, sometimes with the loan of pointed hose and 
 silken gowns and other properties. Henry V, Margaret 
 of Anjou, Richard III, Henry VII were present at their 
 several convenience to grace the miracles at Coventry. 
 Chaucer and Lydgate and Langland, and many a less- 
 known man of letters, rubbed elbows with the crowd. The 
 
 8
 
 n 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 plays were at once an advertisement of civic solidarity, 
 wealth, wit, and enterprise, an incentive of literary culture 
 and amusement, and a vehicle, longer effective than 
 dubious, for the conveyance of religious instruction. 
 The utmost care was taken to prevent the abuses that 
 attend unwieldy assemblies. None but those who are 
 privileged may bear weapons ; disturbances are met with 
 imprisonment and fine ; dissolute characters are warned 
 away or violently ejected before the play-week begins ; 
 due provision is made for the separate and orderly ob- 
 servance of religious rites and the collection of moneys 
 from the faithful. At first we read of crowds " admiring," 
 then weeping and laughing by turns. It is not until 
 reason has invaded tradition that the simple delight, aes- 
 thetic and devotional, fades utterly away. Of course 
 there were, from the beginning, remonstrances and inhi- 
 bitions on the part of the church. That is an ancient 
 quarrel between church and stage. But in spite of 
 material grossness, ignorance, crudity, and occasional 
 irreverence, the plays were not without their beneficent 
 consequences. A queer story is handed down by Disraeli 
 and Sharp of a puritanical vicar of Rotherham, who once 
 happened to be preaching at a place called Cartmel in 
 Lancashire, 1 toward the end of the seventeenth or the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century. "The churches," 
 says he, "were so thronged at nine in the morning, that 
 I had much ado to get to the pulpit. One day an old 
 man of sixty, sensible enough in other things, and living 
 in the parish of Cartmel, coming to me on some business, 
 I told him that he belonged to my care and charge, and 
 I desired to be informed in his knowledge of religion. I 
 
 1 From the MS. Life of John Shaw, in Disraeli's Curiosities / Sharp, 
 P. 53-
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 115 
 
 asked him how many Gods there were. He said he 
 knew not. I, informing him, asked again how he thought 
 to be saved. He answered he could not tell : yet 
 thought that was a harder question than the other. I 
 told him that the way to salvation was by Jesus Christ, 
 God-man, who as he was man, shed his blood for us on 
 the cross, etc. ' Oh, sir,' said he, * I think I heard of that 
 man you speak of, once in a play at Kendal, called Cor- 
 pus Christ's play, where there was a man on a tree, and 
 blood ran down,' etc. And afterwards he professed he 
 could not remember that he ever heard of salvation by 
 Jesus, but in that play." Now, the plays had ceased 
 at Kendal only about the end of the first third of the 
 seventeenth century. As late as the sixteenth, the clergy 
 seem to have been in the way of recommending them as a 
 means of salvation. For, said a preacher (in the C Mery 
 Talys of 1526) at the close of a sermon on the Creed: 
 "Yf you beleve not me, then for a more suerte and 
 suffycyente auctoryte go your way to Coventre, and there 
 ye shall se them all playd in Corpus Cristi play." 
 
 THE PASSING OF THE MIRACLES 
 
 Because of the expense incident to the production of 
 the miracles, the gradual changes in the function and 
 formation of town-guilds, and the revulsion among reli- 
 gious reformers against ritualistic commemoration of the 
 saints, and of the doctrine of the Real Presence which 
 Corpus Christi was designed to inculcate, the perfor- 
 mance of the sacred cycles begins in the first half of the 
 sixteenth century, here and there, to wane in frequency, 
 magnificence, and interest. 
 
 In Lincoln in 1540, several guilds are ordered to 
 restore their pageants which they have for some reason
 
 u6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 broken ; soon after this officials are scouring the country 
 for collections to support the plays ; later the jewels, 
 plates, and ornaments of St. Anne's show (in other 
 towns, of Corpus Christi) are sold for the benefit of the 
 Common Chamber. During Queen Mary's reign there 
 is a brief restoration of the plays ; but after 1563 "the 
 story of Toby " is substituted, and even of that no record 
 later than 1567 remains. 1 In 1572 and 1575 the eccle- 
 siastical authorities of Canterbury, York, and Chester 
 inhibited the performance of the Chester plays ; but the 
 play-loving mayors of those years had their way. Still, 
 though the plays in 1575 had been revised to suit 
 modern religious taste, they were " to the great dislike 
 of many," ostensibly, however, because they were " in 
 one part of the city." In 1599 the mayor, "a godly 
 zealous man . . . would not suffer any playes, bear-baits 
 or bull-bait." The " Banes" were read as late as 1600 ; 
 but David Rogers, in his Breviary of 1609, thanks God 
 that 1574 (1575 ?) was the last time " the whitson playes 
 weare played. And we have all cause to power out oure 
 prayeres before God, that neither we nor oure posterities 
 after us, may never see y e like abomination of desolation 
 with such a Clowde of Ignorance to defyle with so highe 
 a hand y e sacred scriptures of God." 2 
 
 In Coventry complaint was made of the expense as 
 early as 1539, but the pageants had such vogue that they 
 were with only occasional intermission continued till 
 1580. Though some of the pageants were sold in 1586 
 and 1587, the songs for the Shearmen and Taylors are 
 dated, as for production, 1591, and the Weavers were 
 still able to lend their stage properties in 1607. By 
 
 1 Leach, in Fur a. Misc., p. 227. 
 
 * Harl. MS. 1944; printed by Furnivall, Digby Plays, xviii, et stq.
 
 REPRESENTATION OF THE CYCLES 117 
 
 1628 the pageants had "bine put downe many yeares 
 since." 1 In Newcastle, after 1578, the "ancient" plays 
 of Corpus Christi were acted only on special occasions 
 and by special command of the magistrates. In York, 
 from 1535 on, some of the miracles were subject to 
 emendation, others to exclusion. More and more fre- 
 quently moral plays like the Creed and the Paternoster 
 are substituted. In 1548 plays of Roman Catholic tra- 
 dition like the Assumption of Our Lady and her Coronation 
 are rejected. Objections to the performances increase on 
 ground of sickness or poverty, or of ecclesiastical dis- 
 approval of their doctrine. In 1568 the play-book 
 appears to have undergone careful revision to suit Arch- 
 bishop Grindal and the Dean of York. It looks as if 
 the plays were performed in 1579 ; but no later notice of 
 the kind remains, though, according to Miss Smith, 2 the 
 Bakers were obtaining rent for their pageant-house in 
 1626, and electing "pageant-masters" as late as 1656. 
 Shakespeare, Jonson, Massinger, and Fletcher were then 
 long dead. Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu, and Crom- 
 well had but two years more to live. Descartes was gone 
 and Leibnitz come. Otway and Fenelon were three years 
 old, Newton fourteen, and Dry den twenty-five. Milton 
 had spent four years in darkness, and was meditating his 
 Paradise Lost. In three years Moliere would produce his 
 Pr'ecieuses Ridicules ; in four, Charles II would come back 
 to his own ; in ten, Bunyan would replace the miracles 
 with Grace Abounding for the Chief of Sinners, and in an- 
 other decade yet with that child of all the mysteries, the 
 best of modern moralities, the Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 1 Sharp, Diss. Cov. Myst., and Chambers, II, 358. 
 3 Tork Plays, xxxvi.
 
 u8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE COLLECTIVE STORY OF THE CYCLES 
 
 IN the miracle plays of our forefathers the mirth, the 
 proverbial philosophy, the social aims, the aesthetic and 
 religious ideals of the middle ages still live for us. At 
 first, as I have shown, these plays existed as units, each 
 commemorating some episode in the life of Christ or of 
 the saints, or some important fragment of Old Testa- 
 ment history. But gradually they coalesced in this town 
 and that into a cycle or sequence (of anywhere from five 
 to fifty dramatic compositions), covering in one vast 
 survey the whole of sacred history and prophecy, as told 
 in scripture and in ecclesiastical legend, from the Fall 
 of the Angels to the Day of Judgment. The cycle of 
 York stands to one of its component pageants as the 
 minster itself to chapel, cloister, nave, or crypt. And 
 the same simple, patient, practical mystics built both 
 cycle and cathedral. If we would know how our fathers 
 lived and dreamed we should study their temples of 
 dramatic verse as well as their aspirations in stone. 
 
 The collective story of sacred plays falls readily into 
 five groups. The first is that of the Creation and of 
 Old 'Testament History. It presents in kaleidoscopic 
 spectacle God making the angels and the universe, 
 Lucifer and his hosts aspiring and descending; the 
 creation of Adam and Eve, the temptation and the ex- 
 pulsion from Paradise ; the promise of the Oil of
 
 THE STORY OF THE CYCLES 119 
 
 Mercy; the birth of the first children of men; their 
 instruction in worship and industry ; then, the blood of 
 Abel crying from the ground, the curse upon Cain, his 
 wanderings, and his death like a hunted thing at the 
 hands of Lamech ; Adam in his old age weary of delving, 
 and sick unto death, sending Seth to the angel who keeps 
 Paradise to obtain that Oil of Mercy if he may ; Seth's 
 vision of the Tree in the Garden and of the unborn 
 Christ, and his return to Adam with the kernels of the 
 fruit whence should spring the wood of the Cross ; 
 Adam's joy, his pious resignation and his death, and the 
 planting of the holy kernels ; Enoch's walk with God ; 
 the corruption of mankind, and God repenting him of 
 his creation ; the mission of Noah, the building of the 
 Ark and the history of the Flood ; the meeting of 
 Abraham and Melchisedec ; the sacrifice of Isaac ; Jacob 
 and his wily mother cheating Esau of his birthright and 
 blessing ; the wanderings of Jacob and the vision at 
 Bethel ; the Israelites in Egypt, the plagues, and the 
 passage of the Red Sea ; Moses and the chosen people 
 in the wilderness, the giving of the laws, and the discov- 
 ery of the Sacred Rods sprung from the " pippins " of 
 Seth ; Balaam on his errand of imprecation, 
 
 " Go forth, Burnell, go forth, go ! 
 What the Devil, my ass will not go ! " 
 
 the Angel in the way, and Balaam's prophecy of the 
 Star to come out of Jacob, the sceptre out of Israel ; 
 then, the transplantation of the Holy Rods by David ; 
 the royal psalmist's sin with Bathsheba ; Solomon building 
 the Temple, and cutting down the Kingly Tree, the 
 beam that the builders rejected ; and of that beam 
 Maximilla prophesying that Christ should hang thereon ;
 
 120 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the bridge over Cedron ; and finally, the procession of 
 the prophets who foretell the Christ : Balaam and Isaiah, 
 Jesse, David, and Solomon, and chosen rulers of the 
 disrupted kingdom, Jeremiah and Jonah and Daniel 
 and Micah, and other righteous, a glorious pomp 
 preceding the Dawn, and singing in many tones 
 
 Virgo concipiet 
 
 Et pariet filium, nomen Emanuel; 
 Egredietur virga de radice Jesse 
 Et fios de radice ejus ascendet. 
 
 As the Processus Prophetarum closes the prologue of 
 the cosmic history, so it also opens the divine Mystery 
 of the Atonement. This is itself a unit, but it falls into 
 three dramatic groups, the Nativity, the Ministry, and 
 the Passion of Christ. 
 
 The Nativity casts its nimbus before : with the angelic 
 prophecy of a daughter, 
 
 Which shall hight Mary, and Mary shall bear Jesus 
 Which shall be Savior of all the world and us, 
 
 the childless home of Joachim and Anna is glorified. 
 The days pass, and the promised maid is born. "All 
 in white as a child of three," she mounts the steps of the 
 Temple, to be dedicated " to Godde's service " and to 
 chastity. Then follow the choice of a husband for the 
 maiden turned fourteen, the flowering of old Joseph's 
 rod, and the betrothal; the departure of Joseph from his 
 " little bride," and the fair one with her virgins working 
 on the curtain for the temple of the Lord ; then, Gabriel 
 on his high embassy, and the Ave Maria, gratia plena, 
 Dominus tecum, the visit to Elizabeth, and the saluta- 
 tion of the Mother of our Lord; then, Joseph's return
 
 THE STORY OF THE CYCLES 121 
 
 and his trouble about Mary, and the trial scene in the 
 Temple where, miraculously, the Virgin is vindicated and 
 her detractors are put to shame ; next, royalty and the 
 palace, Csesar Augustus taking counsel with Cyrenius 
 against the coming of the Child ; the Emperor and the 
 Sibyl, her prophecy of Christ; then, the riches of poverty, 
 the journey to Bethlehem, the stable, the birth of Christ, 
 and the sign shown to the midwives ; Emperor and 
 Sibyl again, Christ's birth announced and the Emperor 
 converted ; the shepherds and the star ; the Magi and the 
 star, and Herod on his throne; after that the Temple, 
 
 the purification of Our Lady, the presentation of the 
 Child and the Nunc dimittis of Simeon ; then, the offer- 
 ing of the Magi ; Herod deceived and furious, the flight 
 of Joseph, Mary, and the Child into Egypt and the 
 massacre of the innocents ; again, the palace, and high 
 revel of Herod and his knights, to them Death enter- 
 ing to strike, and the Devil issuing from Hell to claim 
 his own. 
 
 Here ends the group of the Nativity, and the active 
 Ministry of Christ begins : the Temple, and Christ with 
 the doctors, disputing ; the baptism in the Jordan ; the 
 mountain of temptation ; the marriage in Cana of 
 Galilee ; the transfiguration ; the absolution of the adul- 
 teress ; the healing of the blind in Siloam ; the raising of 
 Lazarus from the dead, and the cure of blind Bartimaeus. 
 
 Then follows the group of plays of which the focus is 
 the Passion : the entry into Jerusalem, and the cleansing 
 of the Temple ; Jesus in the house of Simon the leper 
 and Mary Magdalen anointing him "aforehand for his 
 burying "; the conspiracy of the Jews, the treachery of 
 Judas, and the Last Supper ; the garden of Gethsemane, 
 
 the agony, the betrayal, the flight of the disciples ; the
 
 122 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 trial before Caiaphas, the buffeting, the denial of Peter; 
 the trial before Pilate, and the dream of Pilate's wife ; 
 the trial before Herod; the second accusation before 
 Pilate, the remorse and self-murder of Judas, and the 
 purchase of the Field of Blood ; the condemnation and 
 the scourging ; the recovery of the cross-wood from the 
 brook Cedron, the forging of the nails for the cross, and 
 the leading of Christ up to Calvary ; the ministrations 
 of Simon the Cyrenian and Veronica; the lamentation 
 of Mary and the daughters of Jerusalem ; the crucifix- 
 ion ; the casting of lots for the seamless coat ; the promise 
 to the penitent thief; and the undying triumph of the 
 Saviour's death. The miracle, then, by which the centu- 
 rion receives his sight ; the descent from the cross, and 
 the burial ; the harrowing of hell ; the imprisonment of 
 Joseph and Nicodemus, and the setting of the watch ; 
 the resurrection, the discomfiture of the Jews, and 
 the release of the prisoners ; the angels to the 
 Maries : " Whom seek ye ? " (>uem quaeritis in sepul- 
 chro, Christicolae ?) ; the appearances of the risen Christ 
 to the Magdalene, to the pilgrims for Emmaus, to the 
 Eleven ; the rebuke to Thomas, the promise of the 
 Holy Ghost, and the ascension. 
 
 Here end the passion plays, properly so-called ; and 
 the last division begins, the History of the Living 
 Church : the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost ; the 
 meeting of Veronica and Tiberius, the conversion of 
 the Emperor, the condemnation and death of Pilate ; the 
 ministry of the apostles; the death and burial, the as- 
 sumption and coronation of the Mother of our Lord ; 
 the piety and martyrdom and miracles of the saints 
 Paul and the Magdalene, Christina and Catharine, and of 
 others a numerous host ; the miracles of Our Lady ; the
 
 THE STORY OF THE CYCLES 123 
 
 miracles of the Blessed Sacrament ; the signs of Judgment ; 
 the coming of Antichrist and his destruction. Dooms- 
 day. 
 
 From this river of history, ecclesiastical and profane, 
 of apocrypha, apocalypse, and legend, the mediaeval 
 playwrights of pageants, single or cyclic, drew the waters 
 of poetic life. The miracles of the saints, indeed 
 (except one or two of the Virgin and those of St. Paul 
 and Mary Magdalene), and the histories of certain Old 
 Testament heroes, such as Daniel and Tobit, are not in- 
 cluded in any of the English cycles ; but they are in the 
 French. And one and another of them occurs in 
 independent form in the annals of mediaeval English 
 drama. I have already mentioned the St. Katharine of 
 Geoffrey, and the Daniel and St. Nicholas of the twelfth 
 century Hilarius. A Tobit was acted at Lincoln in 
 1564 and 1567; the Deaths of the Apostles and a play of 
 Sts. Crispin and Crispinianus, in Dublin, in 1528 ; a St. 
 Meriasek in Cornwall; and plays of numerous others 
 St. James, St. Andrew, St. Laurence, St. Susanna, St. Lucy, 
 St. Margaret in various places. It has been recently 
 announced by Mr. Chambers that the "dumb show of 
 St. George," of which the subtle J. P. Collier says that 
 it was presented by Henry the Fifth for the entertain- 
 ment of Emperor Sigismund of" Almayne " was nothing 
 more than a " soteltie " or ornamented cake ; but the 
 probability still remains that many a miracle of the 
 patron saint preceded by centuries the mummings of St. 
 George which obtain in England even at the present 
 day. Plays of St. Paul and Mary Magdalene form part 
 of the Digby cycle of which I have something later to 
 say ; and a miracle of the Blessed Sacrament is preserved 
 in the well-known Croxton play, which was composed
 
 I2 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 between 1461 and 1500. This latter-day episode of the 
 history of Christ's saints represents the desecration by 
 Jews of a wonder-working wafer, their discomfiture and 
 ultimate conversion, and is a striking example of the 
 transition from the sacred and didactic drama to the real- 
 istic and comic play of contemporary fife. 1 
 
 The five groups of plays into which the collective 
 miracles, above enumerated, may be resolved, are, as we 
 have noticed, but three, in effect : that of pre-christian 
 history and legend, that of Christ's ministry, and that 
 of his church. Of these, the first is the prologue to the 
 swelling theme of the second, the essential drama of the 
 Atonement God born into the world ; living, suffering, 
 dying for man ; harrowing hell, rising from the dead, and 
 ascending into heaven; and to that the third is the epilogue. 
 
 1 Since I have dwelt at some length in my Beginnings of English 
 Comedy (Repr. Engl. Comedies, xxxvii) on popular saints' plays and 
 "marvels," I must refer the reader to that treatise, suggesting, however, 
 that its material be supplemented by Mr. Chambers' scholarly study of 
 the relation of folk dramas, mummings, etc., to the pagan rites and 
 festivals of our Teutonic and Celtic predecessors.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 125 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE HISTORICAL ORDER OF THE 
 ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 FROM the analogy of the English dramatic tropes and 
 offices and the sacred plays of Hilarius, an Englishman 
 brought up in France about the middle of the twelfth cen- 
 tury, we may conclude that dramas, so long as acted in 
 the church, were largely, if not wholly, in Latin. Grad- 
 ually an Anglo-Norman line or refrain slipped in, even 
 in case of a church play ; and from the end of the four- 
 teenth century on, liturgical plays were performed which, 
 with survivals of the Latin, were principally in English. 
 Extra-ecclesiastical plays, on the other hand, were, at an 
 early period, probably first in the Anglo-Norman, and 
 then in the English. If the traditional date of the 
 Chester plays, 1328, may be credited, we have an indica- 
 tion of the still earlier use of the vernacular in the miracle 
 cycle. 
 
 Of extant approaches to a play in English, the earliest 
 is The Harrowing of Hell, about 1250, which Dr. Ward 
 well denominates a link between the dramatic dialogue 
 and the religious drama. The next, according to Pro- 
 fessor Ten Brink, 1 is the Jacob and Esau, preserved as 
 part of the Towneley cycle. Philological tests would 
 indeed indicate for this an early date of composition. 
 
 1 Hist. Eng. Lit., Vol. II, Pt. I, 244 ; Vol. II, Pt. II. 274.
 
 ia6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Ten Brink says about 1280, and he thinks it is an inde- 
 pendent creation. I must agree with Mr. Pollard l 
 that, in style and language, it is more probably part of an 
 original didactic cycle. The Brome play of Abraham 
 and Jsaac y which comes next in order of production, is 
 undoubtedly the basis of The Sacrifice of Isaac in the 
 Chester cycle, and probably in an earlier version dates 
 from the beginning of the fourteenth century. The 
 Ludus Fdiorum Israel, which was performed at Cam- 
 bridge, perhaps by the guild of Corpus Christi y in 1350, 
 is not extant ; but we may conjecture that it was akin to 
 the play of the poltroon knight given by the English 
 bishops at the Council of Constance, 1415, and embodied 
 in the various cycles best represented, however, by 
 Parfre's Kyllynge of the Children of Israeli in the Digby 
 manuscript. These plays are all on subjects employed 
 by the cycles. The Harrowing may be said to have con- 
 tributed to drama an element of wonder ; the two plays 
 next mentioned contributed respectively elements of 
 realism and pathos ; the Ludus Filiorum in all likelihood 
 some quality of farce or burlesque. 
 
 THE CORNISH 
 
 Of the cycles composed in England the Cornish 2 may 
 have been in its original form prior to the rest. It con- 
 sists of four plays. The Beginning of the World ( Orig o 
 Mundi) extends from the creation to the death of Maxi- 
 milla in Solomon's time for prophesying of the Christ. 
 The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ ( Passio Domini] 
 covers the life of Christ from the temptation to the cruci- 
 fixion. The Death of Pilate presents the legendary 
 
 1 Towneley Plays, p. xxv. 
 
 1 E. Norris, Cornish Drama, 2 vols., 1859.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 127 
 
 account of the leprosy of the Emperor, Tiberius : how 
 Tiberius sent for healing to the wonder-working Jesus 
 and learned through Veronica that Pilate had already 
 suffered that Physician to be put to death ; how he is 
 assured by her that he may yet be healed of his disease if 
 he kiss the handkerchief upon which the likeness of 
 Christ's face has been imprinted ; how the Emperor is 
 healed and, at the instigation of Veronica, sends for Pilate 
 to take retribution upon him for the death of Christ; 
 how Pilate comes wearing the seamless garment of our 
 Saviour, and how that melts the wrath of Tiberius into 
 love; how, at Veronica's word, the cloth of Jesus is 
 stripped from Pilate, and how, condemned, he betakes 
 himself to suicide ; how, finally, land and water alike re- 
 fuse to hold his accursed carcass. This Death of Pilate 
 appears as an insertion in the middle of The Resurrection 
 and Ascension, which is itself the concluding play of the 
 cycle. The manuscript is in Cornish and, according to 
 the editor, could not have been made earlier than 1400. 
 From an examination of the references to localities and 
 the formation of the names, it appears that the Origo 
 Mundi may have been composed as early as 1300; and 
 the Resurrection during the second half of the fourteenth 
 century. 1 The latter date would be indicated for the 
 Passion of our Lord, also, by the use in its opening scene 
 of a verse-form closely approximating to the unique 
 nine-line stanza of the master-playwright of Wakefield. 
 Of the first of these miracles, the Origo Mundi, a second 
 version is preserved in William Jordan's Creation of the 
 World, written 1611. Its only claim to consideration is 
 that it alone of British cycles dramatises the wanderings 
 of Cain and the life of Enoch, and is the only associate of 
 1 E. H. Pedler, Appendix to Norris, Cornish Drama.
 
 128 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the Coventry N-Town in presenting the subject of Cain's 
 death. In other respects Jordan's play is but a revision, 
 sometimes adopting or imitating, sometimes reproducing 
 the Origo Mundi. It is not at all unlikely that the origi- 
 nal cycle was written in the ecclesiastical college of 
 Glazeney, founded about 1287; and probably by some 
 member of the religious body who himself was a native 
 of Penryn. 
 
 THE GREAT CYCLES : MANUSCRIPTS AND DATES or 
 COMPOSITION 
 
 The manuscript of the York plays appears to have 
 been made 1430-40; that of the Wakefield (or so- 
 called Towneley, from the family which preserved it), after 
 the middle of the same century. Most of the manuscript 
 of the so-called Ludus Coventrize was written in the year 
 1468. The manuscripts of the Chester cycle were made be- 
 tween 1591 and 1607, and appear to be based on a text of 
 the beginning of the fifteenth or the end of the fourteenth 
 century. In spite of all that has been written, no agree- 
 ment has yet been reached concerning the comparative 
 age of the four great cycles. The modernity of the Chester 
 manuscripts discourages dialectal investigation, but exami- 
 nation of the language of other cycles should be of assist- 
 ance. The metrical tests have been only partly applied, as 
 by Davidson and Hohlfeld. I know of no richer field for 
 comparative study of sources, contents, vocabulary, verse, 
 and style than that which here remains to be explored. 
 
 According to the tradition preserved in the prose proc- 
 lamation of the cycle for 1543, and copied in Bellin's 
 manuscript of the cycle, 1600, the Chester plays were 
 " devised and made by one Sir Henry Francis " during 
 the mayoralty of John Arneway; that would be between
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 129 
 
 1268 and 1277. Francis also went, says the proclama- 
 tion, three times to Pope Clement to obtain license for 
 the witnessing of the plays. According to other Banns, 
 written in verse for a performance sometime between 1551 
 and 1572, they were "devised by one Done Rondall, 
 monk of Chester Abbey," in the mayoralty of the same 
 " Sir John Arnway." It is, however, the fashion nowa- 
 days to assign them to a much later date. Dr. Ward, 
 for instance, hesitates to place them earlier than the be- 
 ginning of the fifteenth or the end of the fourteenth 
 century. The fact that French stanzas occur in five 
 places points either to the use of an original written in 
 French, or to composition in a period before the French 
 had ceased to be the language considered appropriate, in 
 England, for kings and courtiers. If the latter hypothe- 
 sis holds, Dr. Ward is of opinion that the passages in 
 French must have been written before the reign of 
 Richard II. If, on the other hand, the plays are based 
 upon a French original, it has been shown by Professor 
 Hohlfeld to be not at all likely that they should be 
 produced after other mediaeval English cycles had de- 
 veloped themselves independently of foreign models. 1 
 In either case I am persuaded that these passages, and 
 in general the plays containing them, were written at as> 
 early a period as the older plays of the York cycle. 
 Pollard 2 dates the composition of the Chester plays 
 
 1 The plays which undoubtedly show French affinities are VI, VIII, 
 XI, XVI, XVII, XIX ; but as Hohlfeld (Die altenglischen Kollektivmis- 
 terien, Anglia, Vol. XI) has pointed out, the parts of VIII, XI, XIX 
 written in the Chaucerian stanza are probably additions by the writer of 
 the Prologue of 1600. Professor Davidson's suggestion (English Mys- 
 tery Plays, p. 130) of an Anglo-Norman origin does not alter the 
 presumption of antiquity. 
 
 2 Engl. Miracle Plays, XXXVI. 
 
 9
 
 130 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 1340-50. So, also, Ten Brink. The liturgical quality 
 of certain parts and the undramatic and almost epical 
 quality of others, the general prevalence of the didactic, 
 the concatenation in the same play of scriptural or 
 legendary action sufficient for several pageants, the 
 crudity of technique, are a few of the numerous con- 
 siderations that may be adduced to support as early a 
 date for part of the cycle. 
 
 I am, indeed, of the opinion that there is, in spite of 
 apparent anachronism and evident contradiction, a soup- 
 fon of truth in one or other of the traditions concerning 
 the still earlier origin of the cycle. A manuscript of the 
 cycle prepared by James Miller in 1607 l has a note on 
 a fly-leaf dated 1628, which attempts to reconcile both of 
 the earlier accounts. It attributes the authorship of the 
 plays to " Randle Heggenet, a monke of Chester Abbey," 
 who also secured license from Rome to have them played 
 in the English tongue. The source of this account is 
 the same as that of the Banns in verse prefixed by George 
 Bellin to his manuscript of the plays, of i6oo, 2 and that 
 of the Breavarye of Chester* prepared somewhere before 
 1595 by Archdeacon Rogers and written out by his son in 
 1609. Both the verse-Banns and the Archdeacon's Brev- 
 iary fix Higgenet's authorship during the mayoralty of Sir 
 John Arneway ; and the Breviary assigns that period to 
 1328-9. Unfortunately that date, while it might corre- 
 spond with Higgenet, whether or not he be the cele- 
 brated Ralph Higden, a monk in Chester Abbey from 
 
 1 Br. Mus. Harl. MS. 2124. For a scholarly discussion of the MSS. 
 of the Ch. Plays, see Dr. Deimling's introduction to his E. E. T. S. 
 edition. 
 
 8 Harl. MS. 2013. 
 
 Harl. MS. 1944 in Furnivall's Digby Plays, XVIII.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 131 
 
 1299 to 1364, cannot suit Arneway's term of office, which 
 ended in 1277. In the second place this MS. of 1607 
 proceeds to assign to Sir Henry Francis, "sometime a 
 monk of the monastery of Chester," the credit of having 
 obtained from " Pope Clemens a thousand daies of 
 pardon, etc., . . . for those who resorted peaceably to 
 see the playes." This attempt to reconcile the claims 
 of Francis with those of Higgenet is inspired by a state- 
 ment in that prose proclamation of 1543 with which this 
 consideration began. The date of composition is there 
 fixed by the papal reign of a Clement and the mayoralty 
 of Arneway. Since Clement IV was Pope from 1265 
 to 1276, and Arneway mayor from 1268 to 1277, the 
 account has so far the merit of consistency. 1 But no 
 Randall Higgenet was monk of Chester Abbey between 
 those dates. And the chance, also, of connecting Francis 
 with the plays falls away ; for since he was still living 
 in 1382 senior monk of St. Werburgh's Abbey 
 he was a trifle too young to have been making plays 
 or pilgrimages in 1276. If, however, the plays were 
 not originally devised as early as 1268-76, it is still 
 not improbable that they were in existence in 1328-29, 
 the date assigned by Rogers. And this supposition is 
 confirmed by a coincidence recently discovered and an- 
 nounced by Mr. Leach and Mr. Chambers, that the 
 mayor of Chester in 1327-29, was a man of name 
 similar to Arneway, viz. Ernes (Erneis, Herneys). That 
 
 1 Mr. Leach (Furnivall Misc., p. 232) objects to the authenticity of 
 the proclamation of 1533, as reported in Bellin's MS., that it speaks of 
 the monastery of Chester as "since dissolved," whereas that monastery 
 was not dissolved till 1540. But the 1533 is due to a scribal mistake in 
 copying the document, by which it reads 24 Hen. VIII, by a slip for 34. 
 Chambers, Mediaval Stage, II, 348, shows that 1543-4 is the date.
 
 132 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 being so, it is not unlikely that the less known mayor 
 Richard Herneys came to be contused with his celebrated 
 predecessor, Erneway, or Hernwey. Herneys' date would 
 correspond with the prime of Randulf Higden, who 
 wrote the great encyclopaedia, Polychronicon, about 1327, 
 and was monk of Chester Abbey from 1299 to I 3^4* 
 The authorship of Francis in 1328 is less likely. He 
 would have been only a youth. If there is any truth in 
 the rest of the tradition, the Pope who granted pardon 
 to those resorting to see the plays must have been 
 Clement IV, 1265-76, or Clement V, 1305-16, or 
 Clement VI, 1342-52. Either Francis or Higden might 
 have made the journeys to Rome after 1328, finally 
 obtaining the approval of Pope Clement VI, between 
 1342 and 1352. Taking all indications into account, 
 there is, therefore, good reason to believe that at the 
 latest some of the Chester plays were in existence dur- 
 ing the first third of the fourteenth century, and that 
 the present form of the cycle, with its marks of occa- 
 sional dependence upon other cycles, 1 represents, in 
 
 1 The Play of the Shepherds, Chester VII, resembles Wakefield's 
 Prima Pastorum XII ; Christ in the Temple, Chester XI, may be from 
 York XX (not by way of W., as Hohlfeld, p. 264, thinks). The 
 speech of Jesus in Resur, Chester XIX, is akin to W. XXVI, XXXVIII, 
 etc. In my opinion, however, it does not derive from that, but from an 
 earlier version of the missing portion in York XXXVIII or from a com- 
 mon original in the primitive ab ab ab ab stanza which is the stanza of 
 York VIII and the body of the oldest York verse-forms. Personal 
 examination convinces me that the Chester play on The Sacrifice of 
 Isaac is borrowed almost literally from the Brome Play on the same 
 subject ; not from any independent English or French, the original of 
 both. Hohlfeld, who is of the same opinion, conjectures an earlier version 
 of the Brome Play, beginning of the fourteenth century, as the basis of 
 Chester.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 133 
 
 general, a revision which may have been made about the 
 end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth 
 century. 
 
 The York cycle, 1 according to its scholarly editor, 
 Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith, was composed between 1340 
 and 1350. Both Miss Smith and Dr. Ward attribute 
 the bulk of the authorship to one hand. A study of the 
 materials, metres ( no less than twenty-five, and of different 
 quality, historical and technical), sources, and dramatic 
 style, convinces me that the formative stage of the cycle 
 is of a date as early as the first Chester plays, and that 
 the middle stage of about 1340 to 1360, and the later to 
 about 1400, had each its distinctive poet. But particulars 
 may be deferred to a later chapter. 
 
 The Wakefield (Towneley) plays, says Mr. Pollard 
 in his introduction to the latest edition, 2 are built in at 
 least three distinct stages, covering a period of which the 
 limits were perhaps 1360 and 1410. The portions be- 
 longing to the earliest stage (part or whole of ten 
 plays), 3 written in the metrical romance stanza ridiculed 
 by Chaucer in the Rime of Sir fhopas, would appear to 
 him to have been written as early as 1360. Their prim- 
 itive character and the fact that they are independent of 
 the corresponding portions of the York cycle, in the 
 middle stage, may indeed indicate a period of composition 
 as early as 1340-50. The original didactic cycle, as Mr. 
 Pollard calls it, was supplemented in the succeeding period 
 by influence from York. During this, the second stage, 
 
 1 York Mystery Plays, Oxford, 1885. 
 
 2 By Geo. England, E. E. T. S., Extra Series LXXI. 
 
 8 I, IV, V, VII, IX, XI, and parts of X, XVII, XXIII, XXVIII.
 
 134 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the playwrights of Wakefield borrowed from the York 
 cycle five plays, and adapted three. 1 
 
 In the third stage the hand of a genius is evident. That 
 his contributions were only slightly later than those of 
 the second stage would appear, not only from internal 
 evidence (metrical and linguistic), but from a variety of 
 historical considerations. To the allusions concerning 
 dress cited by the Surtees editor, which would indicate a 
 date between 1390 and 1420, Mr. Pollard adds confirm- 
 atory material. He thinks, however, and with reason, 
 that " in a writer so full of allusions, the absence of any 
 reference to fighting tends to show that the plays 
 were not written during the war with France, and thus 
 everything seems to point to the reign of Henry IV as 
 the most likely date of their composition. The date of 
 our text is probably about half a century later. But the 
 example of the York plays shows us that in its own 
 habitat the text of the play could be preserved in tolerable 
 purity for a longer period than this. In the direction of 
 popular treatment it was impossible for any editor, how- 
 ever much disposed towards tinkering, to think that he 
 could improve on the playwright of the nine-line stanza 
 (in which are written the best portions of the Wakefield 
 cycle), while it is reasonable to suppose that the hold of 
 these plays on the Yorkshire audience was sufficiently 
 strong to resist the intrusion of didactics." To these 
 considerations I would add that the Herod's ironical and 
 easy disposal of the Papal Chair in Wakefield XVI is 
 eminently appropriate to the period of Pr<emunire, 1392, 
 and that the shepherd's complaint of " gentlerymen " in 
 
 1 Borrowed VIII, XVIII, XXV, XXVI, XXX. Adapted X, 
 XIV, XV. Still others, like IV, XIX, XXVII, would seem to be 
 based upon early alternatives of Y. plays, discarded about 1340.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 135 
 
 the Secunda fits very well the decade on either side of 
 Wat Tyler's rebellion. 
 
 Objections to the attribution of this cycle to Wake- 
 field I cannot stay to consider. 1 The only definite 
 evidences, the appearance of " Wakefield " and " Ber- 
 kers" at the head of the first pageant, "Wakefield" at 
 the head of the third, and the references to crafts as 
 playing, are for Wakefield. There is no authority for 
 Woodkirk or Widkirk, or Nostel or Whalley. The 
 topographical allusions are suitable to Wakefield ; and 
 that Wakefield players sometimes assisted in the York 
 plays, to which the Towneley MS. is deeply indebted, 
 is well known. 
 
 Since the guilds of Coventry had their own miracle 
 plays, two of which, the Shearmen and Taylors' Pageant 
 from the Annunciation to the Flight into Egypt, and the 
 Weavers' Pageant of the Presentation in the Temple, 
 are still extant, and since we have numerous munici- 
 pal and guild records of the co-operation of these and 
 other crafts in the production of the Coventry plays of 
 Corpus Christi, all the way from 1392 to 1591, the 
 temptation is strong to assign the distinct cycle, edited 
 by Halliwell for the Shakespeare Society in 1841, under 
 the name of Ludus Coventrize to some entirely different 
 origin. For not only was Coventry already supplied 
 with a collective series of its own, the dialectal and scribal 
 peculiarities of the series called Ludus Coventrize are pro- 
 nounced by philologists to be not those of Warwick- 
 
 1 See Skeat, The Locality of the Towneley Plays {Athenaum, 3449, 
 Dec. 2, 1893); Pollard, Introduction to the Towneley Plays, 1897 ; 
 M. H. Peacock, The Wakefield Mysteries (4ng/iaXXlV, 509); Bunzen, 
 Zur Kritik d. Wakefield Mysterien (Diss.), Kiel, 1903.
 
 136 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 shire at all. Professor Ten Brink, indeed, assigns them 
 to the counties northeast of the Midlands, and Mr. 
 Pollard adds good reasons for that conclusion. If, by 
 any chance, they were originally a craft-cycle, they might 
 better be regarded as the lost play-book of some such 
 town as Lincoln. For, in the Lincoln craft-plays there 
 was always ecclesiastical co-operation, and especial em- 
 phasis was laid upon the romance of the Virgin : char- 
 acteristics which mark the so-called Ludus Coventri*. 
 
 The subsequent performance of the series one is 
 tempted to assign to strolling players, because in the 
 only extant manuscript, that of 1468, the performance is 
 announced not by the customary municipal Banns, but 
 by verses placed in the mouths of three vexillatores, 
 banner-bearers, or what we might call sandwich-men, 
 apparently advertising their wares. The stanza assigned 
 to the last of these closes : 
 
 A Sunday next, yf that we may, 
 
 At vi of the belle we ginne our play, 
 
 In N Towne, wherefore we pray 
 
 That God now be youre spede. Amen. 
 
 This would suggest that the plays were given from 
 
 town to town, the N , or Nomen, of the town being 
 
 filled in with the designation suitable to the occasion. 
 
 These suppositions are reconcilable, if we assume that 
 after the play-book ceased to be used by such a town as 
 Croxton, Lincoln, or Norwich, it passed into the hands of 
 professional actors sufficiently skilful to revise and supple- 
 ment the text, from time to time, according to need. 
 
 But we must reckon with the fact that when the 
 manuscript already inscribed " The plaie called Corpus 
 Christi," passed into the possession of Sir Robert Cotton, 
 about 1630, his librarian, Dr. Richard James, made this
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 137 
 
 note in Latin on the flyleaf: " Materials of the New 
 Testament in dramatic form as they used to be acted 
 formerly by monks or mendicant friars : this book is 
 commonly called Ludus Coventrize (the Coventry Play) 
 or Play of Corpus Christi ; it is written in English 
 metres." Also that Dugdale, the historian of Warwick- 
 shire, writing in 1656, said that the plays of this very 
 manuscript were acted, before the suppression of the 
 monasteries, by the Franciscans, or Grey Friars of 
 Coventry ; and that he himself had been " told by some 
 old people who in their younger years were eye-witnesses 
 of these Pageants so acted, that the yearly confluence of 
 people to see that shew was extraordinarily great, and 
 yielded no small advantage to the City." The Coventry 
 Annals , also, contain an entry of the year 14923, which 
 records that " this year the King came to se the playes 
 acted by the Gray Friers, and much commended them." 
 Such items look like fairly conclusive evidence in favour 
 not only of Coventry as the locality, but of the Francis- 
 cans as the actors of the disputed cycle. Not, however, 
 if we note the following particulars : (i) Dr. James does 
 not say that the book is correctly called the Ludus 
 Coventrize. He is careful to say it is " commonly " or 
 " traditionally " so-called vulgo ; and he adds the gen- 
 eral, self-evident title under which the book had reached 
 his hand, Ludus Corporis Christi. (2) If his information 
 regarding the history is to be gauged by his accuracy in 
 other respects, it is not worth much, for he tells us that 
 the contents are of the New Testament. That state- 
 ment would apply to such plays of Coventry as we know 
 to have been given by the crafts ; but the manuscript 
 under the Doctor's hand was of Old as well as of New 
 Testament subjects. (3) The people who told Dugdale,
 
 ij8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 somewhere between 1620 and 1650, that they had seen 
 these plays, were speaking of the craft plays, not of plays 
 given by monks in Coventry. For the Grey Friars of 
 Coventry had, by 1620, been dissolved eighty-two years; 
 whereas the craft plays had been continued to be acted 
 till within twenty-five years of Dugdale's birth in 1605. 
 (4) The source of Dugdale's information about the Grey 
 Friars, namely the dnnals, is untrustworthy, for they 
 were not written up until the beginning of the seventeenth 
 century. (5) The words "by the Gray Friers" may, 
 after all, mean only that the pageant which so pleased 
 King Henry VII was set up near the house of the 
 Franciscans. 1 
 
 There is no other reference in the records whether 
 Annals, Leet-Book, or Accounts of the Companies to 
 the participation of Friars of any colour in the dramatic 
 history of Coventry. So far as nomadic performances 
 go, they are more likely to have been undertaken by 
 professional actors. 
 
 Wherever the cycle originated, and probably not at 
 Coventry, its ecclesiastical flavour, as Dr. Ward has 
 said, indicates the influence of ecclesiastical minds. Such 
 influence was more likely to have been exerted during 
 the period of original composition and by the secular 
 clergy of the town, than in the days of nomadic repre- 
 sentation. Professor Hohlfeld, 2 indeed, shows that in 
 certain of the plays the so-called Ludus Covenfri*, or, as 
 I would call it, N-Town collection, bears a closer relation 
 than any other cycle to the liturgical drama. While, 
 then, its composition may, in general, be assigned to the 
 first half of the fifteenth century, some parts of the cycle 
 
 1 See Chambers, II, 420 ; Sharp's Dissertation, p. 218. 
 1 Die altengliicben Kollektivmisterien, Anglia XI.
 
 
 
 Devil with Hammer, from a Fresco at Stratford-upon-Avon 
 
 From "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries 
 Anciently Performed at Coventry"
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 139 
 
 appear to be of much earlier date. Hohlfeld says that, like 
 the York plays, this cycle shows no signs of borrowing 
 from other cycles. That, however, is more than doubt- 
 ful. The manuscript being comparatively modern, the 
 cycle displays frequent elaborations of a more recent date 
 than any in the York and the Wakefield. I have de- 
 tected resemblances to the Chester and, in occasional 
 phrases and lines, to the York, which can hardly be 
 explained otherwise than as derivative. The portions of 
 the Chester and N-Town cycles which are derived from 
 the Old Testament are, in general, of prior date to the 
 rest of those cycles and to the York and Wakefield. 
 But the rest of the N-Town should be assigned to a 
 date later than that of the other cycles. 
 
 THE DIGBY AND OTHER PLAYS 
 
 Of another collection called the Digby, 1 after the 
 Bodleian manuscript in which it is contained, not much 
 of historical value is known. These plays, the Conver- 
 sion of St. Paul, the St. Mary Magdalen, the Massacre of 
 the Innocents, and the Morality of the Wisdom that is 
 Christ, date from the latter half of the fifteenth century 
 and were acted, probably, in several little towns of the 
 Midland counties. Accidentally included in a common 
 manuscript of the early sixteenth century they are, with 
 the exception of the Massacre, not components of any 
 cycle. That play, however, as we know from its pro- 
 logue, is one of a series covering the Nativity, the 
 Magi, Herod and the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt, 
 the Death of Herod, the Purification of Mary, and the 
 Disputation with the Doctors, of which the representa- 
 tion ran through several years and was set for St. Anne's 
 
 1 Digby Mysteries, edited by Furnivall (New Sbakesp. Soc. VII, I).
 
 i 4 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Day. Of the Digby plays and certain fragmentary cycles 
 like that of Newcastle (about 1426), further mention 
 will be made when we come to consider their dramatic 
 quality. Of the Newcastle there is preserved only the 
 Shipwrights' Play of Noah's Ark. The manuscript, now 
 lost, was of about 1426.* 
 
 Of the Beverley Corpus Christi y though it has not 
 survived, numerous details are preserved, and have 
 been published by Mr. A. F. Leach. 2 There were, in 
 1390, thirty-eight pageants; in 1520, thirty-six; and 
 they were still in presentation during the first half of 
 the sixteenth century. They covered much the same 
 field as those of York, though not so minutely ; they 
 added, however, like the Cornish cycle, the play of Adam 
 and Seth. In the municipal records of Lincoln, too, 
 frequent mention is made of miracle-plays from the year 
 1244 on; the names of seven of the most essential sur- 
 vive, and the regulations by which each of the crafts was 
 bound to provide its pageant. These are denominatedj 
 as in other towns, Corpus Christi plays, and they seem to 
 have constituted a cycle. Mr. Leach has shown, how- 
 ever, that they were probably played on St. Anne's Day 
 (July 26), and we note that their special feature, as of 
 the N-Town plays, was the adoration of the Virgin. In 
 London a cosmic cycle, now entirely lost but probably 
 the largest and most elaborate of all, was acted at Skin- 
 ners' Well. In 1378 and 1391 it is called the History of 
 the Old Testament. In the latter year it lasted four days ; 
 also in 1409, when it is recorded to have continued the 
 
 1 Printed in 1736 by Bourne in his History of Newcastle. Reprinted 
 by Sharp, Dissertation on Coventry Mysteries ; Brotanek, Anglia XXI, 
 165. 
 
 3 Beverley Town Documents, and in Furnivall Misc.
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 141 
 
 drama to the day of Judgment. In 1411 it lasted a 
 whole week, and was attended by the " moste parte of the 
 lordes and gentylles of Ynglond." In Norwich, also, 
 there was a cycle, in 1527, dating probably from 1478 or 
 earlier, and representing scriptural events between the 
 Creation and Pentecost. It consisted of but twelve plays ; 
 but it has the distinction of being the one English cycle 
 to dramatise the conflict of David and Goliath. There 
 survives only the Grocers' Pageant of The Creation of 
 Eve with the expelling of Adam and Eve out of Paradise. 1 
 
 The Dublin plays can hardly be called a cycle; they 
 represented, to be sure, the stories of Adam and Eve, of 
 Joseph and Mary, of the passion, and of the deaths of 
 the apostles ; but they included, with a somewhat ludi- 
 crous catholicity of aesthetic appeal, the story of Crispin 
 and Crispinianus, the adventures of Bacchus and of 
 Vulcan, and the Comedy of Ceres, presented, appro- 
 priately enough, by the shoemakers, the vintners, the 
 smiths and the bakers, respectively. The same happy 
 disregard of convention is displayed in the sequence of 
 floats listed for the Corpus Chris ti procession of 1498, 
 where it is arranged that Moses and the Israelites shall 
 accompany Mary and the Child, and Joseph leading the 
 camel, down to Egypt; where Arthur and his knights 
 are interposed between the pageant of Annas and Caiaphas 
 and that of the twelve apostles; while the Nine Worthies, 
 and St. George and the dragon, bring up the rear. 
 
 COMPARATIVE SCOPE 
 
 Of the comparative scope of the principal cycles a 
 few words may here be said. In the York there are 
 forty-eight plays ; in the N-Town, forty-two ; in the 
 
 1 In Manly 's Specimens of the Pre-Sbakespearean Drama, 1897, 1, i.
 
 i 4 2 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Wakefield, thirty ; and in the Chester, twenty-five. 
 The tetralogy of Cornwall is not subdivided into minor 
 pageants. These collections coincide in dramatising, in 
 some manner, the fall of Lucifer, the creation and fall 
 of man, the murder of Abel, the flood, and the sacrifice 
 of Isaac; and in emphasising the series of events begin- 
 ning with Christ's entry into Jerusalem and ending with 
 the Ascension. 
 
 The Cornish develops with especial, one might say 
 with unique, fondness, the legendary history of the 
 cross-wood. It alone of the collections extant drama- 
 tises Seth's mission to Paradise, the death of Adam, the 
 life of Enoch, Moses and the holy rods, David's dis- 
 covery of the rods, the planting of the King's tree and 
 the building of the temple, the martyrdom of Maximilla 
 and the institution of the bridge over Cedron, the 
 bringing of the cross from Cedron, and the refusal of 
 the smith to make the nails for it. The cycle is unique 
 also in the presentation of the imprisonment of Joseph 
 and Nicodemus, the death of Pilate, and the cure and 
 conversion of Tiberius by Veronica. And the story of 
 David's love for Bathsheba finds a dramatic devel- 
 opment unattempted by any of the cycles written in 
 English. While the Cornish tetralogy abounds in 
 realistic allusions to villages and manors in the gift of 
 the diocese, to which we find elsewhere no parallel, and 
 in a certain rude ribaldry applicable to the persons acting, 
 it indulges but sparingly in the humorous treatment of 
 biblical characters and episodes. The stories, for instance, 
 of Cain and Abel, and of the flood, which in other 
 cycles afford material for divers twists of comic inge- 
 nuity, are presented with no suggestion of aught but 
 their traditional and serious import. The tetralogy omits
 
 ORDER OF THE ENGLISH CYCLES 143 
 
 altogether the pivotal play of the prophets, the miracles 
 investing the nativity and the youth of Christ, and the 
 romance of the Virgin. Of history succeeding the As- 
 cension it has nothing ; and of the life of Christ before 
 the entry into Jerusalem, only the temptation in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 The English cycles, on the other hand, though they 
 differ in their respective selection of incidents, omit none 
 of the main divisions of sacred history. The N-Town 
 plays, like the Cornish, are characterised by a predilec- 
 tion for the legendary ; but they choose for peculiar 
 elaboration the apocryphal events of the new dispensa- 
 tion, the miraculous youth, motherhood, passion, and 
 glorification of the Blessed Virgin. The Chester cycle, 
 like the N-Town, condenses the Old Testament history 
 into one-fifth of the whole ; like the Cornish, it omits the 
 procession of the prophets, but it substitutes the proph- 
 ecy of Balaam ; and it retains more of his story and 
 of the life of Adam, and of the signs of Judgment and 
 the legend of Antichrist, than either the N-Town or 
 its congeners of Wakefield and York. These two, York 
 and Wakefield, follow the scriptural narrative more 
 closely, and with more discriminating selection than the 
 rest: the former treating particularly of the ministry of 
 Christ and adding the marvels after Pentecost ; the latter 
 supplying with realistic detail, original and sometimes 
 grewsome characterisation, and superabundant humour, 
 what it discards of the material of tradition.
 
 144 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
 ENGLISH CYCLES 
 
 THE EARLY INFUSION OF THE COMIC 
 
 WHEN, after the reinstitution of the festival of Corpus 
 Christi in 1311, the miracle plays began in England to 
 be a function of the guilds, their secularisation, even 
 though the clerks still participated in the acting, was but 
 a question of time ; and the injection of crude comedy 
 was a natural response to the civic demand. Indeed, if 
 we consider comedy in its higher meaning as the play 
 of the individual achieving his ends, not by revolt, but 
 by adjustment to circumstance and convention, the 
 miracle play, as I have elsewhere said, 1 was in its essence 
 a preparation for comedy rather than tragedy. For 
 the theme of these dramas is, in a word, Christian : the 
 career of the individual as an integral part of the social 
 organism, of the religious whole. So, also, their aim: 
 the welfare of the social individual. They do not exist 
 for the purpose of portraying immoderate self-assertion 
 and the vengeance that rides after, but the beauty of 
 holiness or the comfort of contrition. Herod, Judas, 
 and Antichrist are foils, not heroes. The hero of the 
 miracle seals his salvation by accepting the spiritual ideal 
 of the community. These plays, accordingly, contribute 
 in a positive manner to the maintenance of the social or- 
 
 1 Representative English Comedies, p. xxi.
 
 DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT 145 
 
 ganism. The tragedies of life and literature, on the other 
 hand, proceed from secular histories, histories of person- 
 ages liable to disaster because of excessive peculiarity, 
 of person or position. Tragedy is the drama of Cain, of 
 the individual in opposition to the social, political, di- 
 vine ; its occasion is an upheaval of the social organism. 
 The dramatic tone of the miracle cycle is, therefore, 
 determined by the conservative character of Christianity 
 in general ; the nature of the several plays is, however, 
 modified by the relation of each to one or other of the 
 supreme crises in the biblical history of God's ways toward 
 man. The Massacre of the Innocents emphasises not 
 the weeping of a Rachel, but the joyous escape of the 
 Virgin and the Child. In all such stories the horrible 
 is kept in the background or used by way of suspense 
 before the happy outcome, or frequently as material for 
 mirth. The murder of Abel gradually passes into a 
 comedy of the grotesque. Upon the sweet and joyous 
 character of the pageants of Joseph and Mary and the 
 Child we shall in due course dwell. They are of the 
 very essence of comedy. Indeed, it must be said that 
 in the old cycles the plays surrounding even the Cruci- 
 fixion are not tragedy; they are specimens of the serious 
 drama, of tragedy averted. The drama of the cross is a 
 triumph. In no cycle does the consummatum est close 
 the pageant of the Crucifixion ; the actors announce, and 
 the spectators believe, that this is " Goddis Sone," whom 
 within three days they shall again behold, though he has 
 been " nayled on a tree unworthilye to die." 
 
 But though the dramatic edifice constructed by our 
 mediaeval forbears is generally comedy, it is also divine. 
 And not for a moment did these builders lose their 
 reverence for the House Spiritual that was sacred, nor 
 
 10
 
 146 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 once forget that the stones which they ignorantly and 
 often mirthfully swung into strange juxtaposition were 
 themselves hewn by Other Hands. The comic scenes 
 of the English Miracle should, therefore, be regarded 
 not as interruptions to the sacred drama, nor as inde- 
 pendent episodes, but as counterpoint or dramatic relief. 
 Regarding the plays as units, we may discover in one, 
 like the beautiful Brome play of Abraham and Isaac, or 
 its allied pageants of Chester, York, and Wakefield, a 
 preponderance of the pathetic ; in another, like the York 
 or the Wakefield Scourging of Christy a preponderance of 
 the horrible; in the Joseph and Mary plays of the 
 Ludus Coventrize a preponderance of the romantic, and 
 so on. But when we regard them as interdependent 
 scenes of the cycles to which they might, or do, belong, 
 the varied emotional colours blend : indigo, gamboge, 
 vermilion producing an effect, gorgeous sometimes dis- 
 quieting, but always definite. Not only definite, but ho- 
 mogeneous and reposeful, when, in moments of historic 
 vision, the tints grow misty, subliminal, and all is moss- 
 green, lavender, or grey, as when with self-obliteration 
 one contemplates the stained glass window of a mediaeval 
 church, King's College Chapel, St. Mark's of Venice, or 
 Notre Dame. 
 
 The best comedies of the cycles the York and 
 Wakefield pageants of the Flood, the N-Town Trial of 
 Joseph and Mary pass from jest to earnest as imper- 
 ceptibly as autumn through an Indian summer. In the 
 Second Shepherds' Play, one cannot but remark the 
 propriety of the charm, as well as the dramatic effect, 
 with which the foreground of the sheep-stealing fades into 
 the radiant picture of the Nativity. The pastoral at- 
 mosphere is already shot with a prophetic gleam ; the
 
 DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT 147 
 
 fulfilment is, therefore, no shock or contrast, but a trans- 
 figuration an epiphany. It is, moreover, to be remem- 
 bered that such characters and episodes as are comically 
 treated are of secular derivation, or, if scriptural, of no 
 sacred significance. Thus the comic and the realistic in 
 the poet were set free ; and it is just when he is embroid- 
 ering the material of mystery with the stammel-red or 
 russet of his homespun that he is of most interest to us. 
 When the plays have passed into the hands of the guilds, 
 the playwright puts himself most readily into sympathy 
 with the literary consciousness as well as the untutored 
 aesthetic taste of the public if he colours the spectacle, old 
 or new, with what is pre-eminently popular and distinc- 
 tively national. In the minster and out of it, all through 
 the Christian year, the townsfolk of York or Chester had 
 as much of ritual, scriptural narrative, and tragic mystery 
 as they desired, and probably more. When the pageants 
 were acted, they listened with simple credulity, no doubt, 
 to the sacred history, and with a reverence that our age 
 of illumination can neither emulate nor understand ; but 
 we may be sure that they awaited with keenest expecta- 
 tion those invented episodes where tradition conformed 
 itself to familiar life the impromptu sallies, the cloth- 
 yard shafts of civic and domestic satire sped by well- 
 known wags of town or guild. Of the appropriateness 
 of these insertions the spectators made no question, and 
 the dramatists themselves do not seem to have thought 
 it necessary to apologise for their aesthetic creed or 
 practice. 
 
 It is as a propaedeutic to comedy, then, rather than tra- 
 gedy that I prefer to treat the miracle plays. And I find it 
 easier to trace some order of dramatic development by 
 approaching them from this point of view.
 
 148 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 I have elsewhere attempted to show * that the later 
 dramatists did not invent their art ; they worked with 
 what they found, and they found a dramatic medium of 
 expression to which centuries and countless influences 
 had contributed. An extended study of the history 
 of English drama should therefore determine, so far as 
 possible, the relative priority, not only of cycles, but of 
 dramatic stages within the cycles ; what each has con- 
 tributed to the enfranchisement of the artistic spirit and 
 the development of the technical factors of the art, to 
 what extent each has expressed or modified the realistic, 
 satirical, pathetic, romantic, or humorous view of life, and 
 in what ways each has reflected the temper of its time, 
 the manners and the mind of the people that wrote, acted, 
 and witnessed these early dramas. If I arrange the plays 
 that bear upon the development of popular drama accord- 
 ing to my conclusions regarding priority of composition, the 
 order, broadly stated for our present rapid survey, would 
 seem to be : First, the Cornish and the Old Testament 
 portions of the Chester and N-Town, then the productions 
 of the second and third periods of the York, and closely 
 following these the crowning efforts of the Wakefield or 
 Towneley, then the New Testament plays of the Chester 
 and N-Town, and finally the surviving portions of the 
 collections of Digby and Newcastle. This order, which 
 is roughly historical, has the advantage, as I perceive after 
 testing it, of presenting a not unnatural sequence of the 
 aesthetic values or interests essential to a kind of drama 
 which is rather comic than tragic : first the humour of 
 the incidental, then of the essential or real, and gradually 
 of the satirical ; afterwards the accession of the romantic, 
 pathetic, and sublime ; the wonderful, the allegorical, and 
 1 Representative English Comedies, p. xxiv.
 
 DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT 149 
 
 the mock-ideal ; and finally of the scenic and sensational. 
 Of course beneath this woof of cumulative art and colour 
 there is the warp of the original intention : the mystery, 
 the sacrifice, the lesson. The presence of the serious and 
 supernal goes without saying; but it is in the incre- 
 ment of other qualities that the transmutation of the 
 spectacle from liturgy to popular drama is most readily 
 to be observed. 
 
 Of the Old Testament, that is, the earlier Chester and 
 N-town plays, the most useful for our present purpose 
 are The Death of Abel and Noah's Flood. With them 
 may be considered the Cornish version. The Cornish 
 miracles present us with dramatic situations in the litur- 
 gical-epical germ, and characters in the undifferentiated 
 "rough." The Cain, for instance, is but boor and 
 niggard ; his possibilities for comedy are undeveloped, 
 but it is impossible that they should long be repressed. 
 The devils, indeed, who come forward like a chorus at 
 the end of each important scene, were probably pressed 
 into the service of merriment ; but the dramatic motive 
 for which they exist is serious, and the part assigned to 
 them is more consistent than in any of the other cycles. 
 The Chester play of Cain, a conglomerate running from 
 the Creation to the death of Abel, is not only one 
 of the crudest of the cycle ( much more so, for instance, 
 than the sacrifice of Isaac based upon the Brome Play), but 
 one of the most naive on the subject. The character of 
 the potential fratricide, with his canny offering of the ear- 
 less corn that grew next the way, and his defiant " God, 
 thou gotteste noe better of me, Be thou never so gryme," 
 is manifestly nearer the primitive conception than the 
 Cayme of York or Wakefield. He is not yet wit, wag,
 
 i 5 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 and dare-devil. The episode in the Chester is didactic, 
 but still realistic ; less imaginative than in the York or 
 Wakefield, but creative. Evidently more modern than 
 the Chester play, which it somewhat resembles, is the 
 Cain and Abel of the Ludus Coventrize or N-Town. The 
 villain is well-conceived, and elaborated with pith and 
 humour. He discusses the Almighty with a worldly 
 wisdom that remotely approaches that of the Wakefield, 
 and he expresses his opinion of Abel 
 
 Among all fools that go on ground 
 
 I hold that thou be one of the most : 
 To tithe [give away in tithes] the best that is most sound, 
 
 And keep the worst that is near lost 
 
 with somewhat the same vivid and natural use of the 
 vernacular. The action between the brothers is more 
 elaborate than in Chester, but the dramatic quality de- 
 pends rather upon dialogue than development of the 
 situation. Its versification is certainly not that of the 
 earliest stage of the cycle to which it belongs, and its 
 lyrical quality might even indicate a later period of com- 
 position than the corresponding plays in the York and 
 Wakefield ; but it is not derived from either of them. 
 
 The development of a situation from the serious to the 
 humorous is admirably illustrated by still another play of 
 this earlier group. In the dramatisation of the Flood, the 
 Cornish cycle presents the serious aspect of the naive con- 
 ception. Noah and his wife are on affectionate terms ; she 
 is obedient and helpful. It has not occurred to the writer to 
 introduce an extraneous interest, as, for instance, that of 
 conjugal strife. The play is interesting, however, because 
 it displays some slight ability to discriminate characters. 
 Likewise unconscious of comic possibilities is the N-Town 
 play of the Flood. Though probably of later composi-
 
 DRAMATIC DEVELOPMENT 151 
 
 tion than the corresponding plays in other cycles, it is, in 
 its greater part, one of the earlier, though not of the 
 earliest plays of its own cycle. The characters (the sons' 
 wives now begin to play a part), pious, prosaic, and un- 
 interesting, are perfunctorily portrayed, but the con- 
 struction of the play is ingenious, especially in its 
 manipulation of the episode of Lamech, not as an extra- 
 neous action, but as a factor in the organic development 
 of the motive; a hint of a sub-plot. In the Chester 
 play, on the other hand, the characters are distinct and 
 consistently developed. The comic episodes are natural 
 and justifiable, for they serve to display, not to distort, 
 character, and they grow out of the dramatic action. 
 They are, moreover, varied, and, to some extent, cumu- 
 lative. This play is indeed a vast dramatic advance 
 upon the N-Town. It is approximately on the same 
 plane of dramatic development as the York play of The 
 Flood) and should be considered with reference to it, 
 although in spite of one or two unique resemblances in 
 language and conception, 1 neither pageant can be re- 
 garded as dependent upon the other. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the York play on the building 
 of the Ark, one of the earliest of that cycle, is serious. 
 The play on the Flood, however, which is in a somewhat 
 later stanza, indulges in an altercation between Noah and 
 his wife. The humour of this in turn is surpassed by 
 that of the Chester, so also the technique. While in the 
 York the amusing episode is sudden and of one sequence, 
 in the Chester the clouds upon the domestic horizon 
 gather with artistic reluctance, and, when they burst, re- 
 fresh the soil in more than one spot. Noah is not yet 
 
 1 Y. VIII, 41 ; Ch. Ill, 41. Uxor wishes to rescue her " commo- 
 drys," etc. ; appearance of the rainbow.
 
 1 52 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the henpecked husband of later comedy, though pro- 
 phetic thereof. Peaceably inclined, but capable of a 
 temper, he serves God and apostrophises the perversity 
 of women. The possibilities of his wife's character are 
 cunningly unfolded. At first apparently amenable to 
 reason, her progress toward " curstness " is a study in the 
 development of character. Few situations in our early 
 drama are better conceived than her refusal at the critical 
 moment to enter the Ark unless her gossips are also 
 taken aboard. Cam's " Shall we all feche her in ? " the 
 drinking song, a rollicking song, too, with the lilt, 
 " Back and side, go bare, go bare," - Noah's collapse of 
 temper and the alapam auri y all these are good fooling, 
 and must have left our ancestors thirsty for more. The 
 " business " is of course enhanced by the multiplication 
 of participants, by the solicitude of the children, and the 
 apathy of the gossips. The song, I am afraid, is a later 
 addition ; but even without that the appropriateness of 
 diction to the naive ( not vague or poetic ) statement of 
 details marks an essential advance in realism.
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS 153 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS OF HUMOUR AND 
 REALISM 
 
 THE York cycle affords very few situations ministering 
 to the humour of the incidental. Such as are of that 
 character must be assigned to more than one period of 
 composition ; none, however, is to be found in the plays 
 which, according to philological tests, belong to the 
 formative stage of the cycle. 1 This is but usual, for 
 while the pageants were illustrating only the more impor- 
 tant events of the church calendar, and were still reminis- 
 cent of their ecclesiastical origin, opportunity for ludicrous 
 situations was limited : we find a touch of nature here 
 and there perhaps ; but not more. 
 
 All approaches to the comic in the plays of York 
 the abusive behaviour of Cain, the quarrel between Noah 
 and his wife, the attempt of the shepherds to mimic the 
 angelic choir, the beadle's intrusion upon the loves of 
 Pilate and Percula, the effort of Herod and his sons " to 
 have gaudis full goode and games or we go " with the 
 prisoner brought to trial, and the failure of their bluster, 
 threats, and shouting, to "gete one worde" out of him 
 
 1 Probably II, X, XI, XX, XXIII, XXIV, XXVII, XXXV, 
 XXXVII, and those parts of XII, XV, and XVII which also show 
 connections with the typical northern septenar stanza. (Davidson, Engl. 
 Myst. Plays, p. 144, would also add IX, second part of Noah. I do 
 not agree.)
 
 i 5 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 may be safely attributed to schools, or periods, of 
 composition which we shall style the middle and the 
 later. A comparative study of the versification, phrase- 
 ology, and occasion of these passages leads me, moreover, 
 to the conclusion that the original comic parts of the 
 Sacrificium of Cayme and Abell, of the Noe and His Wife, 
 and of the Shepherds, are of a humorous master of what 
 we may call the middle period. 2 
 
 The Beadle and Herod episodes are of the later 
 school and are realistic. They occur in the Dream of 
 Pilate's Wife and the Trial before Herod plays which 
 themselves form the core of a group of six that in 
 literary style, conversational method, dramatic action 
 and technique, might very well be the work of one 
 individual. These six are XXVI, The Conspiracy to 
 Take Jesus; XXVIII, The Agony and Betrayal; XXIX, 
 Peters Denial; Jesus before Caiaphas ; XXX, Pilate's 
 Wife, etc; XXXI, Herod; XXXIII, Second Trial before 
 Pilate Continued, and probably XXXII, Purchase of the 
 Field of Blood. The subjects are such as might reason- 
 ably have been used for an expansion of the cycle to 
 accommodate the increasing number of guilds in York, 
 at a time after the more important and obvious religious 
 events had been dramatised. The materials are practi- 
 cally the same for these six plays, and are subjected in 
 each case to the same free handling. 3 The somewhat 
 
 1 The Brewbarret passage as it stands is later, but it probably represents 
 the earlier Garcio who was the origin of the Wakefield Pikeharness. 
 
 * To this period I would in general assign also the serious and ro- 
 mantic plays of a scriptural character not included in the lists here indi- 
 cated as of the first and third periods ; for instance, the series of Joseph 
 tnd Mary plays. 
 
 * While there arc good metrical reasons for doubting whether the plays 
 dealing with the Magi and the Innocents are by the same hand, there are
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS 155 
 
 alliterative, experimental tendency of versification marks 
 them all. Not only are the experimental or transitional 
 stanzaic forms of this group of plays, the excessive allit- 
 eration, the substitution of anapaestic ease and rapidity 
 for the regular beat and stiffer movement, indications 
 of a later date, but the style itself is that of a different 
 author, or school, retaining the facile idiom of the earlier 
 days, but substituting for the old-fashioned humour an 
 attempt at realistic portrayal of life, and for the home- 
 spun wit a bombast and abuse which, though idiomatic? 
 are sometimes wearisome. The bombast is chiefly from 
 the mouths of Pilate and Herod. The realism and other 
 such advance in dramatic technique leap to the eye in 
 the conduct of Caiaphas and Annas, their cunning, their 
 virulence, their knowledge of the shady side of contract 
 law ; in the careful portraiture of Judas, who " wolde 
 make a merchaundyse with the high priests their mys- 
 cheffe to marre " ; of his shifts for gain, his remorse 
 when the triumph gutters ; in the grim humour of the 
 Janitor (the precursor of Shakespeare's Porter of hell- 
 gate), his reply to the arch-conspirator applying for 
 admission, "Thy glyfftyng 1 is so grimly thou gars my 
 harte growe," 2 . . . "thou lokist like a lurdane his 
 liffelod hadde lost," and his description of him to the 
 " Dukes " : 
 
 A hyne helte-full 3 of ire, for hasty he is ... 
 I kenne hym noght, but he is cladde in a cope 
 He cares 4 with a kene face uncomely to kys; 
 
 indications throughout of the influence of the realistic master or school. 
 See Kamann, Die Quellen d. York Plays, Anglia X, 210, . /. to. and 
 Herttrich, Studien zu d. Tork Plays, Breslau, 1886. 
 
 1 glance. 2 fear. 
 
 8 hind full to the hilt. 4 wends.
 
 156 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 in the common sense of the beadle in the Dream who, 
 knowing literally the laws, would send the lady home, 
 ere " the day waxe ought dymme," 
 
 For scho may stakir 1 in the strete, 
 But scho stalworthely stande ; 
 Late hir take hir leve while that light is; 
 
 in the curtain side of Pilate and his lady ; in the dis- 
 criminate drawing of women from Percula and her maid 
 down to the Mulier who detects Peter and taunts him 
 with falsehood : 
 
 Itt were grete skorne that he schulde skape, . . . 
 Wayte nowe, he lokis like a brokke, 2 
 Were he in a bande for to bayte ; 
 Or ellis like a nowele in a stok, 3 
 Full prevaly his pray for to wayte, 
 
 and Peter's plea that her accusation be rejected, 
 For women are crabbed, that comes them of kynde ; 
 
 in the vivid brutality of the soldiers, the minute and 
 horrible detail of their conversation, the quick retort 
 and apt, the picturesque phrase, the elaborate dramatic 
 dialogue, sometimes long-winded, to be sure ; in the un- 
 conscious but skilful distinction between characters some- 
 what similar, Caiaphas, Annas, Pilate, Herod, and the 
 control of supernumeraries ; in the interplay of the pa- 
 thetic, the wonderful, and the fearful ; in the accumulation 
 of scenes within the act, and the frequent use of dramatic 
 surprise. These and other features of the kind charac- 
 terise the York school of realism. So peculiar and at 
 the same time uniform is the technique that its inter- 
 polation may be detected in plays not characterised by 
 
 1 she may stagger. 2 badger. ' an owl on a stump.
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS 157 
 
 the transitional and elaborate verse structure of the 
 group, but written in an earlier ecclesiastical stanza ; and 
 even at times in plays marked by the typical twelve-line 
 septenar stanza of the parent cycle. Wherever the York 
 realist has inserted, elaborated, revised, or recast, 1 he has 
 left his unquestionable mark, though side by side with 
 passages just as undoubtedly of earlier date. 
 
 But if these six or seven Pilate and Herod plays are 
 to be attributed to one author, then that author is more 
 or less responsible also for three other plays, XXXVI 
 XXXVIII, the MortificaciOy the Harrowing, and the 
 Resurrection. For in two of the former group, Pilate 's 
 Wife and the Second Trial, he has quoted from memory 
 and adapted to the stanzaic form portions of a northern 
 middle English Gospel of Nicodemus. Other passages 
 from this metrical Gospel are in like fashion incorporated 
 in the Mortificacio, Harrowing, and Resurrection. No 
 other plays in this or other cycles utilise the metrical 
 version of the Nicodemus ; and the adaptations here are 
 of such a kind as to preclude the possibility of their 
 insertion by ordinary copyists from the original text. 
 The Mortificacio (XXXVI) with its elaborate and unique 
 stanza is an original production substituted by our play- 
 wright for some older play. The Harrowing and the 
 Resurrection (XXXVII, XXXVIII) are survivals, in 
 earlier stanzaic form, which he has remodelled. If we 
 assume, and not without reason, that he also retouched 
 the Christ Led up to Calvary (XXXIV) and the Cruci- 
 fixion (XXXV), we may regard him as the Passion 
 Playwright of York. For only one play of the series 
 beginning with the Conspiracy (XXVI) and ending with 
 
 1 For instance, certain overalliterated and accented Herodiacs and 
 other regalities in XI, XVI, XVII.
 
 158 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the Resurrection (XXXVIII) evidently lacks his influ- 
 ence ; and that is the Last Supper (XXVII), one 
 of the pageants of the original didactic stage of the 
 cycle. 
 
 The longer one studies these York plays, the more is 
 one persuaded that not only were there three York periods 
 or schools, but that there was at least one playwright in 
 each of the latter two who distinctly contributed to the 
 development of English drama. A playwright of the 
 middle period, to which belong Caym, Noe and His Wife, 
 and The Angels and Shepherds, is characterised by an un- 
 sophisticated humour ; the distinctive playwright of the 
 later or realistic period is marked by his observation of 
 life, his reproduction of manners, his dialogue, and the 
 plasticity of his technique : whether in presentation of 
 the comic, or of the tragic and horrible, aspect of his 
 narrative. 
 
 That the later school or period was influenced by the 
 manner of its predecessor is further indicated by the 
 fact that of its two most efficient stanzaic forms, one, 
 namely, that used in the Conspiracy, is anticipated 
 (though in simpler iambic beat) by that of Noe y the 
 typical play of the middle period, the school of humours, 
 while the other, the stanzaic form, of which variants are 
 found in The Mortificacio and The Second Trial, has its 
 germ probably in The Cayme of that same middle period. 
 
 The rhyme-scheme of the Noe isabababab 4 
 c 8 d 8 c 4 c 4 c 4 d s in iambs varied with anapaests, thus: 
 
 Filius. Fadir, I have done nowe as ye comaunde, 
 
 My modir comes to you this daye. 
 Noe. Scho is welcome, I wele warrande, 
 
 This worlde sail sone be waste awaye. 
 Uxor. Where art thou, Noye.
 
 THE YORK SCHOOLS 159 
 
 Noe. Loo ! here at hande, 
 
 Come hedir faste, dame, I thee praye. 
 Uxor. Trowes thou that I wol leve the harde lande 
 And tourne up here on toure deraye ? 1 
 Nay, Noye, I am nought bowne 
 
 To fonde nowe over there ffelis, 2 
 Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne. 
 Noe. Nay, certis, sothly than mon ye drowne. 
 Uxor. In faythe, thou were als goode come downe, 
 And go do som what ellis. 
 
 The rhyme-scheme of the Conspiracy of the Realistic 
 school is the same ; but the octave is in septenars, and the 
 triplet c c c is in trimeters. 
 
 The rhyme-scheme of the other perfected stanza of the 
 realistic York school, as seen in the Mortificacio, a b a b 
 bcbc 3 d 1 eee 2 d 3 , is merely an expansion of that of 
 the Caym of the earlier school, which runs thus, in iambics, 
 a b abbc'd'bccM 2 : 
 
 Caym. We! Whythir now in wilde waneand 3 
 
 Trowes thou I thynke to trusse of towne ? 
 Goo, jape thee, robard jangillande, 4 
 
 Me liste nought nowe to rouk nor rowne. 5 
 Abell. A ! dere brothir, late us be bowne 
 Goddis biddyng blithe to fulfille, 
 I tell thee. 
 
 Caym. Ya, daunce in the devil way, dresse thee downe, 
 For I wille wyrke even as I will. 
 What mystris thee, 6 in gode or ille, 
 
 Of me to melle thee. 
 
 1 confusion. 
 
 2 I 'm not ready just now to voyage over the fells. 
 8 Oh, whither now, with a wanion (curse). 
 
 4 Go, mock thyself, jangling thief. 
 6 I have no mind to bow or whisper. 
 6 Why needst thou.
 
 160 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The Mortificacio makes a quatrain out of the first b c, 
 rhymes the triplet, and slides into anapaests ; and so doing 
 prepares not only the best stanzaic instrument of the 
 York realistic school, but at the same time the prototype 
 of the brightest, wittiest, and most effective verse-form 
 of the finest plays of the neighbouring town of Wakefield. 
 With these two stanzaic forms the realistic school, so 
 far as we may conclude from the mutilated condition of 
 surviving plays, seems to experiment ; and the second of 
 them, that of the Mortificacio y may be regarded as the 
 final and distinctive outcome of York versification. To 
 the leading playwrights of each of these schools, the 
 former the best humourist, the latter the best realist of 
 the York drama, to these anonymous composers of the 
 most facile and vivid portions of the York cycle, our 
 comedy owes a still further debt ; for from them it would 
 appear that a poet of undoubted genius derived some- 
 thing of his inspiration and much of his method and 
 technique, our first great comic dramatist, the anony- 
 mous Player-Clerk of Wakefield.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 161 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 
 His RELATION TO THE SCHOOLS OF YORK 
 
 IN order to show the more plainly the indebtedness of 
 our first great comic dramatist to the leading dramatists 
 of the York cycle, I must for a few paragraphs enlarge 
 upon the treatment already accorded to this subject in 
 my edition of Representative English Comedies. 
 
 We know that Wakefield actors sometimes played in 
 the Corpus Christi plays of York, and it was only natural 
 that the smaller town should borrow from the dramatic 
 riches of its metropolitan neighbour. We are therefore 
 not surprised to find in the Wakefield cycle a number of 
 plays which are in large part literally taken from the York 
 cycle, the Pharao from York XI, the Pagina Doctorum 
 from Y. XX, the Extractio A nimarum from Y. XXXVII, 
 the Resurrectio Domini from Y. XXXVIII, the Judicium 
 from Y. XLVIII. None of these borrowings or of their 
 originals is in either of the perfected stanzaic forms of the 
 later York schools humorous and realistic of which 
 mention was made in the preceding chapter, but in 
 altogether simpler and cruder measures. In the Wake- 
 field Ascension^ and the Wakefield Conspiracy, however, 
 which in other respects betray their derivation from 
 earlier metres and discarded portions of the York cycle, 
 there are embedded occasional variations of the later 
 
 ii
 
 162 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 York strophes evidently in transition toward their final 
 adaptation by the master-dramatist of Wakefield. In 
 stanza 57 of the Wakefield Ascension^ for instance, we 
 find a variant of one of the best stanzas of York that 
 of the Morttficacio abab b c b c 8 d 1 e 2 e 2 e 2 d 
 side by side with a tentative form of the final Wakefield 
 stanza, and very much like it ; and in the Wakefield 
 Conspiracy ', 97-10x3, we find similar variants of the other 
 favourite stanza of the York realistic school, the abab 
 ababcdcccdof the York Conspiracy , with its octave 
 in septenars, and sestet in trimeter. In the Wakefield 
 Fflagellacio, moreover, the four opening stanzas of a 
 transitional York strophe abababab*c 1 ddd 2 
 c 2 , are immediately followed by twenty-four in the 
 Wakefield master's improvement upon that form. Else- 
 where there occurs a similar juxtaposition. It is there- 
 fore beyond doubt that the composer of the perfected 
 York-Wakefield stanza, such as appears in a remarkable 
 group of the Wakefield plays, must have been influenced 
 consciously or indirectly by the later York school of 
 dramatic composition and by the humorous school of the 
 middle York period, from which the later school derived 
 much of its artistic technique. About one-quarter of 
 the Wakefield cycle, a quarter which for other reasons, 
 linguistic, stylistic, dramatic, and social, one is tempted to 
 ascribe to a single author, is couched in a stanzaic form 
 of which the following is an example : 
 
 I thank it, God, 
 Hark ye what I mene 
 
 Ffor even or for od 
 I have mekyll tene j 1 
 
 1 sorrow.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 163 
 
 As hevy as a sod 
 
 I grete with myn een 
 When I nap on my cod, 1 
 For care that has bene, 
 
 And sorow. 
 All my shepe ar gone, 
 I am not left oone, 
 The rott has them slone ; 
 Now beg I and borow. 
 
 This thirteen-line stanza, rhyming abababab 2 c 1 
 d d d 2 c 2 , is the evident outgrowth, by combination and 
 modification, of the York Mortificacio and Conspiracy 
 stanzas, of which I have just spoken. Sometimes, in- 
 deed, a three-accented line occurs among the first eight, 
 showing the more plainly the derivation from the Mor- 
 tificacio. This resemblance is, however, ordinarily ob- 
 scured by the fact that the Wakefield stanza has been 
 preserved in manuscript and print in a nine-line mould 
 the first four lines of which represent the first eight 
 of the thirteen-line stanza, thus : 
 
 I thank it, God | hark ye what I mene, 
 Ffor even or for od | I have mekyll tene ; 
 As hevy as a sod | I grete with myn eene 
 When I nap on my cod, | for care that has bene. 
 
 This nine-line stanza, with its involved rhymes in the 
 first quatrain, is in all probability the Wakefield develop- 
 ment of the thirteen- and fourteen-line stanzas of the 
 York Mortificacio and Conspiracy. Whether the rapid 
 beat and frequently recurring rhyme are a conscious 
 elaboration of the York or a happy find or accident, the 
 stanzaic result is an accurate index of the superiority in 
 spirit and style achieved over their congeners of York by 
 these comedies of Wakefield. 
 
 ' * pillow.
 
 164 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The Wakefield cycle had completed what Mr. Pollard 
 fitly calls an older didactic period, of which the product 
 is couched in couplets (a a 4 ) or in various forms of the 
 six-line stanza aa 4 b 8 cc*b 3 , beloved by early metrical 
 romance and used predominatingly in the Chester plays ; 
 it had indeed made most of its borrowings from York 
 (in the abababab 4 cdcd 3 and similar simple 
 metres) when the humorist or humorists of the nine- 
 line stanza took it in hand. In the Creation, the Isaac, 
 the Jacob) the Processus Prophetarum, the C<esar Augustus, 
 the Annunciation, the Salutation, the Purification, and the 
 St. Thomas all of the older period no nine-line stanza 
 occurs. But at the close of the Mactacio Abel, which in 
 other metrical respects is of the didactic cycle, we find 
 two of the nine-line stanzas in their thirteen-line forma- 
 tion and entirely in the realistic Wakefield vein. In 
 one of the five plays derived from the York cycle, 
 namely, the Judicium, stanzas 16 to 48, and 68 to 76 in 
 the nine-line Wakefield stanza, have been inserted. Of 
 the two plays which show a general resemblance to a 
 corresponding York, one, the Herod, is in this stanza, 
 and to the other, the Conspiracy, a dozen of the stanzas 
 are prefixed. The Fflagellacio (XXII), the second half 
 of which is an imitation, sometimes loose, sometimes 
 literal, of York XXXIV (Christ Led Up to Cahary), 
 opens with twenty-three of these stanzas nearly the 
 whole of the original part. One of them, No. 25, is, 
 by the way, based upon stanza 2 of that part of York 
 XXXIV which is not taken over by the Wakefield play. 
 In the Wakefield Ascension, which adapts, but in no 
 slavish manner, a few passages from the York XLIII, 
 we find two of this playwright's nine-line stanzas ; * and 
 1 Stanza 57 might just as well be arranged like stanza 58.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 165 
 
 in the Wakefield Crucifixion, which has some slight 
 reminiscence of York XXXV and XXXVI, we find one. 
 In that part of the Wakefield less directly, or not at all, 
 connected with the York cycle, four whole plays, the 
 Processus Noe, the two Shepherds' Plays, and the Buf- 
 feting, and occasional portions of other plays 1 are written 
 in this stanza. 
 
 This contribution in the nine-line stanza amounts, as 
 has been said, to approximately one-fourth of the cycle ; 
 and allowing for modifications due to oral and scribal 
 transmission, it is of one language and phraseology. 
 Not merely the identity of stanza and diction, however, 
 leads one to suspect an identity of authorship ; it is the 
 prevalence in all these passages, but not in others, of 
 spiritual characteristics in approximately the same com- 
 bination realistic and humorous qualities singularly 
 suitable to the development of a vigorous national 
 comedy. " If any one," says Mr. Pollard, " will read 
 these plays together, I think he cannot fail to feel that 
 they are all the work of the same writer, and that this 
 writer deserves to be ranked if only we knew his 
 name! at least as high as Langland, and as an expo- 
 nent of a rather boisterous kind of humour, had no equal 
 in his own day." And, speaking of the Mactacio Abel, 
 where we lack the evidence of identity of metre, Mr. 
 Pollard adds, "The extraordinary youthfulness of the 
 play and the character of its humour make it difficult to 
 dissociate it from the work of the author of the Shep- 
 herds 1 Plays, and I cannot doubt that this, also, at least 
 in part, must be added to his credit." 2 I had come to a 
 
 1 XXIV, 1-5, 56-59 ; XXVII, 4. Passages in a closely similar 
 stanza are XXII, 1-4 ; XXIII, ^ ; XXVII, 30. On the order of the 
 Wakefield Plays, see also Bunzen, Kritik d. Wakefield Mysterien, p. 19. 
 
 3 The Totvneley Plays, Introd., p. xxii.
 
 166 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 similar conclusion before reading Mr. Pollard's opinion, 
 and I may say that I detect the Wakefield master in the 
 Processus Talentorum as well ; for though the stanzaic 
 form of that pageant is not his favourite, the humour, 
 the dramatic technique, and the phraseology are closely 
 reminiscent of him. In this revising and editing process, 
 the Wakefield master was brought into touch with the 
 York schools of comic and realistic composition. What 
 he derived from those schools and what he added, may 
 be gathered from a comparative view of the related 
 portions of these cycles. Let us consider a typical 
 instance or two of each kind in both York and Wake- 
 field. 
 
 His RELATION TO THE SCHOOL OF HUMOUR 
 
 Of the York school of humour the plays dealing with 
 the Flood are an admirable example. One, The Building 
 of the Ark) is serious and of early composition. We may 
 dismiss it from the present consideration. The other, 
 Noe and His Wife, is of the middle period ; but it is of 
 the earliest stage of comic production in the cycle. The 
 action lacks the variety of its Wakefield correspondent, 
 and, as we have already seen, of the Chester ; but the 
 characterisation is discriminating and distinct In the 
 first scene Noe contemplates his preparation for the flood, 
 and sends his sons for their mother. He appears to be 
 pious and long-suffering, but his wife is a shrew from 
 the beginning. In the second scene, when bidden to 
 the ark, she " wol come no narre." But her curiosity 
 gets the better of her; she cannot sit still till she has 
 discovered what Noe means. In the third scene, before 
 the ark, "business" waxes furious; and the strife of 
 tongues keeps pace, brisk, witty, and natural. Here we
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 167 
 
 discover the first artistically constructed woman in Eng- 
 lish comedy. She won't enter the ark for a variety 
 of reasons, in ordering which the dramatist has displayed 
 no slight knowledge of the probabilities. " Where art 
 thou, Noe?" (He bids her embark quickly.) "Why 
 should I leave the hard land? . . . I'm not fain for any 
 voyage of discovery, especially in that old ark. . . . 
 Come, children, let 's trusse to towne." " Drown ? sayst 
 thou ? Now, Noe, thou drivelest fast ; art well-nigh 
 mad ; I am aghast. Farewell, / will go home again." 
 (He seeks to detain her.) "Hello! Thou wert as 
 good let me go my gait." (Noe calls upon the sons to 
 help : they persuade her that the world will surely sink.) 
 " What 's that ? Alas, that I this news should hear ! 
 Well, then, I must hie me home and pack." (Noe's 
 temper breaks loose.) " Wha.t, not * trusse my tolis.' 
 Noe, thou mightst have let me wit what thou didst these 
 hundred years while thou letst me sit at home." (He 
 apologises, saying it was " Goddis wille.") " God's will? 
 Psha! Take that." (He "gets a clowte.") "God's 
 will again ? c Thou shulde have witte my will, If I 
 wolde assent there till, Now first I fynde and feele, Why 
 thou hast to the forest sought.' Well if I must escape 
 from scathe, I would c my commodrys and my cosynes 
 bathe ' went with us in company." That hope proving 
 vain, this admirable matron subsides and passes into the 
 ark. Her daughters comfort her, and Noe rules with a 
 chastened joy. In the fourth scene the conversation is 
 biblical and more general, the birds are sent forth, and 
 at last Noe beholds the " hills of Hermonye." Once 
 more Uxor breaks out in lament for her kin and com- 
 pany. " Dame, all are drowned," retorts Noe ; " let be 
 thy din."
 
 168 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Here we have, then, a comic episode with an attempt 
 at " business," the rudiments of characterisation, and a 
 commendable naturalness and ease of conversation. 
 
 Now, the Wakefield dramatist, whether we regard 
 the stanzaic form of his Noe as derived from or suggested 
 by the York play or not, certainly appears to have been 
 acquainted with the York treatment of the subject. The 
 plays agree in details which, at the same time, distinguish 
 them from those of other cycles. The Wakefield Pro- 
 cessus Noe belongs to the third or artistic stage of com- 
 position in its own cycle. It is in five scenes, and in 
 each of them it improves upon its congener of York. 
 The fable no longer constitutes a comic episode nor a 
 mere string of such episodes ; nor is it exactly a farce. 
 It may be described as a comic history. Coarse as the 
 quarrelling may be, and uproarious the fun, the play gives 
 evidence of shrewd observation ; it abounds with realistic 
 touches, confidential asides, contemporary nicknames, 
 assorted terms of abuse, and a rich, varied rustic philos- 
 ophy. The humour is of a piece with that of the earlier 
 York school; the realism, of a piece with the later; the 
 play as a whole is the work of a genius who knows not 
 only to hold the mirror up to nature, but to select the 
 nature which shall be mirrored. 
 
 Scene I. The Forest. Enter Noe y bewailing the evil 
 
 days : 
 He has served God "sex hundreth yeres and odd," 
 
 And now I wax old, 
 
 Seke, sory and cold, 
 
 As muk apon mold 
 
 I widder away. 
 
 Yet he will cry for himself and his fry that they be 
 brought to God's hall in heaven. God appears above,
 
 B 2, 
 
 3 g>
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 169 
 
 repenting that He ever made man, and proposing to 
 " fordo all this medill-erd with floods " ; but Noe and 
 his wife He will spare, for they would never strive with 
 Him, nor Him offend. He informs Noe of his purpose, 
 and commands the building of the ark. God, however, 
 appears to be less conversant with the character of Noe's 
 Uxor than her husband, or more tolerant ; for no sooner 
 has the Deity disappeared than Noe expresses a doubt 
 as to how this pattern of womankind will take the news : 
 
 Lord, homward will I hast as fast as that I may ; 
 My wife will I frast 1 what she will say. [Exit Deus. 
 And I am agast that we get som fray 
 
 Betwixt us both : 
 For she is full tetchee, 
 For litill oft angre, 
 If anything wrang be, 
 
 Soyne is she wroth. Tune perget ad uxorem. 
 
 Scene II. Noe's House. " God spede, dere wife, how 
 fare ye ? " " The best I can ; the worse now I see thee." 
 He says that he bears ill-tidings. She opines that he 
 were worthy to be clad in Stafford blue (like a flunkey), 
 for he is always adread of something : 
 
 For I dare be thi borrow, 2 
 From even unto morrow, 
 Thou spekis ever of sorrow; 
 God send thee onys thi fill. 
 
 Women may well curse all ill husbands, she adds and 
 one such, by Mary, has she; but she knows how to 
 bide her time to " qwyte hym his mede " : 
 
 1 try. 2 security.
 
 170 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Noe.. We ! hold thi tone, ram-sky t, or I shall thee still. 
 Uxor. By my thryft, it thou smyte I shall turne thee 
 
 untill. 
 Noe. We shall assay as tyte ! : have at thee, Gyll ! 
 
 Apon the bone shall it byte (He strikes her). 
 Uxor. Ah, so, mary ! thou smytis ill ! 
 
 Bot I suppose 
 I shall not in thi det, 
 Fflyt of this flett ! 2 
 Take thee ther a langett 
 
 To tye up thi hose ! (She strikes back.) 
 
 And so the quarrel goes : she promising three blows for 
 two, biting and shrieking withal, till Noe declares for a 
 truce for he has other work to do. She says no man 
 shall tarry him : as for her " to spyn will I dress me." 
 He begs her to pray for him busily. " Even as thou 
 prays for me ! " and exit Gyll. 
 
 Scene III. The Forest as before. Noe falls to work 
 upon the ark ; in the first stanza lays out the measure- 
 ments and bends his bones to the tree ; in the second, 
 takes off his gown and works in his coat at the mast and 
 wonders when his back will break ; in the third makes 
 top and sail, helm and castle, and drives the nails through 
 the boards ; in the fourth, builds window and door and 
 three chambers " as God had said," pitches them well, 
 thanks God that the labour is fulfilled, and hies him to 
 fetch his wife and meiny. 
 
 Scene IV. Noes House. " Why, syr, what ails you ? " 
 cries she. No one is hurting you, but if you feel afraid 
 you had better run away. " There is other yarn on the 
 reel, my dame," replies he, and proceeds to inform her 
 of the approaching flood. She is dazed, and dodders for 
 
 1 try it at once. 2 flee from this flat.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 171 
 
 fear of the tale, and with her sons prepares to "trus the 
 gear " ; but when it comes to getting it into the ark, 
 
 I was never barred ere, as ever myght I the l 
 
 In sich an oostre 2 as this. 
 In faith I can not fynd 
 Which is before, which is behynd, 
 Bot shall we here be pyned, 
 Noe, as have thou blis ? 
 
 Noe. Dame, as it is skill, here must us abide grace ; 
 
 Therefore, wife, with good will, come into this 
 
 place. 
 
 Uxor. Sir, for Jak nor for Gyll, will I turne my face 
 Till I have on this hill, spon a space 
 On my rok. 3 
 
 The heavens open ; it thunders and lightens ; down 
 come halls and bowers, castles and towers. 
 
 Therefor, wife, have done ! Come into ship fast. 
 Uxor. Yei, Noe, go cloute thi shoon ; the better will 
 they last. 
 
 The sons' wives take a hand, but in faith yet will she 
 spin ; all in vain do they carp. " If ye like," says one 
 more wily than the rest, probably Japhet's mulier, " If 
 ye like, ye may spin, mother, in the ship.'' And Noe 
 announces the second call for embarkation, "dame, on 
 my friendship." Whereupon, Gyll 
 
 Wheder I lose or wyn, in faith, thi felowship, 
 Set I not at a pyn, this spyndill will I slip 
 
 Apon this hill 
 Or I styr oone fote. 
 
 She changes her mind when the water " nighs so near 
 that she sits not dry," and hies her toward ship with a 
 
 1 thrive. 2 hostelry. 8 distaff.
 
 172 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 " byr." "In faith, and for your long tarrying," cries Noe, 
 "ye shall lick on the whip." She retorts, " Big words 
 don't hurt." He bids her cry him "Mercy!" She 
 wishes she were a widow, she would n't grudge a mass- 
 penny for his soul ; and she sees many a wife in the 
 audience that would hail like deliverance. Noe rejoins 
 with sprightly advice : 
 
 Ye men that has wifis, whyls they ar yong, 
 If ye luf youre lifis chastice thare tong: 
 Me thynk my hert ryfis both levyr and long 1 
 To see sich stryfis wedmen emong, 
 
 Bot I, 
 
 As have I blys, 
 Shall chastyse this. 
 Uxor. Yit mary ye mys, 
 Nicholl nedy ! 
 
 More picturesque repartee. He cudgels her and catches 
 a beating in turn. In fine, all passion spent, they enter 
 the ark. 
 
 Scene V. In the Ark The parents are upbraided by 
 the three sons. " We will do as ye bid us ; we will be 
 no more wroth, dear bairns," and Noe " hents to the 
 helm." Gyll takes interest in the spectacle of the heav- 
 ens and of the rising flood. In good counsel and obe- 
 dience she continues, till the " hillys of Armonye " 
 are touched, and the voyage brought to its traditional 
 conclusion. 
 
 To the crude conception, somewhat scanty humour, and 
 deficient " business " of the York play the Wakefield has 
 added the element of surprise (consider the satisfaction 
 of the female spectators when Uxor retreats after having 
 once consented to enter the ark), variety and rapidity of 
 
 1 my heart bursts, and my liver and lungs.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 173 
 
 action, vivid reproduction of human ways, and local 
 manners, racy speech, familiar idiom if not the thrust 
 and parry, at any rate the quarter-staff of tongues, a 
 reckless humour, and a rhythmic swing. 
 
 His RELATION TO THE SCHOOL OF REALISM 
 
 Passing now to those parts of the two cycles most 
 marked by methods of the realist, and still confining our 
 selection from the Wakefield plays to those written in 
 the nine-line stanza, we note that approximately the 'same 
 relation obtains between the realism of Wakefield and the 
 later York School as that which held true of the humour 
 of Wakefield and the middle school of York. As said 
 before, the portraiture of manners by the York play- 
 wright appears to best advantage in some half-dozen 
 plays, XXVI, XXVIII, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, 
 XXXIII, etc., which elaborate the preliminaries of the 
 crucifixion, especially those in which Herod, the Beadle, 
 Caiaphas and Annas, Judas and the Janitor, Pilate and 
 Percula, figure. The Herod of the York plays, wher- 
 ever he appears, is of uniform character. But there are 
 two entirely distinct presentments of him in the cycle 
 of Wakefield : that of Herod the Great, written in the 
 nine-line stanza, and that of the Magi, written in a 
 different stanza (a a a b a b) and a more alliterative verse. 
 The Herod of the latter is a chip of the York blockj 
 boastful and abusive, but aimless in his bombast, trusting 
 to noise and a scattering fire ; whereas the Herod of the 
 former, in the Wakefield nine-line stanza, though he may 
 rant and brag, is direct, personal, and concrete. He is of 
 the stuff of the craftsman that plays him. The very lilt 
 of his metre is provocative of laughter ; so, also, are the 
 metres of his Nuncius : the rapid succession of rhymes,
 
 174 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 often double rhymes at that, the jocosity of vituperation, 
 its figurative as well as mouth-filling finality 
 
 Ffor if I beggyn I breke ilka bone 
 And pull fro the skyn the carcas anone, 
 Yei, perde ! 
 
 But it is when we consider the subtler qualities of 
 style, mock-heroic and double-edged, that we descry the 
 Master. In the grotesque cosmography of Herod's 
 dominions 
 
 Tuskane and Turky, 
 All Inde and Italy, 
 Sicily and Surrey 
 
 Drede hym and dowtys. 
 
 From Paradyse to Padua, to Mount Flascon ; 
 From Sarceny to Susa, to Grece it abowne ; 
 From Egyp to Mantua, unto Kemptown ; 
 Both Normondy and Norwa lowtys to his crown ; 
 
 His renowne 
 Can no tong tell, 
 From heven unto hell ; 
 Of hym can none spell 
 Bot his cosyn Mahowne ; 
 
 in the reference to familiar interests of the audience, to 
 the " Tales " of Boethius, the Epistles, the Holy Grail ; 
 in the sly literary criticism and the satire on ecclesiastical 
 preferments (for Herod swears, if he lives in land the 
 Councillor who moved the massacre of the infants shall 
 yet be Pope); in the burlesque of that massacre 
 " Dame," courteously ventures the murderous Miles, 
 " think it not ill, thy child if I kill " ; in the bargaining 
 between Herod with his knights and his promise of 
 payment (next time he comes) in all this there is a 
 marked advance upon the portrayal of character and
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 175 
 
 manners and the verisimilitude of thought and expression 
 afforded by the herodiacs of York. And this parallel is 
 the more instructive because while the general treatment 
 of this subject 1 in the Wakefield is so like that of the 
 York, the common characteristics of these two versions 
 are distinct from the Chester and N-Town plays. We, 
 therefore, cannot but suppose that the chief dramatist 
 of Wakefield took the York plays as his model. He 
 achieves, however, an independent result. 
 
 The York Janitor and the Pilate, Percula and Beadle 
 of the domestic scene, are not reproduced in the Wake- 
 field cycle. The Judas, indeed, reappears in the Con- 
 spiracy^ written in an old York metre and probably 
 borrowed from a discarded York original ; but there is 
 no trace of the Wakefield Master in his construction. 
 Wherever the dramatist of the nine-line stanza touches a 
 character, he endows it with qualities unmistakable, and 
 unknown to the other cycles making for a more artis- 
 tic realism. To the Conspiracy -, for instance, he prefixes 
 six stanzas, and in them causes Pilate, sitting upon the 
 bench, to display a political shrewdness of which his 
 continuator in the rest of the pageant was utterly inca- 
 pable : 
 
 Ffor I am he that may make or mar a man ; 
 Myself if I it say, as men of cowrte now can ; 
 Supporte a man to-day, to-morn agans hym than, 
 On both parties thus I play, And fenys 2 me to ordan 
 
 The right ; 
 Bot all fals indytars, 
 Questmangers and jurers, 
 And all thise fals outrydars, 
 
 Ar welcom to my sight. 
 
 1 See Hohlfeld on W. XVI and Y. XIX. feigns.
 
 176 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 This Pilate is the first trimmer in English comedy. 
 His development continues through the first half of the 
 Wakefield Scourging, and the whole of the Talents. 
 He is a vastly improved edition of a quondam York 
 Pilate, of whom traces can still be found in other parts of 
 the Wakefield. The earlier Pilate was timid and in- 
 genuous ; the latter is full of subtlety, breeze, and wit, 
 and wholly given over to jokes and Latin tags and maca- 
 ronic verses. Like most of the characters created by 
 the Master, he is of proverbial philosophy compact. 
 The clue to the procurator's character as given above is 
 repeated in the second stanza of the Scourging, the refrain 
 of which is in the same words and verse as Conspiracy, 3, 
 although the earlier part of the stanza doubles the metre 
 of the nine-line stanza. This is interesting because it 
 proves that there is some connection between the Mas- 
 ter's productions and those of some Wakefield experi- 
 menter who followed or preceded him, 1 or that the 
 Master was capable at times of varying his stanza. 
 
 In the Wakefield cycle there is, of course, much real- 
 ism of a powerful and grim kind that cannot be attributed 
 to the Player-clerk. The preparations for the crucifixion, 
 the wrenching of Christ's body to fit the cross, the 
 binding and the nailing, the jolting of the timber into 
 the mortice, the jesting and jeering of the torturers, are 
 a distinct counterpart of the Crucifixio Cristi of York. 
 They bear no mark of our dramatist. Their art is the 
 transcript of the physically horrible, their style the 
 straightforward, grisly poetising of the "pynner" or 
 the " paynter." How different the proverbial philosophy, 
 the side-play, the shading of character, the subtle shift 
 of motive and incident, the allusive quality, the ironic 
 1 XXII, 1-4; XXIII, 2 ; XXVII, 30.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 177 
 
 sophistry, the Latinism, the vocabulary, the sign-manual, 
 in short, of the Player-clerk, may be seen if one turns to 
 the Wakefield Coliphizacio, all of which is in his stanza, 
 or to stanzas 5 to 27 of the Fflagellacio, which are also 
 undoubtedly his. In the latter play the difference stands 
 out the more strikingly because the remaining and older 
 half is based upon York XXXIV, Christ Led Up to 
 Calvary, and from stanza 42 on literally copied from it. 
 While portions written by the Master do not balk at 
 the cruelty appropriate to the subject of buffeting and 
 scourging, they refrain from repulsive detail. 
 
 The Wakefield Master is no sentimentalist. His 
 anger is sudden as his sympathy. Always genially iron- 
 ical, he displays in his revision of the Judicium his full 
 power as a satirist. Here, as I have already elsewhere 
 said, his hatred of oppression, his scorn of vice and self- 
 love, his contempt of sharp and shady practice in kirk or 
 court, upon the bench, behind the counter, and in the 
 home, are welded into one and brought to edge and 
 point. He strikes hard when he will, but he has the 
 comic sense and spares to slay. We may hear him 
 chuckling, this dramatic contemporary of Chaucer, as 
 he pricks the bubble of fashion, lampoons Lollard and 
 " kyrkchaterar " alike, and parodies the latinity of his 
 age. When his demons speak, the syllables leap in 
 rhythmic haste, the rhymes beat a tattoo, and the stanzas 
 hurtle by. Manners, morals, folly, and loose living are 
 writ large and pinned to the caitiff. But the poet be- 
 hind the satire is ever the same, sound in his domestic, 
 social, political philosophy, constant in his sympathy 
 with the down-trodden and in his godly fear. 
 
 Doomsday is at hand : the souls have fled from hell ; 
 the devils, too, are out, and one here tells his fellow 
 
 12
 
 178 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 that he must betake himself to judgment like a peer to 
 Parliament. Up Watling Street shall be his way, but in 
 sooth they had rather be making three whole pilgrimages 
 to Rome. Their books they must take with them for 
 evidence against the damned, and books they have full 
 of all kinds of sinners: 
 
 Of wraggers and wrears a bag full of brefes, 
 Of carpars and cryars, of mychers and thefes, 
 Of lurdans and lyars that no man lefys 
 Of fly tars, of flyars and renderars of reffys. 1 
 
 The first demon asks if there is anger in their record. 
 There is anger, and treachery, too. " Hast thou ought 
 written there," says the first, " of the femynyn gendere ? " 
 " Yei, mo than I may bere," says the second, " of rolles 
 forto render" 
 
 Thai are sharp as a spear, if thai seem but slender 
 Thai ar ever in were if thai be tender, 
 
 Illfetyld; 
 
 She that is most meke, 
 When she semys full seke, 
 She can rase vp a reke 
 
 If she be well nettyld. 2 
 
 " Make ready our tools," continues the first, " for we 
 deal with no fools." " Yea, Sir," says the second, warn- 
 ingly, "it is high time for us to act," for 
 
 had domysday oght tarid 
 We must have bigged hell more, the warld is so warid. 3 
 
 1 wranglers, wrigglers, carpers, cryers, pilferers, thieves, louts, liars 
 that no man believes, quarrelers, '* flyers," and restorers of stolen goods. 
 
 a They are ever in doubt ; never ready ; can stir up smoke when 
 once well nettled. 
 
 * If Doomsday had been delayed, we must have built an addition to 
 Hell, the world is so cursed.
 
 Devils and Cauldron 
 From "Histoire de la langue et de la literature francaise"
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 179 
 
 Faith and truth have no feet upon which to stand, the 
 poor people must bear all the burdens, God is no longer 
 dreaded, and by that we know that doomsday is at hand. 
 " Sir," says the second demon, 
 
 it is saide in old sawes 
 The longere that day dawes 
 "Wars pepill wars lawes." 
 
 "I laugh," says the first demon, "at thy reason." To 
 them enters then the hero of that ilk, Tutivillus, regis- 
 trar to the devil, once their chief tollsman " and sithen 
 courte rollar [recorder]," but now "master lollar [lollard]." 
 He has brought in a single hour his thousands to hell : 
 the fool who dresses finely and leaves his children bread- 
 less, and the woman who shrouds her ugliness with 
 vanities, 
 
 When she is thus paynt, 
 She makys it so quaynte, 
 She lookys like a saynt, 
 And wars than the deyl. 
 
 Then, in rapid file, step forth for condemnation the 
 fashions of the day and the souls that flock to the world 
 below : harlots and bawds ; liars, scolds, extortioners, 
 usurers, and backbiters ; so that in sooth the porter shall 
 have old turning the key. Hell is full and doomsday 
 can no longer be delayed. 
 
 Such is the flavour of the plays in nine-line stanza which 
 it is comfortable, and perhaps not utterly unscientific, to 
 attribute to some one poet : a younger contemporary of 
 Chaucer, perhaps. No two men could have possessed a 
 style compounded of elements in just such collocation 
 and proportion or have produced results so uniform. 
 Nor does any other writer of the Wakefield cycle ap- 
 proach this style.
 
 i8o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 His MASTERPIECE; AND OTHER ATTRIBUTIONS 
 When one considers the uniformity of style, temper, 
 scholarship, and verse of the group of plays more or less 
 inspired by the York schools of humour and realism 
 and their distinctive character, withal: their Latinity, 
 joviality, and satiric indirection one is tempted not 
 merely to assign them to a single author, but with Leach 
 and Pollard to figure him concretely as some whilom 
 clerk of Oxford or of Cambridge : not a monk, indeed, 
 but some "jolly Absalon " who played by times on 
 " scaffold high " his Herod and his Pilate both, mayhap 
 his Noe, and Mak, the sheep-thief, too. I have men- 
 tioned in passing the masterpiece of the nine-line stanza 
 in which Mak and the shepherds prelude the birth of 
 Christ. This little English comedy, the Secunda Pas- 
 torum, gathers in itself the qualities already noted in the 
 playwright's other work, and adds a technique surpassing 
 that of any drama up to that time written. 1 The only 
 preceding play that can bear comparison with it from the 
 point of view of realism and of that shrewd reflection of 
 contemporary conditions which makes for interest, is the 
 Prima Pastorum of the same author. But the Prima is 
 rather a dramatic idyll than a comedy ; for though it 
 possesses comic motive and dialogue, it lacks comic action. 
 It is a pastoral picture in most diverting panels. What 
 could be more humorous than the little scene where Gyb, 
 going to buy sheep, quarrels with his friend Home as to 
 where he shall pasture them, though they are not yet 
 bought, and shouts to his bell-wether to possess the 
 
 1 In my Star of Bethlehem, as played by Mr. Ben Greet's company, 
 an attempt has been made to revive this and other Nativity plays, and 
 adapt them to modern requirements (Dufficld and Company : N. Y., 
 1904).
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 181 
 
 land? When Home won't let the imaginary wether 
 obey, and Gyb threatens to break his head, up comes in 
 a lucky moment Slowpace, discovers that they are match- 
 ing castles in Spain, and, like a fourteenth-century Sam 
 Weller, takes the conceit out of both by his story of 
 Moll, who, while casting up the account of her fictitious 
 flocks, absent-mindedly broke her pitcher into shards : 
 
 " Ho, God," she sayde, 
 But oone shepe yit she hade, 
 The mylk pycher was layde, 
 
 The skarthis was the tokyn. 
 
 To conclude the matter, Slowpace bids the disputants 
 hold his mare while he shakes his sack empty to sym- 
 bolise the condition of their wits. 
 
 Nothing like this had been produced by way of comic 
 scene before, and few things by way of native humour. 
 But the Prima cannot compare with the Secunda in move- 
 ment. From that point of view the only play compar- 
 able is the Shepherds' Play of Chester. Whether that was 
 written somewhat earlier or somewhat later, we cannot 
 say ; but that it resembles the Wakefield masterpiece 
 in the attempt to reproduce pastoral life and manners is 
 indubitable, though in technique, as well as tone and 
 style, it is inferior. 
 
 The Chester pastoral opens with a shepherd gathering 
 simples for his flock ; and it furnishes us with a joint 
 dinner like the Wakefield plays, with a wrestling match 
 between the boy Trowle and his three masters, and with 
 the singing of the angels and the usual colloquy concern- 
 ing the Latin of the song. The boy Trowle, indeed a 
 most lethargic and humorous lout, is one of the originals 
 of miracle comedy. A blander mode than his of directing 
 a passing traveller would be difficult to devise:
 
 1 82 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Yf any man come me bye 
 
 And would witte which waie were beste : 
 
 My leg I lifte up as I lye 
 
 And wishe hym the waie este or weste. 
 
 But the comic bustle of this pastoral is action with- 
 out progress ; the Wakefield Secunda, on the other hand, 
 is plot within plot, developed through eight closely 
 consecutive scenes, and crowded with action. The comic 
 adventure is indeed but an episode, this "sheep steal- 
 ing of Male," - but it has its beginning, middle, and end ; 
 the motive, the devices, and the progress of a comedietta 
 in itself. It grows out of and belongs to the conditions 
 with which the enveloping action opens, and its party of 
 the second part are also dramatic persons in the main 
 action. From every point of view conception, con- 
 struction, effect up to the end of the Mak episode, it 
 is quite on a level with Pathelin vint au vin, or with any- 
 thing that John Heywood has written. In power of 
 observation, as well as in the reproduction of every-day 
 life, it excels Tom Tyler, Thersytes, or any other play 
 written before the sixteenth century. As a work of 
 dramatic genius this little play, with its home-made phi- 
 losophy, home-made figures, and home-made humour, 
 with its comic business, its sometimes boisterous spirits, 
 its quiet and shrewd irony, its ludicrous diction, its reve- 
 lation of rural manners, its simple and healthful creed, 
 its radiant and naive devoutness, its dramatic anticipa- 
 tions, postponements, and surprises, stands out English 
 and alone, and a masterpiece. 
 
 The plot is so well known that an outline would be 
 superfluous ; but I doubt whether sufficient attention 
 has been directed to the realistic portrayal of its characters : 
 Coll, the first shepherd, who soliloquises concerning
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 183 
 
 political philosophy, a kind of later fourteenth-century 
 populist whom it refreshes to grumble : 
 
 It dos me good, as I walk thus by myn oone, 
 Of this warld for to talk in maner of mone ; 
 
 Gyb, the second shepherd, whose vein is of matrimonial 
 philosophy, and whose dame 
 
 As sharp as a thystyll, as rough as a brere, 
 Browed like a brystyll with a sowre-loten chere, 1 
 
 who therefore counts it a marvel due to destiny that 
 
 Som men wyll have two wyfs and som men three 
 
 In store 
 Som are wo that has any ! 
 
 and Daw, the hind, whose philosophy is eclectic, who 
 swears by the unborn Christ and Saint Nicholas, and 
 " lets the world pass." He it is who sees " sudden 
 sights in the darkness " ; who warns of the midnight- 
 stalking Mak ; who makes that " Yoman " of the king 
 lie safely down between them ; it is he, too, who dreams 
 of the stolen sheep and conducts the vain search there- 
 for ; and who, fortunately flinging back to Mak's home 
 to give the hypothetical babe " that lytyll day starne " a 
 " saxpence," lifts up the clout and diagnoses the fraud 
 that has been practised upon them. Mak himself is a 
 piece of characterisation of which a nineteenth-century 
 dramatist need not be ashamed. Behold him slinking 
 in by night with his habit of disguise and his " southern 
 tooth " and his sanctimonious plaint 
 
 Now wold God I were in heven, 
 For there wepe no barnes. 2 
 
 1 sour-looking face. 2 bairns.
 
 184 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Mark his delicate taste, his delicious hypocrisy ! But 
 mark with greater admiration still that worthy seconder 
 of his wiles, his somewhat unduly prolific wife, Gyll, 
 who, confined of the " borrowed sheep," declines the 
 approach of visitors for no less reason than that 
 
 Ich fote that ye trede goys thorow my nese l 
 Sohee! 
 
 This comedy, with its background of reality, and its 
 atmosphere of worship when once the Stable is in sight, 
 is the climax of the dramatic movement present in the 
 York cycle and forwarded by those portions of the 
 Wakefield which we have described. It so completely 
 eclipses the York play of The Angels and the Shepherds, 
 that if it were not for the effort of the Second York 
 Shepherd to imitate the angelic choir, and the rustic 
 naivete of the adoration in the Stable, the kinship of 
 the two plays would be difficult to trace. The N-Town, 
 indeed, shows a closer resemblance to the York in matters 
 of detail, and the Chester to the Wakefield, than the 
 Wakefield and the York show to each other. It must, 
 however, still be conceded that, in spirit and manner, 
 the Wakefield Prima and Secunda Pastorum, though not 
 derived from the corresponding York play, are but the 
 full flower of the comic and realistic promise of the 
 York cycle. 
 
 In the contributions passed in review there is enough 
 to characterise a comic dramatist; but if we turn from 
 the plays in the nine-line stanza to the only other dis- 
 tinctively comic pageants of the cycle, namely, the 
 Mactacio Abel and 'The Talents, we cannot long refrain 
 
 1 goes through my nose.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 185 
 
 from deciding that they, also, owe somewhat to the 
 Wakefield Master. 
 
 The Wakefield killing of Abel is probably a revision 
 of an earlier play in its own cycle. It is certainly later 
 than the York (VII), which is unfortunately a fragment, 
 and not even itself one of the parent cycle. These, 
 again, are more mature, and probably of later composi- 
 tion than the N-Town and Chester plays upon the sub- 
 ject, especially the latter. I have already said that the 
 oldest treatment of the Abel, the Cornish, was destitute 
 of humour. The next oldest, the Chester, is not only 
 grim, but very crude. Its successor of N-Town conceives 
 the churlish Cain of Chester with pith and merriment, 
 but fails to elaborate the possibilities of action between 
 the brothers. What is left of the York play is full of 
 dramatic life : Cain is a swaggering devil, who curses 
 God and His angel, and deliberately tries to thrash the 
 latter. As the extant portion of this play may have 
 suggested to the Wakefield the discussion between Cain 
 and Abel, so the original servant or garcio of the York 
 (who becomes Brewbarret in the later edition) was prob- 
 ably the prototype of Cayme's garcio, Pikeharnes, in the 
 Wakefield. The garcio in both is the forerunner of the 
 impudent underling in English comedy, and the Cayme 
 is a model of rusticity and irreverence. The characterisa- 
 tion is effected largely by the contrast between Cayme's 
 behaviour and Abel's. " God has ever yit byn my fo," 
 cries the reckless skeptic of the Wakefield play. And 
 when he has sought to defraud God of his burnt-offering 
 and the Lord appears to rebuke him, 
 
 " Why ! " cries he, " who is that hob-over-the-wall ? 
 We ! who was that that piped so small ? . . . '
 
 1 86 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The Wakefield Abel is an episode of painful reality, 
 with a tragic element, to be sure, but with more of the 
 spice of comedy than had appeared in previous plays 
 upon the subject. The author is a close observer of the 
 Wakefield swains ; and here they live perennial with 
 bucolic apothegm and pungent phrase, cunning fel- 
 lows, close-fisted, bargaining with the spiritual. " Never 
 yet," says Cain, " have I borrowed a farthing of God " ; 
 he will consequently apportion to the Almighty but one- 
 twentieth of the harvest, and that the worst. The rela- 
 tions between Cain and Pikeharnes are caught out of 
 reality : the details of farm life, the ploughing, the ob- 
 jurgation of Donnyng, the mare. The technique of the 
 play is also noteworthy for its " asides '* and mock- 
 echoes, its variety of scene, and its elaborate movement. 
 The final reviser, our Wakefield Master, I think (for 
 these that I have recited are ear-marks of his drama- 
 turgy), has not only added the last two stanzas in his 
 favourite form, but has lent spice to the first seven. It 
 was probably he who, leaving the other stanzas much as 
 they were, heightened the characterisation of Cain and 
 his boy, enriched their speech with proverbs, and made 
 of Abel something other than the milksop presented in 
 the earlier cycles. My word for dialectal peculiarities is 
 not worth much, but I must say that in the livelier parts 
 of this play the language appears to be of a piece with 
 that of the Prima and Secunda Pastorum. 
 
 The Processus Talentorum y or The Casting of Lots, gives 
 evidence of three strata of composition, of which the 
 last, an introduction of five stanzas and an epilogue of 
 five more, is not only in the strophe but the phrase 
 and temper of the Wakefield Master. The racy dia- 
 logue, the characterisation, and the rapid movement of
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 187 
 
 the play proper also betray the shaping hand of an artist. 
 In many a humorous touch I think that I recognise 
 the impress of ours. Nothing more natural than to re- 
 vive the colours when one is framing the picture. The 
 frame itself is in his most distinctive style, quaint, 
 original, brilliant, surprising. There is no mistaking 
 him in the subtlety and satire, the goliardic verses of 
 Pilate calling for silence and obedience, 
 
 Stynt, I say ! gyf men place : quia sum dominus domi- 
 
 norum ! 
 
 He that agans me says : rapietur lux oculorum ; 
 Therefor gyf ye me space : ne tendam vim brachiorum, 
 And then get ye no grace : contestor lura polorum, 
 
 Caveatis ; 
 Rewle I the lure, 
 Maxime pure, 
 Towne quoque rure, 
 
 Me paveatis, 
 
 He is in the double rhymes, the rapid lilt, the cogni- 
 sance of contemporary foible and custom, the boisterous 
 humour, and the gluttony of words. The play proper is 
 cast principally in a stanzaic mould not elsewhere found 
 in the Wakefield cycle. " Fellows," says the third 
 torturer, when the three having agreed to cast dice with 
 Pilate for the seamless coat, the highest throw falls to 
 himself: 
 
 Felowse, in forward here have I fifteene ! 
 As ye wote I am worthi, won is this 
 
 Weed. 
 Pilatus. What, whistyll ye in the wenyande ! * 
 
 Where have ye been ? 
 Thou shall abak, bewshere, 2 that blast I 
 forbede. 
 
 1 in the unlucky waning of the moon. 2 beau sire.
 
 1 88 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Tercius Tortor. Here are men us emang 
 
 Lele in our lay, will Ty for no leyd 
 And I wytnes at thaym if I wroght any 
 wrang. 1 
 
 This hurrying a b a b 4 c 2 b 4 c 4 of iambs and anapaests dif- 
 fers materially from its wooden congener of York XIV, 
 XXI, and XXV, and has, if my memory serves me, no 
 analogue in the other cycles. It fits itself readily to the 
 adjacent stanzas of nine lines ; it conveys at various 
 points material suggestive of the nine-line versifier, and 
 betrays his facile turn for comic situation. 
 
 Of the unique idiom of those through whom the 
 Wakefield Master speaks sporadic instances have al- 
 ready been cited ; but I cannot leave him without plac- 
 ing a few more on record. " Sir, as I am true knight," 
 says the first torturer, "of my dame since I sucked had 
 I never such a night" ; and of the prophesying of Jesus, 
 " He lies for the whetstone, I give Him the prize " ; 
 and, before the buffeting begins, " We shall teach Him 
 I wot a new play of Yule." Says Tortor Secundus of the 
 victim, " He sets not a fly-wing by Sir Csesar full even." 
 Cayphas, fretting that his sacerdotal position restrains 
 him from striking Jesus, cries, " He that first made me 
 clerk and taught me my lere, On books for to bark, the 
 Devil give him care!" ; and when Annas persuades him 
 to desist, " My heart is full cold, nearhand that I 
 swelt; For tales that are told I bolne (burst) at my 
 belt." When Jack the boy comes in to his masters, 
 the quarrelling shepherds of the Prima, he casually 
 remarks : 
 
 1 Here are men among us, loyal in the law, who will lie for no people, 
 I call them to witness.
 
 THE WAKEFIELD MASTER 189 
 
 Now God gyf you care, foles all sam ; 
 Sagh I never none so fare hot the foles of Gotham. 
 Wo is hir that you bare, youre sire and youre dam : 
 Had she broght furth an hare, a shepe, or a lam, 
 
 Had bene well. 
 Of all the foles I can tell, 
 From heven unto hell, 
 Ye thre bere the bell ; 
 God gyf you unceyll ! 
 
 The rural wisdom of his Yorkshire craftsmen is simi- 
 larly redolent of daily use. When Noe's Gyll complains, 
 " We women may wary all ill husbands," and the 
 patriarch retorts, " Ye men that has wives, Whiles they 
 are yong, If ye love your lives Chastise their tongue," 
 the audience beholds itself as in a mirror. Primus 
 Tortor was not the first to philosophise : " It is better 
 sit still, than rise up and fall " ; and Secundus is but 
 echoing the lore of the homely wise when he commits 
 dicing to the Devil with " As Fortune assize, men will 
 she make, Her manners are nice, she can down and 
 uptake." Pilate portrays the political trimmer that all 
 knew, in his confession "For like as on both sidys 
 the iren the hammer makith play, So do I that the law 
 has been in my kepyng " ; and his counsellor but echoes 
 public opinion when he upbraids this ruler with " Why 
 should / not mell of those matters that / you taught ? 
 Though ye be prince peerless without any peer, Were 
 not my wise wisdom, your wits were in waght [peril] ; 
 And that is seen express and plainly right here." Of 
 the moralising of the Secunda Pastorum I have already 
 spoken ; the Prima is equally observant of the common 
 lot. " Lord," grumbles Gyb, as he enters, " what they 
 are well that hence are past, For they nought feel them
 
 1 9 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 too downcast. . . . After our play in this world comes 
 sorrow ; after riches, poverty ; horseman Jack Cope 
 walks then, I ween. Rents are coming thick but my 
 purse is weak; nay, if ill-luck will grind, may God from 
 his heaven send grace." " Poor men," groans John 
 Home, " are in the dyke, and often Time mars ; such is 
 the world ; no helpers are here." " Yea," rejoins 
 
 Gyb,- 
 
 It is sayde full ryfe 
 A man may not wyfe 
 And also thryfe 
 
 And all in a yere. 
 
 No better index to the view of life of our mediaeval 
 workaday forefathers still endures than that afforded by 
 their Miracle plays. No picture more ingenuous than 
 that dramatised by the Player-clerk of Wakefield. And 
 for technical skill, what Langland was to satire, Malory 
 to prose fiction, and Chaucer to the metrical romance, 
 that, if we but allow for the immaturity of the type, the 
 Wakefield Master was to our mediaeval drama.
 
 TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 191 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 THE TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 
 
 ESPECIALLY IN THE LUDUS COVENTRIZE AND THE MIDDLE 
 PERIOD OF THE YORK 
 
 WE shall now turn to the Chester and the Ludus 
 Coventrize, or N-Town, plays which are not of the Old 
 Testament. Their comedy parts (at any rate) are prob- 
 ably of later date than the plays of York and Wakefield 
 which have just been treated, but the undiluted comic 
 passages are few. In the Chester we come across the 
 excellent fooling of the Shepherds 1 Play, of which I have 
 spoken in connection with the Wakefield Secunda Pasto- 
 rum y approximately of the same period ; the delicious 
 fling at the knightly ideals of romance, when Sir Launce- 
 lot of the Deep, and Sir Grimbald are introduced as 
 braggadocio cavaliers sallying forth to slaughter innocents 
 a passage, perhaps of the end of the fourteenth cen- 
 tury ; and that well-inserted reference to contemporary 
 manners, as late as 1524, in the lament of the "taver- 
 nere," the gentle gossip and " tapstere," who remains in 
 hell after its harrowing. 
 
 Comic representations of real life in the later portions 
 of the N-Town plays are also few. But, such as they 
 are, the pompous converse of the Doctors in the 
 Temple, the unaffected precipitancy of the young man 
 taken in adultery who escapes Calligis non ligatis et Irac- 
 cas in manu tenens, and Lord Lucifer's monologue on
 
 i 9 2 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the fashions of the day, they must have leavened the 
 general didacticism of the cycle with some flavour of actu- 
 ality. Both vocabulary and verse would indicate that 
 these passages belong by no means to an earlier period 
 in the composition of the cycle ; the allusions to dress 
 in the last of them have been assigned to the latter half 
 of the fifteenth century. A feeble attempt at the comic 
 may be detected also in the Adoration of the Shepherds, 
 but that appears to me to be suggested by a similar 
 passage in the Chester. Though in its original form 
 this play was one of the earliest of its cycle, certain ver- 
 bal resemblances between its present form and that of 
 the corresponding play of York would indicate later 
 borrowing from that source as well. 
 
 But beside the comic of every-day manners and 
 characters, there is evidence in some of these later 
 pageants, especially those of N-Town, of that romantic 
 element without which we can never realise the comic of 
 the ideal. The Joseph and Mary plays are among our 
 earliest romantic comedies, and as embodying a higher 
 conception of the dramatic than most of the plays so far 
 considered, it has seemed wise to gather them from all 
 cycles into a single group. 
 
 The Chester play From the Salutation to the Nativity, 
 may be passed with a word ; for in original date of com- 
 position it is one of the oldest in the cycles, and though 
 touched up by later hands, is still clumsy neither a dra- 
 matic whole nor dramatic in the handling. It is merely 
 a section of narrative measured off and draped about lay- 
 figures for purposes of display. Occasionally a natural 
 trait appears, as in the grumbling of Joseph over the 
 payment of tribute, and the naivete of his affection for
 
 TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 193 
 
 Mary; occasionally a gleam of the humorous, as in the 
 punishment of the sacrilegious midwife, Salome. An- 
 other pageant of Chester, however, the Purification, which 
 is evidently a late insertion between the Flight into Egypt 
 and the Christ in the Temple, avails itself of the possibil- 
 ities of wonder somewhat more fitly and in the fashion 
 property characteristic of this sequence of plays. 
 
 The York plays in this delightful series, probably of 
 the middle period, are altogether more natural, detailed, 
 and realistic than the Wakefield, though the Joseph of 
 the latter has an interest of his own because he is so 
 decidedly " down on his luck." In spirit, style, and 
 verse, there is indeed a radical difference between the 
 York treatment of this romance and the treatment ac- 
 corded to their distinctive themes by the later York 
 realist and the Wakefield Master. The work of the 
 former, as we have seen, is in general characterised by 
 an ability in plot-construction, a grasp of dramatic situ- 
 ation, and a tendency to emphasise idiosyncrasy and 
 manners, though with somewhat more of grimness than 
 of sympathy. The Wakefield Master not only refines 
 upon the raw material, but transmutes it to something 
 new in the alembic of his humour ; he subordinates man- 
 ners to satire, or to the comic of the situation, but he 
 indulges rarely or not at all in tenderness. With the 
 exception of two stanzas the Wakefield Virgin Plays owe 
 nothing to him. The Annunciation, the Flight, and the 
 Play of the Doctors show, more or less, the influence of 
 York. The Salutation, however, opens with an original 
 and charming domestic scene, where the cousins, Mary 
 and Elizabeth, inquire after mutual friends and interests. 
 The tone is as modern and as suitable to its dramatic 
 function as a modern poet could achieve. 
 
 13
 
 i 94 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The romance of the betrothal of Mary and Joseph as 
 told by the latter in the Wakefield Annunciation is not very 
 dramatic, but it contains one pre-Raphaelite stanza : 
 
 When I all thus had wed hir thare, 
 We and my madyns home can fare, 
 
 That kyngys doghters were; 
 All wroght thay sylk to fynd them on, 
 Marie wroght purpyll, the oder none 
 
 Bot othere colers sere, 
 
 which, although a paraphrase (as Mr. Pollard has shown) 
 of verses in the apocryphal gospel of Mary, 1 and the 
 Protevangel of St. James, 2 indicates both the poetic 
 taste and the diction of the composer; for the " Kynges 
 doghters," the " sylk to fynd them on," the " wroght," 
 and that exquisite touch of the " othere colers sere" are 
 of his invention. That part of the Purification written in 
 the same stanza, where the bells of the Temple ring them- 
 selves at the approach of Mary and the Child, contains 
 even more of simple wonder than the corresponding por- 
 tions of the York. These plays have been assigned by 
 Mr. Pollard to the original didactic stage of the cycle; 
 but I am of opinion that the portions in the six-line met- 
 rical romance form were additions, at an early period to 
 be sure, to the naive basis in couplets. 
 
 It is with Joseph's Trouble about Mary y in the York 
 cycle, that we reach the first genuine effort at a ro- 
 mantic handling of the theme. This play, though its 
 introduction of Mary's attendant maids is probably of 
 later insertion, displays many of the characteristics of a 
 little comedy: the shifting moods of Joseph, Mary's pa- 
 tient iteration of the paternity of the Child, the skilful 
 sequence of the plot. Significant above all are the char- 
 
 1 vi, 7. a ix, 1-4, 6, 8, 1 8.
 
 S 
 
 B 
 
 ffi 
 
 0> 
 
 ?3 
 3 P 
 
 g 50
 
 TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 195 
 
 acter of the Virgin and her vindication. In the Wake- 
 field play she is somewhat curt in her replies ; here she is 
 the ewigweibliche, worthy of adoration, winsome, mild. 
 She is the first romantic woman in English drama, and 
 the series of plays in which she figures is the forerunner 
 of the modern comedy of love, the drama of the maiden 
 ideal victorious, and of woman adored. The devotion of 
 the York Joseph to Mary and the Child is brought to its 
 climax in an idyllic drama, The Journey to Bethlehem, and 
 is developed with happy iteration in the Plight and the 
 Christ in the Temple. 
 
 The intense interest taken by our ancestors in this 
 story of eternal youth and love is evidenced by the fact 
 that, of the York cycle, one-fifth centres about it ; of the 
 Chester, one-fourth ; of the Wakefield, almost a third ; 
 of the N-Town, a third. Of the thirteen N-Town plays 
 which refer to it, all but one introduce the figure of the 
 Virgin, and in eight she is the central character. Now, 
 metrical and other tests show that, while five of these 
 (XII, XIII, XIV, XVIII, XIX) were originally among 
 the earliest in the cycle, they are, in their present form, 
 probably revisions of a later date than the corresponding 
 plays of other cycles; also, that the remaining three (IX, 
 X, XI) were first written about the time of these revisions. 
 The charm of the Virgin has therefore prospered, and in 
 the N-Town plays it bursts into full flower. In spite of 
 their didactic bent, they enhance the interest of the 
 dramatic by the infusion of romantic legend : as of the 
 cherry tree bowing its fruit to the Virgin's hand ; and 
 by allegory, as of the maidens five that circle Mary. 
 This ideal woman, the gracious child of long childless 
 parents, the daughter vowed 
 
 In clennes to lyven in Godys service,
 
 196 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the maiden wife and virgin mother, what figure more fit 
 to refine the manners and the art of an age still rude ? 
 And then what variety of plot revolves about her, the 
 comic reluctance of the aged bridegroom, his surprise 
 over the blossoming rod of his destiny, his apprehension 
 of a hen-pecked future, 
 
 Xuld I now in age begynne to dote ? 
 If I her chyde she wold clowte my cote, 
 Blere myn ey and pyke out a mote, 
 
 his hearty wrong response during the wedding ceremony 
 the simple devotion of her damsels, the benediction of 
 the bishop, the solicitude of the parents, the hiring of the 
 "lytyl praty house," and the sudden departure of the new- 
 wed husband for a far "countre" such touches, cus- 
 tomary and immediate, must have made the Betrothment a 
 most acceptable drama of the sentimental-comic kind. In 
 sequence with this the Return of Joseph and the Trial con- 
 stitute a trilogy, the prominence of which in the history 
 of romantic comedy must not be underrated. The Trial 
 of Joseph and Mary opens humorously, with a summon- 
 ing to court of people by their English nicknames. This 
 passage is evidently a somewhat later addition to a play 
 which is otherwise significant. On the one hand the 
 pageant is an early representative of romantic comedy, 
 on the other of the scandal or manners school which was 
 later to be developed with gusto and ungodly grace by 
 the dramatists of the Restoration, and ultimately to be 
 refined by Sheridan. For the elements of scandal it is 
 necessary only to refer to the career of the apostles of 
 detraction, ensnared in the gins which they had set 
 for others. For the element of the romantic no finer 
 example of that early date can be found than the success-
 
 TRANSITION TO THE ROMANTIC 197 
 
 ful refutation of the attack upon the honour of the Virgin. 
 From the point of view of plot, as well, the play is 
 justly to be regarded as one of the most important of 
 cyclic contributions to early comedy. Indeed, the Joseph 
 and Mary plays, as a whole, form an excellent transition 
 from the study of realism to that of the romance of early 
 comedy, and in their appeal to the sentiments of sexual 
 chivalry, of wonder and admiration, the N-Town group 
 of plays, and, to some extent, the corresponding York 
 plays, make a decided advance upon other cycles. 
 
 I think that this aspect of the Nativity plays has not 
 been hitherto duly emphasised. It is to be noted that 
 the hero or heroine of them is always triumphant, that 
 the best opportunity is offered for light-hearted fun, an 
 opportunity which is generally availed of, and that the 
 English drama is enriched in them by the virgin ideal, 
 without which comedy would have remained farcical, 
 fleshly, or heartless. It is largely by virtue of this ideal 
 that the romantic comedy of Greene and Shakespeare 
 runs with a ruddier blood and beats with a quicker pulse 
 and healthier actuality and nobler spirit than the satire of 
 Aristophanes or the smut of Wycherley. Comedy is not 
 of the head alone nor of the belly. She is no Phoenician 
 Ashtoreth, nor Aphrodite Pandemos, nor French Lubri- 
 city ; nor is she any pallid Artemis, or lightning-born 
 Athene, purposive, unfeeling, and serene. Thalia Urania 
 is wit and winsomeness ; sanity, romance, and tenderness, 
 in one: the light and love of a life found "more amusing 
 than we thought."
 
 198 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF PATHOS AND SUBLIMITY 
 
 I SAID " romance and tenderness "; for pathos in the 
 drama makes illusion real and calls the careless listener to 
 account. And, though the most serious of these scrip- 
 tural dramas is comedy in the sense divine, because tri- 
 umphant in the outcome, it still is kind " with touches 
 of things common " and " droppings of warm tears." 
 Even in early pageants such as the Brome play of Abra- 
 ham and Isaac, its derivative of Chester, and its analogues 
 of other cycles, true pathos obtains. In the pageants of 
 the middle and later periods, the tender phases of the 
 Christ-story are steadily developed. But always the Vir- 
 gin remains the lode-star of emotion. Few more tenderly 
 natural scenes can be adduced than that in the Coventry 
 guild play where the " Chyld waxeth cold "; or that in 
 the York Flight into Egypt where Mary weeps and Joseph 
 to " ese her arme " takes the " dere sone so swete." 
 Again and again in the crucifixion and resurrection plays, 
 the central figure is the Virgin. Jesus only too frequently 
 presents a theological aspect; Mary, never. In the N- 
 Town Crucifixion, when Jesus, in the greater business he 
 was about, is apparently unmindful of her, the matchless 
 motherhood asserts itself in pathos so dramatic that I 
 wonder how historians have so long ignored it :
 
 PATHOS AND SUBLIMITY 199 
 
 O my sone, my sone, my derlyng dere ! 
 What have I defendyd [offended] thee ? 
 Thou hast spoke to alle tho that ben here y 
 And not o word thou spekyst to me ! 
 
 To the Jewys thou art ful kinde, 
 Thou hast forgeve al her mysdede ; 
 
 And the thef thou hast in minde, 
 
 For onys askyng mercy heven is his mede. 
 
 A ! my sovereyn Lord, why wilt thou not speke 
 To me that am thi modyr, in peyn for thi wrong ? 
 
 A ! heart ! heart ! why whylt thou not breke ? 
 That I were out of this sorwe so stronge ! 
 
 The reply of the Son is disappointingly clerical ; but the 
 situation is saved dramatically by that twin-mother with 
 Mary of Christian romance the Magdalene. "Ah, 
 good lady," she cries, "why do ye thus, the pain that my 
 Lord Jesus sees in you, it but paineth him the more." 
 The York crucifixion plays are likewise sometimes 
 mellowed by pathos ; but the poet is generally paying too 
 much attention to his alliterations to bestow a human 
 sympathy upon the Mother of Christ. To her 
 
 Alias! for my swete sonne I saie, 
 
 That doulfully to dede thus is dight ; 
 
 Alias! for full lovely thou laye 
 
 In my wombe, this worthely wight, . . . 
 
 the Jesus of York replies with words in which the scrip- 
 tural severity becomes brutal : 
 
 Thou woman, do way of thy wepyng, 
 For me may thou no thyng amende ; 
 
 My fadirs wille to be wirkynge, 
 For mankynde my body I bende. 
 
 The Wakefield Processio Cruets, on the other hand, 
 (though it has from its fourth to its forty-eighth stanza
 
 200 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 followed the dramatic manner and occasionally the lan- 
 guage of the York Crucifixio and Mortificacio), leaves the 
 style of York immeasurably behind, just as soon as the 
 Virgin makes her moan her planctus. "Alas, my lam 
 so mylde," she weeps : 
 
 Why will thou fare me fro 
 
 Emang thise wulfes wylde that wyrke on thee this wo ? 
 Fro shame who may theeshelde? Forfreyndys has thou fo! 
 Alas, my comly childe, why will thou fare me fro ? 
 Madyns, make youre mone 
 And wepe, ye wyfes, everichon, 
 With me, most wrich, in wone, 
 
 The childe that borne was best ! 
 My harte is styf as stone that for no bayll will brest. 
 
 This is poetry, the note inevitable : " Why wilt thou 
 fare me fro ? " 
 
 My life how shall I lede 
 When fro me gone is he that is my hede 
 
 Inhy? 
 My death now comen it is: my dere Son have mercy ! 
 
 The futile cry of the heart that, aching, cannot burst. 
 Then answers the Son with tenderness infinite and that 
 human tone: 
 
 My moder mylde, thou chaunge thi chere ! 
 Cease of thi sorow and sighing sere, 
 
 It syttys unto my hart full sare ; 
 The sorow is sharp I suffer here, 
 Bot doyll thou drees? my moder dere y 
 
 Me marters mekill mare. 
 
 Thus will my fader I fare 
 To lowse mankynde of bandys: 
 
 His son will he not spare 
 
 To lowse that bon was ere 2 
 Full fast in feyndys handys. 
 
 1 The pain thou bearest. * To loose those that were bound.
 
 PATHOS AND SUBLIMITY 201 
 
 There were, indeed, poets in England other than Chaucer 
 and Langland, long before Spenser, Marlowe, and Shake- 
 speare. Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona multi. 
 
 That the development of the cycles as a popular 
 spectacle demanded a departure from that which was ex- 
 clusively religious, didactic, and conventional in their in- 
 ception, must again be emphasised. The craft-plays are 
 a " sport " sprung from a serious stock. And on that 
 account those qualities of pathos, sublimity, and tragic 
 awe which characterise the miracles as liturgical, are 
 not the differentia by which the progress of the offshoot 
 as drama should be measured. In the crude the serious 
 qualities are as vital as in the refined. Art has added 
 little to their emotional sincerity. The pathetic, for in- 
 stance, which in the later plays of the great cycles has 
 attained that impressiveness of which we have taken note, 
 was also significant though naive in the thirteenth-cen- 
 tury Harrowing of Hell, the Brome Sacrifice of Isaac, and 
 the early versions of the Massacre of the Innocents. It is 
 present in the liturgical laments of the Maries at the 
 Tomb, and it rises to its climax in the Latin planctus of 
 the Virgin before the Cross. From this point of view 
 these efforts, early as they were, are not markedly inferior 
 to their dramatic successors of the N-Town and Wakefield 
 cycles, or to the Road to Calvary of the Shearmen's play 
 at York. But though it is more difficult to trace an his- 
 torical advance in the handling of the serious emotions 
 than in that of the commoner sort, it is no less instructive 
 to note their contribution to the aesthetic value of the 
 miracle plays. 
 
 From the consideration of the pathetic we pass 
 most readily to that of its converse, the sublime. This 
 obtains to some extent in the earlier spectacles of
 
 202 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Abraham's obedience and Christ's nativity, but most, of 
 course, in the dramas of the Passion, whether early or 
 late. In the majestic silence of the Saviour during the 
 trials before Caiaphas, Pilate, Herod, it speaks. In the 
 superhuman patience of the Ascent to Calvary, and of 
 the agony upon the Cross, it lives. 
 The words of Jesus, 
 
 Ye daughters of Jerusalem 
 
 I bid you weep no more for me, 
 
 and those beginning 
 
 I pray you people that pass me by 
 
 which recur in one form or another in various cycles 
 appeal to me as among the finest specimens of mingled 
 pathos and sublimity in mediaeval literature. The Wake- 
 field monologue of Christ after his resurrection (of the 
 affiliation of which with the Chester, N-Town, and other 
 versions I shall speak later) is the height of moral grand- 
 eur : " Earthly man that I have wrought, Remember 
 what was done for thee " 
 
 Clean have I made thee sinful man, 
 With woe and wandreth l I thee wan ; 2 
 From heart and side the blood out-ran 
 
 Such was my pyne 3 
 Thou must me love that thus gave than* 
 
 My life for thine; . . . 
 
 and that other stanza, too, whose tone is the vox humana 
 of some great organ, 
 
 For I am very prince of peace, 
 And sinnes sere 6 I may release, 
 
 1 misfortune. a won. ' pain. 
 
 4 then. 6 many.
 
 PATHOS AND SUBLIMITY 203 
 
 And whoso will of sinnes cease 
 
 And mercy cry, 
 I grant them here a measse * 
 
 In bread, mine own body. 
 
 For the solemnity which is born of the thought of 
 death, I venture to say that few modern elegies can stand 
 comparison with one embedded in the Wakefield Lazarus, 
 and there forgotten : 
 
 Ilk one in such array, with death he shall be dight, 
 And closed cold in clay, whether he be king or knight. 
 
 What more dignified, and stern yet tender, than the 
 concluding strain : 
 
 Amend thee, man, whiles yet thou may, 
 Let never no mirth fordo thy mind ; 
 
 Thinke thou on the dreadful day 
 
 When God shall deme [judge of] all mankind. 
 Think thou farest as doth the wind ; 
 
 This world is waste and will away : 
 Man, have this in thy mind, 
 
 And amend thee whiles thou may. 
 
 Amend thee, man, whiles thou art here, 
 
 Against thou go another gait ; 
 When thou art dead and laid on bier, 
 
 Wit thou well thou be'st too late ; 
 
 For if all the good thou ever gat 
 Were dealt for thee after thy day, 
 
 In heaven it would not mend thy state, 
 Therefore amend thee whiles thou may ! 
 
 If thou be right royal in rent, 
 
 As is the steed standing in stall, 
 Know in thy heart and take intent 
 
 That they are Goddes goodes all. 
 
 1 meal.
 
 204 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 He might have made thee poor and small 
 As one that begs from day to day ; 
 
 Wit thou well, account thou shall, 
 Therefore amend thee whiles thou may ! l 
 
 As to the tragic, it is present, to be sure, in the Cor- 
 nish Pharaoh, David and Bethsabe, and Maximilla ; in 
 the Chester Antichrist, the Wakefield Judicium, the 
 N-Town and the York Massacre of the Innocents ; and 
 in the plays of the Passion. But while the liturgical 
 interest of the Passion plays was serious, or even tragic, 
 the tragedy, as I have insisted, was always relieved by the 
 foreknowledge of the Resurrection. And in other cases, 
 when the subjects were such as might lend themselves 
 naturally to tragic treatment, the fury and death of 
 Herod, for instance, the remorse and hanging of Judas, the 
 downfall of Antichrist, and the retribution of Cain, there 
 is rather a presentation of horror than of tragedy, for 
 the suffering of the heroes is so contrived as to awaken 
 in the beholder neither the sympathy nor the admiration 
 essential to the proper enjoyment of tragic art. 
 
 1 1 have but slightly modernised the text.
 
 THE LATER MIRACLES 205 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LATER 
 MIRACLES 
 
 ALSO closely connected with the interest in the romantic, 
 and tending to the same idealisation of fact, is interest 
 in the allegorical. One cannot but notice the growing 
 frequency with which abstractions are introduced as 
 characters in the later N-Town plays : Contemplacio, Mors, 
 VeritaSy Misericordia, Justicia, Pax. 1 The influence of 
 epical allegory is beginning to tell ; but we must not, 
 therefore, conclude that the miracles of N-Town were the 
 first or only adaptation of the allegorical dramatic form. 
 Chaucer had already reduced allegory to dialogue ; and 
 moralities like the Castle of Perseverance, written as 
 early as 1400, and abounding in abstract characters 
 derived both from epical allegory and experience, were 
 already pursuing their distinct and independent course 
 toward a comedy of humours and manners even before 
 the miracle play had begun to avail itself of the stock- 
 in-trade abstractions of religious ceremony and thought. 2 
 
 1 For a list of these instances, see Hohlfeld, die Kollektivmisterien, 
 Anglia, XI, 279. I doubt whether the twelve abstractions listed at the 
 beginning of Lud. Cov., XL, are dramatic characters. For these four 
 lines make a stanza which was probably assigned for delivery, word by 
 word, to the several apostles; just as the next stanza was distributed in 
 the same order, but by lines. 
 
 a See Ebert, Jabrb. f. rom. u. engl. Lit., I, 166-7 > Die engl. 
 Mysterien ,- and chapter xxi, below.
 
 ao6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The Ludus Coventria " Daughters of God," are merely 
 signs of the literary times, adaptation of scriptural im- 
 agery ; not a new dramatic invention nor of uncommon 
 historical significance. 
 
 A period sufficiently mature to enjoy symbol and 
 satire could not but develop still another dramatic possi- 
 bility, the mock ideal. This is furnished by situations 
 in which Pride rides for a fall or Cunning is caught in 
 his own snare. The yeomen and craftsmen of Plan- 
 tagenet England could not always with safety vent their 
 wrath upon the oppressor and the extortionate, but upon 
 the Pharaohs, Balaaks, and Herods of the Corpus Christi 
 they could. The louder the bluster of the local bully, 
 the deeper was he drowned, or downed, and damned by 
 the local playwright. When Judas hanged himself, many 
 a red-headed usurer of the neighbourhood was remembered 
 with imprecations not loud but deep, and consigned by 
 the audience to perdition with him ; and long tediums of 
 restrictive conscience were doubtless relieved by a flout at 
 the devil of the play. This, indeed, was the drama of vica- 
 rious reprisals, which, administering the physic of contempt 
 for tyrants, worked a salutary elimination, or catharsis, of 
 timidity in the vulgar, a sursum corda of self-gratulation, 
 burgher independence, and good cheer. To get the better 
 of the devil was ever a grim delight, even of and in one's 
 self; but in those days there was also the satisfaction of 
 assisting at the discomfiture of Judases, Pharaohs, and 
 Antichrists of one's own acquaintance, into whom Sathanas 
 long ago had crept. For no doubt, as on the Continent, 
 odious dramatis person* were presented in the likeness 
 of even more odious contemporaries. 
 
 In the latest additions to the great cycles, and in other 
 miracles of a late date of composition, the dramatic
 
 THE LATER MIRACLES 207 
 
 element most zealously developed is that of surprise. 
 The minor biblical miracles, such as the healing of Mal- 
 chus, are availed of, the marvels of the Resurrection are 
 supplemented, apocryphal and legendary wonderments 
 are introduced : the obeisance of the banners to the 
 Lord Jesus, the appearance of Our Lady to St. Thomas, 
 the mystic concomitants of her death, assumption, and 
 coronation, the mediaeval juggleries of the Antichrist, 
 and many other necromantic delights. It is, however, 
 in the Newcastle Shipwrights' Play and the Digby series, 
 both of the fifteenth century, that the climax of sensa- 
 tion is attained. The former presents us with dramatic 
 woman and dramatic devil in alliance, gaining, pari passu, 
 in complexity of motive and unexpectedness of action. 
 The Noe's wife, here, surpasses her prototypes : she is 
 positively melodramatic. Under the devil's influence 
 she wanders from her traditional role so far as to give a 
 sleeping potion to her unsuspicious husband. And the 
 devil is no longer the mythical worm, or the shadow of 
 a dream, with which Eve and Percula were acquainted : 
 he is possessed of human characteristics, is a more fas- 
 cinating creature, more natural, and of course more 
 amenable to feminine importunity. 
 
 The Digby play of the Kyllynge of the Children of 
 Israel, though composed, like others included in the 
 same collection, as late as the end of the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, improves in only one particular upon the dramatic 
 quality of the miracles which had earlier dealt with that 
 subject. It develops into action the possibilities of bur- 
 lesque already suggested by the Chester play. There 
 the Hebrew mothers threaten to beat Herod's soldiers 
 with their distaffs ; here one boastful soldier, Watkyn, 
 gets a sound drubbing. The Conversion of Saint Paul,
 
 208 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 on the other hand, and the Mary Magdalene, betray in 
 many ways their comparative modernity. They not 
 only fuse the leading characteristics of saints' play and 
 scriptural miracle, but absorb from the contemporary 
 " moral " as well, certain of its distinctive ingredi- 
 ents. To the biblical narrative and the devils of a 
 miracle play the St. Paul adds the conflict between good 
 and evil for the possession of a human soul which is the 
 raison d'etre of the " moral." The conflict is not, indeed, 
 conducted, as in the moral play, between concrete abstrac- 
 tions, virtues and vices, but directly between God and 
 the Devil.. Still, the Seven Deadly Sins, from whom 
 the dramatic Vice of the " moral " was derived, are effec- 
 tively deployed by word of mouth, both of the devil 
 Belial and of Saul ; and the equally abstract Power of 
 Grace takes visible form in the figure of the Holy Ghost 
 and so descends upon the new-made saint. Somewhat 
 similarly the Mary Magdalene combines the material of 
 mediaeval saint-story with incidents and characters drawn 
 from scriptural tradition and with still others borrowed 
 from the custom of the moral play. Side by side with 
 Mary's father Cyrus, and with the King and Queen of 
 Marcylle, the Marcylle Shipman, and Mary in the 
 Wilderness, all out of popular legend, proceed Laza- 
 rus and Jesus, Simon the Leper, Herod, Pilate and the 
 devils as from the Bible and the biblical miracle play ; 
 while in and out of the one and fifty scenes which consti- 
 tute the two parts of the drama step abstractions, the 
 Angel of Good and the Angel of Evil, the mortal sins 
 Pryde and Covetyse, retainers of the King of the World ; 
 Slowth, Gloteny and Lechery, retainers of the King of 
 the Flesh ; Wrath and Envy, retainers of the Prince of 
 Devils, Satan himself.
 
 THE LATER MIRACLES 209 
 
 No less novel are these plays in devices productive of 
 sensational effect, in the former, for instance, the 
 comic realism of the encounter between Saul's servant 
 and the ostler ; the richly caparisoned knights riding to 
 bind the Christians and bear them to Jerusalem ; the 
 appearance of the Lord with great tempest, and Saul 
 struck blind by lightning ; Belial in the fiery parts infer- 
 nal, Mercury his messenger, and other devils who shall 
 " rore and crye"; music and dancing. Even more spec- 
 tacular the career of the Magdalene : not only in the 
 pomp, already familiar, of scriptural potentates, and the un- 
 dying wonders of Lazarus revived and of Hell harrowed, 
 but in the more alluring presentation of less hackneyed 
 scenes, Lechery and Mary, Mary and her gallant, 
 Mary in her arbour, the pagan sacrifice and ritual in the 
 Temple of Marcylle, Mary's mission to the heathen 
 king and queen, the angels feeding Mary and taking her 
 to the king's chamber, the miraculous childbirth and the 
 death of the queen, the journey by sea of the corpse and 
 the babe, the conversion of the king and his baptism by 
 St. Peter, the restoration of the queen to life, Mary and 
 the hermit and the shriving in the desert, and finally the 
 assumption of the Magdalene. As in the St. Paul, here 
 also are interwoven with the heroic-romantic, episodes of 
 comic realism, the mock-mass of Mahound, the amusing 
 controversy of the pagan presbyter and his irreverent 
 acolyte, the storm by sea, the bustle of the mariners, 
 the captain shouting for his dinner, and the sea-cook so 
 sick with a cramp that he can't get it ready. 
 
 The spectators may, of course, have been familiar 
 with the legend of the Magdalene as presented by Vora- 
 gine and Caxton, or even with some of its sources in the 
 apocryphal New Testament ; but whatever abatement
 
 210 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 of surprise may have resulted on that account would 
 be more than compensated by interest in the develop- 
 ment of the personality of the heroine herself. This is 
 the distinctive contribution of the play to the equipment 
 of English drama: the portrayal of the struggle by 
 which an erring soul gradually achieves salvation, the 
 growth of character from within ; the romance of the 
 fallen woman who raises not only herself but others ; 
 the flowering of the sinner into the saint. 
 
 To the parts played by the Devil and the Deadly 
 Sins in the miracle of St. Paul we have referred above ; 
 the Magdalene is rich in material for the study of these 
 characters in a critical period of their dramatic career. 
 The Devil here, if less ridiculous, is no less sensational 
 than in the former play ; the Deadly Sins, which in the 
 former were terrors of rhetorical imagery, here are pres- 
 ent in the flesh, playing a concrete dramatic role. Still 
 further, from the rank and file of them two emerge the 
 Lady Lechery and the gallant Curiosity as social per- 
 sonalities, no longer mere shadows of their master-devils, 
 but walking embodiments of man's own depravity, Vices 
 full-grown, both human and dramatic. The Devil of the 
 earlier miracle plays was a theological character, a fallen 
 archangel, an incarnate spirit inimical to all mankind 
 because of a grudge against the Maker of all. Origi- 
 nally a serious character, he degenerated into a " bogey " 
 or a buffoon only at the instance of the improvising 
 actor ; and as the latter he enters such literature as is ex- 
 tant only with the author of these Digby plays. So, too, 
 with the Digby plays we find the Vice of the dramatic 
 moral and of contemporary Fool-literature intruding 
 upon the borders of the miracle. He is not a theolog- 
 ical character, has no long Hebrew or Babylonian gene-
 
 THE LATER MIRACLES 211 
 
 alogy. He is allegorical, typifying the moral frailty of 
 man or woman. Not of mankind in the lump, though 
 he is willing to oblige ; but of one individual at a time, 
 whose colours he consistently parades. Proceeding from 
 the concept of the Deadly Sins, at first emphasising the 
 characteristics of one, ultimately focussing all into one, 
 he dramatises the evil that springs from within. Though 
 at first directed, as in the Digby Magdalene and early 
 moral plays, by the theological Devil, God's enemy, 
 who assails mankind with temptations from without, the 
 Vice is the younger contemporary of the Devil rather 
 than his offspring or agent. As he acquires personality, 
 he assumes characteristics and functions unknown to the 
 Devil, scriptural or dramatic. These functions were grad- 
 ually assimilated with those of mischief-maker, jester, and 
 counterfeit crank. 1 The story of this assimilation con- 
 cerns, however, not the history of the religious play, 
 but that of the interlude moral, educational, witty, or 
 satirical which prepared the way for, and was also 
 contemporary with, the secular drama of the early 
 Elizabethans. 
 
 In the last six chapters I have tried to show how the 
 English cycles developed in dramatic quality. This de- 
 velopment is but an index to the parallel growth of 
 English culture. I therefore repeat what, in these chap- 
 ters, I have frequently emphasised : that in the earlier plays 
 of our forefathers the mirth, the proverbial philosophy, 
 the social aims, the aesthetic and religious ideals of the 
 middle ages still live for us. I would urge upon lite- 
 rary investigators, as of incalculable advantage to histor- 
 ical and social, as well as exclusively philological, science, 
 a more minute and sympathetic study of these monuments 
 
 1 See Rep. Engl. Com., xlvi-liv, for a fuller treatment of the subject.
 
 212 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 than has been hitherto undertaken. The miracle plays 
 are humanities that, originating long before the Conquest, 
 dominated the imagination of native England for more 
 than five hundred years, and helped to form the national 
 taste for a fiction, allegory, epic, and satire, more artistic, 
 to be sure, but still traditional and of scriptural tang, 
 and for a drama higher and broader, both classical and 
 romantic, but ever racy, and of the inherited stock and 
 soil. They were humanities in the yellow leaf, but still 
 lingering on the tree, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson 
 put forth blossom, and when Peele and Lyly, Marlowe 
 and Greene, had already passed from flower to fruitage.
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 213 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 
 
 IN France, as Petit de Julleville has shown, the reli- 
 gious -plays were until the fifteenth century known as ludi, 
 repr<esentalioneSj historic repr<esentand<. " Mystere " is 
 used for the first time in 1402 in a letter of Charles VI 
 licensing the Confreres de la Passion of Paris to present 
 the " misterre de la Passion, et d'autres misterres." Up 
 to 1450 the term applies commonly to tableaux vivants 
 and pageants for royal entries. Only after that date are 
 dramatic texts called " mysteries," and even then the 
 term is extended to include plays of no religious content 
 whatever, as, for instance, the Mystere du Siege d* Orleans. 
 "Mysterium" (or "mystery") and "ministerium" ("me- 
 tier " or " office") were confounded in the usage of the 
 middle ages ; and it is uncertain whether the dramatic 
 nomenclature derives originally from the act or minis- 
 terium of public worship and industrial function, or from 
 the sacred nature of the " mystery " symbolised in the 
 elevation of the Host at the critical moment of the Mass. 
 Of the earlier religious plays, such as the twelfth- 
 century Adam, and the thirteenth-century St. Nicholas, 
 I have already spoken. The collective mysteries fall 
 into three cycles : that of the Old Testament, that of the 
 New Testament, and that of the Apostles and the later 
 saints.
 
 2i 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The first of these, le Mysore du Viel Testament^ con- 
 sists of 44,325 verses. It was compiled from pieces 
 written by many authors, which had been accumulating 
 up to and during the fifteenth century, and was printed 
 by Pierre le Dru about the year 150x3. It was played 
 entire by the Confreres de la Passion at the Hotel de 
 Flandres in 1542; and it took twenty consecutive per- 
 formances to exhaust the material. The price of ad- 
 mission was two sous; that of a box for the season, thirty 
 'ecus. It covers several mysteries which dramatised the 
 sacred history of the world to the reign of Solomon, and 
 also separate plays of Job, Tobias, Susanna and Daniel, 
 Judith and Esther. 
 
 The Nouveau Testament is preserved in seven distinct 
 versions, called Passions, the best known of which, com- 
 prising 34,574 verses, was written by Arnoul Greban, about 
 1450. In each of these versions the whole life of Christ is 
 presented ; but several other plays present portions of the 
 life, the Nativity, the Passion, properly so called, and 
 the Resurrection. Of these special mysteries the most 
 celebrated is the Passion of Jean Michel, which elaborated 
 that particular portion of the cycle of Greban. 1 1 was writ- 
 ten about the end of the fifteenth century, and surpasses 
 in occasional moments of sublimity all others of its kind. 
 
 The third series of plays comprises the Actes des 
 Apotres by Arnoul Greban and his brother Simon, and 
 some forty mysteries of separate saints composed by other 
 authors. The Apdtres in length staggers the imagination. 
 It has 61,968 lines. When it was played at Bourges in 
 1536, it ran through forty consecutive days; and when at 
 Paris in 1545, it occupied the Sundays for seven months. 
 In both cities it was witnessed by crowds of all ranks and 
 classes.
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 215 
 
 Petit de Julleville, 1 from whom these facts are drawn, 
 gives us also a description of the manner of performance 
 at Valenciennes. Here, in 1547, the Passion was played, 
 and from a painting at the beginning of the manuscript 
 of the mystery one discovers the arrangement of the 
 stage. It was of enormous size and provided with tieux, 
 or stationary scenery ; a pavilion with columns above, 
 which was Paradise, where God was enthroned and 
 surrounded by the four Virtues, Justice, Peace, Wis- 
 dom, Mercy ; a wall with a gate, figuring Nazareth ; a 
 second pavilion enclosing an altar and the ark of the 
 covenant, the Temple ; another wall with gate, tower, 
 and house, Jerusalem ; and so on: the Palace, House 
 of Bishops, Golden Gate, the Lake of Tiberias, Hell 
 and Limbo. These, however, were but a few of the 
 many structures required for the mystery. The per- 
 formers were not, as in England, exclusively of the various 
 trades or crafts of these provincial towns, but of all 
 degrees, nobles, the lower clergy, magistrates, lawyers, 
 as well as minor townsfolk. Even girls and little chil- 
 dren occasionally took part. At Metz the character of 
 St. Catherine was so well acted by a glazier's daughter, 
 who not only had the 2300 lines on the tip of her tongue, 
 but made people weep with the pathos of her utterance, 
 that she was out of hand married by a rich nobleman, 
 Henri de Latour, " who fell in love with her because of 
 the great delight he took in her performance." The 
 chronicles abound with testimony to the enthusiasm of 
 the audiences and the devotion of the actors. The 
 realism with which the latter played is illustrated by the 
 fact that in the Passion play of Metz, in 1437, both the 
 
 1 Hist, de la langue ft de la lift. Franf., II, 405 ; Le Theatre en 
 France, pp. 1-35.
 
 216 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 vicar who was crucified as Christ, and the chaplain who 
 hanged himself for Judas, came so near dying that they 
 had to be taken down and rubbed with restoratives. 
 
 In Paris, from 1402, the sacred plays were under the 
 complete control of the association of bourgeois and 
 craftsmen mentioned above as the Confr'erie de la Pas- 
 sion. To them may be accredited the establishment of 
 the first permanent theatre ; for they played within doors 
 and in a fixed place, first 1'Hopital de la Trinite, then 
 1'Hotel de Flandres, and finally 1'Hotel de Bourgogne, 
 from their inception until the close of the sixteenth 
 century. During that century numerous other " mys- 
 teries " were composed, many of them on purely secular 
 themes, like Gringoire's Mystire de Saint Louis. Of 
 the various kinds some twenty specimens still exist. 
 
 The French mysteries aim more deliberately at enter- 
 tainment than their analogues of England. Nothing, 
 perhaps, illustrates this difference more conclusively than 
 a review of the subjects included in the French cycle of 
 the Old Testament, but not in any of the English. 
 Some cater to the vulgar with situations that are prurient, 
 salacious, and openly obscene ; of such are the wooing 
 of the daughters of men, the Cainites, by the Sethite 
 sons of God, the exposure of Noah in his drunkenness, 
 Pharaoh's attempt upon Sarah and his consequent malady, 
 the lusting of the Sodomites, Leah's deception of Jacob, 
 the rape of Dinah, the intrigue of Reuben and Billah, 
 with little Joseph in the role of spy and informer, 
 Joseph and Potiphar's wife, the amours of David and 
 Bethsabe beside the details of which the Cornish play 
 shrinks into virtuous crudity, Ammon's incestuous pas- 
 sion, and the conspiracy of the elders against Susanna.
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 217 
 
 Other plays of the Viel Testament emphasise the 
 marvels of legend and scripture. The mission of Seth 
 was included, as we have seen, in the cycle of Cornwall, 
 but in no other British collection. In the French it 
 is more gorgeously dramatised, and with parallel scenes 
 of the heavenly and the earthly paradise, the process 
 divine as well as human. Wonders such as the trans- 
 lation of Enoch, Esau's vision of the three " arbres de la 
 croix et les oyseaulx qui les adorent," the metamorphosis 
 of Lot's wife, the conjurations of the Witch of Endor, and 
 the apparition of Samuel, are to be found in none of 
 the cycles of Britain. Nor the sensational sequel of the 
 murder of Abel in the wanderings and bestial death of 
 Cain ; nor the romance of Samson and Delilah, nor 
 the adventures of David's youth the contest with 
 Goliath, the friendship with Jonathan, the harping before 
 Saul, the winning of Michal, and the flight from Saul's 
 jealous hatred. 
 
 The English cycles touch, with a pathos as tender 
 as that of their French contemporary, upon the sacrifice 
 of Isaac and the griefs of the Blessed Virgin, but none 
 of them seizes such possibilities as are presented by the 
 death of Saul and the untimely end of Absalom. In 
 the French cycle, few scenes are more delicately con- 
 trived than David's lament over Saul and Jonathan, and 
 his futile agony for the rebellious, beautiful son, whom 
 Joab has smitten and slain : 
 
 Mon filz Absalon, 
 
 Absalon, mon filz ! 
 Las! perdu t'avon, 
 Mon filzAbsalon ! 
 Et fault que soyon 
 
 En grief dueil confis,
 
 218 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Mon filz Absalon, 
 Absalon, mon filz. 
 
 In the play DC Abraham et de ses cnfants, the pathos 
 of which I have spoken is enhanced by a realism of 
 detail, a pastoral atmosphere and environment unap- 
 proached by the dramatists of England. I do not say 
 that the thrilling simplicity of the Brome play is sur- 
 passed by the art of the French, but merely that the 
 natural possibilities are elaborated by the French play- 
 wright with a skill, which even if somewhat sophisticated, 
 imparts a charm both exquisite and peculiar. 
 
 The play opens with a pretty domestic scene in which 
 Abraham and Sarah express their gratitude to God for 
 the child of their old age and lesson the little Isaac in his 
 duty to the Divine. We next are admitted to the celes- 
 tial council, where, after long deliberation of God, Justice, 
 and Mercy, the trial of Abraham's righteousness is de- 
 creed. Restored then to the humble affairs of earth, we 
 hear the patriarch summoning Ishmael and Eliezer to 
 lead the sheep to pasture, and Ishmael whistling the 
 dogs to their work, "Come, Clabault, Tourin, Patault, 
 Veloux, Satin, out with us, out for the day." Off they 
 run ; and little Isaac, left behind, turns to his mother : 
 
 Mother Sarah, give me please 
 
 Leave to follow after these. 
 Sarah. Yes, my child, if your father will ; 
 
 His word is ever my word still. 
 Isaac. Father, let me hasten away 
 
 Whither the shepherds have gone to-day, 
 
 Out with the sheep, the spot I know. 
 Abraham. Then, my boy, God bless you, go. 
 
 I '11 mount my donkey and follow anon 
 
 There where you and the rest are gone.
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 219 
 
 Isaac. So, here goes Isaac ; away, away ! 
 
 [Isaac va aux champs. 
 
 Eliezer. Ishmael ! 
 
 Ishmael. What is it ; what do you say ? 
 
 Eliezer. Lo, Isaac afar ; he comes I see 
 
 To be with us. 
 Ishmael. Then let us three 
 
 Contrive some sport. 
 Eliezer. Well said. Devise 
 
 Which is the best. With you it lies. 
 
 \_Isaac arrives. 
 
 Isaac. God bless you, shepherds ! 
 Ishmael. The same to you, 
 
 Isaac ! 
 Isaac. Hst y fellows, now tell me true, 
 
 What kind of a game do you think we '11 play 
 
 To while the time ? 
 
 Ishmael. Chuck-farthing, I say. 
 
 Isaac. Oh, no, no ! At fuller ettes. 
 
 Eliezer. Not by a long shot. Tell you, let's 
 
 Have a good turn at picque en Romme ; 
 
 That 's the best fun. 
 Ishmael. Here 's for it ; come ! 
 
 We leave them playing and return to Abraham, who, 
 unwontedly taken with sleep, tells Sarah that he '11 have 
 a nap in the garden. Let her, meanwhile, see that the 
 donkey has his oats. Abraham, pillowing comfortably 
 his head upon a stone, composes himself for slumber ; 
 while we are transported once more to the Council in 
 Paradise. God, Justice, and Mercy determine to an- 
 nounce by Seraphim the news of their sad decision to 
 Abraham. With this angelic company we return. The 
 patriarch receives the order with horror and submission. 
 " Ah, Sarah," thinks he, " when you gave our sweet 
 Isaac leave to play in the fields, how little you thought
 
 220 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 what was about to befall." But he keeps to himself the 
 doom ; and mounting his donkey departs as with intent 
 to offer the customary sacrifice. We return to Paradise 
 to assist at still further argumentation concerning type 
 and antitype, Isaac and the Atonement for mankind. 
 Meanwhile Abraham, agonising and philosophising, rides. 
 And out in the pastures the unwitting victim still sports 
 with his playmates. At last, weary of games, picque en 
 Rommey crusoe, and the rest, they are betaking themselves 
 to song. 1 Says Isaac, 
 
 Cependant, chantons ung petit 
 Pour nous recreer. Voulez vous ? 
 
 But Ishmael replies, 
 
 Si j'avoye ma fleute a troys troux, 
 Dont je m'esbas en mon lourdoys, 
 Nonobstant que aye bien lourdz doitz, 
 Je sonneroye une chanson, 
 Ou vous danceriez tous au son, 
 Et n'eussiez de dancer envie. 
 
 And Eliezer likewise opines that had he only his pet bag- 
 pipe, reed of oaten straw, or viol, no harp could please 
 them more. Then Ishmael makes the best of things as 
 they are, and unaccompanied sings, 
 
 II n'est tel plaisir 
 Que estre a son desir 
 Couche et gesir 
 
 Parmy ses beaux champs, 
 Fleurettes choisir, 
 Jouer a loysir 
 Sans nul desplaisir, 
 
 Et passer le temps ; 
 
 1 I have availed myself of the variants as given in the Mistere as pub- 
 lished fur the Societe des Anciens Textes Fran^ais.
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 221 
 
 and more of the meadows, and the songs of birds far 
 sweeter than the tinkle of the merchant's gold. Eliezer, 
 in turn, carols of care-free shepherds, and the snatch of 
 sleep under the vine or the eglantine : 
 
 Puis quant Tun s'esveille 
 Pour faire la veille, 
 Ung aultre sommeille 
 
 Et prent son repos ; 
 L'ung tire 1'oreille 
 A quelque bouteille 
 Soubz la verte treille 
 
 Et boit a pleins potz. 
 
 So they continue till Abraham, arriving, calls them to the 
 journey for the sacrifice ordered by the angel of the Lord. 
 What follows, interspersed as it is with further doc- 
 trinal proceedings in Paradise, is hardly less pathetic 
 than the best of the English plays. It is certainly more 
 imaginative and more skilfully versified. A triolet of 
 father and son, as Isaac lies bound for the slaughter, suf- 
 ficiently exemplifies the quality of the French treatment : 
 
 Abr. A Dieu, mon fi\z.^ 
 Isaac. A Dieu, mon pere. 
 
 Bende suys ; de bref je mourray ; 
 Plus ne voy la lumiere clere. 
 Abr. A Dieu, mon filz. v 
 Isaac. A Dieu, mon pere. 
 
 Recommandes moy a ma mere ; 
 Jamais je ne la reverray. 
 Abr. A Dieu, mon filz. ^ 
 Isaac. A Dieu, mon pere. 
 
 Bende suys; de bref je mourray. 
 
 Delicate, but how different from the poignant simplicity 
 of the Chester play and its congener, the Brome. Says 
 the Isaac of the former:
 
 222 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Father, greete well my brethren yinge, 
 And praye my mother of her blessinge, 
 I come noe more under her wynge, 
 
 Fare well for ever and aye ; 
 But, father, I crye you of mercye, 
 For all that ever I trespassed to thee, 
 Forgeven, father, that it maye be 
 
 Untell Domesdaie. 
 
 Still the three plays were evidently derived from some 
 common original, French or Anglo-Norman. 
 
 The pathos of the Abraham play is not more notable 
 than the sublimity, realism, sometimes the buffoonery, of 
 other of the French mysteries. The Passion plays, dis- 
 tinctively so-called, are noble in sentiment as well as style. 
 The birth of Moses and his discovery by Pharaoh's 
 daughter, a subject neglected by the English playwrights, 
 is developed with a realism that is, to say the least, pretty; 
 and the building of the Tower of Babel gives opportunity 
 for a graphic illustration of the manners and conversation 
 of mediaeval craftsmen. As for buffoonery, no English- 
 man ever dreamed of exploiting the bigamous Lamech, 
 the impious Ham, the daughters of Cain, the lecherous 
 accusers of Susanna, the hordes of accessory demons, 
 knaves, mendicants, and fools as they are exploited in the 
 Viel Testament. 
 
 In characterisation, the French playwrights leave the 
 English far behind all but the Master of Wakefield at 
 his best. The perilous femininity of Eve, the cunning of 
 Rebecca, the cruelty of Judah, the innate humanity of 
 Reuben, the provoking piety and self-conscious superi- 
 ority of Joseph, the heroism of Judith, are conceptions 
 of an art no longer fumbling or na'ive. The characters, 
 principal and secondary, are mirrored from the real world ; 
 they live the mediaeval life in all its detail of pompous or
 
 THE MYSTERIES IN FRANCE 223 
 
 of " vulgar " manners ; they indulge in the luxury of 
 sincerity, and they speak, when appropriate, the simple 
 and natural patois of the folk. 
 
 In inventive imagination and dramatic skill, the dif- 
 ficult manipulation of extended plots, numerous person- 
 ages and varied tableaux, of parallel scenes, of surprises 
 and of critical moments, the plays of Bathsheba and 
 David, Judith, Tobias, and Daniel prophesy the tech- 
 nique if not the rhetoric of Corneille and Racine. One 
 cannot shut his eyes to the disparity existent between Eng- 
 lish miracles and the Elizabethan drama. In France ; 
 between mystery and classical drama no such gulf was 
 fixed. This is due to the earlier cultivation there of 
 diversified poetic forms, to the fact that the French 
 mysteries as we have them were collated and revised as 
 late as the middle of the fifteenth century, and to the ulti- 
 mate control of their representation by literary and dra- 
 matic societies possessed of the culture and influence that 
 marked the famous Confrerie de la Passion of Paris. 
 
 I have more than once mentioned the easy versification 
 of these plays. Elaborate forms also abound : triolets, 
 rondels, ballades, and the chant royal with double refrain. 
 If it were not for lack of space, some of these should be 
 quoted. But I content myself reluctantly with mere ref- 
 erence to such as the ballades of Seth, Cain, and Pharaoh ; 
 the rondel of Esau, the triolet on the Death of Abel, and 
 the chant royal of Judith and the Bethulians. 
 
 The sources of the French cycles are in general the 
 same as those of the English ; and the latter will be dis- 
 cussed in a later chapter. The Chester cycle, indeed, in 
 its first five plays has directly borrowed from early ver- 
 sions of various French mysteries. 1 
 1 See Appendix A.
 
 224 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 CURIOUS TRADITIONS IN THE CYCLES 
 
 THE ANGELIC HIERARCHY AND THE FALL OF LUCIFER 
 
 CERTAIN of the miracle plays are especially interesting 
 because they develop traditions that have but slight basis 
 in scriptural narrative, or none at all, and still present 
 them as material of common acceptance by the religious 
 and literary consciousness of the time. 
 
 The Fall of Lucifer offered to our forefathers oppor- 
 tunity for a dramatic exordium unusual, mysterious, sub- 
 lime, and spectacular in the extreme. All the English 
 cycles avail themselves of it, but none with nicer respect 
 for histrionic arrangement and detail than that of Chester. 
 
 God is on his throne : Ego sum Alpha et Omega y primus 
 et ultimus, 
 
 It is my will it should be so. 
 It is, it was, it shall be thus : 
 I am great God, gracious 
 Which never had beginning. 
 
 Wisdom, beauty, might of majesty are magnified in him 
 who is the Trinity, " Never but one, And ever one in 
 three." Now will he build, and here, a boundless Bliss : 
 
 A heaven without ending ; 
 And cast a comely compass 
 By comely creation 
 Nine orders of angels 
 Be ever at once descending !
 
 CURIOUS TRADITIONS 225 
 
 With the rushing of many wings and the gleam of white 
 and gold, and solemn strains of music louder and louder 
 growing, and a great burst of light, the new-created hosts 
 of angels surround the throne, singing Te deum laudamus^ 
 te dominum confitemur. 
 
 There is a silence. And Lucifer begins: 
 
 Lord, through thy might thou hast us wrought 
 
 Nine orders here, that we may see 
 
 Cherubin and seraphin, through thy Grace, 
 
 Thrones and dominations in bliss to be, 
 
 With principates, that order bright, 
 
 And potestates in blissful light, 
 
 Also virtu tes through thy great might, 
 
 Angel also archangele. 
 
 Nine orders now here be witterly, 
 
 That thou hast made here full right ; 
 
 In thy bliss full bright they be, 
 
 And I the principal, Lord, here in thy sight. 
 
 The Almighty straightway admonishes Lucifer and Lu- 
 cifer's other self, Lightborn, that they be lowly : 
 
 Exalt you not too excellent 
 
 Into high exaltation; 
 
 Look that you tend righteously; 
 
 For hence I will be wending. 
 
 The world that is both void and vain, 
 
 I form in the formation 
 
 With a dungeon of darkeness 
 
 Which never shall have ending. 
 
 Thereupon the world has being, though still formless; 
 and hell yawns black beneath. Angels and archangels 
 praise their " Prince withouten peer," and the orders nine 
 chant the Dignus Dei. The Creator then disposes the 
 orders nine according to their degree. Lucifer he seats 
 next unto himself, proclaiming him governor, but warn- 
 
 15
 
 226 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 ing him, " Touch not my throne by none assent." And 
 to all he says : 
 
 Each one of you keep well his place, . . . 
 For I will wend and take my trace, 
 And see this bliss in every tower." 
 
 Once the splendour of Divinity is withdrawn Lucifer's 
 superiority to his fellows is manifest: 
 
 Aha that I am wondrous bright, 
 Among you all shining full clear; 
 Of all neaven I bear the light 
 Though God himself, an he were here. 
 All in this throne if that I were 
 Then should I be as wise as he ; 
 What say you, angels, all that be here ? 
 Some comfort soon, now let me see. 
 
 From one order and another without regard to degree 
 comes the remonstrance : from virtues, cherubim, domi- 
 nations, principalities, seraphim, thrones, powers 
 
 We will not assent unto your pride . . . 
 This pride will turn to great distress . . . 
 Cast away all wicked pride. 
 
 But Lucifer is consumed with the brightness of his glory, 
 and Lightborn his brother urges him on. " In faith, you 
 shall sit on this throne ; shall be wise as God himself: 
 
 The brightness of your body clear 
 Is brighter than God a thousand fold." 
 
 Again the holy angels plead but Lucifer: 
 
 Go hence . . . 
 
 Above great God I will me guide, 
 And see myself here as I ween ; 
 I am peerless and prince of pride, 
 For God himself snines not so sheen.
 
 CURIOUS TRADITIONS 227 
 
 He takes the awful seat : 
 
 Here will I sit now in his stead. 
 And Lightborn : 
 
 I am next of the same degree, . . . 
 All orders may assent to thee and me. 
 
 Dominations: Alas, why make you this great offence ? . . . 
 
 Lucifer: I rede you all make reverence, 
 
 That am replete with heavenly grace. 
 Though God come, I will not hence, 
 But sit right here before his face. 
 
 GOD enters 
 
 Deus. Say, what array do you make here ? 
 Who is your chief and principal ? 
 I made thee angel and Lucifier, 
 And here thou wouldst be lord of all ; 
 Therefore, I charge this order clear 
 Fast from this place look that you fall . . . 
 For your foul pride to hell you shall ! 
 [Now Lucifer and Lightborn fall. ~\ 
 
 And in the abyss they lie, assailing one the other, no 
 longer angels, but demons, bewailing their lot, knowing 
 well that in hell-fire they shall abide " Till the day of 
 doom, till beames [trumpets] blow." But even so, one 
 comfort has Lucifer : 
 
 Therefore I shall for his sake 
 Shew mankind great envy ; 
 As soon as ever he can him make, 
 I shall send him to destroy ! 
 
 God, nevertheless, will have his intent : 
 
 That I first thought, yet so will I ... 
 A full fair image we have y-meant, 
 That the same seed shall multiply . . .
 
 228 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Man, accordingly, is created as a new or tenth order, to 
 supply the place of the angels who had fallen. 
 
 Some idea of the variety and antiquity of the materials 
 that constituted what one may call the literary conscious- 
 ness of the middle ages may be obtained if one follow, 
 even in a general way, the history of this tradition to its 
 sources. Where, for instance, arose the conception of 
 these orders nine or ten of angels, and of the sequence 
 of their creation ; whence the revolt and fall of Lucifer 
 and of his cohorts ; whence the attribution of his revolt 
 to pride, and the story of man's creation as a substitute 
 for the fallen host ? 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE " ANGELIC ORDERS " 
 
 First, for the hierarchy of celestial hosts. This is 
 given in the Chester play as of nine orders, cher- 
 ubim, seraphim, thrones, dominations, principalities, 
 powers, virtues, angels, and archangels. In the first 
 York play, too, though the names of the orders are not 
 given, they are nine in number ; and in the seventh play 
 of the same cycle we are informed that of each of those 
 nine orders the tenth part fell in Lucifer's revolt. In 
 the first Wakefield play, however, a variant is introduced ; 
 for Lucifer says : 
 
 X orders in heven were 
 Of angels that had offyce sere ; 
 Of each order, in thare degree 
 The X parte fell downe with me. 
 
 These four plays were composed during the last three 
 quarters of the fourteenth century ; and since the famous 
 cyclic poem of sacred history, the Cursor Mundi, which 
 was written as early as 1300, mentions both orders nine
 
 THE ANGELIC ORDERS 229 
 
 and orders ten, it is not impossible that the miracles of 
 Chester, York, and Wakefield derived their versions of 
 the story from that poem. That they drew upon it for 
 other material is well known. But we are not just now 
 concerned with that question ; we are not looking for the 
 immediate, but the remote, source of the tradition. How 
 old are these factors of the mediaeval consciousness ? 
 Are they of ecclesiastical derivation ; and if so, of 
 what channels other than the canonical books of Holy 
 Scripture ? 
 
 The story may be traced in both its versions through 
 the literature and theology of the middle and dark ages 
 back to the fourth century, where we find Basil the 
 Great and Gregory of Nazianzus 1 maintaining, on the 
 basis of scriptural authority, the conception of an angelic 
 hierarchy. The latter of these goes so far indeed as to 
 enumerate in one of his Orations "certain angels and 
 archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, 
 brightnesses, and ascensions, and incorporeal mighti- 
 nesses (or virtues)." 2 This enumeration is doubly in- 
 teresting, first, because it is not derived directly from the 
 scriptural canon, the Nazianzen to the contrary, not- 
 withstanding (but of that later) ; secondly, because it is 
 the first mention in Christian literature of nine orders 
 and of their names. St. Augustine, writing not long 
 after that, about the year 400, professes ignorance of 
 " that supernal and most beatific society, its distinctions, 
 and its names " ; but the Pseudo-Dionysius, a century 
 
 1 See Hagenbach, History of Doctrines, II, 45. 
 
 3 d-yyeXAovs rivas KCU ap^ayyc'Xous, $povovs, Kvpion/rasj ap^as, lav- 
 (rt'asj \anirp6nrjTas, dva^Scurets, voepas 8wa/is rj voas. Or at. , xx vi ii, 3 1 . 
 In what follows from other authors, I have kept the same correspondents 
 for Greek words.
 
 230 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 later still, in his Celestial Hierarchy, undertakes not only 
 to distinguish by name and quality, but by precise 
 analysis of rank. There are three classes of the heav- 
 enly host, he says, and these are subdivided into three 
 orders apiece : the first, seraphim, cherubim, thrones ; 
 the second, dominions, and virtues or mightinesses, and 
 powers ; the third, principalities, archangels, and angels. 
 This might be construed as a rearrangement of the list 
 of Gregory Nanzianzen, with a substitution of sera- 
 phim for ascensions, which is but natural, since the 
 seraphs are the six-winged creatures that ascend nearest 
 to God ; and of cherubim for brightnesses. I think, 
 however, that the Pseudo-Dionysius went to an earlier 
 source, and of that something will presently be said. 
 His "hierarchy" was adopted, in the sixth century, by 
 no less an authority than Gregory the Great, but with 
 two changes. In one discourse Gregory alters the rela- 
 tive position of virtues (or mightinesses), powers, and 
 principalities ; and for this Dante, some six hundred 
 years later, takes him seriously to task. In another, he 
 conveys, by a certain looseness of statement, the idea 
 that the order of Lucifer which fell was from the first 
 distinct from the nine which remained loyal. Hence the 
 conflicting tradition of ten orders that re-emerges in the 
 Later Genesis and other Anglo-Saxon poems of the ninth 
 century ; and afterwards in the sermons of ^Elfric, who 
 refers to Gregory the Great as his authority, saying that 
 the orders were originally ten, "angels, archangels, 
 virtues, powers, principalities, dominions, thrones, cheru- 
 bim, seraphim, and another which fell. Then was man- 
 kind made to fill the room of the lost order." 
 
 1 For particulars, see Ungemach, Quellen d. funf trsten Chester Pfays, 
 pp. 18-24.
 
 THE ANGELIC ORDERS 231 
 
 This explains the twofold tradition and traces the con- 
 ception of a hierarchy as far back as the Pseudo-Dionysius 
 (c. 500), and the Nazianzen (A. D. 300-390). These in 
 turn profess to have drawn their inspiration from the 
 Holy Scriptures ; and the profession is not wholly to be 
 rejected. For in Isaiah there appear the six-winged ser- 
 aphim ; in Ezekiel the cherubim and the four wheels full 
 of eyes (the ophanim) ; and in Daniel the angelic hosts 
 that surround the Ancient of Days and the flaming 
 wheels. Revelation repeats the angelic host and the six- 
 winged creatures " full of eyes within," and adds the 
 seven lamps of fire that are Seven Spirits of God, and 
 the thrones of the four and twenty elders about him who 
 sat upon the Throne ; Colossians mentions thrones, do- 
 minions, principalities, and powers ; Epbesians, princi- 
 palities, powers, mightinesses (virtues) and dominions ; 
 and other of the epistles rehearse with variation two, 
 three, or four of the same celestial orders. 1 But the 
 enumerations of the Old Testament writers are both in- 
 definite and meagre ; and in the New Testament no single 
 enumeration contributes more than four of the orders to 
 the list of the Nazianzen, the Pseudo-Dionysius, or 
 Gregory the Great. It is therefore much more likely 
 that the carefully organised hierarchies with which these 
 authors furnish us were derived from neither of these 
 sources, but from some authority at once more explicit 
 and comprehensive. This I believe to be the newly 
 discovered apocalypse, called the Secrets of Enoch, which 
 not only synopsises all earlier Hebrew fantasy concerning 
 the constitution of the heavenly places, but is itself the 
 source, sometimes even to words and their order, of the 
 
 1 Is. vi, I ; Ez. i and x ; Dan. vii, 9, 10 ; viii, 1 7-19 ; Rev. iv ; Col. i, 
 1 6 ; Epb. i, 21 ; iii, 10; Rom. viii, 38 ;/ Pet. iii, 22, etc.
 
 2 j2 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 passages from the New Testament epistles, cited above. 
 Since there is also a Book of Enoch of somewhat earlier 
 origin, known as the Ethiopic, it is sometimes found con- 
 venient to designate the Secrets as the Slavonic. This 
 because, as its recent editor 1 tells us, it was for more than 
 twelve hundred years unknown save in Russia. " The 
 book," he continues, " was much read in many circles in 
 the first three centuries of the Church, and has left more 
 traces of its influence than many a well-known book of 
 the same (apocalyptic) literature." It purports to be a 
 series of visions attributed to Enoch, the seventh from 
 Adam ; and is essentially different from the Ethiopic 
 Book (170-64 B. c.), though in certain passages it is based 
 upon the older apocalypse. 
 
 Some parts of this Secrets of Enoch are assigned to a 
 date as early as 30 B. c., and they were originally of 
 Hebrew composition ; but the apocalypse, as a whole, was 
 cast into its present literary form in Greek by an Alexan- 
 drian Jew during the first fifty years of our era. While, 
 on the one hand, it displays familiarity with the historical 
 books of the Old Testament, the Psalms, and the books 
 of wisdom and prophecy, it anticipates, on the other, 
 both in material and style, utterances to be found in the 
 gospels, the epistles attributed to St. Paul and St. Peter, 
 and the Book of Revelation, the later Christian apoca- 
 lypses, the Sibylline Oracles and the Testaments of the 
 Twelve Patriarchs ; conceptions developed by Augustine, 
 Clement of Alexandria, Philo, Origen, and other of the 
 Christian Fathers; and traditions delivered by the un- 
 known author of that strange product of the fifth 
 century, the Book of Adam and Eve. 
 
 1 The Book of the Secrets of Enoch. Tr. by W. R. Morfill ; ed. by 
 R. H. Charles.
 
 THE ANGELIC ORDERS 233 
 
 In a chapter of the earlier apocalypse of Enoch, 
 known as the Ethiopic, 1 the seer, speaking of the glorious 
 judgment of the heavenly ones by the Lord of Spirits, had 
 said: "And He will call on all the host of the heavens 
 and all the holy ones above, and the host of God, the 
 cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, and all the angels of 
 power, and all the angels of principalities, and the Elect 
 One, and the other powers on the earth, and over the 
 water, on that day." This passage was written somewhere 
 between 94 and 64 B. c. It gathers materials from Isaiah 
 and Ezekiel and the Psalms for a more definite enumer- 
 ation of the heavenly hosts. But it is in the Secrets of 
 Enoch, in a passage based upon this, that, some thirty 
 years before the Christian era, the heavenly hosts receive 
 their most majestic and their first systematic elaboration. 
 
 " There was a very wise man and a worker of great 
 things : God loved him, and received him, so that he 
 should see the heavenly abodes, the kingdom of the 
 wise, great, inconceivable and never-changed God ". . . . 
 So begins the Enoch of the Secrets. " Hear me, my 
 children, for I do not know whither I am going, or 
 what awaits me. . . . Make confident your hearts in the 
 fear of God." Thus speaking the wise man is translated 
 by angels. He sees the denizens of the various heavens 
 to the sixth, the Place of the Righteous and the Terrible 
 Places, and finally the Heaven that is highest and the 
 seventh: 2 
 
 " And I saw there a very great Light, and all the fiery 
 hosts of archangels, and incorporeal powers ; and do- 
 minions and principalities and powers (over things cor- 
 poreal) ; and cherubim and seraphim and thrones ; and 
 
 1 Ixi, 10. 
 
 3 Secrets of Enoch, xx, 1-4. Tr. by Morfill.
 
 2j 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the watchfulness of many eyes." Here the " very great 
 Light" is the Light of the Holy Ones above the an- 
 gels par excellence as separate from the host of the heav- 
 ens. Just so in the Ethiopia Enoch, we have " He will 
 call on all the host of the heavens and all the holy ones 
 above." And the " incorporeal powers " are the virtues 
 of Gregory or the principalities of Dionysius : it matters 
 little which. Excluding the " watchfulness of many eyes," 
 we have in this the original of the nine orders of angels 
 known to the early Fathers and the fathers of the medi- 
 aeval stage. The orders are even arranged in the ternaries 
 from which those of Dionysius, Gregory the Great, and 
 Dante have descended: angels, archangels, and virtues; 
 dominions, principalities, and powers; cherubim and ser- 
 aphim and Thrones. 
 
 In the " many eyes " we have that tenth order which 
 all the three-times-three of Dante and the theologians 
 could not suppress the order of the ophanim, those 
 living wheels of eyes that go beside the cherubim of 
 Ezekiel's vision " As for their rings they were so high 
 that they were dreadful ; and their rings were full of eyes 
 round about them four." " There were ten troops," 
 proceeds the Seer of the Secrets , "a station of brightness ; 
 and I was afraid and troubled with a great terror. . . . 
 And all the heavenly hosts having approached stood 
 on the ten steps according to their rank ; and made 
 obeisance to the Lord. And so they proceeded to their 
 places in joy and mirth and in boundless light, singing 
 songs with low and gentle voices, and gloriously serving 
 him. " 
 
 The traditions of the orders, with which our forefathers 
 of the miracle plays were familiar, those of Erigena and 
 and of the Cursor Mundi, and other mediaeval
 
 THE ANGELIC ORDERS 235 
 
 poems, are, therefore, descended from Hebrew apoca- 
 lypses of the century preceding the foundation of Chris- 
 tianity. Strange to think that out of wells of fancy, yes, 
 of inspiration, so remote, so long discredited by the very 
 church that fostered the liturgical plays of our mediaeval 
 ancestors, those ancestors should have drunk draughts 
 of poetry in simple faith that they were draughts of 
 dogma originating in the Christian church. Still stranger 
 to reflect that out of this non-canonical apocalyptic litera- 
 ture proceeded much other that is most sublime and 
 poetically true in the canon as accepted by that church. 
 Religion, in her mysterious avatars, is mother and foster- 
 mother of more children of the House Beautiful than we 
 moderns ordinarily apprehend. 
 
 From the same unconsidered source flows the allied 
 tradition also, that man was created not " a little lower 
 than the angels," but as the miracle plays have it, an 
 order like unto them. " For man," says the Ethiopic 
 Enoch* " was created exactly like the angels to the in- 
 tent that he should continue righteous and pure ; and 
 death which destroys everything could not have taken 
 hold of him, but through this their knowledge (knowl- 
 edge of the bitter and the sweet imparted by evil an- 
 gels) they are perishing." And in the somewhat more 
 recent Secrets of Enoch 2 the words of God run thus: 
 "On the sixth day, I ordered my Wisdom to make man 
 . . . and I placed him upon the earth ; like a second 
 angel, in an honourable, great, and glorious way." 
 
 That the angels were created on the first day, as the 
 
 cycles of Chester and York inform us, is another tradition 
 
 not found in the books of the scriptural canon. It 
 
 derives from the Book of Jubilees, a kind of revision and 
 
 1 Book of Enoch, Ixix, 1 1 . 2 Seer. Enoch, xxx, 8, 1 1 .
 
 236 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 enlargement, or Targum, of Genesis and Exodus, written 
 originally in Hebrew over a hundred years before Christ. 1 
 This story, as well as that of the subsequent construction 
 of Hell, descended to the Cursor Mundi and the miracle 
 plays, by way of Gregory of Nazianzus and his younger 
 contemporary, St. Augustine. Of these the former, in- 
 deed, was of the opinion that the angels were the entire 
 rational world created prior to the world of sense or 
 matter 2 ; but St. Augustine held that while they are 
 themselves the light which was created in the beginning 
 before all other creatures, this one day of light included 
 the other days of creation. 8 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE " FALL OF LUCIFER " 
 
 Of the splendour of Lucifer, his pride and rebellion, his 
 fall with those whom he had seduced, and his malignity 
 against man the tradition is even more ancient. The 
 pride of the morning-star and his rebellion against the 
 God of Light was poetry of Babylonian myth long before 
 Abram left Ur of the Chaldees to seek him out a new 
 country in the West. The followers of Zoroaster, too, 
 had their doctrine of the seven heavens and of a hell for 
 the spirits of defection. The sources of the antagonism 
 between the fallen spirits and the human usurpers of their 
 room are indeed principally extra-biblical. 
 
 It is in an ode denunciatory of Sennacherib,* which 
 some post-exilic poet has splendidly interpolated into the 
 prophecy of the older Isaiah, that the Hebrew conscious- 
 
 1 Jub. ii, 2 ; edited by R. H. Charles. 
 
 * Greg. Naz., Or at, xxxviii, 9. 
 
 De. Civ. Dei, xi, 9, quoted by Cursor, 1. 360; Hagenbach, H'utory 
 qfDtctrines, II, 43-45. 
 
 4 Isaiah xiv, 1 2-2 1 .
 
 THE FALL OF LUCIFER 237 
 
 ness of the Lucifer legend first finds such expression as 
 we still possess. Likening the long-since murdered Assy- 
 rian, the conqueror of Hezekiah, to " Lucifer, son of the 
 morning," this poet cries " How art thou fallen from 
 heaven ! . . . For thou hast said in thy heart, I will ascend 
 into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of 
 God : I will sit upon the mount of the congregation, in 
 the sides of the north : I will ascend above the heights 
 of the clouds ; I will be like the most High. Yet thou 
 shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." 
 
 These star-like angels, Lucifer the arch-conspirator, his 
 camp in the sides of the north, and his fall to the stones 
 of the pit, a legend learned by a Hebrew exile prob- 
 ably from his Persian deliverers, in the fifth or sixth 
 century before Christ, are the ultimate inspiration of the 
 Anglo-Saxon Caedmon and the dramatists of Chester and 
 York. But the legend had yet to receive the impress 
 of many minds before it reached the religious and artistic 
 consciousness of the middle ages. 
 
 No work of pre-Christian authorship is more gorgeous 
 with description of the origin and early fable of the 
 universe than the Ethiopic Enoch. "In Genesis v, 24, 
 it is said of Enoch that he walked with God. This 
 expression was taken in later times to mean not only that 
 he led a godly life, but also that he was the recipient 
 of superhuman knowledge. It was not unnatural, there- 
 fore, that an apocalyptic literature should begin to cir- 
 culate under his name in the centuries when such 
 literature was rife." With the visions and similitudes 
 attributed to Enoch " all the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment were familiar, and were more or less influenced 
 by them in thought and diction. The book is quoted as 
 a genuine production of Enoch by S. Jude, and as
 
 238 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Scripture by S. Barnabas. The authors of the Book of 
 Jubilees , the Apocalypse of Baruch and IV. Ezra, laid it 
 under contribution. With the earlier Fathers and Apol- 
 ogists it had all the weight of a canonical book, but 
 toward the close of the third and the beginning of the 
 fourth centuries it began to be discredited, and finally 
 fell under the ban of the Church. Almost the latest 
 reference to it in the Early Church is made by George 
 Syncellus in his Chronography, about 800 A. D., who 
 has preserved for us some long passages in Greek. The 
 book was then lost sight of till 1773, when an Ethiopic 
 version of it was found in Abyssinia by Bruce." 1 This 
 apocalypse holds the reader with a rare fascination. Not 
 only for its wealth of traditional Hebrew, and other 
 oriental, sacred lore, its majestic visions and similitudes, 
 its opulent imagery and sonorous diction, but also for its 
 frequent anticipation of doctrines ordinarily supposed to 
 have originated with the foundation of Christianity and 
 the writers of the New Testament. It preaches a per- 
 sonal Messiah as " Christ," " the Anointed," " the Right- 
 eous," "the Elect," "the Son of Man"; it foresees the 
 resurrection of all Israelites (first taught, says Mr. 
 Charles, beyond possibility of doubt in Daniel, chapter 
 xii, 2 but here made a commonplace of Jewish theology), 
 the final judgment and the everlasting kingdom of the 
 Messiah ; and it develops the doctrine of " the angels 
 which kept not their first estate." With the last of these 
 teachings we are at present concerned. 
 
 It will be remembered that in Genesis there are pre- 
 served two versions of the Fall of the Angels, one assuming 
 
 1 R. H. Charles in the Gen. Introd. to his collated edition of the 
 Book of Enoch. Oxford: 1893. 
 
 a Written c. 164 B. c., according to Encyclopedia Biblica.
 
 - .,-e- 
 
 so o 
 o > 
 o o 
 
 \ 1 "r^Sewr^vV V\^ 

 
 THE FALL OF LUCIFER 239 
 
 their defection before the creation of man, as indicated by 
 the presence of the Serpent in the garden of Eden ; the 
 other implying that the Sons of God sinned first only 
 when they had looked upon the daughters of men and 
 seen that they were fair. The second of these versions 
 underlies the account given in the Ethiopic Book of 
 Enoch, but that account itself supplies many of the 
 particulars used by later fabulists to elaborate the other 
 tradition of the angelic catastrophe, viz. t that it was not 
 for lust but by arrogance and rebellion. 
 
 " And it came to pass," says Enoch, 1 whose eyes were 
 opened by God that he might see a vision of the Holy 
 One in the heavens, "when the children of men had 
 multiplied in those days, that beautiful and comely 
 daughters were born unto them. And the angels, the 
 sons of the heavens, saw and lusted after them, and 
 spake to one another, ' Come, now let us choose wives 
 from among the children of men and beget children.' ' 
 And they, who being immortal had not need to perpetuate 
 their race as do the mortals of the earth, took mortal 
 wives and taught them evil, and sinned themselves ; and 
 all the ways of man became corrupt. And the women 
 bore unto the angels giants, whose ghosts should in time 
 become the spirits of evil, walking to and fro upon the 
 earth. " And the Lord spake to Rafael, 2 ' Bind Azazel 
 (the chief offending son of the heavens) hand and foot, 
 and place him in the darkness : make an opening in the 
 desert, which is Dudael, and place him therein. And 
 place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him 
 with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover 
 his face that he may not see the light. And on the great 
 day of judgment he shall be cast into fire. . . . And I will 
 
 1 Book of Enoch , vi, 1-2. * Enoch x, 4-7.
 
 2 4 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 heal the earth, that all the children of men shall not perish 
 through all the secret things that the Watchers (from the 
 heavens) have disclosed and have taught their sons.'" 1 
 ..." And I went round," says Enoch, " to the place 
 of chaos. And I saw there something horrible ; I saw 
 neither a heaven above nor a firmly founded earth, but a 
 place chaotic and horrible. And here I saw seven stars 
 of the heaven bound together in it, like mountains, and 
 flaming as with fire. On this account I said, * For what 
 sin are they bound, and on what account have they been 
 cast in hither? ' Then spake Uriel, one of the holy 
 angels, who was with me and was chief over them, and 
 said, ' Wherefore dost thou ask, and why dost thou en- 
 quire and art curious ? These are the stars which have 
 transgressed the commandment of God, and are bound 
 here till ten thousand ages, the number of the days of 
 their guilt, are consummated.' And from thence I went 
 to another place which was still more horrible than the 
 former, and I saw a horrible thing. . . . And Uriel 
 spake to me, c This place is the prison of the angels, and 
 here they will be imprisoned for ever.' ' 
 
 Now these portions of the apocalypse were written 
 before 170 B. c. ; but the following interpolation, written 
 shortly before the birth of Christ, assigns a reason for 
 the punishment of the angels more consonant with the 
 tradition of rebellious pride. The angel of the eigh- 
 teenth chapter shows Enoch seven stars in a bottomless 
 pit, " stars like great burning mountains, and like spirits 
 which besought me. . . . ' This is,' said the angel, * where 
 heaven and earth terminate; it serves for a prison for the 
 stars of heaven and the host of heaven. And the stars 
 which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed 
 1 Enoch xxi, i-io.
 
 THE FALL OF LUCIFER 241 
 
 the commandment of God before their rising, because 
 they did not come forth at the appointed time.'" "And 
 again I saw," says the Enoch of Chapters Ixxxvi and 
 Ixxxviii, 1 " and behold a star fell from heaven . . and 
 behold I saw many stars cast themselves down from 
 heaven to that first star. . . . And the stars were bound 
 hand and foot and laid in the abyss." 
 
 In other apocalyptic books, such as the Slavonic 
 Secrets of Enoch y 30 B. .-50 A. D., and in the legal- 
 istic Book of Jubilees of a somewhat earlier possible 
 date, the story is similarly told. In the sixth chapter 
 of the Book of the Secrets, Enoch sees in the second 
 Heaven prisoners suspended, reserved for eternal judg- 
 ment. They are the angels who apostatised from the 
 Lord, and transgressed with their prince ; they are gloomy 
 m appearance more than the darkness of the earth, and 
 unceasingly they weep. In the twenty-ninth chapter, 
 which elaborates upon the Isaian ode, God says, " One 
 of these in the ranks of the Archangels, having turned 
 away with the rank below him, entertained an impossible 
 idea that he should make his throne higher than the 
 clouds over the earth, and should be equal in rank to 
 my power. And I hurled him from the heights with his 
 angels. And he was flying in the air continually, above 
 the abyss." 
 
 Filtering through devious channels, the conception of 
 the imprisoned angels reappears in the Testaments of 
 the Twelve Patriarchs (about I A. D.), in the Book of Rev- 
 elation (about 70-96 A. D.), in Luke (about 79-96 A. D.), 
 and in Jude, the author of which styles himself " the ser- 
 vant of Jesus Christ and brother of James," but in fact 
 lived about the end of the first, or in the second, 
 
 1 Written about B. c. 1 6 1 . 
 16
 
 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 century. Later still, the conception appears in the 
 Second Epistle General of Peter (probably the production 
 of the middle of the second century after Christ). 
 
 From the apocalypses of Enoch are descended the 
 famous verses of Jude t " The angels which kept not 
 their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath re- 
 served in everlasting chains under the darkness unto the 
 judgment of the great day ; " * and his " Enoch also, the 
 seventh from Adam, prophesied of these." 2 Hence, 
 also, the vision of St. John the Divine, of the dragon, 
 who with his tail drew the third part of the stars of 
 heaven and cast them to the earth. " And there 
 was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought 
 against the dragon ; and the dragon fought, and his an- 
 gels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found 
 any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast 
 out, that old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, which 
 deceived the whole world ; he was cast out into the 
 earth, and his angels were cast out with him." 8 Also that 
 other vision of the fifth angel who sounded, " and I saw 
 a star fall from heaven to earth, and to him was given 
 the key of the bottomless pit. . . . And they had a 
 king over them which is the angel of the bottomless pit, 
 whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in 
 the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon." 4 And the 
 words of Jesus to the Seventy, recorded by Luke (x, 18), 
 " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." 
 
 1 Jude 6; Enoch x, 5-13, and Seer. Enoch, vi. 
 
 * Jude 14; Enoch Ix, 8. 
 
 * Rev. xii ; Enoch Ixxxvi, I ; liv, 5-6 ; Ixix, 5, 6, and Seer. Enoch, 
 passim. For Michael, sec Enoch x, 11, and elsewhere. For Satan, 
 Seer. Enoch, xviii, 3 ; xxix, 4; xxxi, 4. 
 
 4 Rev. ix; xx ; Enoch xc, 24; Seer. Enoch, xlii, I.
 
 THE FALL OF LUCIFER 243 
 
 As we have seen, the biblical account in Genesis vi, and 
 some of the accounts in Jewish apocalyptic literature, 
 pointed to lasciviousness as the initium peccati. But from 
 the time when Chrysostom and St. Augustine in the 
 fourth century began to explain the commerce of the 
 Sons of God with the daughters of men in terms of 
 the intermarriage of the descendants of Seth, who were 
 righteous, with the daughters of the Cainites, who were 
 fair but carnal-minded, that explanation of the sin of the 
 angels was relegated to the background. Pride is the 
 motive advanced by Eusebius of Caesarea about the year 
 300, and to this Gregory of Nazianzus in the following 
 century adds " envy." It is in the hexameters of Bishop 
 Avitus, in the early sixth century, that the legend of an- 
 gelic insolence is first fully developed ; and in the Morals 
 and Homilies of Gregory the Great at the end of that 
 century the doctrine is elaborated. " The first and more 
 noble creature was the Angel who fell . . . and his first 
 folly was arrogance." Upon the testimony of these 
 two bishops, one of Vienne, the other of Rome, the 
 English tradition mainly rests. In the seventh century 
 Caedmon and Bede resume the story, the former to poet- 
 ise, the latter to instruct ; and the same influence is even 
 more marked in the Anglo-Saxon poem of the Later 
 Genesis and the Homilies of ^Ifric. This brings us 
 down to the beginning of the eleventh century. On 
 the continent, meanwhile, that devoted student of apoca- 
 lyptic literature, Syncellus, had written. He is the 
 forefather, with his Chronographia, about 800 A. D., of 
 the tribe of cyclic writers of traditional history to which 
 Peter Comestor and Jacopus de Voragine and the author 
 of the Curser o' Werld belong. But Syncellus, himself, 
 is the last to base directly on the Books of Enoch, and to
 
 244 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 retail the wantonness of the Sons of God. The others 
 adopt the tradition of Lucifer's pride ; though, indeed, 
 Satan is not generally identified by name with the Lucifer 
 of the Ode in Isaiah xvi, before the time of Anselm * 
 (1034-1093) Comestor in his Historia Scholastica calls 
 him Lucifer outright, and the Legenda Aurea about 
 one century later (1275) quotes the passage verbatim; 
 while the Seraphic Doctor, Bonaventura (1257) ex- 
 plains, saying, " Dictus est autem Lucifer quia pr<s ceteris 
 luxit, suaeque pulchritudinis consideratio eum excoecavit." 
 Among the earlier Fathers of the Church, Eusebius was 
 the only one who applied the appellation " Lucifer " to 
 the devil. Neither Jerome nor Augustine ever did so. 2 
 
 Following Peter Comestor the Early English Genesis 
 and Exodus of the first quarter of the thirteenth century 
 hands down in more modern style and more extended 
 form than England hitherto had known the story of a 
 pride-inflated Angel's doom. Duns Scotus c. (1300) 
 finds the word luxuria more appropriate to the sin. 
 
 To another non-scriptural assumption of the Chester 
 Play, that man was made in place of the ruined angels, 
 and that because of this insult to his order, Lucifer 
 contrived the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, 
 we have already once or twice adverted. These tradi- 
 tions are implied or explicit in the four great English 
 cycles and in the Cornish plays. Indeed the Cornish 
 Origo Mundi* and the N-Town play 4 emphasise the 
 element of grudge in the Devil's procedure, by intro- 
 ducing a little scene, unknown to the rest of the cycles, 
 in which Deus draws from Diabolus this motive of his 
 action. The traditions in general are found in the Cursor, 
 
 1 De Casu Diaboli. * Hagcnbach, Hist. Doctr., II, 237 a. 
 
 1. 300. Fall of Man.
 
 THE FALL OF LUCIFER 245 
 
 and the Legenda Aurea ; the latter of which uses Peter 
 Comestor's exact phraseology, Luctfer enim dejectus para- 
 diso spirituum invidit homini, etc. " Lucifer, which was 
 deject and cast out of heaven, had great envy to man 
 that was bodily in Paradise, and knew well, if he might 
 make him to trespass and break God's commandments, 
 that he should be cast out also." 1 The story of man's 
 substitution runs back through Anglo-Saxon literature, 2 
 Avitus of Vienne, and Anselm's famous treatise Cur Deus 
 y to Gregory and Augustine. 
 
 1 Caxton's translation: The Golden LfgeaJ, Hist. Adam. 
 a ^Elfric and the Later Genesis.
 
 246 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE OIL OF MERCY AND THE HOLY 
 ROOD-TREE 
 
 OF the episodes dramatised in the various cycles no 
 fewer than ten are drawn from a legend almost faded out 
 of memory nowadays, but well known to church and 
 people in the middle ages. The history of the Holy 
 Rood-Tree, that is to say of the wood from which the 
 Cross was made, is of such antiquity and it so deeply 
 coloured the poetic consciousness of our forefathers that 
 it should certainly be reintroduced to their children of 
 to-day. It is closely affiliated with two other legends, 
 one of which, the Promise of the Oil of Mercy, derives 
 from sources still more ancient than Christianity itself, 
 while the other, known as the Harrowing of Hell, has 
 its origin both in early Christian and earlier Jewish apoc- 
 alyptic literature. 
 
 The authors of the miracle plays upon these subjects 
 drew their inspiration, of course, from the oral tradition 
 of their day or from written versions in Latin, French, 
 and English of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth 
 centuries, in especial from the Golden Legend of Voragine 
 and the Cursor Mundi. Of these I have most closely 
 followed the last in my restatement of the story ; but 
 concerning the other sources I shall append a few remarks 
 at the close of this section.
 
 THE OIL OF MERCY 247 
 
 THE MISSION OF SETH AND THE PROMISE OF THE OIL 
 
 When Adam, having sinned by eating with Eve of the 
 forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge " that stood 
 a-midward paradise," was put out of the garden, God 
 did not leave him altogether comfortless : 
 
 Ye shall be flemed [banished] fro my face 
 
 Till that I sende you my grace : 
 
 The oil of mercy ye must abide 
 
 I hete [promise] to send it you, some tide. 
 
 And even in the wretched world without, where children 
 were born to him and Eve, and where sorrow came with 
 the death of Abel, some comfort was vouchsafed ; for 
 after a hundred winters of grief then 
 
 was born an holy child, 
 Seth that was both meek and mild, 
 Of whom Christ himselven cam 
 Full far to tell fro first Adam, 
 This child was Godde's prive friend 
 And truly yielded him his tend [tithe]. 
 
 And when Adam, being nine hundred years old and more, 
 began to feel unsound, it was to Seth, of all his thirty 
 sons and thirty daughters, that, leaning upon his spade one 
 day, or some say his hatchet, he confided himself. In 
 fact, there are who say that Adam was on his death- 
 bed, and thence spake to Seth, in especial, of all the 
 sixty children of his loins : 
 
 " Son," he said, " thou must now go 
 
 To Paradise that I came fro 
 
 To the cherubin that is gateward." 
 
 " Yea, sir," said Seth, " but whitherward." 
 
 " Soon," said Adam, " I shall thee say 
 
 How-gate thou shalt take thy right way :
 
 248 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Toward the east end of yonder dall 
 A greene way finde thou shall ; 
 In that way shalt thou find and see 
 The foot-steps of thy mother and me 
 The grass is fallow [yellow] on the green, 
 And ever since then has it been, 
 Where we came wending as unwise 
 When we were put fro paradise." 
 
 " Inquire of the angel who guards the gate" continued 
 Adam, " whether I may have aught of the oil of mercy 
 which was promised me when I left paradise." Seth 
 forthwith departing traced the withered foot-prints of 
 his parents back to the bounds of Eden. All gloppend 
 (dazzled) with the mickle light of the garden, he told his 
 errand to the gate-ward. " Go, then, thrust thy head in, 
 but keep thy body without, and take heed to what thou 
 shalt see," replied that angel. 
 
 When Seth a while had looked in 
 He saw so mickle wealth and win: 
 In earth there is no tongue may tell 
 Of flowers, of fruit, of sweete smell, 
 Of joy and bliss, so many thing. 
 
 Amid the land, moreover, he saw a spring, wherefrom 
 four rivers ran. Also he beheld a great tree with many 
 branches, but bare of bark, no leaf thereon nor less nor 
 more. " This tree is dry for Adam's sin," thought Seth, 
 and turning he reported to the angel what had been 
 revealed to him. " Look once more," the angel said. 
 And he looked and saw an adder all about the tree. 
 Yet a third time the angel bade him behold : and lo, the 
 tree reached even unto heaven, and a new-born babe lay 
 crying in the top. Then was Seth afraid ; but when to 
 the root he cast his eye,
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 249 
 
 Him thought it reached fro earth to hell 
 Where, under, he saw his brother Abel. 
 
 " The Child is Christ," said the Cherub, then with 
 cheer so mild, " he weeps now for thy father's sin, but 
 in the fulness of time he shall cleanse it : and that cleans- 
 ing of sin 
 
 This is the oil that was hight him 
 To him and to his progeny." 
 
 " Go tell thy father, that in three days he shall die. But 
 take with thee these three pips that here I hold of the 
 tree whose fruit thy father ate, and when he dies 
 
 Do them under his tongue root : 
 To many a man they shall be boot. 
 They shall be cedar, cypress and pine, 
 To many a man be medicine." 
 
 Now these trees betoken the Trinity : the cedar for its 
 height, God the Father ; the cypress for its sweet savour, 
 God the Son ; the pine for its gifts of fruit, God the Holy 
 Ghost. And when Adam heard the tidings of Seth, that 
 in three days he should die, and that in five thousand, two 
 hundred and twenty years the oil of mercy should be sent 
 (when Christ himself should suffer death for the sin of 
 man) Adam laughed for joy, though never ere had our 
 first father laughed ; and he thanked God. 
 
 THE THREE KERNELS AND THE HISTORY OF THE 
 CROSS-WOOD 
 
 And on the third morn he died and was buried of Seth 
 in the Vale of Hebron. Under his tongue, according to 
 the cherub's words, the kernels were laid. And therefrom 
 sprang three shoots ; cedar, cypress, and pine, an ell in 
 height ; they waxed no more, through the days of Noah
 
 250 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 and Abraham even till the day that Moses gave the law. 
 And Adam's soul descended into hell. And all that died 
 from that time on until the death of Christ, no matter 
 how holy they were, descended to their first father till 
 the hour that Christ harrowed hell. All save Enoch and 
 Elias. As to Enoch, the seventh from Adam, he was 
 withouten peer. He walked with God ; and was the 
 first to find letters, and he wrote some books with his 
 hand: 
 
 To Paradise quick was he ta'en 
 
 And there he lives in flesh and bane. 
 
 He shall come forth before Doomsday 
 
 To fight all for the Christian lay ; 
 
 With Antichrist then shall he fight 
 
 For to wary [defend] the Christian's right, 
 
 He and his fellow Helia. 
 
 Antichrist shall slay them twa 
 
 But with their up-rise fro death to life. 
 
 Then shall they fell that false strife. 
 
 Now after three thousand years and more, when Moses 
 had led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea, he 
 came to the Vale of Hebron and there encamped. And 
 the people died of thirst. " What shall we drink, 
 Moses ? " quoth they. And Moses slept that night in 
 the forest and in the morn, lo, a " ferly sight," three wands 
 stood growing by his head, a cypress, a cedar, and a pine. 
 And he looked on them with wonder, and knew that they 
 betokened the three persons of the Trinity. And he drew 
 them up without scathe or break, and ever bore them with 
 him. Then the people of Israel found water, but it was 
 bitter ; and the wands made it sweet. 
 
 This is the tree of which it is said in the Book of Exodus^ 
 " And the Lord shewed him a tree, which when he had
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 251 
 
 cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet " ; but 
 the legend of the Holy Rood sayeth that the marvel was 
 of the wands of the seeds set under the tongue of Adam 
 when Seth buried him. And from the rods there issued 
 a sweet fragrance, so noble a smell filling the whole host 
 that the Israelites thought that they had at last reached 
 the Land of Promise. And Moses wrapped the rods in 
 a clean cloth, and through the forty years of the wander- 
 ing in the wilderness they were ever in leaf and flower ; 
 and by them were many wonders done : those that were 
 bitten by snakes were healed, and those that were spat 
 upon by venomous toads. And it was with these rods 
 that Moses smote the rock in Horeb, and there burst 
 out water like a brook that the people might drink. 
 Then, when his end drew nigh, Moses planted the rods 
 again beside a stream at the foot of Mount Tabor. 
 
 A thousand years went by ; and David was King in 
 Israel, and lay one night asleep, when there appeared to 
 him an angel clear, God's own messenger, and told him 
 to cross the Jordan to Mount Tabor, where he should 
 find the rods that Moses had planted. 
 
 He knew them at the firste sight, 
 For they were three all of a height, 
 
 and of a likeness and all green, and still each of his own 
 fruit and leaf. He drew them up without breaking, and 
 the people saw them shine with light. And to him 
 hastening home, came sick men and were blessed with 
 the rods and healed, and Saracens black and misshapen, 
 their mouths in their breasts, their brows hairy to their 
 ears, their sight high in the forehead, their arms with 
 wrinkled hide set to the elbows in the sides of them, 
 crum pie-kneed and broken-backed and downward-look-
 
 252 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 ing. They kissed the wands and their skins became as 
 milk and all their shape was turned anew. On his ar- 
 rival at Jerusalem, King David put the wands in a dike 
 and set men to watch them all the night. But God, 
 that all has for to keep, made the wands strike root so 
 deep and join into one trunk so mighty that on the mor- 
 row none might move them. So the King built a wall 
 about that place, and circled the Tree with a silver ring to 
 know its measure, and each year for thirty years there 
 was a circle set about the trunk. And the Tree grew apace, 
 maintaining above the silver circles its triple branches, 
 cedar, cypress, and pine. Under this Tree the King would 
 pray and there he made his songs, and under it he first be- 
 thought him to build a temple to God. But for his sins 
 he might not finish it : and Solomon ruling in his stead 
 set it forward to completion. When the work was almost 
 finished the workmen found that a master-beam was 
 wanting, and nought would suffice but that they should 
 cut down the Holy Tree which now had grown to a 
 mighty stature. So King Solomon gave orders that the 
 Tree be felled ; and the workmen measured off a beam 
 of it thfrty-and-one cubits, but when they had hoisted it 
 into place, behold it was a cubit too long. They took 
 off the cubit, and hoisted it into place ; when, lo, it was a 
 cubit too short. Thrice they varied it; to no avail, the 
 beam would not come to the square. So the Holy Tree 
 with David's thirty circles of silver was laid in the temple. 
 One day there came a woman named Maximilla to wor- 
 ship and pray, and sat down unawares upon that Tree, 
 whereon her garments caught a-flame and burnt like 
 tow, 
 
 And then began she for to cry 
 As with a voice of prophecy,
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 253 
 
 And said, upon that Tree should hing 
 The lord of Hell, that blisful King: 
 Jesus Christ of maiden born 
 To save the wretched world forlorn ; 
 And that the Jews should hear and see 
 That should the Cross make of that Tree. 
 
 Whereat the Jews, angered for that she had blasphemed 
 against the only God they knew, dragged her forth from 
 the temple and stoned her some say, beheaded her: 
 
 She was the first that suffered shame 
 For mentioning of Jesu's name ; 
 
 and an angel descended from heaven and bore away her 
 soul before the sight of men, and called her " Christian." 
 Then the Jews threw the Tree into a pool ; but angels 
 stirred the water and it healed the sick who were placed 
 in it. So the Jews drew it out and laid it across the 
 brook Siloam some say Cedron as a bridge. There 
 it abode until the coming of the Queen of Sheba to hear 
 the wisdom of Solomon. And it was hoped that the feet 
 of sinful men might wear away the virtue from that Tree. 
 But this Queen when she reached the bridge, bowed 
 down and honoured it, and lifted her skirt, and barefoot 
 waded the water rather than do dishonour to the Tree ; 
 and of that Tree she told many prophecies. 
 
 And, namely, also of Doomsday 
 
 When all this world shall wind away. 
 
 This ilke Tree that I of say, 
 
 There it lay full many a day 
 
 Yet shall it be in the temple boun (ready) 
 
 At the time of Christ his passion. 
 
 When Christ a thousand years later, betrayed by Judas, 
 was about to suffer death, the Jews would have none but 
 the King's Tree whereon to hang him. They went,
 
 254 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 therefore, to the temple and hewed it into the shape of 
 the Cross ; but not a foot could they raise it or stir it 
 from its place. But when Jesus was brought, he louted 
 down and kissed it, and without help of man he laid it 
 upon his back. This was the Holy Rood on which he 
 died. And after he had given up the ghost, that Rood 
 blossomed from the hour of noon even unto the going 
 down of the sun. 
 
 Of the traitor Judas, it is written that when he had 
 done that sin, he went to his mother with the pieces that 
 he had taken, and told her thereof. Now Judas was 
 Jesus' almoner, he took in all the silver of the company 
 but seldom gave account of it. " Son, hast thou sold thy 
 master ? " said his mother, then. " Now shalt thou suffer 
 punishment, for I wot the Jews will slay him, but he 
 shall rise again from his grave." " Rise up, mother, eft," 
 he said, " nay, certes, it shall not be so. He shall no 
 more rise than shall this cock that was plucked and 
 scalded, yesternight." No sooner had he said that word 
 than the cock arose and flew, feathered fairer than before, 
 and crowed full shrill, through God the Lord, his might. 
 And on the roof of the house he settled, rejoicing and 
 singing as if he prophesied the day of the resurrection of 
 Christ. This is the cock, some say, that the same night, 
 thrice crowing, convicted Peter of sin, who had denied 
 his Lord. But Judas, the accursed, terrified by that omen 
 of the risen cock, went to the place where Jesus suffered, 
 and seeing that he was already condemned to death, threw 
 down the thirty pieces in the temple, whence they had 
 aforetime been purloined by the Jews, and went out and 
 hanged himself. Of these thirty silverlings, it is said 
 by some that they were the circlets which David and 
 Solomon had put about the trunk of the Holy Rood-
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 255 
 
 Tree ; and that they were stolen from the care of the priest- 
 ess of the sanctuary, Sara the daughter of Caiaphas, by 
 that same Demas, or Dysmas, the robber who was crucified 
 therefor by the side of Jesus, and asked mercy of him. 
 
 The Holy Cross Joseph of Arimathea would fain have 
 preserved, after he had buried the body of Christ, but 
 the Jews, fearful of its magic power, would not permit 
 him to remove it. They took it away themselves, to- 
 gether with the crosses on which had been crucified the 
 two robbers beside him, their names were Dysmas, who 
 was saved, and Gestas, the wicked one, and the crosses 
 were buried where none might find them, or, finding, know 
 them apart. 
 
 Some three hundred and thirty years after, when the 
 Emperor Constantine had received baptism, there ap- 
 peared to him in the night, before a great battle, a vision 
 of the Cross on which was written, " In this sign thou 
 shalt conquer." He caused to be made a cross like unto 
 it, and borne before him into battle, and thus he won the 
 victory. Then he sent word of the omen to his mother 
 Helena. And it happened that, at that time, her gold- 
 smith, a Christian, had borrowed money from a certain 
 Jew, who was a money-lender. According to the agree- 
 ment the goldsmith was to pay the weight of the money 
 in his own flesh in case he could not make good the 
 amount of the loan. The Christian could not find money 
 wherewith to repay, and the Jew was demanding the pen- 
 alty ; and in this case things were when the messengers of 
 Constantine arrived. The contest being referred to them, 
 they decided that the Jew might take the money's weight 
 in flesh, provided he shed no blood in doing so. He 
 thereupon offered to show Helena, if only she would 
 remit the penalty, where Christ's Cross was buried. She
 
 256 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 granted his request. The place being revealed, the 
 crosses were dug up and borne to the city, and there 
 the raising of a dead man to life by the true Cross dis- 
 covered to Helena which it was. In the temple was 
 found the remainder of the beam from which the Cross 
 had been made, and it sent forth still a sweet odour through 
 the temple. Of the four parts of the Cross Helena sent 
 one to Rome, one to Alexandria, one to Constantinople, 
 and the last remained in the temple. Of the nails she 
 made a work for the bridle of Constantine, which blinded 
 with its brilliance the enemy when he rode forth to war. 
 One of the nails is now at St. Denis, the author of this 
 story has seen and kissed it. Others tell the story of 
 the invention of the Cross otherwise, saying that it was a 
 man named Judas who found the Cross, and that he was 
 afterward made bishop and called Quiriacus, and that 
 when he had found it the devil threatened him with 
 vengeance. 1 
 
 THE SOURCES OF THE STORIES 
 
 The history of the Oil of Mercy and the Rood-Tree I 
 have taken, as I have said, from various sources accord- 
 ing as they seemed best to furnish the incidents used by 
 the authors of the dramatic spectacles based upon the 
 tradition. Of these sources the principal is the Cursor 
 Mundi. In that poem the passages descriptive of Seth's 
 mission to Paradise, and of the martyrdom of Maximilla- 
 Sibylla, follow a Latin legend written maybe between 
 1190 and 1210, while the rest of the story has been 
 shown by Professor Napier of Oxford to be almost a 
 
 1 This paragraph is based upon Napier's account of Cursor Mundi, and 
 an Old French Poem, in several respects its original. E. E. T. S., 1 894; 
 Orig. Scr. 103. The Holy Rood-Tree.
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 257 
 
 literal translation of an Old French Poem on the history 
 of the Cross-Wood. The manuscript of the French 
 poem is of the fourteenth century, but the poem must 
 have been composed at any rate by the middle of the 
 thirteenth. Other authorities used in my sketch are two 
 narratives of the fourteenth century, both derived in part 
 from the Latin Legend. Of these the first, namely The 
 Story of the Holy Rood * makes direct use of the sixth-cen- 
 tury Vita Adae et Evae as well ; and the second, How the 
 Holy Cros was T-founde 2 borrows also from the Legenda 
 A urea ofVoragine. The former of these narratives gives 
 a slightly different version of the Seth-mission from that 
 of the Latin Legend. I have in the last place made use 
 of an Anglo-Saxon version of The Holy Rood-Tree of 
 which Professor Napier assigns the manuscript to 1150- 
 1175. He thinks that this Holy Rood-Tree and the Old 
 French Poem while written independently of each other 
 have a common source in an original of about the year 
 1000. This original is, however, distinct from the Latin 
 Legend of the Cross- Wood which contains the Seth story 
 omitted by the group of the Holy Rood-Tree, and omits 
 the Invention of the Cross supplied by that group. Both 
 the Seth story and the story of Queen Helena are in- 
 cluded in Voragine's Legenda Aurea ; but they are not to 
 be found in Peter Comestor, to whom the Golden Legend 
 owes much in other respects. 
 
 The story of the inception of the Holy Rood-Tree 
 in the three kernels given by the Cherub of Paradise to 
 Seth cannot be traced to sources earlier than the Latin 
 Legend of the twelfth century and that common original 
 
 1 Legends of the Holy Rood: Harl. MS. 4196 ; Publ. R. Morris, E. E. 
 T. S., 1871 ; Orig. Ser. 42. And Napier, op. fit. 
 
 2 Morris, Legends, etc., p. 18, from Harl. MS. 2277, etc. 
 
 17
 
 258 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 of the Anglo-Saxon Holy Rood-Tree and the Old 
 French Poem which Professor Napier conjectures to have 
 existed about 1000 A. D. The motif of the grains or 
 seeds may possibly have been suggested by a passage 
 in the sixth-century Vita Adae et Evae> to the effect that 
 Seth and Eve, failing to obtain from the archangel 
 Michael the oil of the Tree of Mercy with which to 
 anoint the dying Adam, took with them perfumes in- 
 stead : nard and crocus and calamus and cinnamon. One 
 of the manuscripts of this text has indeed an additional 
 clause at this point, according to which the angel gave 
 Seth a branch with three leaves from the Tree of Paradise, 
 but that Seth dropped it into the river Jordan as he was 
 crossing over. 1 The earliest extant account of the 
 mission of Seth and the death of Adam is the Apocalypse 
 concerning Adam revealed to Moses by the archangel 
 Michael. This was written about the time of Christ, or 
 at any rate before the fifth century after Christ. It is 
 in part the original of the Vita. In this apocalypse 
 we find Seth and Eve vainly asking for the oil and 
 receiving neither the three -leafed branch nor the 
 seeds of the spices. It is Adam himself who takes 
 crocus, nard, calamus, cinnamon, and other seeds with 
 him upon his expulsion from Paradise. 
 
 According to Professor Meyer, the original Book 
 of Adam the source both of the Greek apocalypse 
 and of the somewhat parallel Latin Vita was in exist- 
 ence before the birth of Christ. Naturally neither that 
 original nor the apocalypse made any prophecy con- 
 cerning the coming of Christ with the Oil of Mercy. 
 That conception appears first in the Latin Gospel of Nico- 
 
 1 Meyer, Vita Adae et Evae, p. 236 ; in Abb. d. k. Bayer is cben 
 Akademie d. Wissenscbaften, Bd. XIV, 1878.
 
 THE HOLY ROOD-TREE 259 
 
 y chapter nineteen (of the fourth or fifth century), 
 and second in the Latin Vita Adae et Evae (of the century 
 after), where the exact words of the Latin Nicodemus are 
 interpolated in a translation of the utterly non-Christian 
 apocalypse. 1 Eliminating, however, the Christian inter- 
 pretation of the symbol, we find the elements of the 
 mission of Seth in the Greek Apocalypse of Moses. 
 Into the more remote inspiration of the story we shall 
 presently make further inquiry. 
 
 The legend of Judas was the subject of a lost episode 
 of the York cycle, and it remains in the fragmentary 
 Suspensio Judae of Wakefield. The narrative as given 
 above is taken from the Cursor, 11. 15962-16016, and 
 from its source, the Latin Judas Story, printed from a 
 manuscript of the twelfth century by Professor Napier. 2 
 To these accounts I have added, from the apocryphal 
 story of Joseph of Arimathea, the passage connecting 
 the thirty pieces of silver with Dysmas (Sanctus Bonus 
 Latro). Their identification with the circlets of the 
 Rood-Tree comes from the Cambridge Latin version 
 of the Rood-Tree story, and the Anglo-Saxon story, 
 both of the twelfth century. 3 
 
 1 The passage beginning, " When I, Seth, was praying at the Gates 
 of Paradise," and ending, "Christ shall lead our father Adam into 
 Paradise to the tree of Mercy." 
 
 3 MS. Jesus Coll. Oxford, with I4th cent, variations. Holy Rood- Tree, 
 p. 68. 
 
 * Napier, Holy Rood-Tret, pp. 25, 49.
 
 2 6o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE OIL OF MERCY AND THE HARROWING 
 OF HELL 
 
 AFTER the legend of the Oil of Mercy enters the realm 
 of Christian story it speedily becomes interwoven with 
 other legends, notably those of Joseph of Arimathea, the 
 Harrowing of Hell, and the Coming of Antichrist. These 
 constitute the chief material of the Latin Gospel of 
 Nicodemus, from which, since it is the most evident 
 of the sources of mediaeval poems and plays on these 
 subjects, I select the following. 1 
 
 After Joseph and Nicodemus had performed the obse- 
 quies for Jesus the Jews were greatly moved against 
 them, and they took Joseph (some say, also Nicodemus) 
 and shut him in a house where was no window, and set 
 keepers at the doors, and sealed up the door where 
 Joseph was shut in. And after the Sabbath day they 
 took counsel by what death they should put Joseph 
 to death, and they commanded him to be brought with 
 much insult. But when the door of Joseph's prison was 
 opened he was not found. And still the seals were 
 sealed, and the high priest Caiaphas had the keys. 
 Therefore the Jews were astonished, and dared no more 
 lay hand on those who had spoken for Jesus. On this 
 there came word that the body of Jesus also was miss- 
 ing; that he had risen from the tomb, and had been 
 
 1 Latin Evangelium Nicodemi, XII-XVI.
 
 THE HARROWING OF HELL 261 
 
 seen talking with his disciples, and saying to them, " Go 
 into all the world and preach the Gospel." Therefore, at 
 the bidding of Nicodemus the Council of the Jews sent 
 out messengers to find Jesus if, peradventure, alive or in 
 death he had been taken up into the mountains. And 
 they came not on him ; but on Joseph of Arimathea 
 wandering at large they came, and yet no man dared lay 
 hold upon him. But being entreated by the Council, 
 Joseph saddled his ass and returned to the holy city ; 
 and to the Jews inquiring of his escape he made answer 
 in these words : " On the day of preparation, about the 
 tenth hour, ye shut me in, and I remained there the 
 whole of the Sabbath. And when midnight came, while 
 I stood and prayed, the house wherein ye shut me was 
 suspended by the four corners, and there was a flashing 
 of light in mine eyes, and I fell trembling upon the 
 ground. Then one lifted me up from the place where 
 I had fallen, and poured abundance of water upon me 
 from my head to my feet, and put about my nostrils the 
 fragrance of wonderful ointment, and rubbed my face 
 with the water, as if washing me, and said to me, f Joseph, 
 fear not, but open thine eyes, and see who it is that 
 speaketh to thee.' And looking I saw Jesus ; and being 
 afraid I asked him, ' Art thou Elijah ? ' And he said, c I 
 am not Elijah ; I am the Jesus whose body thou didst lay 
 in thine own new sepulchre.' And he showed me the 
 place where I had laid him, and he put me in mine own 
 house, and kissed me and said, c For forty days go not 
 from thine house; for, behold, I go into Galilee to my 
 brethren.' " 
 
 And soon after that the rulers heard how Jesus had 
 been taken up into heaven before the eyes of his disciples, 
 and they wondered thereat ; but Joseph arose and said to
 
 262 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Annas and Caiaphas : * "It is more to be wondered at 
 that he arose not alone from the dead, but that he hath 
 raised alive from their tombs many other dead men, and 
 they have been seen by many in Jerusalem. Lo, the same 
 Simeon, the great priest who in the temple held Jesus in 
 his hands, had two sons and we were present at their 
 burial. Behold, even now they are in the City of Arima- 
 thea alive, and together in prayer. But they are speech- 
 less. Let us adjure them, that they tell us of the 
 mystery of their resurrection." 
 
 And the sons of Simeon being found, the priests 
 swore them by the law of God, and by Adonai himself, 
 saying, " If ye believe that it is Jesus who raised you 
 from the dead, tell us how ye rose from the dead." 
 Then Carinus and Leucias, the sons of Simeon (accord- 
 ing unto some the names of them were Carius and Len- 
 thius), signed the sign of the cross upon their tongues, 
 and their tongues were loosened, and they said, " Give 
 us wherewith to write and we will set down each of us, 
 separately, what we have seen." Now of what they 
 wrote this is a part; and it was found that each had 
 written the same thing, to wit : 
 
 " When we had been gathered unto our fathers in the 
 pit of hell, in the blackness of darkness, on a sudden 
 there appeared the colour of the sun like gold, and a 
 kingly light of purple enlightening the place. And 
 straightway Adam, the father of all mankind, with all 
 the patriarchs and prophets rejoiced, and said, c That 
 light is the author of light eternal which hath promised 
 to send us the co-eternal light.' Then Isaiah bare 
 witness to the light, and our father Simeon, and John 
 the fore-runner of the Highest, saying, 'This is the day- 
 spring itself; the Son of God coming from on high is 
 
 1 Evangtlium Nicodemi, XVII-XXVIII (Dcjceniuj ad infer os).
 
 s 
 
 3 
 a 
 " O 
 
 it 
 it 
 
 5 S 
 
 " ~t 
 oo O 
 
 f? 2.
 
 THE HARROWING OF HELL 263 
 
 about to visit us who sit in darkness and the shadow of 
 death.' 
 
 "And when Adam the first-formed, heard these 
 things, he cried to his son Seth, and said, * Declare 
 unto thy sons, the patriarchs and prophets, all those 
 things that thou didst hear from Michael the archangel, 
 when I sent thee to the gates of Paradise to pray God to 
 give thee of the oil of the tree of mercy, to anoint my 
 body when I was sick.' Then Seth drew nigh to the 
 holy patriarchs and prophets and said, 'When I, Seth, 
 was praying to the Lord at the gates of Paradise, behold 
 Michael, the angel of the Lord, appeared unto me, 
 saying, " I am sent to thee from the Lord ; I am 
 appointed to the care of the bodies of men upon the 
 earth. I say unto thee, Seth, labour not with God in 
 tears, nor entreat him for the oil of the tree of mercy 
 wherewith to anoint thy father Adam for the pain of his 
 body ; for thou canst in no wise receive of it save in the 
 fulness of days and times, namely, till five thousand and 
 five hundred years be past. Then shall come upon 
 earth the most merciful Son of God to raise the body of 
 Adam and the bodies of the dead ; and at his coming he 
 shall be baptised in Jordan. Then with the oil of his 
 mercy shall he anoint all who believe in him ; and that oil 
 of mercy shall be for all generations of those who are born 
 of water and the Holy Spirit unto life eternal. Then 
 coming down within the bowels of the earth, the well- 
 beloved Son of God, Christ Jesus, shall lead out our 
 father Adam into Paradise to the tree of mercy." When 
 they heard these things from Seth, all the patriarchs and 
 prophets rejoiced with great joy. 
 
 " Then Satan, the prince of death, and Hades were 
 seized with great fear, because Christ was coming to set 
 free those who were dead. And while they talked in 
 their terror, lo, a sound as of thunder, and a crying of 
 spirits, saying, ' Lift up your gates, ye princes, and be 
 ye lift up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of Glory 
 shall come in.' And the Lord Christ brake down the
 
 264 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 gates that Death and Hades had barred against him ; 
 and he trampled upon Death, and seized Satan, the 
 prince, and delivered him to the power of Hades, and 
 took our father Adam with him into glory. And so 
 Christ harrowed hell ; and the prophets, David and 
 Habakkuk and Isaiah and Micah, rejoiced and bare 
 witness of the Christ whom they had prophesied. Then 
 the Lord made the sign of the cross over Adam, and 
 took him by the right hand, and He led him forth from 
 the underworld ; and all the saints followed him. And 
 the Lord, holding Adam by the hand, gave him over to 
 Michael the archangel. And all the saints followed 
 Michael the archangel, and he led them into Paradise 
 filled with mercy and glory. And there met them two 
 men, most ancient of days; and the saints asked them, 
 * Who are ye that have not been dead with us in the 
 underworld, and yet have been stationed in Paradise in 
 the living body ? ' One of them answered, and said 
 unto them, * I am Enoch who was translated hither by 
 the word of the Lord ; and he that is with me is Elijah, 
 the Tishbite, who was taken up in a fiery chariot. Here 
 we have been hitherto, nor have we tasted death, but are 
 reserved to the coming of Antichrist with whom we shall 
 contend in the power of divine signs and miracles ; and 
 we shall be slain by him at Jerusalem, but after three 
 days and a half we shall again be received alive into 
 the clouds.' 
 
 " And while these things were talked of with Enoch 
 and Elijah, behold there came up another, a very 
 wretched man, bearing on his shoulders the sign of the 
 cross. And when they saw him, the saints said unto 
 him, ' Who are thou, for thy countenance is like unto that 
 of a robber, and why bearest thou the sign of the cross 
 upon thy shoulders ? ' And he answered them that he 
 was indeed a robber, but that crucified upon the cross 
 beside the Christ he had believed in him ; and the Lord 
 had received his prayer and said, c This day thou shalt be 
 with me in Paradise.' And he had given him the sign of the
 
 THE HARROWING OF HELL 265 
 
 cross that the angel guarding the gate of Paradise might 
 suffer him to enter and abide the coming of Christ with 
 Adam and all his sons that were holy and just." 
 
 These are the divine and sacred mysteries which 
 Carius and Lenthius saw. 
 
 Thus became that oil in place 
 That God had Adam hight of grace, 
 Long might Adam think the space 
 Of exile from that lordes face. 
 
 Of the episodes involved in these legends, as well as the 
 motives, practically all were dramatised by the Cornish 
 miracles, and many by the French Mystere de la Nativite. 
 In the York play of Christ led up to Calvary, the third 
 soldier says : 
 
 I have been gar make 
 This Cross, as ye may see, 
 Of that lay over the lake 
 Men called it the kingis tree. 
 
 In the lost Beverley cycle there was a pageant of Adam 
 and Seth, which the ." Shermen " played ; in the Wake- 
 field plays the Oil of Mercy is mentioned by Noah first 
 and then by Abraham. In the Chester and Cornwall 
 plays and in the French mystery of the Resurrection 
 especial emphasis is laid upon that part of the story. 
 The Harrowing of Hell is a spectacular feature of all 
 the cycles. 
 
 BIBLICAL, APOCALYPTIC, AND OTHER SOURCES 
 
 The sixth-century Life of Adam and Eve, the Gospel 
 of Nicodemus, and the still earlier Apocalypse of Moses 
 are after all but channels through which some of these
 
 266 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 conceptions have flowed. The sources of inspiration 
 are further back. The extreme antiquity of the vision of 
 Paradise and the promise of mercy illustrates both the 
 cosmopolitan quality of the mediaeval literary conscious- 
 ness and the vitality of religious symbol and explana- 
 tory myth. The tree of life, like the fall of Lucifer, is 
 a theme in Babylonian poetry of times long antecedent to 
 the writing of the early Hebrew scriptures. 1 Originally 
 there was but one tree in the garden of Eden, that of 
 youth ; and there was a water of life. The tree of the 
 knowledge of good and evil was added by some Hebrew 
 editor, probably as an explanation of the tree of perpetual 
 youth. The art of living smoothly depends upon the 
 knowledge of good and evil, in fact upon the knowledge 
 of all things. "This is the life eternal to know thee, 
 the only true God." 
 
 The best known biblical bases for the description of 
 Eden and the glories thereof are, of course, the chapters 
 in GenestSy and the references in Ezekiel, Eden, the 
 garden of God, its precious stones, its cherub, its holy 
 mountain, its trees of cedar and fir and chestnut. 2 The 
 latter references, however, are only a metaphorical adapta- 
 tion of an ancient North Arabian myth to certain kings 
 of Tyre and Egypt who lived long after the time of the 
 Ezekiel of Jehoiachin's captivity, 597 B. c. Both tree of 
 life and tree of wisdom are expressly mentioned in the 
 Ethiopic Book of Enoch, the portion written before 
 161 B. c. ; also the fragrance of the former and the fruit 
 reserved for the elect, and the four streams that flow from 
 its root; the presence of Michael, too, though explaining 
 things somewhat differently, all as in the legend of 
 what Seth saw in Paradise. But here it was Enoch 
 
 1 Encyc. Bibl. art. Paradise. * Ezek. xxviii, xzxi.
 
 REMOTER SOURCES 267 
 
 who saw. In the capricious favouritism of popular myth- 
 making the apocalyptic adventures of the superhuman 
 Enoch were in time transferred to Seth, and those of Seth 
 still later to some other darling of the race, Moses, or 
 Elijah, who was reported to have "walked with God." 
 The description of the earthly paradise in the Book of 
 Enoch is so beautiful and at the same time so admirably 
 illustrative of the transition of the myth toward its early 
 Christian form that I quote it almost in full. 1 
 
 Enoch sees a place of magnificent mountains : " And 
 the seventh mountain was between these, and in their 
 elevation they all resemble the seats of a throne; and the 
 throne was encircled with fragrant trees. And amongst 
 them was a tree such as I had never yet smelt : nor were 
 others like it ; it had a fragrance beyond all fragrance : its 
 leaves and blooms and wood wither not for ever ; and its 
 fruit is beautiful, and it resembles the dates of a palm. . . . 
 Then answered Michael, one of the holy and honoured 
 angels who was with me, and was in charge thereof: 
 ' Enoch, what dost thou ask as touching the fragrance 
 of this tree and what dost thou seek to know ? ' Then 
 I, Enoch, answered him and said : c I should like to know 
 about everything but especially about this tree.' And he 
 answered me and said: 'This high mountain which thou 
 hast seen, whose summit is like the throne of the Lord, 
 is His throne, where the Holy and Great One, the Lord 
 of Glory, the Eternal King will sit when he shall come 
 down to visit the earth with goodness. And no mortal is 
 permitted to touch this tree of delicious fragrance till the 
 great day of judgment, when he shall avenge and bring 
 everything to its consummation for ever ; this tree, I say, 
 will then be given to the righteous and humble. By its 
 
 1 Eth. Enoch, xxiv, 3-xxvi.
 
 268 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 fruit life will be given to the elect j 1 it will be transplanted 
 to the north, to the holy place, to the temple of the Lord, 
 the Eternal King. Then will they rejoice with joy and 
 be glad : they will enter the holy habitation : the fra- 
 grance thereof will be in their limbs, and they will live a 
 long life on earth, such as thy fathers have lived : and in 
 their days no sorrow or pain or trouble or calamity will 
 affect them.' a Then blessed I the Lord of Glory, . . . 
 because that he hath prepared such recompense for the 
 righteous, and hath created it and promised it to them." 
 This passage is followed by a description of the four 
 streams that flow from the base of a holy mountain in the 
 middle of the earth. Of course there are references here 
 to actual localities in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, but 
 the description is so vividly suggestive of the garden of 
 Seth's vision in the thirteenth-century Cursor Mundi, and 
 the Cornish Origo Mundi, that I have refrained from 
 italicising particulars only for fear of italicising the whole. 
 In a later chapter we read of Enoch 3 that he beholds 
 the other tree : " And I came into the garden of righteous- 
 ness and saw beyond those trees many large trees grow- 
 ing there . . . and the tree of wisdom which imparts great 
 wisdom to those who eat of it. And it is like the Carob 
 tree: its fruit is like the clusters of the vine, very beauti- 
 ful : the fragrance of the tree goes forth and penetrates 
 afar. And I said: 'This tree is beautiful, and how 
 
 1 Hence the promise to Adam, on his expulsion from Paradise, of the 
 fruit of the tree of life on the day of his resurrection. Apoc. Moses 
 (A. D. 1-400). And the promise of Christ in Latin Gospel of Nicode- 
 mus, xii. 
 
 2 Hence, the like passage in the Apocalypse of Moses. See Meyer, Vita 
 Adae, 204. 
 
 8 Eth. Enoch, xxxii.
 
 REMOTER SOURCES 269 
 
 beautiful and attractive its look ! ' And the holy angel 
 Rafael, who was with me, answered me and said : ' This 
 is the tree of wisdom of which thy old father and aged 
 mother, who were before thee have eaten ; and they learnt 
 wisdom and their eyes were opened, and they recognised 
 that they were naked, and they were driven out of the 
 garden.' " 
 
 In the Secrets of Enoch (B. c. JO-A. D. 50) the approach 
 to the mediaeval legend is even closer. 1 " And these 
 men took me from thence, and brought me to the third 
 heaven, and placed me in the midst of a garden. And 
 I saw all the trees of beautiful colours, and their fruits 
 ripe and fragrant, and all kinds of food which they pro- 
 duced, springing up with delightful fragrance. And in 
 the midst, in that place, is the tree of life on which God 
 rests when he comes into Paradise. And this tree can- 
 not be described for its excellence and sweet odour. And 
 it is beautiful more than any created thing. And on all 
 sides in appearance it is like gold and crimson, and trans- 
 parent as fire, and it covers everything. From its root in 
 the garden there go forth four streams which pour honey 
 and milk, oil and wine, and are separated in four direc- 
 tions, and go about with a soft course. And they go 
 down to the Paradise of Eden, which is between corrupt- 
 ibility and incorruptibility. . . . And there is another tree, 
 an olive tree, always distilling oil. And there is no tree 
 there without fruit, and every tree is blessed. . . . And 
 I said, ' What a very blessed place is this ! ' And those 
 men spake unto me : c This place, Enoch, is prepared 
 for the righteous who endure every attack in their lives 
 from those who afflict their souls : who turn away their 
 
 1 Slav. Enoch, viii.
 
 270 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 eyes from unrighteousness. . . . For them this place is 
 prepared as an eternal inheritance.' ' 
 
 Here we have an anticipation, in the tree in which 
 God rests, of the resting-place of the unborn Christ, 
 the child whom the Seth of the mediaeval Latin legend 
 sees and hears in Paradise ; anticipations, too, of the 
 mickle light that made the Seth of the Cursor Mundi 
 " all gloppend " ; and of the four streams flowing from 
 the root of the tree ; and of the tree of mercy as well, 
 and the oil. These last are, of course, the antecedent of 
 the arbor and the oleum misericordice of the lost Book of 
 Adam, and of the Apocalypse of Moses, the Latin Vita y 
 and the Gospel of Nicodemus.\ 
 
 In a later chapter 1 Michael the archangel again takes 
 charge of Enoch, as he does at the close of the Gospel 
 of Nicodemus, and takes from him his earthly robe, 
 and anoints him with the holy oil of the Lord, excellent, 
 fragrant, shining like a ray of the sun. " And I gazed 
 at myself, and I was like one of His glorious ones." In 
 Chapters XLI and XLII, Enoch finds "Adam and Eve 
 and all our forefathers from the beginning " in Hades ; 
 just as the sons of Simeon found them, according to 
 Nicodemus and the fiction of legend and drama based 
 thereon. 
 
 The Hades of Enoch is close by the " Paradise of 
 Eden, where rest has been prepared for the just, and 
 that is open to the third heaven, and shut from this 
 world. . . . And the angelic guards of the Paradise of 
 Eden will, at the last coming, lead forth Adam with our 
 forefathers and conduct them there that they may rejoice 
 ... in the light and eternal life." There is much here 
 to suggest the condition of the Enoch and Elijah of the 
 
 1 xxii, 6
 
 REMOTER SOURCES 271 
 
 various plays on the harrowing of hell. The writer of 
 the Gospel of Nicodemus must have been intimately ac- 
 quainted with Hebrew apocalyptic literature. It is in- 
 teresting to notice, furthermore, that even in little things, 
 such as the period of mourning observed by Adam and 
 Eve for the death of Abel, and their coming together 
 again at the command of the Lord, cyclic miracles like 
 the Cornish, ecclesiastical poems such as the Cursor, and 
 prose legends like the Aurea of Voragine, follow with 
 but slight variation stories handed down by the Book of 
 'Jubilees l and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs 
 and other Jewish haggadic or apocalyptic books. 
 
 1 Jubilees, iv, 7; Leg. Aur., History of Adam; Cursor, 1. 1192.
 
 272 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 THE COMING OF ANTICHRIST 
 
 THE PROPHECY 
 
 To the coming of Antichrist reference is made in all the 
 English cycles. But only one, the Chester, develops it 
 into dramatic form. The prophecy as given there, and 
 in the slightly earlier Cursor Mundi and the Golden 
 Legend is as follows: * 
 
 Before the second coming of Christ and the day of doom, 
 a wicked one shall arise. He will call himself by the name 
 of the Holy One, the Elect of Israel, he will assert that the 
 prophecies of Moses, David, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, fore- 
 telling a Messiah, were of him; and that he who had here- 
 tofore called himself Messiah, a certain fellow of the baser 
 sort " Jesus, he hight, I understand " - was nought 
 other than imposter. This Antichrist, the wicked one, 
 will not hesitate to build the temple again and be honoured 
 therein as God. He will have many leal to his service, 
 and will war against the good, and ruin the gospel. 
 
 Wise clerks say that Antichrist will be a Jew of the 
 tribe of Dan (for it was prophesied that Dan should be 
 as a serpent, smiting the good). He shall be cursed 
 entirely. The Devil, who, though bound by the Lord, 
 and in prison after the harrowing of the underworld, 
 
 1 Based chiefly on Morris's abstract of Cunor, 21971-22426, and 
 the Chester play.
 
 Enoch, Elias, and the Antichrist 
 From "L'Apocalypse en frangais"
 
 THE COMING OF ANTICHRIST 273 
 
 will be at his birth. For Satan shall be loosed and work 
 woe. The Book of Revelation tells of the Angel with 
 the key of the pit where Satan lies. But his binding is 
 only for a thousand years. When loosed he will beguile 
 many. As the Holy Ghost lighted upon Mary, so Satan 
 will descend on the mother of Antichrist. As Christ was 
 born in Bethlehem, a place of grace, so Antichrist shall 
 be born in Babylon, a town of pride and idolatry. Beth- 
 saida and Chorazin shall foster him; enchanters, necro- 
 mancers, and jugglers shall nourish and fill him with 
 falsehood. All the Christians in Jerusalem Antichrist 
 will slay; he will set his throne on Solomon's temple, 
 and great emperors and kings will turn to him; he will 
 destroy all that was hallowed by Christ; he will send out 
 his preachers, and do many violent works against nature. 
 Antichrist may even raise the dead; but such deeds will 
 not be true. Good men will be puzzled whether he be 
 Christ or not. He will search all lands against the Chris- 
 tians; he will draw some by rich presents, others by fear, 
 others by miracles. Then shall arise great sorrowing; 
 men will flee to the hills; he in the house will leave his 
 goods. The Christians will either forsake Christ or 
 undergo hard vengeance, till they die in Christ. This 
 sad time will last two years and a half, for our Lord will 
 shorten it. We know that the kings of Greece and Persia 
 were chief kings formerly; and that Rome was head over 
 all receiving tribute. St. Paul says that before Antichrist 
 comes there shall be a dissension among these; the king- 
 doms will rise against Rome; and a great king of France 
 shall be made Lord of Rome. This king shall be blest; 
 he will end his reign at Jerusalem, giving up crown and 
 sceptre to Christ. So shall end the Roman empire. After 
 
 this Antichrist will show himself, the Wicked One! He 
 
 18
 
 274 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 will exalt himself above the Trinity. He will simulate 
 Christ, saying that he has come to gather in the Jews. 
 He will even prophesy his own death and resurrection; 
 and the kings shall mourn him and lay him in the tomb, 
 saying, "If he rise again, Him will we honour day and 
 night as the saviour of mankind." Then Antichrist will 
 come out of the tomb, calling upon them to worship him, 
 and they shall do so. And he will send forth upon them 
 a spirit, saying that it is "My Holy Ghost;" and their 
 hearts shall be light; and he will bless them with worldly 
 goods, cities, castles, towns, towers, principalities, and 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Two prophets, then, shall come on high, 
 That been Enoch, and eke Helye. 
 
 And they shall teach the kings that this is not Christ but 
 a devil's limb, and make war against Antichrist, but he 
 will slay them. Then our Lord shall send judgment on 
 Antichrist; others say that Michael the archangel will 
 destroy him in Babylon. 
 
 And in the article of death, the Antichrist shall be heard 
 calling, "Help, help, help, help! Help Sathanas and 
 Lucifer." Then he shall die, and two demons shall hear 
 him and come and bear him down to hell. Then Enoch 
 and Elijah shall rise from the dead, and Michael shall 
 say to them: 
 
 You have been long, for you be wise, 
 Dwelling in earthly Paradise; 
 But to Heaven, where Himself is, 
 Now shall you go with me. 
 
 ITS ORIGIN AND GROWTH 
 
 Though this legend is narrated, as we have seen, in the 
 Cursor and the Legenda Aurea, they are not the only
 
 THE COMING OF ANTICHRIST 275 
 
 sources of the unique and spectacular play of Chester. 
 The drama itself show's kinship also with a Latin play acted 
 on the continent about 1160, and probably in the presence 
 of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The prophecy 
 in its religious aspect was evidently based upon St. Paul's 
 warning to the Thessalonians * concerning the second 
 coming of the Lord, "Let no man deceive you; that day 
 shall not come except there come a falling away first, and 
 that man of Sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who op- 
 poseth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or 
 that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple 
 of God, shewing himself that he is God. His coming is 
 after the working of Satan with all power and signs and 
 lying wonders. He shall delude man; but that Wicked 
 shall at the last be revealed, and the Lord shall consume 
 him with the brightness of his coming." To this forecast 
 picturesque materials were added from the visions of Daniel 
 (vii-xi) and the prophetic description of the Beasts in 
 Revelation (xi-xvii). The fable received its more dra- 
 matic impetus, as we have already remarked, from the 
 words attributed to Enoch in the Gospel of Nicodemus, 
 "I am Enoch, who pleased God, and was translated 
 hither (to Paradise) by him; and this is Elijah the Tish- 
 bite; and we are to live until the end of the world; and 
 shall be sent by God to resist Antichrist, and to be slain 
 by him, and after three days to rise again, and to be 
 caught up in clouds to meet the Lord." 
 
 Traces, however, of elements other than the religious 
 are apparent in the story. The Wicked One would 
 seem to be a personification couched, on the one hand, in 
 terms of an old and fairly consistent Jewish tradition 
 of the end of the world, which is only in part de- 
 
 1 2 Tbess. i, ii.
 
 276 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 pendent upon the prophecies of the Book of Revelation 
 and Second Thessalonians; and on the other hand, in 
 terms of progressively changing political crises. The po- 
 litical factor had undergone mutation with the progres- 
 sive conditions of history. As far back as the time 
 of the captivity of Judah, 587 B. c., the Wicked One is 
 a foreign foe of the kingdom; a conception poetically 
 matured in the chapters of Ezekiel (xxxviii-ix) where Gog, 
 of the land of Magog, chief prince of Mescheck and 
 Tubal, is described as mustering his forces for an inroad 
 upon Palestine from the north. With awful judgments 
 (like those of the fifteen signs that precede the day of 
 doom) the Lord overthrows him and his hosts; and 
 Israel lives once more with Judah in freedom, unity, 
 peace, prosperity, and righteousness. This apocalypse 
 appears to refer to an expected invasion by the Scythians 
 about 580 B. c. In Daniel's vision, too, of the four Beasts, 
 the disturber is a foreign power. In the early Christian 
 tradition the dreaded invasion is of the Huns, whose west- 
 ward migration the Roman Empire alone can stay. Rome 
 therefore comes to be the bulwark against the modern 
 Gog and Magog. In the writings of St. Paul, however, 
 and in Revelation, the "man of sin," the "son of perdi- 
 tion" who is to seat himself in the temple and claim 
 Messianic honours, dominate, like Gog, the kings of 
 Egypt, Lybia, and Ethiopia, mark men with the mark of 
 the beast, work celestial wonders, persecute the righteous, 
 be unmasked by the two witnesses of the true Christ, put 
 them to death, drive the true believers into the wilderness, 
 and finally be overthrown in an angelic battle where Christ 
 or Michael leads the victorious host, this son of per- 
 dition is no foreigner, but a Jew; one of the tribe of 
 Dan (says the apocryphal Testament of Dan). The
 
 ^ 01
 
 THE COMING OF ANTICHRIST 277 
 
 Gog tradition was not fully absorbed in the modern 
 Antichrist belief until some six centuries after the death 
 of Christ. Then a new historical significance was sug- 
 gested by the identification of Gog or Antichrist with the 
 conquering Mussulman. Meanwhile, the Antichrist of 
 St. Paul and of the Book of Revelation was gradually 
 assimilated with Belial, the evil spirit of the air, this 
 because the Jewish apocalyptic writers of the first cen- 
 turies before and after Christ preached insistently of a 
 war to be waged in the last days between the Messiah 
 and Belial or Beliar. So the early Christian writers, hav- 
 ing identified Belial with Antichrist, and finally with the 
 Dragon as in Revelation, revived that ancient Babylonian 
 myth of the rebellion of Lucifer, and his attempted usurpa- 
 tion of the place and power of the Most High, 1 to which 
 in after years our mediaeval ancestors were to turn for the 
 opening spectacle of all dramatic cycles. As the spiritual 
 conflict of the miracles begins with Lucifer, so with Anti- 
 christ it ends; and these twain are but the personification 
 of the same principle of rebellious pride. 
 
 The political tradition was as a whole introduced to 
 Western literature by the monk Adso of Toul, who in 
 the tenth century made a compilation, called De Anti- 
 christo, of materials which he drew from a seventh-century 
 Apocalypse of the Pseudo-Methodius, and from the third 
 of the famous Sibylline Oracles, lines 63 to 74, perhaps 
 of the fourth century. Of these sources the former de- 
 rives from various Jewish apocalypses; while the latter 
 reproduces a myth of Nero Redivivus, who, as Beliar or 
 Belial, is at the latter days to return and work delusion 
 of the church by lying wonders. And of this apprehension 
 
 1 See Encyc. Bib.; Hagenbach; and Dorner, System of Christian 
 Doctrine.
 
 278 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 of renewed political oppression early traces may be found 
 in the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, in the works of 
 St. Jerome and Hippolytus, and of the well-known prophet 
 of the Syrians, Ephraem, who died about 378 A. D. 
 
 Beside these legends, so fruitful of narrative and 
 dramatic harvest for the middle ages, there are others 
 drawn largely from the apocryphal books of the New 
 Testament, of equal fascination and of no less vogue in 
 the days of the cyclic drama. We cannot, for lack of 
 space, give attention to them here. But of some, such 
 as the Nativity, Childhood, and Betrothal of the Blessed 
 Virgin, her Assumption and Coronation; the stories of 
 Veronica, Magdalene, Pilate, and a few others, a word 
 will be said in connection with the sources of the cycles 
 as considered in the appendix to this volume.
 
 RELATION OF MIRACLES TO MORALS 279 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE RELATION OF MIRACLES TO MORALS, 
 AND OF MORALS TO INTERLUDES 
 
 MIRACLES AND MORALS 
 
 AN unfortunate misapprehension has obtained currency 
 to the effect that there was a deliberate transition, chron- 
 ological and logical, from the miracle cycle to the "mor- 
 ality," and thence to something entirely different called 
 the " interlude"; and that certain steps in the development 
 of comedy were taken part passu with this transition. It 
 is, for instance, said, that "in the progress of the drama, 
 Moralities followed Mysteries and were succeeded by Inter- 
 ludes. When folk tired of Religion on the Stage they took 
 to the inculcation of morality and prudence; and when 
 this bored them they set up Fun." * This statement of 
 one of the most genial and learned of English scholars 
 was of course not intended to be scientific. It represents 
 what, in general, seem to be the facts, but it may be so 
 easily misconstrued in support of several popular miscon- 
 ceptions that I must, with the utmost respect, attempt to 
 qualify some of its clauses. To begin with, the terms are 
 misleading: "mystery" suggests the French mystere, of 
 which the career was quite different from the English 
 miracle or miracle play; and as to "morality," though 
 the word occurs in an English manuscript of the sixteenth 
 century, it is even there borrowed from the French. Its 
 1 Furnivall, Digby Ptays, Forewords xiii.
 
 2 8o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 history in France may be found in Petit de Julleville. 1 
 The term is never used by the English contemporaries of 
 these plays. The nearest approach to it on the part of 
 our ancestors is "Moral," "Moral Play," or especially 
 "moral," "goodly," or "pithy Interlude." It cannot be 
 said that the moral play followed the miracle. The 
 earliest moral in England of which we have information 
 is the Play of the Lord's Prayer mentioned in the preamble 
 to the ordinances of the guild in York which performed 
 it. It must have existed before 1384, and was played 
 until 1582. It presented "vices for scorn and virtues for 
 praise," by means of separate pageants, one of which was 
 the pageant of Sloth. The play is now lost, but we can 
 form a definite idea of it from the Beverley Minute-book 2 
 where an entry is made, May 29, 1469, of a Paternoster 
 Play divided into a general pageant of Vicious, and seven 
 others of Pride, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Hatred, Avarice, 
 and Anger. The York play was evidently a moral; in 
 point of antiquity, it rivals the collective York miracles 
 themselves; and it persisted upon the stage as late as they. 3 
 Another moral, though we do not know whether it was 
 so called, is the Creed Play of the York guild of Corpus 
 Christi. The play, like its guild, may date back to 1408. 
 It was acted, probably, in various pageants during the 
 palmy days of the miracle cycles, and the city council are 
 still trying to have it performed as late as 1568, twenty- 
 one years after the guild has gone out of existence, and 
 within a decade of the last performance of the miracle 
 plays. As to morals still extant, if the plays called the 
 
 1 La Comedie tt In Maun en France au mojen age. Paris, 1 886, 
 p. 45 tt seq. 
 
 1 Leach, Some English Pfays, etc., Furn. Misf., p. 221. 
 Lucy Toulmin Smith, York Mysttries, XXVIII.
 
 RELATION OF MIRACLES TO MORALS 281 
 
 Pride of Life, and the Castell of Perseverance date from 
 the first decade of the fifteenth century, as appears to be 
 established, they also must have been composed while 
 the miracles were in process of formation: about the 
 time of the completion of the Wakefield cycle, before the 
 last pageants were added to the Ludus Coventrize, maybe 
 half a century earlier than the Digby miracle-marvels of 
 the Magdalene and St. Paul, which themselves possess 
 features of the moral play, and two full centuries before 
 miracles ceased to be played. While the biblical play 
 still ran its course under the conduct of the crafts in vari- 
 ous towns, the allegorical, known by its flavour as the 
 moral or moral play, or by its rapidly diminishing pro- 
 portions as the "enterlude," flourished under the patron- 
 age, not only of the crafts, but perhaps, with better grace, 
 under that of school, castle, and court. Nor can it be 
 said that one of these kinds survived the other. The last 
 morals worthy of the name were written by Robert Wilson 
 within a decade after 1579, when last the York miracles 
 were performed; the quasi-morality by Greene and Lodge 
 called the Booking-Glass preceded the last performance 
 of the Chester plays by thirteen, and of the Beverley by 
 seventeen years. Plays of the moral and scientific kind, 
 to be sure, were presented at the universities many years 
 later; the Lingua, for instance, in 1607, and Techno garni a, 
 in 1618; but these were artificial survivals of the stock. 
 The moral was, therefore, rather a younger contemporary 
 and complement of the miracle than a follower, or a sub- 
 stitute for it. 
 
 Perhaps the misconception of which I have spoken has 
 been fostered by the idea that the allegorical characters 
 of the moral were derived from sporadic figures of that 
 description found in some of the miracle plays and in
 
 282 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 similar pageants of the middle ages. But as Ebert, Ward, 
 and Creizenach haw. shown, neither miracle nor moral 
 play need have derived its allegorical method from the 
 other. The explanation of the practice is pyschological 
 and obvious; its history is traceable to the personification 
 of abstract ideas common in the ethical or sacred writ of 
 every faith and race. The motives of allegorical drama 
 may be detected in Latin literature all the way from the 
 Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, 1202, back to the 
 Psychomachia of Prudentius, 400. The World-Flesh- 
 and-Devil allegory flourished from 1200 on, but it draws 
 its inspiration from St. Paul's armour of the Christian, 
 Ephesians vi, II, etc., and St. Paul in his turn was 
 elaborating upon the "complete armour of the righteous" 
 described in the Wisdom of Solomon, v, 17-19, by an 
 Alexandrian Jew of the second century before Christ. 
 The earliest dramatic representations of the kind of 
 which I know are the Lord's Prayer already mentioned, 
 and the contest between the Seven Virtues and Seven 
 Vices performed in Tours in 1390. Allegory is already 
 found in Caedmon and Cynewulf; it bursts into full 
 bloom with Guillaume de Loris, Langland, Chaucer, 
 Lydgate, and Gower. In the Pastime of Pleasure it 
 falls into the sere, but from Brandt and Barclay it receives 
 an infusion of concrete life and character, and so puts forth 
 its buds afresh. One of the earliest allegorical representa- 
 tions in the miracle plays was that of the four " daughters 
 of God " in the eleventh N-Town play. But these daugh- 
 ters of God are earlier found in the thirteenth-century 
 work of Langton, and in Grosseteste's Chateau d* Amour ; 
 and at the end of the twelfth century, in a production of 
 Guillaume Herman. It has been pointed out that Her- 
 man's conception is, in turn, based upon the "Mercy and
 
 OF MORALS AND INTERLUDES 283 
 
 Truth are met together; Righteousness and Peace have 
 kissed each other," of the eighty-fifth Psalm. 1 Allegory, 
 both in literature and in drama, commanded the attention 
 of the public contemporaneously with scriptural narrative. 
 People, therefore, did not wait until they were "tired of 
 religion on the stage" before "they took to the inculca- 
 tion of morality and prudence;" nor could they have 
 hoped to escape religion by taking to the moral play. The 
 moral plays, like those which were originally liturgical, 
 aimed at religious instruction. But as the scriptural- 
 liturgical illustrated the forms of the church service and 
 its narrative content, the moral illustrated the sermon 
 and the creed. The former dealt with history and ritual, 
 the latter with doctrine; the former made the religious 
 truth concrete in scriptural figures and events, the latter 
 brought it home to the individual by allegorical means. 
 The historical course of the drama was not from the 
 scriptural play to the allegorical, but from the collective 
 miracle and collective moral, practically contemporary, to 
 the individual miracle and individual moral. The dra- 
 matic quality of the moral was, as we shall presently 
 remark, not the same as that of the miracle, but it neither 
 supplants nor fully supplements that of the miracle. 2 
 
 MORALS AND INTERLUDES 
 
 The distinction between "morality" and "interlude" 
 has likewise been unduly and illogically emphasised. The 
 former term may properly be said to indicate the content 
 and aim of a drama, the latter, its garb and occasion; but 
 
 1 See Ward, E. Dram. Lit., I, 106, and Courthope, Hist. Eng. 
 Poetry, I, 415-417. 
 
 a See my Rep. Engl. Com., Iv-lvi, from which this paragraph and 
 most of the next are taken.
 
 284 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 the essential characters of the moral play (the human hero 
 and the representatives of good and evil contending for 
 his soul) may be common to "interlude" and "morality" 
 alike; and both terms may with justice refer to the same 
 drama. After 1500, the role of hero is, to be sure, some- 
 times filled by an historical character, or by one or more 
 concrete personages representative of a type; but it must 
 not be supposed that the play possessing such a hero is 
 therefore to be called an interlude, for similar heroes are 
 to be found in the morals before 1500. Nor should the 
 statement be accepted that morals are distinguished from 
 interludes by the presence in the former of both Devil and 
 Vice; for several interludes of a later date have both Devil 
 and Vice, while some of the earlier morals, written before 
 1500, have but one or the other of these characters, or 
 neither. 1 The attempt to characterise the moral by its 
 professed didactic intent, and the interlude by the lack 
 thereof, or by the profession of mirth, is equally unavailing; 
 for the manifest moral the Pride of Life, one of the earliest 
 extant, makes explicit promise in its prologue "of mirth 
 and eke of kare" from "this our game;" while Mankind, 
 a moral of 1461 to 1485, which advertises no amusement, 
 is as full of it as any late interlude. On the other hand, 
 several plays written after 1568, calling themselves "come- 
 dies or enterludes," and promising brevity and mirth, are 
 tedious. But, for the advertisement, sub-title, or specifi- 
 cation of the play, we must of course hold the publisher 
 and not the author generally responsible. 
 
 The common misapprehension that "moralities" were 
 succeeded by "interludes" is probably due in large part 
 
 1 Wtidom has only Lucifer ; Nature has only Sensuality and minor 
 Vices ; Pride of Life had Devils in all probability, but no Vice, for Mirth 
 is not one ; Everyman has neither.
 
 OF MORALS AND INTERLUDES 285 
 
 to the fact that the "interlude" had been used in England 
 at different periods for entirely different kinds of enter- 
 tainment, some of which, notably that to which Collier 
 restricted the term, were of later production than the 
 moral. Not all, however, for the term had been in use 
 from a date preceding the first mention of the moral play, 
 which in fact the " interlude " ultimately absorbed into 
 itself. From 1300 and probably earlier, the term "inter- 
 lude" seems to have been used as a synonym for singing 
 and music, probably also for shows presented during the 
 pauses of banquets. In the last years of Edward Ps 
 reign, perhaps as early as 1300, the word was employed for 
 a dramatised anecdote of the type of the French or Italian 
 farce: Hie incipit Interludium de Clerico et Puella. 1 The 
 only extant copy of this, according to Wright and Halli- 
 well, 2 is written in a hand of the beginning of the four- 
 teenth century, and the title would appear to be con- 
 temporary with the rest of the manuscript. The language 
 is English of a decided dialect, according to ten Brink 3 
 the South Northumbrian, and it appears to be the earliest 
 extant specimen of its kind. A fragment, moreover, of 
 a Cornish farce of the same century has been preserved 
 in the Revue Celtique* and there is little doubt that farce 
 interludes abounded at the banquets of sovereigns and 
 nobles from 1300 down. It is, in fact, more probable 
 than not that they may be traced to the dramatic dia- 
 logue of the Anglo-Norman jongleurs. The performers 
 of these interludes were probably professional from an 
 early date; but the name interludentes does not occur 
 until the reign of Edward IV, when it is used both for 
 
 1 Ward, I, 237. a Reliquiae Antiqua, I, 145. 
 
 ' Engl. Lit., II, i, 295. 4 IV, 259.
 
 286 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 strolling companies and for professional players attached 
 to the household of a magnate. 
 
 As a synonym for miracles themselves, the name "in- 
 terlude" is used before the end of the fourteenth century 
 in the well-known Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge. Speaking 
 against sacred plays, the author says "how thanne may 
 a prist pleyn in entirlodis;" and that these "entirlodis" 
 are both biblical miracles and saints' plays is evident, for 
 he specifies those "miraclis" that "Crist dude heere in 
 erthe, outher in hymsilf outher in hise seyntis," and again 
 by name, the plays of Antichrist, Doomsday, the Passion, 
 the Crucifixion. 1 
 
 But this author does not restrict the word "interlude" 
 to a serious miracle. He may have had in mind, when he 
 inveighs in the same treatise against "japyng" interludes, 
 the Mak and the Judicium of the Wakefield master, or 
 such exhibitions as that indicated in the margin of the 
 Chester play of the Three Kings (one of the oldest of the 
 cycle, "The Boye and Pigge when the Kinges are gone," 
 or a scene like that, of late insertion, between the "tav- 
 ernere" and the devils in Chester XVIII., or worst of all 
 some mockery of the ritual. There is, however, only 
 slender proof that in England the farce interlude was 
 "commonly introduced between the acts of long mystery 
 plays." This statement, which one finds in the New 
 English Dictionary, applies rather to France. In Eng- 
 land the word "interlude," when used with reference to 
 the "mysteries," indicated not merely a diversion, but a 
 kind of "mystery" play itself. 
 
 The word is next used for a brief farce or dramatic story 
 introduced between the parts of a long moral play, like 
 the interlude of the Pauper and the Pardoner in the Thrie 
 
 1 Rel. Antiq. t II, 42.
 
 OF MORALS AND INTERLUDES 287 
 
 Estaitis, 1440; and finally we find it applied, in 1504, 
 not to a farce, but to an imposing allegorical drama, 
 Skelton's Nigramansir, which called itself a "moral 
 enterlude and a pithie, " and was an excellent satire. In 
 1514 we learn that two morals (written by Medwall and 
 Cornish) were acted under the name of interludes before 
 Henry VIII. Some eight years later, Wynkyn de Worde 
 printed as a "proper new interlude" an unalloyed moral, 
 Mundus et Infans, which had been written about 1500; 
 and before 1538 various other out-and-out morals, such 
 as Medwall's Nature, although written maybe as early 
 as 1486, and the Four Elements, composed 1517 to 1519, 
 and Magnyfycence, 1515 to 1523, are published under the 
 same seductive and fashionable designation. No matter 
 how serious, they are all "enterludes," "goodly" or "newe 
 and mery." 
 
 During these latter years the name is also appropriately 
 applied to the descendants of the old Interludium culti- 
 vated by Heywood and undoubtedly by others, first as the 
 "mery play," then as the "newe and very mery enterlude," 
 synonyms, in this case, for a debat like the Wether y or 
 for a brief dramatic sketch presenting social types and 
 concrete characters in a fable which, at any rate, was 
 unified and spicy, if not comprehensive or profound, 
 a farcical or a satirical comedy, in short, whose aim, as 
 Heywood said, was "not to teach but to touch." In 1530 
 Palsgrave defines "interlude" as moralite, and from that 
 date on, the designation "interlude" is applied to alle- 
 gorical plays of all kinds, long or short, lively or dull: 
 moral, like the Disobedient Child, acted 1560 to 1561; peda- 
 gogical, like Witte and Wisdome, written between 1547 and 
 1553; politically controversial, like Respublica of 1553, or 
 doctrinally, like Newe Custome, printed in 1573; "godly
 
 288 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 and mirthful," after the fashion of Like Will to Like, printed 
 1568; or scriptural, instructive and concrete, like Wager's 
 Mary Magdalene of 1567. As early as 1538 we find the 
 term used by Bishop Bale for morals and artificial miracle 
 plays which he also somewhat indifferently designated 
 tragedies and comedies. In 1567 it is applied by the 
 printer to the half-classical, half-moral tragedy of Hor- 
 estes; and in 1568 it appears on the title-page of a "neue, 
 mery and wittie comedie" out of scripture, the History 
 of Jacob and Esau. 
 
 As a synonym for "comedy," somewhat, indeed, in the 
 modern sense, "enterlude" occurs as early as the years 
 adjoining 1520 to 1530: for instance, to designate the 
 "newe comodie in maner of an enterlude" of the story of 
 Calisto and Melibcea. In his Governour, 1531, Sir Thomas 
 Elyot speaks of "entreludes" as if they were the English 
 equivalent of the classical comedy; and again, in Cooper's 
 Dictionary (edition of 1559), which was a revision of 
 Elyot's older work "Comcedia," that is, the classical 
 comedy, is defined as an "enterlude wherein the common 
 vices of men and women are apparently declared in per- 
 sonage." * In this sense "enterlude" is employed by 
 Udall for his "comedie" in the fashion of Plautus and 
 Terence. Indeed after 1550, the tendency among the 
 learned seems to have been to regard this term as a 
 synonym for the play yielding mirth, felicity, and recrea- 
 tion, as opposed to the tragedy. Such a distinction is 
 made by Puttenham, for instance, in his Art of Poetry, 
 1589; and in Mar prelate of 1588, Gammer Gurton is 
 called a " proper enterlude." From that time until Collier, 
 in 1831, restricted the term to plays like Heywood's, the 
 
 1 For references to Elyot and Cooper I am indebted to Professor 
 Fliigel.
 
 EVERYMAN 
 From "Everyman : A Moral Play'
 
 OF MORALS AND INTERLUDES 289 
 
 name "interlude" stood for any humorous and popular 
 play. 
 
 These conclusions proceed from a study of the Morals 
 produced while Miracles and Marvels were still in their 
 prime. Between these earlier and the later moral plays, 
 however, Mr. Pollard thinks that there is a real distinction. 
 He therefore gives separate treatment to those written 
 before 1500 (inclusive of Everyman and the World and 
 Child), which are "concerned with issues that touch the 
 whole of human nature . . . the whole of a man's life 
 in its relation to its eternal issues," and the later plays 
 of the kind, "moral, educational and controversial, that 
 deal with mere fragments of men's life." * The latter, 
 according to him, are inferior in quality and, as the name 
 "interlude" would imply, are shorter, easier of acting, 
 and of a trivial nature. He further distinguishes the 
 two kinds by saying that "in the morality proper " (i.e., 
 the earlier moral) "the Vice has no part. But when the 
 desire was felt for some humorous relief in the didactic 
 interludes, a character probably dressed in the tradi- 
 tional garb of the domestic fool was introduced and 
 
 O 
 
 obtained great popularity." Mr. Pollard regrets that 
 most of the popular ideas about morality plays have been 
 derived from plays of this latter kind. It appears to me, 
 however, that the confusion, if any, has been caused by 
 just such attempts to distinguish arbitrarily between plays 
 as earlier and later, longer and shorter, which in essential 
 method were alike ; that is, were allegorical. That some 
 of the morals produced before 1500 were of imposing 
 dimensions is true; Perseverance, for instance, had some 
 3500 lines. Still these dimensions are insignificant when 
 compared with those of contemporary moralites in France.. 
 
 1 Eng. Miracle Plays, liii. 
 19
 
 2 9 o PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 De la Chesnaye's Condemnation des Banquets (1507) 
 exceeded 3500 verses; Bien-Avise, acted in 1439, reached 
 8000; and these are as pygmies beside I'Homme p'echeur 
 and VHomme juste l of the period of Louis XII, which 
 boast respectively, 22,000 and 30,000 lines. The long 
 or short of an English moral is a trifling differentia, at 
 the best. But when we come to compare English morals 
 written before 1500 with those written after, we find no 
 great difference in length after all. Nature, written before 
 1500, has 2860 lines. Respublica, as late as 1553, has 
 2000 odd. The Conflict of Conscience, 1581, stretches 
 itself to the number of 2200, long ones at that. Jacob 
 and Esau, licensed 1557, has 2400 lines; and if my memory 
 serves me the moral interlude of Longer thou Livest and 
 Wager's Mary Magdalene are of the same proportions as 
 Nature, or perhaps greater. On the other hand, before 
 1522, when according to the fashion of the day Wynkyn 
 de Worde printed the World and the Child as a "proper 
 new interlude," although it was an old-fashioned moral 
 that had been written some twenty years earlier, before 
 1522, I say, several similar allegorical dramas had existed 
 which were as brief as many of the kind afterward pro- 
 duced. Everyman, written about 1500, which calls itself 
 in the prologue a "morall playe," has only 700 lines and 
 is shorter than most of the succeeding interludes so called; 
 the moral play Mankynd, 1461 to 1485, has only 900 lines, 
 and the 500 lines remaining of the Pride of Life, one of 
 the earliest of morals, would appear to be fully one-half 
 of the whole. The World and the Child itself has but 
 looo lines; whereas many later morals called new, pretty, 
 and short interludes are anywhere from one-half again 
 to twice as long. 
 
 1 Petit dc Jullcville, Comedie, p. 79, etc. ; Creizenach, /. 47 1 .
 
 DEATH 
 From "Everyman : A Moral Play'
 
 OF MORALS AND INTERLUDES 291 
 
 To discriminate between the older and the later morals 
 or moral interludes by attributing to the former a broader 
 scope or deeper spiritual significance, is likewise of no 
 avail. Of the older set, Mankind, for instance, does not 
 represent the "whole of a man's life in its relation to its 
 eternal issues;" and if the Pride of Life and Everyman 
 touch the whole of human nature, they do so merely in 
 the moment of death. The later plays, on the other hand, 
 can by no means be collectively characterised as repre- 
 senting "mere fragments of man's life." Moros, of the 
 Longer thou Livest, runs a protracted human career; so 
 do the characters of The Nice Wanton, and they touch 
 as well most of the moral possibilities. Skelton's "goodly 
 enterlude and mery" of Magnificence (about 1520) and 
 Lyndsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis (acted 1540) may, 
 perhaps, be called specialisations of the problem, but they 
 afford as profound and extensive a treatment of vital 
 issues as most of the extant morals of the century that 
 preceded. The latter of these is a "proper" enough 
 "morality" to contain within itself an interlude, specifi- 
 cally so called, existing purely to exemplify the lesson of 
 the whole. The Thrie Estaitis advances, to be sure, the 
 technique of comedy by the employment of concrete char- 
 acters, but the improvement is one of degree, not of kind; 
 it is a moral as undiluted as the Pride of Life, written 
 maybe a hundred years before. 
 
 The reduction in the number of actors, as I have else- 
 where said, 1 the abbreviation of the play, the concentra- 
 tion of the plot, wherever these exist in the later morals 
 or moral interludes, are not evidence of a change of kind, 
 but merely of its natural permutation through a period 
 of some two hundred years. When ten Brink tells us 
 
 1 Rep. EngL Com., Ivi.
 
 292 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 that the interlude was the species best adapted to further 
 the development of dramatic art, we must understand 
 him to mean the individual as opposed to the collective 
 drama, or the occasional performance by professionals 
 for the delectation, and sometimes at the order, of private 
 parties, as opposed to expository or perfunctory plays, 
 plays collaborated by crafts, or associated with times, 
 places, and ends external to art. The improvement in 
 scope and elasticity which marks the individual play is 
 due to various causes; to patronage, for instance, which 
 prefers amusement to instruction and the work of artists 
 to that of journeymen; to the development, accord- 
 ingly, of a bread-and-butter profession of acting, and to 
 the accompanying stimuli of necessity and opportunity. 
 Poetic invention, dramatic constructiveness and style, are 
 sometimes spurred by hunger; they are always respon- 
 sive to the appreciation of the cultivated, and may be to 
 the reward.
 
 SOME OF THE OLDER MORALS 293 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 SOME OF THE OLDER MORALS 
 
 EXAMINATION of the older morals, those that were pro- 
 duced before 1520, reveals, even though the period is 
 comparatively early, a twofold character of composition. 
 We find on the one hand plays interpretative of the ideals 
 of life and constructive in character, relying upon the 
 fundamentally allegorical and making principally for a 
 didactic end. We find on the other hand plays that deal 
 with the actual, appear to have a critical purpose, and 
 consequently reproduce life and manners. These tend, 
 not so much toward the ideal in purpose as toward the 
 amusing and satirical. 
 
 Of the half dozen morals before 1520 that made for 
 the development of a drama which by allegorical means 
 should interpret ideals and construct characters, one of 
 the earliest (about 1400) and most important was the 
 Castell of Perseverance. In its use of virtues and vices as 
 dramatic figures it sustains a close relation to the Digby 
 Magdalene. The Pride of Life, 1 a moral of perhaps as 
 high antiquity as the preceding, is interesting, not so 
 much for its lofty and ideal conception as for the excel- 
 lence with which it portrays ingenuous and fundamental 
 
 1 The text would call for the title King of Life ; but Mr. James Mills, 
 who discovered the play, and described it, April 13, 1891, to the Royal 
 Irish Academy, has named it as above. It is reprinted by Brandl, 
 Quellen des Weltlicben Dramas in England vor Shakespeare, 1898.
 
 294 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 types of character, and conducts a plot straightforward, 
 tragic and severe, the natural outgrowth of premises com- 
 mon to the play and to a contemporary view of life. In 
 place of the comic in character and episode, the play 
 presents us with a Nuncius, called Mirth or Solas, who 
 sits upon the king's knee, flatters him and sings. While 
 this figure bears a resemblance, indeed, to the court fool, 
 as Professor Brandl has said, he appears to me more 
 nearly related to the herald of the miracle plays. I 
 should not think that he could be in any way regarded 
 as the forerunner of the Vice, 1 if it were not that the 
 appellation "Solas" appears to have been appropriated 
 by that personage in some later plays. The next of these 
 morals of ideal purpose, The Wisdom that is Christ 
 (1480 to 1490), is a comedy in the mediaeval sense of the 
 term insomuch as it portrays the ultimate triumph of the 
 hero in the contest with evil. The plot is allegorical, but 
 the language and philosophy of the play are direct and 
 practical: the guise and behaviour of Lucifer, the gallant, 
 and Will, the debauchee, are of mundane flavour, and 
 allusions to contemporary manners and localities, "Hoi- 
 born, Powlys" and the like, abound. On the whole the 
 play makes, however, for the advancement of creative 
 ideality; and in particular for the evolution of a species of 
 drama which Udall, Lyly and others were soon to bring 
 to some degree of perfection, the masque. For within 
 the limits of artificial drama like this, it is into the 
 masque that the continual recourse to "disguising," 
 
 1 Quellen s. XV. Cf. Solas, in an Interlude of 1540-1547, described 
 by Halliwell from the MS. copy of the notes (Supp. Dods. O. PI. II, Wit 
 and Wisedome, p. 66) and Sandy Solas, a vice-like figure in Lyndesay's 
 Three Estates, 1 540, upon which the MS. copy just referred to would 
 seem to have been based.
 
 SOME OF THE OLDER MORALS 295 
 
 almost the only device in this play, naturally ripens ; 
 while within the field of the romantic play the same device 
 will mature into the comedy of intrigue. 
 
 In spite of a vivid satirical scene in which the lewd life 
 and manners of Holborn, Westminster and Eastcheap are 
 described by Folly, the Vice of the play, the proper, new 
 Interlude of Mundus et Infans, printed in 1522, but 
 written perhaps by the beginning of the century, mani- 
 festly continues the allegorical and didactic purpose of 
 its kind. To the variety of dramatic means and methods 
 it adds nothing, but to the inherent technique of comedy 
 it makes a twofold contribution: a representation, crude 
 to be sure, but laudable, of a sequence of changes in 
 the character of the hero, and a pleasing iteration of 
 crises in the conduct of the plot ; the former of these 
 potential in the nature of the moral play, the latter essen- 
 tial to the differentiation of the comic movement from 
 that of the tragedy. While the ideal purpose of the 
 moral is nominally prosecuted in the next play of this 
 series, the "goodly interlude and mery" of Magnyfycence, 
 composed by Skelton between 1515 and 1523, the play is 
 more significant for "the vigour and vivacity of diction" 
 to which Dr. Ward has already called attention, than for 
 its allegorical treatment of "Vaynglory" and its some- 
 what mechanical attempts at comic realism. I wish that 
 we could still consider at first hand another play of the 
 same poet, The Nigramansir, written somewhat earlier, 
 for by its attack upon ecclesiastical abuses it is said to 
 have contributed much to the development of satirical 
 comedy. But our knowledge of the play is indirect. 1 
 
 1 Warton, History of English Poetry, II, 360, describes it; but it has 
 disappeared. The plot seems to have had nothing in common with 
 Ariosto's Negromante of I 520, which is rather of the style of The Bugbears 
 (1561-1584).
 
 296 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 One character, Beelzebub the judge, is reported to have 
 been not only the most clownish and concrete of devils 
 up to date, but the mainspring of the play, and an 
 important factor in the motivation of the plot. 
 
 In excellence of construction and stern nobility of pur- 
 pose the Moralle Playe of the Somonynge of Evtry-man 
 leaves all its contemporaries behind. The fable, as Dr. 
 Percy has said, is conducted upon the strictest model 
 of the Greek tragedy, and for severity it may be likened 
 to the Samson Agonistes. It is justly called by Collier 
 "one of the most perfect allegories ever formed," and by 
 Ward, "the flower and crown of the literary species to 
 which it belongs." Printed before 1531, but of uncertain 
 date of composition, 1 it is of importance in the present 
 survey as indicating the possibilities of a technique which, 
 though dealing with abstractions, may imbue them with 
 the interest of steady and progressive movement. It pre- 
 pares the way, in other words, for the development of 
 character other than the painfully pious or foolishly ludi- 
 crous, and for sober contemplation not only of the mortal 
 issues but of the artistic possibilities afforded by them to 
 the creative imagination. Like the moral plays of Nature, 
 Hyckescorner and Four Elements, it dispenses with the 
 Devil. It manages to get along also without any specified 
 representative of the Vice, unless Fellowship, Goodes, 
 etc., may have been intended as such. 
 
 Besides these morals of constructive and ideal content 
 there were a few written before 1520 that contributed to 
 
 1 Collier and Brandl conjecture before 1483 ; Ward, a later date: 
 his account of the Latin sources perhaps the Legenda Aurea and Speculum 
 Hiitoriale, more surely the Barlaam and Jehoshaphat (1090) is to be 
 found in Hist. E. Dr. Lit., I, 120. Logeman regards Everyman as a 
 translation of the Dutch play Elckerlijk by Petrus Dorlandus.
 
 Characters in "Hycke-Scorner" 
 From "The Ancient British Drama"
 
 SOME OF THE OLDER MORALS 297 
 
 the comedy of real life. Three I have mentioned in 
 the last paragraph; the other is called Mankynd. For a 
 full description of them I must refer the reader to my 
 Representative English Comedies. 1 Suffice it here to say 
 that, though they pretend to a serious purpose, not one 
 of them could have achieved success and they were all 
 successful without doubt on any other basis than that 
 of comic quality. Mankynd has its Vices and Devil, and 
 its allegorical figures like Mercie and MyschefF; but the 
 Devil is merry, the Vices are witty, the human characters 
 interesting rascals and the Virtues a bore. The language 
 savours more of the tavern than the tabernacle. This 
 play was written between 1461 and 1485 ; the next, 
 Nature, between 1486 and 1500. It was written by one 
 of Archbishop Morton's chaplains, Henry Medwall, and 
 displays a startling accuracy of information concern- 
 ing the Bohemian purlieus or "tenderloin" of London. 
 If it were n't for Medwall's sense of humour one might 
 suspect him of more than altruistic and artistic interest 
 in the slums. To the next of these "moral" interludes 
 a Vice, Hyckescorner, gives his name. It was written 
 between 1497 and 1512 ; and is more of a comedy, in 
 dialogue and situation, in spite of occasional tediosities 
 of spiritual pabulum, than the chaplain's play. The Four 
 Elements, printed by its author, John Rastell, in 1519, 
 tries to teach physics, but leaves in the memory an im- 
 pression only of stale beer and tavern-wit, and tags of 
 popular songs. 
 
 The older morals, whether serious or satirical, made, 
 after all, a certain advance upon the usual technique of 
 the miracles. They took their dramatis persons not from 
 books but out of life. And though they called these char- 
 
 1 Pp. Ivii-lxi.
 
 298 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 acters by abstract or generic names they tried to distinguish 
 each from the rest by a motive of action. The more the 
 motive lived the more the character grew. This kind of 
 play is, therefore, the forerunner of Ben Jonson's comedy 
 of humours. It offered scope to the imagination, as well 
 as the observation, of the dramatist : the more he forgot 
 his pedagogic purpose the more his characters came to 
 be like persons, his manners to be contemporary, and 
 his plot vital and inwardly propulsive, possessed of the 
 elasticity, novelty and finality requisite to art.
 
 SURVIVALS OF THE MORAL 299 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 LESS-KNOWN SURVIVALS OF THE MORAL 
 INTERLUDE 
 
 THE farces and romantic interludes, concluding with 
 the earliest of our plays of romantic intrigue, the Calisto 
 and Melibaea, "caused to be printed" by John Rastell, 
 about 1530, and the school interludes which characterised 
 the period between the older morals and the first regular 
 dramas, I have described at such length in my Beginnings 
 of English Comedy, that it is not necessary to consider 
 them here. It may be said, however, that of the school 
 plays the most important to the development of English 
 drama were the "Mirth" interludes, like the Thersytes; 
 the "Wit" interludes, like The Contract of a Marriage be- 
 tween Wit and Wisdome, and a revision of some ten years' 
 later date, The Marriage of Witte and Science, both of 
 them marked by rapidity of movement, diversity of persons 
 and naturalness of conversation ; the "Youth" interludes, 
 which reach their climax in the Interlude of Youth; and 
 finally the "Prodigal Son" plays, which were patterned 
 upon Terence and certain Dutch school plays after the 
 fashion of the Acolastus of Gnapheus, 1529. The best ex- 
 amples of the English interlude of the "Prodigal" are The 
 Nice Wanton and The Disobedient Child. The period of 
 these school plays was from 1530 to 1553. 
 
 About the time that the first regular dramas were 
 written, polytypic, or fusion, dramas like Ferrex and
 
 300 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Porrexj Roister Doister, The Historie of Jacob and Esau, 
 Gammer Gurton, Misogonus, Damon and Pithias, and The 
 Supposes y that is to say between 1545 and 1566, there 
 were still coming to the birth a few interludes or morals 
 of the older kind which I should like to describe because 
 they are usually ignored in the lump, as if unworthy of 
 attention in every particular. Though some of these 
 belated morals were stupid, others have as much right 
 to a place in literature as certain of their contemporaries 
 which were more lucky in catching the eye of the early 
 historian. 
 
 CONTROVERSIAL PLAYS 
 
 The stupidities among them I shall merely mention. 
 They are controversial interludes: First, the "new enter- 
 lude of N ewe Custome," an anti-Papist play which, though 
 not printed till 1573, was produced about 1562 to 1563, 
 and written perhaps as early as 1550 to 1553. It presents 
 no novel dramatic feature save that, instead of the Vice, 
 two rufflers appear, who supply the only humour in the 
 disputation. The second of this series is a "mery Playe 
 bothe py thy and pleasaunt" of dlbion Knight, 1 a political 
 fragment acted between 1560 and 1565. Though its sub- 
 ject is the ever-interesting dissension between the estates 
 of the realm, and its rhetoric unusually blunt, it is not 
 dramatically up to the level of Respublica. The element 
 of concrete and personal interest is lacking; and the comic 
 interest centers solely about the Vice, Injurie. He, with 
 his "olde mate," Dyvysion, and their instruments, Double 
 Devyce and Old Debate, forms the mischief-making group 
 of the drama: a signally effective group, indeed, whose 
 chief, a clever, disputatious and satirical personage, is the 
 
 1 S. R. 1565-6. See also Collier, H. Dram. Poetry, II, 284.
 
 SURVIVALS OF THE MORAL 301 
 
 mainspring of such action as appears. The controversial 
 element is not far to seek in the third play of this division, 
 a peculiarly insipid disputation called Kyng Daryus, 
 printed in 1565. The Vice, Iniquytie, calls himself the 
 son of the Pope, and, when discomfited, departs " to the 
 south to seek his fortune." In spite of the coarse and 
 feeble quality of the comic, a certain distinction attaches 
 to the interlude because of its twofold thread of interest. 
 The strands, however, lack all connection. Here, again, 
 the Vice and his two associates, occupying the greater part 
 of the production, dominate the play. Indeed, the Vice, 
 influencing the major or the minor action, and sometimes 
 both, and thus uniting the interests of the fable, has, dur- 
 ing the years of which we have just treated, steadily pro- 
 gressed from a negative if not subordinate position to that 
 of manipulator or comic individual as well as marplot. 
 It will also be noticed that, while in the earlier moral 
 plays the Vice's ridicule rebounds upon himself, because 
 directed chiefly at individuals not obnoxious to ridicule 
 but dignified and conscious of ultimate vindication, in 
 Daryus and plays of its like, he advances artistically as 
 well as satirically. This is because here the Vice makes 
 fun of the pretensions of his own worthless associates. 
 Comedy has learned a lesson of social importance when 
 she turns her weapons, at last, against those who are de- 
 servedly objects of derision or contempt. Somewhat more 
 virile is the remaining play of this group. Like Bale's 
 King Johan, the Conflict of Conscience, by Nathaniell 
 Woodes, Minister in Norwich, presents a peculiar mix- 
 ture of individual and historical characters with figures 
 of mere abstraction. The real subject of this con- 
 troversial drama, Francis Spiera, had committed sui- 
 cide, about 1550, in remorse for his conversion to Roman
 
 302 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Catholicism. Woodes* play, though not published until 
 1581, was probably written soon after 1563. * It stands 
 midway between the allegorical interlude and the drama 
 of concrete experience, and at first sight seems worthy of 
 the praise accorded to a worthy innovation. But it is 
 not: for though the author makes a laudable profession 
 of raising his subject from the particular to the universal, 
 he succeeds only in theologising; and though he calls his 
 production an "excellent new commedie," it is that only 
 by virtue of the narrated repentance of the "apostate" 
 before his death. Still there is something of originality 
 and amusement in one or two of the episodes, and in the 
 colloquies of the Vice and his associates. There is also 
 a commendable realism in the portraiture of the priest, 
 Caconos. With his Scottish dialect, and his portace illu- 
 minated to offset the imperfection of his reading faculty, 
 he is, I think, the earliest burlesque of the ecclesiastical 
 ignoramus in English comedy. The author shows skill 
 in the development of his characters, and is betrayed, at 
 times, into poetry of a technique and style almost as 
 charming as that of the best portions of the Manage of 
 Witte and Science. 
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS OF THE STOCK 
 
 Of the decadent stock of moralities and interludes, 
 there are, as I have said, a few specimens, be- 
 tween t4ie years 1553 and 1578, that exhibit a decided 
 advance in quality, even if not in kind. 2 Three of these, 
 The Longer thou Livest, All for Money and Tyde Taryeth 
 no Man t Mr. Fleay 3 lumps together as simple instances 
 
 1 When Sicilian's French account of Speira appeared in Geneva ; 
 Collier, in H. Dods. VI. 
 
 8 Rep. Engl. Com., Ixxxvi, from which this paragraph is taken. 
 Hist. St., p. 66.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 303 
 
 of the survival of the older "morality" after the introduc- 
 tion of tragedy and comedy on the models of Seneca and 
 Plautus, and makes the further statement that none of 
 them teaches us anything as to the historical develop- 
 ment of the drama in England. With the utmost respect 
 for the knowledge of this often helpful historian, I must 
 say that as a matter of judgment, none of these dramas, 
 least of all Longer thou Livest, should be classed with 
 the moral plays of mere survival. While the authors of 
 these and similar specimens did not produce a new kind, 
 they did more than repeat the old. They revived and 
 enriched the moral interlude by infusion of new strains, 
 and so produced, by culture, a most interesting group of 
 what may be called variations of the moral. To this 
 class of morals belong also the Triall of Treasure, Like 
 wil to Like and the Life and Repentaunce of Marie Mag- 
 dalene. It must be said also that a few moral tragedies 
 of the period like R. B.'s Apius and Firginia (about 
 1563, printed 1575), and Preston's King Cambises (S. R. 
 1569 to 1570), have some claim to belong to this group, 
 and that if there were space they should receive attention 
 for their vital dramatic quality and their development of 
 the character of the Vice. The Hap-hazard of the former 
 far from being, as Dr. Ward has said, "redundant to the 
 action," suggests the "conspiracie" which Apius adopts, 
 and is the heart of rascality and fun; he is consequently 
 a Vice of the old type ; but he is, also, the representative 
 (in accordance with his name and express profession) of 
 the caprice of the individual and the irony of fortune. 
 He is the Vice, efficient for evil, but in process of evolu- 
 tion into the Inclinations or Humours of a somewhat later 
 period of dramatic history: conceptions not immoral but 
 unmoral, artistic impersonations of comic extravagance,
 
 304 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 where Every Man is in his Vice, and every Vice is but 
 a Humour. The Ambidexter of the latter tragedy plays 
 "with both hands finely" in the main action, and at the 
 same time serves to provoke the jocosity of those admir- 
 ably concrete ruffians, Huf, Ruf and Snuf, and of the 
 clown of the play. The Horestes* written by John 
 Pikerynge in 1567, must also be mentioned here. The 
 Vice under his dual designation of Corage and Revenge 
 is of the weathervane variety; and in realistic and hu- 
 morous qualities the play closely resembles the preceding 
 two. They were a noble but futile effort to bottle the 
 juices of tragedy, classical-historical at that, in the leath- 
 ers of moral interlude. 
 
 Of the comedy-interludes of this group the first in 
 chronological order would appear to be Tyde Taryeth no 
 Man. It was compiled by George Wapull and printed 
 in I576, 2 and calls itself a "commody right pythie and 
 full of delight." Collier thinks that the character of the 
 play indicates a considerably earlier date of authorship. 
 The religious tone is of the established reformation, not 
 at all controversial; but the references to the "Prince" 
 (instead of Queen) can hardly be explained as abstract 
 or generic. It therefore may have been written before 
 1553. While there is nothing new in the conception, 
 and the unity of the plot lies entirely in the hands of the 
 Vice, who devotes himself to illustrating the truth of the 
 proverbial title, the movement is noteworthy because it 
 develops no less than three parallel actions: the ruin of a 
 
 1 Brit. Mus.,C. 34.g; Collier's Illustr. OldEngl. Lit., II, 2. Brandl's 
 Quellen. 
 
 9 Nothing known of Wapull. The play is in Br. Mus., C. 34. f. 
 45 ; also in Duke of Devonshire's Library. Repr. Collier, E. E. Pof. 
 Lit., Vol. II, London, 1863-64.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 305 
 
 tenant by oppression, the failure of a courtier in his vain 
 ambition, and the career of two prodigals, Wilfull Wanton 
 and Wastefulness. The conclusion gathers these three 
 threads into one, and metes out poetical justice to the 
 dramatis persona. In the first movement, the character of 
 No-Good-Neighbourhood notably anticipates the Nychol- 
 Know-the-Law of Lupton's All for Money; in the second, 
 the hero, Willing-to-win- Worship, anticipates the Perin of 
 Knack to Know a Knave and the Radagon of Greene and 
 Lodge's Looking Glass ; the third movement is a crude 
 treatment of the Magdalene theme. The dramatic means 
 are, like the conception, old; but the Vice and the local 
 characters, tenaunt, debtor, courtier, prodigals, though 
 generic, are concrete and well portrayed. Corage (Vice, 
 marplot and jester), with his rollicking songs of the barge 
 that he steers to hell, is the dramatic main-spring, the 
 comic individual, if not the hero. The character of Fur- 
 theraunce, who makes his interest out of oppressor and 
 oppressed alike, is conducted with no ordinary skill; 
 likewise that of Greediness the landlord, a forerunner 
 of the Lucres, Overreaches and Suckdrys, who ends his 
 days "in a great madnesse" and sails "with the tyde 
 boat straight into Hell." The play, therefore, though a 
 survival, is of cardinal importance since it combines 
 motives sufficient for three kinds of moral interlude, sug- 
 gests the drama of parallel action, and interweaves the 
 comic and the grave, while it exemplifies abstract princi- 
 ples with a width of reach decidedly remarkable, by means 
 of characters on the one hand native and social, on the 
 other typical. 
 
 The "new and mery" interlude of The Trial of 
 Treasure, printed 1567, but probably written some years 
 before, is directed against the love of wealth, and is no 
 
 20
 
 3 o6 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 less didactic than its predecessors. But though confined 
 within the usual limits of the moral interlude, it possesses 
 characteristics of some novelty and promise. The serious 
 and comic actions are consolidated, and the characters 
 are arrayed in contrasted pairs, as in Like will to Like 
 and Damon and Pithias. The saintly hero and heroine 
 and their worldly counterparts are well portrayed. The 
 Lady Trust is one of our earliest specimens of the gra- 
 cious, highminded, and, still not impossible, woman ; and 
 Just is an example, not quite so novel, but well intended, 
 of the muscular Christian, unswerving in constancy. While 
 the plot turns upon the relations of the worldly pair, those 
 of the unworldly furnish the imagination with materials 
 for a sequel. The characters are, generally speaking, con- 
 crete in action if not in name ; and especially life-like are 
 the amusing, fat blackguard, Greedy-Gut, and the Vice, 
 Inclination. The latter is distinctively of the mischief- 
 making variety; he eggs on the victim, but also ridi- 
 cules him in his embarrassment and prophesies his 
 destruction. He does not deserve to be severely punished; 
 and so the author merely "snaffles" him as one should 
 snaffle any irresponsible, and as Porter, Shakespeare, 
 Chapman and Jonson, in the coming age, snaffled the 
 undue "humours" of their dramatis personce. 
 
 In spite of Ulpian Fulwell's laudable attempt at riding 
 two horses in the "very godly and mirthful enterlude in- 
 tituled Like wil to Like quod the Devel to the Colier" he 
 does not much impress us with the disaster to which his 
 "ruffins and roisters are brought." The play was printed 
 in 1568, but acted, Mr. Fleay thinks, as early as I562. 1 
 
 1 Bodl. Malonc, qto.; H. Dods. Vol. III. See Fleay, Hist. St., 
 pp. 596 1 , for his theory of its connection with Misogontts, Roister Doister, 
 and Damon and Pitbias.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 307 
 
 Though it is, in fact, little more than a farce, it acquires 
 a certain distinction as one of the few interludes posses- 
 sing both Devil and Vice, and the only play extant of 
 the kind in which the latter is conveyed to hell by the 
 former. Nichol Newfangle, comic hero as well as Vice, 
 fulfils the purpose of the plot by pairing off characters 
 of his kidney: Lucifer, with Grim the Collier, Tom Tosspot 
 with Ralph Roister, Hankin Hangman with himself. The 
 contrasted pairing of virtuous abstractions is also not- 
 able, for every such attempt at classification indicates a 
 step forward in the analysis of character; but the shred of 
 serious action itself is of slight importance beside the 
 comic, and not affected by it. In this play, again, the 
 Vice is the most important personage: his rapport with 
 the audience, his skill in burlesque, the liturgy to the 
 Devil, and the sham court, his repertory of comic 
 tricks, mimicries and witty responses, distinguish him 
 as one of the most varied and original of his class. 
 In versatility he must be ranked with Idelness of 
 the Contract of Wit and Wisdome. As mischief-maker, 
 indeed, and consequently as motive force of the 
 action, he is unusually inventive. The Vice of The 
 Trial of Treasure seduces, and in Mephistophelian vein 
 derides, the Nichol Newfangle of this play informs 
 against his dupes as well, and even puts the halter 
 round their necks when he can. Though he is roundly 
 drubbed by two of them, and borne by Lucifer to 
 the place where he belongs, he is treated rather 
 as a source of merriment than as a vicious character. 
 It is a grim kind of merriment, however, and must 
 have impressed the spectators to an unusual degree 
 with the irony of lawlessness, for of that Nichol is 
 the incarnation.
 
 308 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene* by the 
 learned clarke Lewes Wager, printed 1566, is an excellent 
 example of dramatic experiment in the fusion of kinds. 
 Based, as the author tells us, on Luke vii and viii, the 
 indebtedness of the play to scriptural story is still but 
 slight, and that only in the Second Part. Of the mediae- 
 val legend, which underlies the Digby Magdalene, no 
 dramatic use is made. Under the disguise of the title, we 
 discover a Protestant "new enterlude," of the prodigal, in 
 many respects as natural and entertaining as The Nice 
 Wanton, or the Acolastus of the continental humanist. 
 Like all survivals of the decadent stock, it is furnished 
 with the agencies of the moral interlude the Vice and 
 his accessories, all children of "Sathan," and the usual 
 chorus of allegorical sermonisers, but it moves in a rich 
 environment of contemporary customs and costumes. 
 Few plays of its date, and of a didactic purpose, present 
 characters so well constructed and consistently developed. 
 Mary, who enters "triflyng with her garmentes" and be- 
 wailing the misfit of her gown, is all the more convincing 
 because not from the first an abandoned character. She 
 is a demonstration of the proverb, Terentian in spirit, 
 but enunciated by the Vice himself Puellce pestis, in- 
 dulgentia parentum. She has merely not been disciplined. 
 Her replies to the double-entendres of the seducer are 
 unsophisticated and girlish. Infidelie gets the better of 
 her, of course; but it is only gradually that she is in- 
 
 1 Edited from the qto., probably unique, in the library of Mr. W. A. 
 White, of New York, by Professor F. I. Carpenter (Publ. of Univ. 
 Chicago Press) with excellent Introduction, Notes, and Glossary. Copies 
 of a second edition, essentially a reissue of the I 566 but dated I 567, are 
 to be found in Br. Mus., C. 34. e. 36. qto. Carpenter dates the com- 
 position as early as 1550, and Brandl 1547. But their reasons seem 
 hardly conclusive.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 309 
 
 structed in evil, and only by suffering and repentance that 
 she is reformed. She is the most natural and interesting 
 girl of dramatic fiction at the date of which we are speak- 
 ing, not saint, nor devil, nor abstraction, a creature 
 of flesh and blood, but of charm by no means only 
 physical. She has a wit and a style. The conversations 
 in which she figures are facile and vivid. Her companions 
 are blackguards ; but the poet who imagined them holds 
 her in poetic regard. She stirs him. There are few 
 sprightlier songs in our early drama than the 
 
 Hoigh, Mistresse Mary, I pray you be mery, 
 
 few heroines of whom we retain so clear a mental 
 impression; her "pretie person," her "golden shyning 
 haire," her " eyes as gray as glasse," her " smylyng 
 countenance," 
 
 Your lyps as ruddy as the redde Rose, 
 
 Your teeth as white as ever was the wales bone 
 So cleane, so swete, so fayre, so good, so freshe, so gay. 
 
 The author has devised his First Part with such cunning 
 that his audience could not but sit through the scriptural 
 and doctrinal moral of the Second; if for no other reason 
 than to discover whether the winsome lass should by any 
 chance fail to be justified by faith. 1 The varied qualities 
 of this play had inclined me to place it in the group 
 called polytypic; but since, like the play which we shall 
 next consider, it is historically important rather as fusing 
 different species of the didactic type into one than as 
 attempting to assimilate the type to the wholly secular 
 farce, comedy of intrigue, romance and the like, the 
 present arrangement seems the more satisfactory. 
 
 1 The author became Rector of Garlickhithe, March 28, 1560. Car- 
 penter, Introd. t p. xiv.
 
 3 io PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 Collier dates the "very merry and pythie Commedie 
 called The Longer thou Livest, the more Foole thou Art" 
 newly compiled by W. Wager l (probably a relative of 
 Lewis), soon after I558. 2 The limits of its publication, 
 however, are 1567 to 1594; and Mr. Fleay's surmise of 
 1571 to 1576 as the period of writing is, I think, confirmed 
 by the passage in the play which begins 
 
 God preserve London, that noble citie 
 
 Where they have taken a godly ordre for a truth. 
 
 This probably refers to some of the "Orders" or the 
 "Remedies" concerning stage performances proposed, 
 J 575 to X 5?6> by the Lord Mayor and Corporation, and 
 indicates that W. Wager was in sympathy with the re- 
 pressive policy of the Common Council. 
 
 The title-page and prologue indicate that this "com- 
 medie" combines the purposes of the "youth" and "wit" 
 interludes: to portray "such as had lever to Folly and 
 Idlenes fall." The plot itself presents in addition features 
 of the "prodigal" play, like the Nice Wanton ("as one 
 bringeth up his children ... so shall he have them "), 
 and of the moral-history of man's career, like Mundus 
 et Infans. In addition to all this, opportunity is taken to 
 root out Antichrist. The play, therefore, combines quali- 
 ties of some half-dozen kinds of moral interlude ; and 
 this it does with a skill and vivacity displayed by few of 
 
 1 Qtp. in Br. Mus., C. 34, e. 37, Hunter (Chorus Vatum Anglica- 
 norum, Br. Mus. 24, 491, Add. MSS. 24, 491, p. 90) conjectures the 
 identity of W. Wager with Dr. W. Gager of Oxford, who is put down 
 by Meres as "among the best for comedy " ; but if the play was written 
 before I 576, it is not likely that Wager was Gager, for the latter did not 
 enter Christ Church till 1574, and would presumably have been too 
 young for such a composition as this. 
 
 8 Halliwell says 1568-9; Hazlitt, 1581.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 311 
 
 its predecessors. The leading character, Moros, whose 
 songs hang together like "fethers in the winde," must 
 not be mistaken for a Vice. His companions, Idleness, 
 Incontinence and their set are self-confessed Vices, and 
 they endow him with the insignia of that role, but he is 
 still designated "as starke an Idiot as ever bore bable"; 
 and it is as such that he is finally provided with the fool's 
 coat and, as a fool, not a Vice, borne by Confusion to 
 the Devil. He is what his name implies, a cross be- 
 tween Vice and Fool, and on this account, is historically 
 a most instructive character: a concrete figure in whom 
 qualities of Vice, waggish knave, and counterfeit-simple 
 or crank, are manifest in transition toward the role of 
 jester and comic hero. The interlude is, in several other 
 respects, interesting: the animus is anti-Papist, the con- 
 ception academic; but the social environment, as of the 
 hero's menage, with its Sir Anthony Arrogant, auditor, 
 Gregory Gorbely, the goutie, Nicholl Never-thrift, the 
 notary, and Nell and Nan of the "thacked house," 
 
 is, after all, of appropriate native quality. The life 
 of the piece lies mostly in the " footes " of songs and the 
 songs themselves decantated by the hero, "I have a 
 pretty titmouse come pricking on my to," and the rest 
 
 a device which however was not new. Rastell, in the 
 Four Elements, and I suppose many another since then, 
 had used it. Beside the suggestion of "humours" in 
 the list of the Fool's officials, and the peculiarities already 
 mentioned, the play does not much advance the methods 
 of comedy. In some details, as of diction and doctrine, 
 it resembles the Magdalene of Lewis Wager; maybe in 
 versatility of comic power it excels that play. So Pro- 
 fessor Carpenter maintains. But in other qualities, 
 in lyric touch, ease of dialogue, and general technique,
 
 312 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 and in the artistic relish of naughtiness, William 
 Wager's dramatic output cannot compare with that of 
 Lewis. 
 
 Another belated, and therefore unconsidered, specimen 
 of the "prodigal son" play is the "tragical comedy en- 
 tituled The Glasse of Government," by George Gascoigne. 
 Though not printed until some fifteen years after the 
 publication of the principal dramas of its class The 
 Nice Wanton and The Disobedient Child this play is 
 at once the most representative and original of English 
 attempts to connect for the stage "Terentian situations 
 with a Christian moral in a picture of school life." The 
 best known English interludes of the prodigal son were 
 patterned after continental models of the early sixteenth 
 century, the Asotus of Macropedius and his Rebelles, the 
 Studentes of Stymmelius, and especially the Acolastus of 
 Gnapheus, which, through Palsgrave's English translation 
 of 1540, exerted a long enduring influence. Earlier still, 
 before the close of the fifteenth century, the ideal of the 
 Christian Terence school had found expression in French 
 moralites, the Bien-Avise et Mal-Avise, les Enfants de 
 Maintenant and so forth. From some of its continental 
 and most of its English predecessors, Gascoigne's play is 
 distinguished by the fact that it is a Calvinistic, not Roman 
 Catholic, adaptation of the humanist experiment of in- 
 struction by the stage, and that instead of Latin or 
 English verse it uses (like the author's early comedy, 
 The Supposes} plain vernacular prose. The plot, too, 
 of The Glasse of Government is fresh and vigorous, and 
 I think, original. The value of the play is further en- 
 hanced by its double ending; it is a genuine "tragical 
 comedy," for while the righteous are rewarded, the un- 
 godly reap the wages of their sin.
 
 ARTISTIC VARIATIONS 313 
 
 A last survival of the older stock remains to consider: 
 All for Money, written by T. Lupton, and published in 
 I578. 1 It calls itself a "moral and pitieful Comedie"; 
 but of the pathos most pitifully fails. It is a morality for 
 grown-ups; Protestant, but not markedly controversial. 
 Collier refuses it the title of comedy, but it surely de- 
 serves some such credit for the comedy-plot, though in 
 skeleton, by which it illustrates the influence of avarice 
 upon the interests and classes of society. Again, as in 
 the Tyde and other plays already noticed, we find that 
 the plot is controlled by a Vice, who manipulates both 
 threads of popular interest, the mischievous and the 
 comic ; but that the minor characters and episodic move- 
 ments all tend to establish the thesis of the main and 
 moral action. This play, late as it was written, rejoices 
 in a "Sathan" as well. The dramatic success, if any, was 
 achieved in spite of the allegorical machinery and fig- 
 ures : the Learning With-Money, Learning PPithout-Money, 
 etc. also in spite of the commonplace humour the 
 humour of dress, of horse-play, of abuse, of puerile 
 epigram and indecency. The dramatic advance consists 
 in the local flavour of the characters, the careful and 
 still varied reproduction of contemporary life: William 
 with-the-Two- Wives, for instance, who would "rather 
 have lesse," Nicholl-never-out-of-Lawe, Sir Lawrence 
 Livingless, the priest who "knows not how many planets, 
 but knows how many cards he has when he has played 
 seven," old Mother Croote, with her complaint of the 
 "holsom yong man of twenty year old and three," who 
 has deserted her for a poorer, younger, more enticing 
 wench. The personages speak in accordance with their 
 
 Bodley, Malone, 163, qto.; repr. Halliwell, Pop. Lit., XVI and 
 Cents., London, 1851.
 
 3 1 4 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 characters; the Vice no longer directs his wit and 
 his machinations against individuals too sincere or com- 
 monplace to be ridiculous; the satire has a definite aim 
 and makes for it. Altogether T. Lupton's play has 
 more merit than some of its genus that are better known. 
 In common with all these less-known morals its main 
 demerit is that it was born too late. 
 
 They served a purpose in the development of the 
 drama, these posthumous plays of qualities incarnate; 
 they promoted the habit of psychological analysis; they 
 quickened the observation of the dramatist, his conjec- 
 tural faculty, his skill in plot-invention; they whetted the 
 appetite of the public for the tragedy of characters and 
 the comedy of humours, the art of Marlowe, Kyd, 
 and Shakespeare, of Robert Wilson, Jonson, Dekker, and 
 Chapman; the expression of abstract vice in vicious per- 
 sonality, of abstract folly in social environment and 
 human caprice.
 
 ROMANTIC COMEDY 315 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 SOME LESS-KNOWN FORERUNNERS OF 
 ROMANTIC COMEDY 
 
 BETWEEN 1560 and 1590 the drift of the drama was 
 setting steadily away from the useful and toward the 
 pleasant. Of the ingredients of romantic comedy, some 
 such as love and ideal devotion had already found a place 
 in the interlude as early as 1530. The inspiration of the 
 Calisto and Melibaea is continued in the romantic friend- 
 ship of Damon and Pithias (1563-1565), and the intrigues 
 of The Supposes which was acted in 1566. Phases of the 
 marvellous and of the heroic had appeared in saints' plays 
 and school interludes; but there the didactic purpose 
 had generally managed to overshadow entertainment. 
 Now the theatre-goer began to revel in representations of 
 chivalry and sentimental love, pomp, adventure, necro- 
 mancy, and intrigue, the ironies of fortune and the chari- 
 ties of mirth, in short, the social comedy of humour and 
 romance. 
 
 The dramas of Edwardes and Gascoigne, and, of course, 
 of the great forerunners of Shakespeare are known to all. 
 About a few of the less-known predecessors of the roman- 
 tic comedy I should like to say a word. 
 
 Of plays which dramatise the adventures of amorous 
 knights and distressed ladies, folk-lore romances as 
 Mr. Fleay calls them, the first to challenge our atten-
 
 316 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 tion is "the pleasant comedie of Common Conditions"* 
 written perhaps between 1572 and 1576, and probably 
 the same that is entered in the stationers' registers on 
 July 26 of the latter year. Mr. Fleay assigns both this 
 play and Sir Clyomon, which will next be considered, 
 to R(ichard) B(ower), the author of Apius and Virginia. 
 Certainly the conception of the servitor, Conditions, 
 who combines the mischief-making characteristics of 
 the real Vice with qualities of the parasite and domestic 
 fool, is somewhat the same as that of Haphazard in 
 R.B.'s play (about 1563). "Which ever way the wind 
 blowes, it is for the commoditie" of this "crafty counter- 
 feit knave"; and, like Haphazard again, the "turne coat" 
 of this play would seem to represent the shifting ironies of 
 fortune. A peculiar figure is Conditions, paralleled, 
 after all, only by the marplot of the somewhat similar 
 "semi-epical comedy of romantic adventure," Sir Clyo- 
 mon. In spite of its crude attempt at emotional display 
 and its rambling nightmare of a plot, the play of Common 
 Conditions has indubitable merit. I have already said that 
 it escapes the didactic ; it is notable also for its devotion to 
 the excitements of adventure, its fresh situations and senti- 
 mental loves, its romantic geography, its range of events, 
 of social classes and typical characters, and for its intro- 
 duction of a phenomenon found in but few earlier plays, 
 such as the Melibaea, the heroine ecstatically roman- 
 tic and still in no respect ridiculous. This play presents 
 us with heroines not kept in the background as in the 
 Italian-Terentian comedy of intrigue like The Sup- 
 poses, but prominent in wit and interest, and easily on 
 
 1 Duke of Devonshire's library ; Rpr. Brandl. Quellen. Malone 
 says, in his transcript of the play (Bodl. Ma/one, Ms. 36.) that it was 
 printed about the year 1570.
 
 ROMANTIC COMEDY 317 
 
 a level with the two heroes of the story. The outcome is 
 parallelism and contrast of the pairs of lovers, and a fairly 
 executed double plot. The "somewhat feminiriative" 
 Clarisia, Lomia the "natural," and the love-lorn Sabia 
 are promising contributions to the gallery of romantic 
 portraiture. But the characterisation of all these figures 
 is inferior to that of Conditions himself, who, though he 
 may fall asleep "while lifting his legge over a stile," is 
 wider awake in quip and knavery than any preceding mar- 
 plot of English comedy. Tinkers and Gilbertian pirates, 
 also, stand out rollicking, farcical, but actual and dra- 
 matic. Certain resemblances, which may of course be tem- 
 poraneous or accidental, might be pointed out between this 
 play and The Two Italian Gentlemen, especially in respect 
 of style, the peculiar blend of humour and romance, and 
 the conversational and lyrical qualities in each. That 
 Common Conditions had some vitality appears from 
 Kirkman's mention of it in his catalogue of I66I. 1 
 
 A considerably greater prominence was achieved by its 
 companion-piece, the history of Sir Clyomon and Sir 
 Clamydes, printed in 1599, but acted between 1587 and 
 I594, 2 and maybe written not long after Common Con- 
 ditions. Although Sir Clyomon lacks perspective, local, 
 logical, or chronological, it is not without humour or dra- 
 matic inventiveness. It strains after novelty and revels in 
 surprise. Like our old friends, Conditions, Haphazard 
 and Ambidexter, the marplot of the play, one Subtle Shift, 
 illustrates the dramatic transition from the portrayal of 
 versatile Vice to that of fickle Fortune, an effort con- 
 
 1 Collier's account of the play is inaccurate ; and I do not see how 
 Brandl makes out that Lomia is Conditions in disguise. 
 
 2 See Fleay's Hist. St., p. 89; E. Dr., II, 296. The attributions to 
 Peele and to Wilson lack confirmation ; while the conjecture of R. B.'s 
 authorship is not convincing, although suggestive.
 
 3i8 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 genial to comedy. We are regaled by the presence of a 
 heroine disguised as a page, of an enchanter and his 
 dragon, and of diversified monsters, puppets and para- 
 phernalia, borrowed from the jurisdiction of the Faery 
 Queene. It is of just such folk-lore extravaganzas, Islands 
 of Strange Marshes and Forests of Marvels, that Peele 
 makes sport in his nearly contemporaneous Old Wives 
 
 For his recent edition of the manuscript of one of the 
 earliest comedies of intrigue of the period which we are 
 considering, we are indebted to Dr. Carl Grabau. The 
 author of this play, The Bugbears? is unknown. If we 
 trust the evidence of the versification, it was written be- 
 fore 1584 ; according to other evidence, certainly after 
 1561. It is a "contamination" of Grazzini's La Spiritata, 
 and of Gl' Ingannati. It revives the secret marriage of 
 the Andria, the buried treasure of the Trinummus and 
 the ghost of the Mostellaria. I find the style of con- 
 siderable interest and the plot dramatically handled. The 
 father of Formosus will not consent to his marriage with 
 Rosimunda unless she bring a dower of three thousand 
 crowns. But Rosimunda is poor ; and her lover has re- 
 sort to a strategem. With the assistance of a pseudo- 
 necromancer he frightens his close-fisted sire out of 
 the house by a pretended obsession of ghosts (the bug- 
 bears), and steals from the paternal coffers the money 
 necessary to the contract. A subplot somewhat enhances 
 the interest. The translator has here and there made 
 slight insertions ; the lyrical passages and the phrase- 
 ology of the necromancer and the servants are distinctly 
 English in flavour. 
 
 1 Br. Mus., Landsdownc MSS., Vol. 807 ; Rpr. Archiv. d. n. 
 Sprachen, Bde. 97, 98.
 
 ROMANTIC COMEDY 319 
 
 This burlesque of witchcraft is found subservient to 
 a plot of nascent humours and romantic passion in still 
 another play that deserves a closer degree of attention 
 than has hitherto been vouchsafed it. This is A. M.'s 
 Fidele et Fortunio, 1 entered to Hackett for publication in 
 1584 as " Fedele et Fortuna, the Deceipts in Love discoursed 
 in a Commedia of ii Italyan gentlemen," comedy of do- 
 mestic intrigue, like The Supposes, and like it a trans- 
 lation. Though the production is fettered by rhyme, the 
 plot is as entertaining and novel as any of that date, 
 even the Campaspe or the Sapho, both printed in 1584. 
 The romance anticipates the circuitous infatuations of 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream. Virginia loves Fidele, 
 who loves Victoria, who loves Fortunio, who loves Attilia 
 (Victoria's maid). And about this lady's maid the busi- 
 ness also of lower life centres; for Pedante, the para- 
 site disguised as schoolmaster, and Crackstone, the 
 swashbuckler (who once sold butter and cheese to the 
 camp but now is "captain"), are rivals for her favour. 
 The intrigues are embellished by songs of no ordinary 
 charm; indeed Fidele's under Victoria's window "I serve 
 a mistress whiter than the snow," foretells from afar 
 Browning's sweetest in the Blot i the 'Scutcheon. But, 
 all in all, the interest of the action is in the common char- 
 acters: Attilia noticeably, and Medusa whose witchcraft 
 aids to interweave the threads of the play. The latter is 
 of the lineage of Celestina; she is a worthy contemporary 
 of Mother Bombie, and a forerunner of the go-betweens 
 
 1 Probably Anthony Munday. Selections are given in HalliwelTs 
 Pop. Lit. XVI and XPII Cents., pp. 1 5 et seq. If, as seems likely, 
 Nashe's allusion in Have With Tou, \ 596 (Fleay, E. Dr., II, 1 13), is to 
 the Crackstone of the translation it is to be presumed that the play had 
 been put upon the stage.
 
 3 20 PLAYS OF OUR FOREFATHERS 
 
 of Restoration comedy. The most characteristic figure, 
 however, thoroughly English in his "humour" is Crack- 
 stone, at one and the same time the Bobadil and Dog- 
 berry and male Slip-slop of the play. His concealment in 
 the tomb, his terror at the "conjurations" of Medusa, his 
 capture in the net, and his Xantippean baptism are ad- 
 mirable fooling. This play has various details of simi- 
 larity with another of domestic intrigue and romantic 
 plot called The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, acted, ac- 
 cording to Mr. Fleay, about the same date, 1584 to 1587, 
 and assigned by him to the same author, Anthony Mun- 
 day. I think it quite likely that the author was that 
 "Antonio Balladino," the "best plotter" of the day; and 
 that he seized upon the story, exactly to his taste, with 
 its young hero, its elopement, battles, disguises, discovery 
 and reconciliation, not very long after it first appeared 
 in Rich's Farewell to the Military Profession, 1581. The 
 Dutch dialect is, however, of Dekker's quality and goes 
 to confirm Dr. Ward's suggestion. Perhaps Dekker 
 collaborated. 
 
 The "pleasant and stately morals" known as the Rare 
 Triumphs of Love and Fortune, The Three Ladies of 
 London, and The Three Lordes and Three Ladies of Lon- 
 don are a distinct advance upon other plays of this 
 romantic kind. The latter two were written by Robert 
 Wilson; and I have a shrewd suspicion that to him the 
 first, also, may be attributed. They are the merging of 
 moral interlude in romantic and social comedy; and 
 consequently, though I have elsewhere described them in 
 detail, 1 I cannot conclude this notice without a word of 
 repetition concerning their quality. In them the " moral " 
 arrives at a consciousness of the demands of art ; and, 
 1 Repr. Engl. Com., Ixxxviii-ici.
 
 ROMANTIC COMEDY 321 
 
 attempting to fulfil its possibilities, acquires body, spirit, 
 and bouquet, even though, in the moment of fermenta- 
 tion, it bursts the ancient bottle. Still we must remem- 
 ber that we have reached the period, 1580 to 1590, in 
 which most of the best work of Lyly, Marlowe, Peele, 
 and Greene was produced; and we must, therefore, 
 not attribute to Wilson an importance greater than 
 that of an industrious and inventive contemporary, hos- 
 pitable to ideas, but essentially conservative in practice. 
 He is at once "father of interludes," as interludes then 
 were regarded, and an intermediary between the interlude 
 of moral abstractions and the comedy of humour and 
 romance. 
 
 21
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 323 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 A. OBSERVATIONS ON THE SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 
 
 In the Chester cycle there are twenty-five plays. 1 The sources 
 of some have already been indicated in our examination of legends 
 like the Fall of Lucifer and the History of the Holy Rood. For 
 dramas treating of pre-Christian subjects, the authorities in gen- 
 eral are the Latin translation of the Bible by Jerome, known as 
 the Vulgate, the Historia Scholastica of the twelfth-century French 
 priest Peter Comestor, the Cursor Mundi, and a thirteenth-century 
 version of the French Mystere du Viel Testament, the extant fif- 
 teenth century copy of which agrees in most matters of sequence 
 and motive with the Chester. In some cases the playwrights of 
 Chester seem to have gone straight to Josephus 2 ; in others to 
 early versions of the French Mistere de la NativitJ and of the 
 Passion of A. Greban, elaborated into cycles in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury. The Mistere d' Adam of the twelfth century may also have 
 been used. In some cases, as, for instance, the account of a 
 dream of things celestial and to come which Adam had while 
 God was making Eve, a consideration of the context 3 shows that 
 the Chester playwright drew not from the Legenda Aurea or the 
 middle English Genesis and Exodus, but directly from their im- 
 mediate source, the history of Comestor. The more remote or- 
 iginals of such traditions were, of course, Bede's Ecclesiastical 
 History, Anglo-Saxon religious poems, the De Spiritalis His- 
 toriae Gestis of Bishop Avitus, the Chronograpbia of Syncellus, 
 the fifth, or sixth, century Book of Adam and Eve, and its sources 
 in apocryphal literature of Jewish origin the Books of Enoch and 
 
 1 The texts are Wright, Chester Plays, 2 vols., 1843, Shakespeare 
 Society; and Deimling, 1893, Plays 1-13, E. E. T. S. 
 
 2 e g-> P art f the Balaam and bis Ass. 
 
 8 Ungemach, Quellen d.f. ersten Chester Plays, pp. 51, 79.
 
 3 2 4 APPENDIX 
 
 of the Jubilees. St. Augustine and Gregory the Great were used 
 both directly and indirectly. Comestor's account of Adam's 
 dream borrows, indeed, the very words of Augustine. 1 
 
 When the New Testament plays do not draw their narrative 
 directly from the Vulgate, the Cursor, the Legenda Aurea or Peter 
 Comestor, they turn to early versions of the French mysteries of 
 the Conception, Nativity, Passion, and Resurrection, to mediaeval 
 legends, or to the Apocryphal New Testament. 
 
 The withering of Salome's hand because she had sacrilegiously 
 touched the Virgin comes, for instance, originally from the Gospel 
 of Pseudo-Matthew ; but it also bears a close resemblance to the 
 fourteenth century Miracle de la Nativit'e Nostre Seigneur, where 
 the names of the midwives correspond with those of the Chester. 
 The story of the Magi owes much to the same Gospel and to 
 the Pseudo-Chrysostom : it was developed in the middle ages 
 into a long and romantic legend. The events attending the 
 birth of Christ, where non-biblical, are derived from the Latin 
 Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, and the Greek Protevangel of 
 James. The sources of the Play of Antichrist, unique in the 
 English Cycles, I have indicated in my account of that legend. 
 
 The fifteen signs that shall fall before the day of doom, which 
 are recited in the play of Ezekiel, are referred directly to the 
 authority of St. Jerome : 
 
 The which were written on a row 
 He found in book of Hebrew. 
 
 These signs are variously given in less known English poems, 8 
 as well as in the Cursor, the Legenda Aurea, and the Historia 
 Scholastica, all of which claim Jerome as their source. The 
 Chester play, however, follows the Legenda, and that Peter 
 Comestor. 
 
 It is singular that neither of the main traditions, that of the 
 Cursor (in which the first sign is of bloody rain) nor that of 
 Chester (in which the first is of the rising sea) follows the letter 
 or the order of the Erythraean Sibyl. The immediate source of 
 
 1 Gen. ad. Lit., IX. 13, Ungemach, p. 51. 
 
 2 Quoted by Wright, Chester Plays, pp. 219-222.
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 325 
 
 St. Jerome's information was undoubtedly, as it was for St. Augus- 
 tine, the famous Erythraean acrostic, lines 217-251 of the eighth 
 book of the Sibylline Oracles. The content of these was of the signs 
 that should precede the Judgment ; the initials of the lines, how- 
 ever, spelled IH2OT2 XP2ITO2 EOT TIOS 2HTHP 
 2TATPO2. A Latin rendering with the last seven lines 
 omitted, and still preserving the acrostic of the rest, is given by 
 St. Augustine in his chapter on the Erythraean Sibyl 1 : Jesus 
 C(h)reistos, T(h)eou Uios, Soter ; and he points out that the 
 first letters of these words, form the Greek ^0u5, or fish, a 
 symbol of the Christ among the Christians of the first centuries. 
 These Sibylline lines were written by a Christian of the second 
 century after Christ. But they are based upon similar prophe- 
 cies written much earlier. One of them appears in the third book 
 of the Oracles, lines 796-808, the production of an Alexandrian 
 Jew who, somewhere between 170 and 140 B. c., is foretelling 
 the signs that shall herald the end of things. Another is to be 
 found in the Book of Jubilees, twenty-third chapter. 2 It recites 
 not exactly the same judgments, to be sure, as those of the Chris- 
 tian Sibyl, the Chester Play, or the Cursor ; but the judgments are 
 fifteen in number. This book was written originally in Hebrew 
 about 135105 B. c. Since Jerome frequently quotes the Book 
 of 'Jubilees, I incline to think that this is his " Book of Hebrew." 
 The meeting of Octavian and the Sibyl (Chester Nativity) is 
 dramatised in the Mystere du Viel Testament, as well ; and is 
 traceable to the chapter on the Nativity of our Lord in the 
 Legenda Aurea ; as is the miracle of the fall of the Temple of 
 Peace which precedes the Octavian episode in the Chester. 
 
 The N-Town, or so-called Ludus Coventrize, 3 contains forty- 
 two plays. Ungemach points out 4 that the plays dealing with 
 Old Testament subjects are as near as those of Chester in their 
 resemblance to the Mystere du Viel Testament. He thinks that 
 
 1 City of God, XVIII. 23. 
 
 2 Verses 1 1, 13. 
 
 8 Edited by Halliwell, 1841, Shakespeare Society. 
 * Quellen, Cb. Plays, 86, 194.
 
 3 26 APPENDIX 
 
 both these English cycles derive in some measure from the same, 
 or a closely identical, French source which stands historically 
 between the Representation d' Adam of the twelfth century and 
 the Vitl Testament, Passion, etc., compiled in the fifteenth. In 
 other respects the N-Town series would appear to depend 
 largely upon the Vulgate, and the apocryphal Gospels, especially 
 the Birth of Mary, the Protevangel of James, and the Nicodemus. 
 In the Barrenness of Anna the disposal of the curate's income is 
 from the Birth of Mary, I. 3 j Mary in the Temple is from the 
 same source. Dr. Ward has called attention to the frequent use, 
 also, of the liturgy, of hymns and psalms, and scriptural para- 
 phrases. The scene of Lamech killing Cain occurs also in the 
 Cornish cycle, and is fully dramatised in the play Du desespoir 
 Cain et de Lameth qui le tua of the Viel Testament. It has its 
 origin, of course, in the account to be found in Genesis, but the 
 N-Town dramatist may have derived the elaborated story from 
 one of many mediaeval sources : the Legenda Aurea, Trevisa's 
 translation of the Polychronicon, Comestor's Historia Scholastica. 
 The details had been material of English tradition from the time 
 of the middle English Genesis ; and are ultimately derived from 
 the Book of Adam. For an exhaustive study of this and other 
 legends of Cain the reader should turn to Professor Emerson's 
 treatise upon the subject. 8 In the play of Mary's Betrothment the 
 author has apparently dispensed with intermediary legends, and 
 drawn his material from the Pseudo-Matthew, for there alone 
 could he have found the names of the virgins who waited upon 
 Mary. Also from that source, and from the Pretevangel of James 
 came the Trial of Joseph and Mary. The incident of Veronica 
 wiping the face of the Saviour " with her kerchy " in the play of 
 the Crucifixion was material of common tradition in the early and 
 middle ages. It may be traced from the Golden Legend back to 
 the apocryphal Death of Pilate. 
 
 That the Golden Legend is one of the chief sources of this 
 cycle is particularly evident in the case of the play of The Assump- 
 tion of the Virgin. The subject finds dramatisation in the York 
 
 1 Oliver F. Emerson, Legends of Cain ; Publications of Mod. Lang. 
 Ass'n, Dec. 1906, p. 874.
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 327 
 
 cycle as well ; but there the authority seems to be the apocryphal 
 Transitus Mariae direct. At first the N-Town play with its 
 successive episodes of wonder seemed to me to follow the sim- 
 ilarly vivid narrative of the Cursor Mundi ; but an examination 
 of the Golden Legend (Assumption)^ to which, in the opening 
 stanza, the officiating " Doctor " expressly refers, shows that not 
 only the incidents, but their order and detail, the exact phrase- 
 ology of the conversations, the Latin chants, and the authorities 
 quoted, are practically a transcript from Caxton's translation of 
 the Legenda. The play, which is itself written in a more recent 
 hand than the rest of the cycle, must therefore have been 
 composed after 1483. It is interesting to note that the N-Town 
 " Doctor " takes pains to inform us, in the words of Caxton, 
 that this story which is assigned to " Seynt Ihon, the Evangelist " 
 is " in a book clepid Apocriphun" The Transitus Mariae is, of 
 course, intended. Another account is given in the Cursor Mundi ; 
 but it varies greatly in details, and, as Dr Haenisch has shown, 
 is an independent translation into Northern English of an As- 
 sumption written in the South-English dialect by one Edmund of 
 Pontenay. 
 
 The York plays are forty-eight in number. Miss Lucy 
 Toulmin Smith tells us that " the cycle offers a closer parallel to 
 the Cursor Mundi than any of the other collections : first, because 
 it is more perfect and comprehensive ; secondly, because it is 
 free from much of the jocularity and popular incident which 
 were introduced into the Towneley and Coventry plays." She 
 says also that the York plays " take up the course of the biblical 
 history, more especially of the New Testament, on the same 
 model." It is, indeed, likely that in general the design of the 
 York cycle was influenced by the example of the Cursor, and it 
 is the most comprehensive of the cycles ; but in the use of 
 legendary materials it does not offer any closer parallel to the 
 Cursor than either the Cornish or the Coventry (N-Town) plays; 
 nor in sobriety of manner does it surpass the Cornish, N-Town 
 or Chester. The York plays are distinguished by their creative 
 power. Naturally they depend upon the accepted biblical
 
 328 APPENDIX 
 
 sources, and such apocryphal as are in use in the other collections: 
 The Pseudo- Matthew ', the Protevangel, the Gospel of the Birth of 
 Mary, both parts of Nicodemus (the Acts of Pilate and the 
 Descent to Hell) and the Transitus Mariae ;* but it is impos- 
 sible to discover the slavish dependence upon traditional ecclesias- 
 tical histories, such as the Historia Scholastica, and the affiliation 
 with continental mysteries which characterise some other cycles. 
 The York dramatists especially the two to whom we owe the 
 middle and later stages of its production were imaginatively 
 independent, artistically equipped far beyond the measure of the 
 compilers of Cornwall and Chester; far beyond the measure of 
 the leading poet of the N-Town, as well. That romancer, 
 while he perceived both the pathos and the humour of the material 
 at hand, had neither the creative power nor the metrical skill to 
 improve his opportunity. These the masters of York emphati- 
 cally had. And it was from York that the genius of Wakefield 
 took his cue. 
 
 In The Creation and the Fall of Lucifer the sources are some- 
 what as in Chester. The Expulsion from Eden suggests kinship 
 with the Representation d* Adam. The sequence in the play of 
 the Flood) relative to the appearance of the rainbow and the 
 prophecy of the catastrophic world-fire may have arisen from a 
 reading of Comestor, who himself derives from St. Augustine ; 2 
 so also the misquoted prophecy of Habakkuk, 
 
 He saide oure Savyoure shall be sene 
 Betwene bestis lye, 
 
 for both the Historia Scholastica and the York Birth of "Jesus 
 (XIV) read Habakkuk iii, 2, as if the Vulgate ran in 
 media animalium, or as Comestor has it in media duorum animalium 
 " between two beasts ; " whereas the original runs, " O Lord, 
 revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the 
 years (in media annorum) make known." But I am not 
 
 1 Lucy Toulrain Smith, York Mystery Plays, Introd., xlviii ; Kam- 
 ann, Die QuelUn der York-Spiele in Anglia, X, 189-226. 
 8 Ungemach, Quellen, p. 51.
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 329 
 
 convinced that the York dramatists were relying in these cases 
 on more than the popular tradition. One of the few instances 
 of a coincidence with the text of the Cursor Mundi concerns the 
 blossoming of Joseph's rod when he is chosen to wed Mary. 
 The source of this legend Miss Smith and Dr. A. W. Ward 
 give up. It is found in the Cursor, line 10,774, 
 
 With leaf and flower they found it green : 
 A dove was fro heaven sent 
 Light down and thereon leant. 
 
 The legendary source is the Pseudo-Evangel of the Nativity of 
 Mary,\. 1417 ; but it is not improbable that the York play de- 
 rived its inspiration directly from the Nativity of Our Lady in the 
 Legenda Aurea, which relates the manner of the marvel in detail. 
 
 The prophecies of the birth of Christ, contained in the York 
 Annunciation, are derived as are those of all cycles indirectly from 
 biblical sources, but effectively from the " pseudo-Augustinian 
 Sermo contra Judaeos, Paganos, et Arianos de Symbolo, probably 
 written in the sixth century, but ascribed throughout the middle 
 ages to the great African." 1 
 
 I have already made reference to Mr. W. A. Craigie's discov- 
 ery of one 2 of the sources of Plays XXX, XXXIII, XXXVI, 
 XXXVII, XXXVIII. From the northern middle English met- 
 rical version of the Gospel of Nicodemus undoubtedly came the 
 immediate diction and to some extent the rhymes of such pa! <res 
 as the following : the beadle doing homage to Jesus (X^. \ 
 306-319); the meaning of "Osanna" (XXX, 346); the bowing 
 of the banners to Jesus (XXXIII, 169); the dream of Pilate's 
 wife (XXXIII, 159, 177) > the roster of the traducers of Jesus 
 (XXXIII, 113) ; the testimony of Isaiah, Simeon, John the Bap- 
 tist (XXXVII, 48-80) ; the account of the eclipse and earth- 
 quake (XXXVIII, 91-102). Play XXXVI, also, betrays one 
 or two echoes of the metrical Gospel. In all of these cases the 
 verbal borrowing is not from the Latin prose text of Nicodemus, 
 
 1 Chambers: Mediaeval Stage, II, 52. 
 
 3 The Gospel of Nicodemus and the Tork Mystery Plays, in Furn. 
 Misc., p. 52.
 
 330 APPENDIX 
 
 though in general the playwright makes use of that version for the 
 sequence of the story. The northern middle English metrical 
 Gospel may be consulted in Horstmann's edition from the Har- 
 leian MS. 4196.* The manuscript is of the early fifteenth 
 century, but the translation itself of the first half of the four- 
 teenth. 
 
 The popular etymology of Pilate's name (XXX) from his 
 "mother Pila the daughter of Atus" comes straight from the 
 Legtnda Aurea, section on the Passion of Our Lord. The 
 restoration of sight to Longeus by the blood from our Saviour's 
 side appears in the Cursor, but is a common tradition of the 
 middle ages. 
 
 The York Plays of the Death, and the Assumption of Mary, are 
 based neither on the Cursor nor the Legenda Aurea, but, I think, 
 on one of the middle English poems of the Assumption, or di- 
 rectly upon the Transitus Mariae. The Coronation, however, 
 shows a closer resemblance to the Cursor and its incidental 
 authority, the Assumption of Edmund of Pontenay, for in both of 
 these occurs the line (York XLVII, 156): "There I am king, 
 thou shalt be queen," and the explicit statement that Mary " was 
 crowned queen of heaven." The power to mediate in prayer 
 accorded to the Virgin in the York play of her Death, is also 
 common to the Cursor and its source, but is not emphasised in 
 the N-Town Assumption and the Assumption of the Legenda Aurea. 
 The story of the Appearance of our Lady to Thomas which is 
 the subject of the unique York XLVI is not given in the Cursor; 
 it appears however in the middle English poems of the Assump- 
 tion, is referred to as " apocryphum " in the Legenda Aurea, and 
 derives from the common Latin source, the Transitus. 
 
 There are thirty plays in the Wakefield or so-called Towneley 
 cycle. 2 Except in the case of the legend of Judas, of which we 
 find a fragment at the end of the collection, I doubt whether the 
 
 1 Herrig's Archiv, 011,1874. 
 
 8 Towneley Plays: the tezts are Raine'sof 1836, Surtees Society, III; 
 and England and Pollard's, 1897, E. E. T. 5., Extra Series, LXXI.
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 331 
 
 sources vary from those of York. Of that legend and its history 
 I have said something under the history of the Rood-Tree. 
 
 Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith has pointed out, in her excellent 
 edition of the York Mystery Plays, that five of them were in 
 whole or in large part borrowed by the cycle of Wakefield. 
 These plays in the Wakefield are VIII, Pharaoh, XVIII, The 
 Doctors, XXV, The Extraccio Animarum, XXVI, The Resurrection, 
 and XXX, The 'Judgment)- In each case of such indebtedness 
 the omissions, variations, and additions in the Wakefield would 
 indicate that the borrowing was made not from the manuscript 
 of the original, but from memory, probably of craftsmen who 
 had taken part in the acting of the York cycle. 
 
 An especially interesting example of such interurban trans- 
 mission of plays is furnished by the relation between the York, 
 Wakefield, and Chester versions of the episode of Christ with the 
 Doctors in the Temple. The original of the series is the York XX. 
 Of this the Wakefield Doctors (XVIII) has reproduced apparently 
 from memory but with a commendable accuracy of phrase, se- 
 quence, and stanza, all from line 73 to the end, line 288. The 
 errors that creep in are just sufficient to show that Wakefield is the 
 borrower. The Chester play, on the other hand (Part II of No. 
 XI), is but a reminiscent jumble of the York. Into an older play of 
 the well-known Chester stanzaic form (aaabaaab) the copyist has 
 interpolated, from the York original, entirely different stanzas, and 
 has disarranged phrases, verses, and stanzas in the process. That 
 the borrowing is direct and not by way of Wakefield is proved by 
 the fact that occasionally where Wakefield has deviated, Chester 
 has succeeded in recollecting aright the words of their common 
 source. 
 
 Beside these larger borrowings from the York cycle I have 
 noticed several of more limited amount. 2 In the Wakefield 
 Magi, for instance, stanza 100 is from the York Adoration, 
 stanza 27 ; in the Wakefield Flight into Egypt there are some 
 
 1 From York XI, XX, XXXVII, XXXVIII, XLVIII, respectively. 
 
 8 For the indebtedness of Wakefield to York, see also Hohlfeld, Die 
 alten^l. Kollectivmysterien {Anglia XI) ; Pollard, Introduction to Towne- 
 ley Plays ; Bunzen, Kritik d. Wakefield Mysterien, Kiel, 1903.
 
 33* 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 thirty distinct echoes of the corresponding play of York. In 
 the Wakefield play of The Scourging the scene of John and the 
 Holy Women is based upon the second scene of the York Christ 
 Led up to Calvary ; it even preserves for us portions that are miss- 
 ing from the York manuscript, and have been regarded as lost. 1 
 The Wakefield play of the Purification is at any rate a reminis- 
 cence of the York scene at Simeon's house in Jerusalem (XLI). 
 I have no hesitation in saying that also the scene between Mary 
 Magdalene and Jesus at the end of the Wakefield Resurrection, 
 and the succeeding Wakefield play of The Pilgrims, are fairly 
 accurate survivals of discarded York plays. For they are evi- 
 dent continuations, in the same phrase and metre, of the simple 
 play of the Resurrection, which is directly derived from the existing 
 play of York ; whereas the surviving York plays of Jesus and the 
 Magdalene (XXXIX), and of The Pilgrims to Emmaus (XI), are in 
 a much more modern, alliterative style, and in a different metre. 
 The manuscript of the latter, indeed, contains, after the first few 
 lines, the Latin statement twice repeated, " This is of a new 
 make." In this same stanzaic form (aaabab), and in the 
 earlier style of York, is written also the fragment on the Hang- 
 ing of Judas (Suspencio Judee), which closes the Wakefield collec- 
 tion. Since a distinct play of that name, in which Judas hangs 
 himself and bursts asunder in the middle, appears in a list of York 
 plays, prepared about 1415 by Roger Burton, the town-clerk, it 
 is very probable that the surviving Wakefield stanzas of the play 
 are a relic of that original. To another passage in this York 
 metre, preserved by the Wakefield borrower, but missing in the 
 York manuscript, attention was called some years ago by Mr. 
 Pollard. This is the famous monologue of the risen Christ, 
 Play XXVI, beginning with line 226 : 
 
 Erthly man, that I have wroght, 
 Wightly wake, and slepe thou noght ! 
 
 1 Wakefield stanzas 28, 29, are York 10, 12. W. 3034 repre- 
 sent the lost Y. 14-18. W. 35-42 are either an insertion or a copy 
 of some older discarded play of York. W. 42-48 closely follow Y. 
 41-29.
 
 SOURCES OF THE CYCLES 333 
 
 With bytter bayll I have thee boght, 
 
 To make thee free 
 Into this dongeon depe I soght 
 And all for love of thee. 
 
 This exquisite and pathetic plea occupies some hundred lines of 
 the Wakefield Resurrection. It is impossible to suppose that the 
 author of the York original could have foregone the opportunity 
 for such a speech ; or that the speech, as preserved in the Wake- 
 field copy, and in the same phrase and stanzaic form, should not 
 be that of the York original. Chester, also, retains a reminis- 
 cence of this tender poem, but, as usual with Chester, in a 
 clumsy paraphrase. An earlier form of the monologue is to be 
 found in the middle English Harrowing of Hell^ where " Domi- 
 nus " begins, " Harde gates have I gone." The N-Town Resur- 
 rection Play opens the plaint of Jesus with these words, and 
 contains three or four other parallel expressions. The Wake- 
 field monologue, on the other hand (or its original of York), 
 bears a closer resemblance to the famous Discourse between 
 Christ and Man in the Cursor Mundi (lines 17,113-17,189), 
 where appear not only the same refrains, " Sinful man that by 
 me goes," " Sinful man for love of thee," etc., but frequently 
 identical thoughts, words, and rhymes in like sequence. 
 
 Of the contents of the four Cornish plays something has al- 
 ready been said. The Origo Mundi follows in some respects 
 the Cursor Mundi account of Seth and the history of the Cross- 
 Wood ; in others, it certainly borrows from the Latin Legend^ 
 or some of the early English narratives based upon it. The 
 Maximilla episode differs somewhat from that in the Cursor and 
 the twelfth 1 and fourteenth 2 century Latin versions. It more 
 closely resembles a middle English, Northumbrian Story of the 
 Holy Rood? which used as its sources both the original Latin 
 Legend and the Latin Life of Adam and Eve. The story, in the 
 
 1 Cambridge Univ. Libr. Napier, Holy Rood-Tree, 41. 
 
 3 Ear I. MS., 3185; Napier, 54. 
 
 8 Harl. MS., 4196; Morris, . E. T. S., 46.
 
 334 APPENDIX 
 
 Cornish Passio Domini, of how the smith refused to make the nails 
 for the Rood, and pleaded a sore hand which, by a miracle, was 
 made to look injured ; and of how his wife would not credit his 
 excuse, and made the nails herself, is also found in the Northum- 
 brian, but not in other English, versions. The Rood story, the 
 Harrowing of Hell, the episodes of Longinus, Joseph of 
 Arimathea, etc., as given in the Resurrection of our Lord, 
 derive from the Gospel of Nicodemus and other sources, as stated 
 elsewhere in this book. The story of Veronica, and of her part 
 in the condemnation of Pilate, his suicide, and of how the river 
 Tiber refused to hold him, is based upon the Legenda Aurea (The 
 Passion of our Lord), or directly upon its source, the apocryphal 
 Death of Pilate, a mediaeval Latin production. In the choice and 
 handling of incidents the Cornish plays bear closer resemblance 
 to the (Coventry) N-Town than to other cycles. 1 
 
 B. THE ADVERTISEMENT OF LEVITY 
 
 Though the miracles were amusing sometimes by themselves, 
 sometimes by virtue of adventitious episodes, they nowhere, so 
 far as I remember, make profession of a comic intent. In the 
 allegorical dramas, however, the interludes, and earlier comedies, 
 so called, the purpose to delight by means of mirth pervades 
 frequently not only the play itself, but prologue and epilogue, 
 and the advertisement upon the title-page as well. Of these, 
 the prologue and epilogue generally speak the policy of the 
 author ; the advertisement, that of the publisher. It was but 
 gradually that the begetter made bold to promise merriment, and 
 that comedy came to mean what now it does. 
 
 As early as the first half of the fifteenth century, the prologue 
 of the Pride of Life promises us a " spelle of mirth" as well 
 
 1 The Cornish text of the Origo, Passio, and Resurrexio is given with 
 an English translation, by Edwin Norris, in The Ancient Cornish Drama, 
 2 vols., 1859. The Cornish text of Jordan's Creation of the World 
 (1611) is given with Keigwyn's translation, in an edition by Davies 
 Gilbert, 1827; also with translation by Whitiey Stokes, 1863, in 
 Transactions of Philological Society.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT OF LEVITY 335 
 
 as of care. Of the former, however, it gives us but little ; 
 whereas Mankind, of the second half of the century, although it 
 makes no promise, for the title-page is lost, affords us mirth in 
 considerable quantity. Wisdom makes no profession ; nor does 
 Nature, nor Mundus et Infans, all written before 1500. But the 
 two latter, when printed some decades later, were advertised as in- 
 terludes goodly, proper, and new. There is more or less fun pro- 
 vided in all of them. The Nigramansir, 15 04, called itself both moral 
 and pithy, and, if we may trust Warton's account, the play was 
 both sententious and entertaining. It is, however, not until 
 between 1515 and 1523 that we encounter plays bold enough to 
 advertise their levity. The first of these were Magnificence and 
 The Four Elements, both of which promise to be "mery." The 
 Messenger of the Elements, also, justifies the dramatist : 
 
 But because some folk be little disposed 
 To sadness but more to mirth and sport, 
 This philosophical work is mixed 
 With merry conceits to give men comfort. 
 
 And this is perhaps the first explicit utterance of the utile dulci 
 to be found in the text of an English drama. 
 
 Every one knows that Chaucer had much earlier used the 
 word "comedy," just as had Dante and others before him, to 
 indicate any poetic narrative whose opening was sad or serious 
 and whose end was happy ; the opposite, in fact, of a tale 
 like Troilus and Creseide, which was called a tragedy because 
 " a dite of a prosperitie for a time that endith in wretchednesse." 
 But of the term " comedy " as comic drama in the classical 
 sense, we find no employment in England before 1386; of that 
 date there is an entry in a Cambridge expense book pro pallia 
 brusdato et pro sex larvis et barbis in comoedia, 1 which savours 
 of Plautus or Terence. It is, to be sure, conjectured that the 
 Latin elegiac " comoedia " of Babio was written by an English- 
 man, and that as early as the twelfth or thirteenth century ; but 
 though such responsive declamations in dramatic form undoubt- 
 edly existed in monastery and school at an early date we have 
 
 1 Retrospective Review, 1825, XII, 7, and Creizenach, p. 454 a.
 
 336 APPENDIX 
 
 but scant evidence of their influence upon the art or its nomen- 
 clature. 
 
 We next encounter the term in the case of the "goodly 
 Comedy " of Plautus that was played before King Henry at 
 Greenwich in 1520. That this signification of comedy was well 
 understood by 1530 is proved by the use of the word in the pro- 
 logue and epilogue of the English translation of " that lytill 
 comedy" the Andria of Terence. In 1531 when Sir Thomas 
 Elyot deems it necessary to defend "comedy" against the charge 
 of ribaldry, he thinks of the species in its Latin sense, though he 
 uses the term synonymously with " enterludes in Englisshe." 
 Says he, " They be undoubtedly a picture or, as it were, a 
 mirrour of man's life, wherein ivell is not taught but discovered; 
 to the intent that men beholdynge the promptness of youth unto 
 vice, the snares of harlotts and baudes laide for yonge mindes, 
 the disceipte of servantes, the chaunces of fortune, contrary to 
 mennes expectation, they, being thereof warned, may prepare 
 them selfe to resist or prevent occasion." The apology empha- 
 sizes rather than refutes the charge of merriment if not of 
 license. It was about this time that ".comedy" began also to 
 be used for interludes of all possible kinds, a fact that I have 
 elsewhere mentioned. Consequently, from 1530 to 1581, plays 
 as different as the Calisto, the Johan Baptystes, Tyde Taryeth no 
 Man, the Longer tkou Livest the More Foole thou Art, All for 
 Money, and the Conflict of Conscience display without hesitation 
 this same seductive sign, which, inferentially, connoted not much 
 more than an advertisement of wares. But good wine needs no 
 distinctive bush ; and the qualities that we attribute to comedy 
 are, from 1530 on, found under the name of " mery play" or 
 " enterlude " as frequently as under the more ostentatious 
 designation. Such, for instance, is the case with Heywood's 
 farces and the Thersytes. On the other hand, a more explicit 
 profession of comic intent is made by Roister Doister, Jack 
 Juggler and Tom Tyler, the composition and publication of which 
 fall between 1545 and 1563. Of these the first is, according to 
 its prologue, a " comedie or enterlude " presenting mirth with 
 wisdom, like the " merrie comedies " of Plautus and Terence.
 
 ADVERTISEMENT OF LEVITY 337 
 
 The second, according to its title of 156263, is an " enterlued 
 . . . both wytte and very playsent," and by its prologue, perhaps 
 of 1554, it promises to interpose " tuis interdum gaudia curis." 
 With " Cicero Tullius " it commends the " old comedy," and in 
 so doing commends itself. As I have elsewhere said, this 
 " enterlued " is a very clever controversial satire as well. What 
 the original title page of Tom Tyler advertised, we don't know, 
 but the Prologue comes before us 
 
 ... to make report 
 
 That after me you shall have merry sport, 
 
 while the concluding song teaches that marriage is a lottery, 
 
 These checks of chaunce can no man flie 
 But God himself that rules the skie. 
 
 In short, the profession is of the utile dulcl. From 1550 on, 
 an increased number of interludes, such as Respublica and the 
 Disobedient Child, take pains to announce themselves as " pretie " 
 or " mery " or both ; sometimes u frutefull " as well. It may, 
 however, be said that by 1566, when Gascoigne's Supposes was 
 printed, the name " comedy " in its modern acceptation was 
 usurping the place of synonymous designations for the type. 
 The Supposes is plain " comedy " on the title-page, " comedy " in 
 the prologue, " comedy " under the dramatis persona ; and this 
 comedy is written without explanation or apology to give 
 "cause of delight." Edwardes indeed, about 1564-66, in his 
 prologue to Damon and Pithias, which he called both " com- 
 medie " and " tragicall commedie," pretends to write no more 
 " In commycall wise, 
 
 . . . and dares avouche 
 
 In commedies the greatest skyll is this, lightly to touch 
 
 All thynges to the quicke ; and eke to frame each person 
 
 so 
 That by his common talke, you may his nature rightly 
 
 know." 
 
 The sobriety is a ruse ; the play has its quantum of " sportes " 
 and of personal satire as well, and is properly entitled by the 
 
 22
 
 338 APPENDIX 
 
 printer in 1571 "an excellent comedie." The Jacob and Esau 
 thinks it necessary, in 1568, to enhance its designation u com- 
 edie or enterlude " with the protestation " newc, mery and 
 wittie ; " but that, I suppose, was intended to offset the scriptural 
 appearance of the subject. The term is again broadened by the 
 epithet " tragicall " in the title of Apius and Virginia, 1575; 
 and it is modified by u pleasaunt " in the registration of Common 
 Conditions, 1576. The title-page of Gammer Gurton, printed, at 
 the latest, 1575, reverts still more decidedly to the ancient style of 
 adjectival qualification, but maybe this title-page was prepared 
 several years before it was used ; the play itself, written as early 
 as 1554, is as " mery " at its " last endyng " as at its first. From 
 about 1560 on, authors and printers rarely apologise for mirth; 
 when " comedy " does not stand for merriment alone, it portrays, 
 as in the case of the decidedly sombre Conflict of Conscience, 
 typical characters and faults intermixed with " some honest mirth 
 . to refresh the minds of them that be the auditors."
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbot of Bon Accord, the reign of the, 74 
 
 Abraham and Isaac, the Brome play of, 126, 
 146; pathos in, 198, 201 
 
 Abraham et de ses enfants, de, described and 
 quoted, 218-222 
 
 Actes des Apotres, description of the, 214 
 
 Adam, the play of, 27, 213 
 
 Adam and Eve, the Book of, 232 
 
 Adam and Eve, the Life of, 265 
 
 Adso of Toul, his De Antichristo, 277 
 
 Advent, date, material for dramatic treat- 
 ment, 6; 28-30 
 
 jElfric, quoted, 230; 234,243 
 
 .flischylus, 2, 3 
 
 Agony and Betrayal, the York play of the, 
 
 '54 
 
 Albion Knight, 300 
 
 Allegorical, the, 149; in the later miracles, 
 205-206 
 
 All for Money, 302, 305, 313 
 
 All Saints, or Hallowmas, 12 
 
 Allusions to miracle cycles by contempora- 
 ries, 111-113 
 
 Angelic Hierarchy and the Fall of Lucifer, 
 the; described with quotations, 224-228 
 
 "Angelic Orders," the history of the, 228- 
 236 
 
 Angels and the Shepherds, the York play of 
 the, 158, 184 
 
 Annales Burtonenses, 84 
 
 Anna Perenna, the, 46 
 
 Annunciation, the, 8, 31 
 
 Annunciation, the, 164; quoted, 194 
 
 Antichrist, 29, 30, 32 ; the coming of, 272- 
 278; the prophecy of, 272-274; origin 
 and growth of the legend of, 274-278 
 
 Antichrist, the Chester, 204 
 
 Apius and Virginia, 316 
 
 Appendix, 323-338 
 
 Ascension, the, 9, 19, 20, 32 
 Ascension, the Wakefield, 161, 162, 164 
 Ash Wednesday, 8, 46 
 Assumption of Our Lady, the, 117 
 Authorship of miracle cycles, 108-111 
 
 BALAAM, 28, 33-47 
 
 Bale, his God's Promises and John the 
 Baptist, no; his King Johan, 301 
 
 Baptism of Jesus, the, 96 
 
 Barbarian, the miracle of the, 63 
 
 Basil the Great, 229 
 
 Baston, Robert, 85 
 
 Bede, 45 
 
 Beginning of the World, date and descrip- 
 tion of the, 126-128 
 
 Beletus, his De Divin. Offic., 48; quoted, 
 
 55 
 
 Beverley Corpus Christi, the, 140 
 
 Beverley plays, 83-90 
 
 Bodel, Jean, his elaboration of St. Nicholas 
 plays, 76-77 
 
 Book of Enoch, 232; quoted, 233 ; 234, 235; 
 237; quoted, 239-242, 243; 266; quoted, 
 267-268, 269 
 
 Book of Jubilees, the, 235, 238, 271 
 
 Borlase, Natural History of Cornwall, 104 
 
 Bourne, History of Newcastle, 140 
 
 Boy Bishop, the, 47; first introduced as 
 dramatised personality in the Mystery 
 of the Nativity, 54 
 
 Boy Bishop and the St. Nicholas Plays, the; 
 their origin and development and de- 
 scriptions of their presentation in Eng- 
 land and on the continent, 54-69 
 
 Brand, Popular Antiquities, 46 
 
 Brandl, Quellen des Weltlichen Dramas in 
 England vor Shakespeare, 293, 294, 304, 
 316
 
 342 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ten Brink, Hist. Eng. Lit., 115, 126, 130, 
 
 136, 285 
 le Brunne, Robert, his version of the Manuel 
 
 tit Ptchin, 86 
 Bustling, the, 165 
 Bugbears, The, account of, 318 
 Bunyan, Grace Abounding for the, Chief of 
 
 Sinners and Pilgrim's Progress, 117 
 Bunzen, Zur Kritik d. Wakefald Mysttrien, 
 
 35- '<>S 33' 
 
 Burlesque, 35, 40, 71 ; in the miracles, 126; 
 in the later miracles, 207-208 
 
 Cttiar Augustus, the, 164 
 
 Cain, the, 149 
 
 Calisto and Melibaea, 299, 315, 316 
 
 Campaspe, 319 
 
 Candlemas, 8 
 
 Castle of Perseverance, the, 205, 281, 293 
 
 Chambers, his Mediaeval Stage, 14, 20, 25, 
 
 3S> 3 6 46, 47, 5 1 ' 66 > 68 "7, 3 I2 4 
 131, 138, 329; quoted, 15-18, 53, 73- 
 
 74,97 
 
 Chansons des gestes, as sources of dramas, 78 
 
 Characterisation, in the French and Eng- 
 lish plays, 222-223 
 
 Characters, the development of typical, 
 dramatic, 70; dress of, in miracles, 106- 
 107; development of, in the Chester 
 plays, 151 
 
 Charles, ed. the Book of Enoch, 238 
 
 Charles, ed. Jub., 236 
 
 Chaucer, his Rime of Sir Thopas, 133; alle- 
 gory in, 205; his allusions to miracles, 
 111-113 
 
 Cherest, his Fete des Innocents, 66 
 
 Chester Plays, the, 26, 30, 90, 146, 149, 150, 
 151, 164; the Shakesp. Soc. ed. of, 30; 
 manuscripts, authorship and dates of 
 the, 128-133; scope of the, 142-143; 
 burlesque in the, 207; quoted, 224-228 ; 
 observations on the sources of, 323-325. 
 
 Childermas, 7 
 
 Children of Israel, the play of the, 61 
 
 Christ in the Temple, the York, 195 
 
 Christ Led up to Calvary, the York play of, 
 157,164,177; quoted, 265 
 
 Christmas, 7, 19, 24, 41 ; Tropes of, 24-28 
 
 Circumcision, the, 7, 35, 41, 48, 53 
 
 Clement V, 10 
 
 Coliphaacio, the Wakefield, 177 
 
 Collier, Hist. Dram. Poetry, 300; Illustr. 
 Old Engl. Lit., 304 
 
 Comedy, Roman, i ; compared with tragedy, 
 3, 4; of Greeks and Romans, 4; cf 
 Christian age, 4 ; Romantic, Some Less- 
 known Forerunners of, 315-321 
 
 Comic, The Influence of the, 144-149; 
 illustrated by the earlier plays of Corn- 
 wall, Chester, N-Town, etc., 149-152 
 
 Common Conditions, account of, 316-317 
 
 Concordia Regularis, the, of St. Ethelwold, 
 
 '5 
 
 Conspiracy, the Wakefield, 161, 162 
 Conspiracy to Take Jesus, the play of the, 
 
 '54, 57 >S 8 '59. l6 3 l6 4> '75 '76 
 Construction of the Ark, the, 96 
 Contents, Table of, v-uc 
 Controversial Plays, 300-302 
 Conversion of Saint Paul, the, 139; the 
 
 fusion of saints' play, miracle, and moral 
 
 in the, 208 
 
 Cooper, Dictionary, 288 
 Coronation, the, 117 
 Cornish plays, the; date and description of, 
 
 126-128; scope of, 142-143; 149, 150; 
 
 observations on the sources of, 333-334 
 Corpus Christi, 10, 90-94, 115-117, 144; 
 
 dramatic importance of, 92; plays of, 
 
 83-90,95-117 
 
 Courthope, Hist. Eng. Poetry, 283 
 Coventry plays, the, 26; manuscripts, au- 
 thorship, and dates of, 135-139; scope 
 
 of, 141-143; 146; the transition to the 
 
 romantic in, 191-197; the sources of, 
 
 325-327 
 
 Craft-plays, origin of, 89-90 
 Crafts, Regulation of the English cycles by 
 
 the, 95-99 
 Craigie, The Gospel of Nicodemus and the 
 
 Tork Mystery Plays, 329 
 Creation, the, 164 
 
 Creation, dramatic representation of, 31 
 Creation and of Old Testament History, the 
 
 description of the, 118-120 
 Creation of Eve, the Norwich play of the, 
 
 '4' 
 
 Creation of the World and the Fall of Lucifer, 
 
 the, 27 
 
 Creed Play, the, 117, 280 
 Creizenach, his Geschichte des Neueren 
 
 Dramas, 20, 29, 30, 77, 335
 
 INDEX 
 
 343 
 
 Croxton play of the Sacrament, description 
 of the, 123-124 
 
 Crucifxio Crist i, the York, 176 
 
 Crucifixion, the, 8, 20 
 
 Crucifixion, the pathos in the N-Town, 198; 
 quoted, 199 
 
 Crucifixion, the Wakefield, 165 
 
 Crucifixion, the York play of the, 157 
 
 Cursor Mundi, the, 234, 236, 244, 246, 256, 
 259, 268, 271, 272, 274 
 
 Cycles, The Secular Representation of the 
 English, 95-117; regulation by the 
 Crafts, 95-99; methods of presentation, 
 99-105; properties and expenses, 105- 
 108; authorship, 108-111; contem- 
 porary allusions, 111-113; ^* e s P ec " 
 tators, 113-115; the passing of the 
 miracles, 115-117; the collective story 
 of the, 118-124; the historical order of 
 the English, 125-143; manuscripts and 
 dates of the great, 128-139; compara- 
 tive scope of the, 141-143; the dra- 
 matic development of the English, 144- 
 152; the historical order of the plays in 
 the, 148; curious traditions in the, 224- 
 245; levity in the, 334 
 
 Damon and Pithias, 315 
 
 Daniel, 44 
 
 Daniel, the, of Hilarius, 27 
 
 Dates of the great cycles, 128-139 
 
 Davidson, his Engl. Mystery Plays, 20, 26, 
 88, 128, 129, 153 
 
 Death of Abel, the, 149 
 
 Death of Pilate, date and description of the, 
 126-128 
 
 Deposuit, the feast of the, 48, 56; burlesque 
 in, 40 
 
 Descent of the Holy Spirit, the, 32 
 
 Devil, the, 30, 206 ; development of his per- 
 sonality in the later miracles, 210-211 
 
 Didactic, the, 150 
 
 Digby plays, the, 123; manuscripts, au- 
 thorship, and dates of, 139-141; bur- 
 lesque in, 207-208; development of 
 character in, 210-211. 
 
 Disobedient Child, the, 287, 299, 312 
 
 Disraeli, his Curiosities quoted, 1 14-1 1 5 
 
 Dorner, System of Christian Doctrine, 
 277 
 
 Drake, History of Tork, 100 
 
 Drama, Mediaeval, the origin of, 1-13; 
 modern, born in religious functions, 4; 
 of the Passion, 9; Biblical, for amuse- 
 ment alone, 32; secular, 70-82 
 
 Dramatic Development of the English 
 Cycles, the, 144-152 
 
 Dramatic relief in the miracle plays, 146 
 
 Dream of Pilate's Wife, the York play of the, 
 
 I54> 1 S7 
 
 Dublin plays, 141 
 Du Cange, his Glossarium, 43 ; his Kalendae, 
 
 48, 5 5 r 55. 59> 6 7 
 
 Du Me-ril, Orig. Lot., 20, 24, 25, 27, 29, 34, 
 47, 54, 61, 63 
 
 EASTER, 9, 14, 19, 24; Tropes of, 14-24 
 Ebert, Jahrb. f. rom. u. engl. Lit., I, 166- 
 
 167; Die engl. Mysterien, 205 
 Edward the Confessor, 11-12 
 Elyot, Comcedia, 288 
 Emerson, Legends of Cain, 326 
 Ency. Bibl., 266, 277 
 Enfants sans souci, 71 
 England, ed. of Wakefield plays, E. E. T. S., 
 
 '33 
 
 Entry into Jerusalem, the, 33, 35 
 Epiphany, 7, 42, 48, 52 
 Epiphany, the festival of the octave of, 42- 
 
 43> 48, 5* 
 
 Episcopus Innocentium, 60 
 
 Episcopus Nicholatensis, 59 
 
 Episcopus Nihilensis, 59 
 
 Episcopus Puerorum, 54 
 
 Eucharist, 4 
 
 Euripides, 2, 3 
 
 Evangelium Nicodemi, 260; quoted, 261- 
 
 265; 266,268,270,271 
 Everyman, 290, 291, 295 
 Expenses of miracle plays, 105-108 
 Extractio Animarum, the Wakefield, 161 
 Ezekiel, 266, 276 
 
 Fabliaux, as sources of dramas, 78 
 
 "Fall of Lucifer," the history of the, 236- 
 245 
 
 Farce, the origin and development of, 70- 
 72; in miracles, 126 
 
 Fear in tragedy, 3 
 
 Feast of Fools, the, 39, 41-43 ; its origin and 
 development in England and on the con- 
 tinent, 47-53 ; 69; secularised, 71-72
 
 344 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Feast of the Acs, The; its origin and de- 
 velopment, 33-47; description of the 
 service, 36-39 ; 48 
 
 Fttta Asinaria, the Beauvais m$. of, 35; 
 the Brit. Mus. ms. of, 35 
 
 Festivals, opportunity for dramatic repre- 
 sentation in, 6 
 
 Ftitum fatuorum, the, 52 
 
 Ftttum ilultorum, 39, 53 
 
 Ffagellacio, the Wakefield, 162, 164, 177 
 
 Fidele ft Fortunio, account of, 319 
 
 Fleay, Hist. St., 302, 304, 306, 317; Eng. 
 Dr., 319 
 
 Flight into Egypt, the, 33, 195, 198 
 
 Flood, The, 96, 146 
 
 Folk-festivals, 2, 45-46 
 
 Fool, the, 70 
 
 Four Element t, the, 287, 296, 311 
 
 Fowler, Roman Festivals, 41 
 
 Furnivall, ed. Digby Mysteries (New 
 Shakesp.Soc.,VU, i), 130, 139; quoted, 
 116, 279 
 
 GAS COIGN t, The Glasse of Government, 312; 
 The Supposes, 312, 315, 316, 319 
 
 Gaylcy, Representative English Comedies, 
 72, 144, 148, 161, 183, 291, 296, 302, 320; 
 The Star of Bethlehem, 1 80 
 
 Gem Nouvtaux, 71 
 
 Geoffrey, his St. Katharine, 123 
 
 Geta, 2 
 
 Girl Abbess and the Nuns' Plays, descrip- 
 tion of the, 66-69 
 
 Giuliano da Cividale, Cronaca Friulana, 31 
 
 Gnapheus, Acolastus, 299, 312 
 
 Golden Legend, the, 65 
 
 Good Friday, 9, 14, 15, 16 
 
 Grabau, ed. The Bugbears, 318 
 
 Gregory of Nazianzus, his Orations quoted, 
 229, 231, 236 
 
 Gregory the Great, 45; his Morals and 
 Homilies, 243 
 
 Grosseteste, Epistolte, quoted, 53 
 
 HAGENBACH, History of Doctrines, 229, 236, 
 
 244,277 
 Halliwell, Pop. Lit., XVI and XVII Cents., 
 
 313, 319; ed. Lucius Coventrue, 325 
 Hallowmas, 12 
 Harrowing of Hell, The, 246 
 
 Harrowing of Hell, The, 96, 1 57 ; date of , 1 25 
 
 Herod, the Autun play of, 43 ; 164 
 
 Herttrich, Studien . d. Tork Plays, 155 
 
 Heywood, 72, 182 
 
 Heywood's allusions to miracles in the Four 
 PP., 113 
 
 Higden, Randall or Randulf, probable 
 author of Chester plays, 108-109, 132 
 
 Hilarius, 27, 63; his Daniel and St. Nicho- 
 las, 123 
 
 Historical Order of the English Cycles, the, 
 125-143 
 
 History of the Living Church, description of 
 the, 122-123 
 
 Hohlfeld, Die altenglischen Kollektivmiste- 
 rien, 128, 129, 132, 138, 139, 175, 205, 
 
 33 1 
 
 Holy Cross, the, 10 
 Holy Cross, the Exaltation of the, 1 1 
 Holy Innocents and St. Nicholas, Plays of, 
 
 61-66 
 
 Holy Innocents' Day, 7, 41 
 Holy Rood-Tree, see Oil of Mercy 
 Holy Thursday, 9, 28 
 Holy Week, 8-9, 14, 20 
 Hone, his Ancient Mysteries, 43, 49-50, 66; 
 
 quoted, 87 
 Heresies, the, 304 
 Horrible, the, 146 
 Hosanna, the pageant of the, 46 
 Hrosvitha, 2 
 
 Humorous, The Invasion of the, 33-53 
 Humour, of the incidental, 148; of the 
 
 essential or real, 148; of the satirical, 
 
 148; the York school of, 153-160; the 
 
 Wakefield Master's relation to the York 
 
 school of, 166-173 
 Hyckescorner, 296 
 
 IMAGINATION in French plays, 223 
 
 Innocents, the, 25 
 
 Innocents' Day, 50, 57, 60 
 
 Interludes, their relation to Morals, 283- 
 292; dramatic qualities of survivals of, 
 299-314; controversial interludes, 300- 
 302; artistic variations of the interludes, 
 302-314; levity in, 334-338 
 
 Isaac, the, 164 
 
 Jacob, the, 164 
 
 Jacob and Esau, date of, 125-126
 
 INDEX 
 
 345 
 
 Jesus before Caiaphas, the York play of, 
 
 '54 
 
 Jordan, his Creation of the World, 127 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 260-265 
 Joseph"! Trouble about Mary, the York, 
 
 194 
 
 Journey to Bethlehem, the York, 195 
 Jude, quoted, 242 
 Judgment, Christ's, 32 
 Judicium, the, 12, 161, 164, 177, 204 
 Julleville, Petit de, 20, 213; his Hist, de la 
 
 langue el de la lilt. Franc,., 215-216; his 
 
 Le Theatre en France, 70-72, 215-216; 
 
 his La comedie et les mceurs en France au 
 
 moyen age, 280 
 
 KAMANN, Die Quellen d. Tork Plays, Anglia 
 
 X, 155,328 
 
 Kidnapped, the play of, 61 
 Kyllynge of the children of Israeli, the Digby 
 
 play of the, 126, 207 
 Kyng Daryus, 301 
 
 Latemur gaudiis, the, 49 
 Last Supper, the York play of the, 158 
 Latin in liturgical plays, the use of, 125 
 Lazarus, the Wakefield, quoted, 203-204 
 Leach, his Beverley Town Documents, 140; 
 his Furnivall Miscellany, 84, 87, 90, 99, 
 116, 131, 140, 280; quoted, 53, 83, 95- 
 96, 98, 109-1 10; his Some English Plays 
 and Players, 2122, 23, 280; his The 
 Schoolboys'" Feast, in Fortnightly, Jan., 
 1896, 56, 68 
 Lent, 8 
 
 Levity, the advertisement of, 334-338 
 Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene, 
 
 the, 303, 308, 311 
 Like Will to Like, 288, 303, 306 
 Lincoln plays, 83-90, 140 
 Lincoln Statutes, quoted from Chambers, 
 
 53 
 
 Little John, 74 
 
 Liturgical Plays, The Evolution of, 14-32; 
 from the Resurrection Trope, 14-24; 
 from the Christmas Trope, 24-28; 
 Shrewsbury School ms. of, 26; from the 
 Tropes of Advent, Ascension, etc., 28- 
 32; the transition of, 83-94; from 
 Church to Guild, 83-90; Whitsuntide 
 and Corpus Christi, 90-94 
 
 London plays, 140 
 
 Longer thou Livest, 290, 291, 302, 303, 310 
 Lord's Prayer, the Play of the, 280, 282 
 Lucifer, The Fall of; described with quota- 
 tions, 224-228 ; the history of, 236-245 
 Ludus Filiorum Israel, 61, 90, 126 
 Lyndsay, Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, 291 
 
 MACRorrDius, the Asotus, 312; the 
 Rebelles, 312 
 
 Mactacio Abel, the, 164, 165; description 
 of, 184-186 
 
 Magi, the, 25, 33, 41, 42, 43 
 
 Mankind, 284, 290, 291 
 
 Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakeipearian 
 Drama, 141 
 
 Manners in the York plays, the reproduc- 
 tion of, 158, 161-179; i n York and 
 Wakefield plays, 173-179 
 
 Man of Sin, the, 29 
 
 Mariolatry, 77 
 
 Marriott, Engl. Mir. PI., 109 
 
 Mary Magdalene, plays of, 67-69 
 
 Mary Magdalene, the fusion of Saint's play, 
 miracle, and moral in the, 208 
 
 Mary plays, 75-82 
 
 Mary the Virgin, the visitation of, to Eliza- 
 beth, 10; the nativity of, 11,190-197,201 
 
 Massacre of the Holy Innocents, the, 51 
 
 Massacre of the Innocents, the, 25, 61, 96, 
 139, 204 
 
 Maundy Thursday, 9, 15, 16 
 
 Melton, William, "Professor Paginte 
 Sacrte," 85 
 
 Methods of Presentation of English Cycles, 
 99-105 
 
 Meyer, Vita Ada et Eva, 258, 268, 270 
 
 Michael HI of Constantinople, 35 
 
 Milton, Paradise Lost, 117 
 
 Ministry of Christ, description of the, 121 
 
 Miracle Cycles, The Secular Representa- 
 tion of the English, 95-117 (see Cycles); 
 the collective story of the, 118-124; thc 
 historical order of the English, 125-143; 
 manuscripts and dates of the great, 128- 
 139; comparative scope of the, 141-143; 
 the dramatic development of the Eng- 
 lish, 144-152; historical order of plays 
 in the, 148; the characteristics of the 
 later, 205-212; curious traditions in the. 
 224-245; levity in the, 334
 
 346 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Miracle plays, 26, 27; their growth from 
 sacred dramas, 31; de Nostre Dame, 
 origin, development, and descriptions 
 of the, 75-81; origin, authorship, and 
 popular development of the, the co- 
 operation of clergy and guilds in the, 
 83-90; cyclic, at Skinners' Well, 88; 
 as units and as cycles, 118; the char- 
 acteristics of the later, 205-212; their 
 relation to morals, 279-283 
 
 Mirth plays, 299 
 
 Misrule, Lords of, 73 
 
 Mission of Seth and the Promise of the Oil, 
 the, 247-249; sources, 256-259 
 
 Mock-ideal, the, 149; in the later miracles, 
 206 
 
 Moliere, Precieuses Ridicules, 117 
 
 Moral Interlude, The Less-known Sur- 
 vivals of the, 299-314; dramatic quali- 
 ties of, 300-314 
 
 Morality of the Wisdom that is Christ, the 
 Digby play of the, 139 
 
 Morals, their relation to miracles, 279-283; 
 their relation to interludes, 283-292 ; 
 the older, dates of and their contribution 
 to the drama, 293-298; levity in, 334- 
 338 
 
 Morfill, ed. the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, 
 231-236 
 
 Morris, ed. Legends of the Holy Rood, 257 
 
 Mortifcacio, the York play of the, 157, 158, 
 159, 160, 162, 163 
 
 Moses, the Apocalypse of, 265-266, 268, 
 270 
 
 Mundus et Infans, 287, 290, 295, 310 
 
 Mystere, definition of the, 213 
 
 Mystere de la Nativite du Christ, the Bene- 
 diktbeuern play of the, 47, 54 
 
 Mystere des Propheies du Christ of Limoges, 
 
 27 
 
 Mystere du Viel Testament, description of 
 the, 214; compared with English plays, 
 217-223 
 
 Mysteries in France, the, definition, descrip- 
 tion, and comparison with the English 
 miracles, 213-223 
 
 Mystery of the Prophets of Christ, The, of 
 Limoges, 34 
 
 NAPIER, the Holy Rood-Tree, 256, 259, 333 
 Nativity, description of the, 120-121 
 
 Nativity, the, 19, 32, 43 
 
 Nature, 287, 290, 296 
 
 Newcastle plays, 140 
 
 Newt Custome, the, 287, 300 
 
 Nice Wanton, the, 291, 299, 308, 310, 312 
 
 Nicodemus, The Latin Gospel of, 157, 260; 
 
 quoted, 261-265; 2 ^6 *68 2 7 *7'i 
 
 quotsd, 275 
 Nigramansir, the, 295 
 Noah's Ark, the Newcastle play of, 140 
 Noah's Flood, the, 149 
 Noe and His Wife, the York play of, 154, 
 
 158; the humour of, 166-168 
 Norm, Ancient Cornish Drama, quoted, 
 
 102-104; "6, 334 
 Norwich plays, 141 
 
 Ncuvtau Testament, description of the, 214 
 Novus annus hodie, the, 49 
 N-Town cycle, the, 128; manuscripts, au- 
 thorship, and dates, 135-139; scope of, 
 
 141-143 
 N-Town plays, the, 146, 149, 150, 151; the 
 
 transition to the Romantic in, 191-197; 
 
 allegory in, 205; observations on the 
 
 sources of, 325-327 
 
 Officium Circumcisionis of the cathedral at 
 
 Sens, 39-40, 47 
 Officium Pastorum, 25 
 Officium Trium Regum, 25 
 Oil of Mercy and the Harrowing of Hell, 
 
 The, 260-271; account of, 260-265; 
 
 sources of, 265-271 
 Oil of Mercy and the Holy Rood-Tree, the, 
 
 246-259; introduction, 246; description 
 
 with quotations, 247-256; sources, 256- 
 
 259 
 
 Ordo representation!? Ada, 27 
 Orientis partibus, the, 49 
 Origo Mundi, the Cornish, 268 
 
 PAGEANTS, description of and dramatic 
 quality of, 88-90 
 
 Pagina Doctorum, the Wakefield, 161 
 
 Palm Sunday, 33, 44 
 
 Palm Sunday Festival, description of the, 
 44-46; relation to folk-festivals, 45 
 
 Paris, Gaston, et Robert, Ulysse, ed. Mira- 
 cles de Nostre Dame, 75 
 
 Parody, 71; of the holy communion, 35
 
 INDEX 
 
 347 
 
 Passion, the, 8, 20, 32 
 
 Passion, the description of the, I2I-I22 
 
 Passion at Valenciennes, description of the, 
 
 215-216 
 Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, date and 
 
 description of the, 126-128 
 Passion Play, at Lichfield, 21 ; at the Bene- 
 
 dictbeuern monastery, 21 ; at Siena, 21 ; 
 
 at Padua, 21 
 
 Pastime of Pleasure, the, 282 
 Paternoster Play of York, 90, 117, 280 
 Pathetic, the, 146, 148 
 Pathos, in miracles, 126; in French and 
 
 English plays, 217-222 
 Pathos and Sublimity, The Elements of, 
 
 198-204 
 Peacock, The Wakefield Mysteries (Anglia 
 
 XXIV, 509), 228 
 Pedlar, Appendix to Norris, Cornish 
 
 Drama, 127 
 Pentecost, 31 
 
 Personality in the later miracles, the de- 
 velopment of, 210-211 
 Peters Denial, the York play of, 154 
 Fez, Thesaurus, Anecdot. Noviss., 30 
 Pharao, the Wakefield, 161 
 Pierre de Corbeil, 39-40, 53 
 Pity in tragedy, 3 
 Plautus, 2 
 Pollard, his Engl. Miracle Plays, 129, 133, 
 
 288; quoted, 134, 136; his Towneley 
 
 Plays, 126, 135, 166, 331; quoted, 165 
 Pride of Life, the, 281, 284, 290, 291, 293 
 Prima Pastorum, the, 180-181, 189 
 Prince des Sots, 71 
 Processio Asinorum, at Rouen, 43 
 Processio Cruets, the Wakefield, quoted, 200 
 Processio prophetarum, 35, 43-44 
 Processus Noe, 165; description of the 
 
 Wakefield play of, 168-173 
 Processus Prophetarum, description of the, 
 
 120-122 ; 164 
 Processus Talentorum, description of the 
 
 Wakefield, 186-190 
 Prodigal Son Plays, 299 
 Properties of miracle plays, 105-108 
 Prophets, the play of the, 26, 33 
 Prose of Fools, the, 39, 49 
 Prose of the Ass, the, 36-39, 40 
 Pseudo-Dionysius, his Celestial Hierarchy, 
 
 229-230, 231 
 
 Purchase of the Field of Blood, the York 
 
 play of the, 154 
 Purification, the, 164, 193 
 
 Querolus, 2 
 
 Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, 320 
 
 Realism, in miracles, 126; the York school 
 of, 153-160; of the Wakefield master, 
 173-179; in the later miracles, 209 
 
 Realistic, the, 147, 150, 152 
 
 Respublica, the, 287, 290, 300 
 
 Resurrectio Domini, the Wakefield, 161 
 
 Resurrection, the, 9, 14-24, 32 
 
 Resurrection, the York play of the, 157, 158 
 
 Resurrection and Ascension, the Cornish 
 play of the, 127 
 
 Resurrection Play, at Beverley, 21-24 
 
 Revelation, 242, 273, 275-277 
 
 Revels of Misrule, English, origin, develop- 
 ment and descriptions of, 72-75 
 
 Rhyme in the York plays, 158-160 
 
 Rhyme-system of Wakefield plays, 161- 
 166 
 
 Robin Hood Plays, 74 
 
 Rogers, Archdeacon, quoted from Wright's 
 ed. of the Chester plays, 100-101 
 
 Romania xrii, 29 
 
 Roman Kalends, the festival of the, 40 
 
 Romantic, the, 146, 148; the transition to, 
 191-197; elements of, in early plays, 315- 
 
 3" 
 Rutebeuf, his Th'eophile, 77 
 
 Sacrifice of Isaac, the, 126 
 
 Sacrifcium of Cay me and Abel!, the York 
 
 play of the, 154, 158 
 St. Anne, n 
 
 St. Augustine, 26; quoted, 229 
 St. Bartholomew, u 
 St. Catherine, Feast of, 69 
 St. Crispin, n 
 St. David, 8 
 St. Ethelwold, 15-19 
 St. Gall Trope, of the Resurrection, 18-19; 
 
 of the Nativity, 25 
 St. George, 9, 74 
 St. James the Greater, 10 
 St. Jerome, 2 
 St. John, 20
 
 INDEX 
 
 St. John the Baptist, Nativity of, 10; be- 
 
 headal of, 11 
 
 St. John the Evangelist, 51, 51 
 St. Lawrence, n 
 St. Martin, 11 
 
 St. Mary Magdalen, the Digby play of, 139 
 St. Mary Magdalene, 10, 20 
 St. Matthew, 11 
 St. Michael and All Angels, n 
 St. Nicholas, 7, 58, 59, 60 
 St. Nicholas, the, 113 
 St. Nicholas, description of the Fleury play 
 
 of, 61-63; description of the Hilarius 
 
 play of, 63-65 
 St. Nicholas Plays, the, 54-69; efforts to 
 
 suppress them, 65-66; their relation to 
 
 the Feast of Fools, 66; elaborations of, 
 
 76-77 
 
 St. Patrick, 8 
 
 St. Paul, Second Thessaloniant, 175-176 
 St. Stephen, 51, 51 
 St. Thomas, the, 164 
 
 Saints' Festivals, dates, material for dram- 
 atic treatment, 6-13 
 Saints Peter and Paul, 10 
 Saints' plays, the secularisation of, 76 
 Salutation, the, 164, 193 
 Sapho, 319 
 
 Satire, of the Wakefield master, the, 177 
 Satire and wonder, secular by-products in, 
 
 70-82 
 
 Scenic, the, 149 
 Scouring, the Wakefield, 176 
 Second Shepherds' Play, the, 146 
 Secrets of Enoch, the, 231,232; quoted, 233- 
 
 136, 242, 269-270 
 Secular by-products in satire and wonder, 
 
 description of, 70-8 1 ; their importance 
 
 for dramatic development, 81-82 
 Secunda Pastorum, description of the, 180- 
 
 184 ; 189, 191 
 Sensational, the 149 
 Sermons joyeux, 70, 72 
 Shakespeare's debt to the miracles, 197 
 Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or 
 
 Dramatic Mysteries, anciently performed 
 
 at Coventry, quoted, 99 ; 102, 104, 105, 
 
 117, 138, 140 
 
 Shepherds, the, 25, 165, 191 
 Shepherds and the Star, the 96 
 Shipwrights' Play, The Newcastle, 107 
 
 Signs ef Judgment, the, 16 
 
 Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes, 316; ac- 
 count of, 317-318 
 
 Skeat, The Locality of the Towneley Plays 
 (Athenaeum, 3449, Dec. 2, 1893), 135 
 
 Skelton, Magnyfyctnce, 287, 291, 295 
 
 Smith, Tork Mystery Plays, 117, 133, 280, 
 317-318, 331 
 
 Societts joyeuses, ^\ 
 
 Sophocles, 3 
 
 Sots, 71 
 
 Sottie and farce, Origin and development 
 of, 70-71 
 
 Sources of traditions in the miracle plays, 
 265-271 
 
 Spectators of English cycles, the, 113-115 
 
 Strutt, Manners and Customs, toi 
 
 Stymmelius, the Studentes, 312 
 
 Sublime, the, 148 
 
 Sublimity, The Elements of Pathos and, 
 198-204 
 
 Suffering Christ, the Xpio-rot fdffxu*, 2 
 
 Surprise, in the later miracles, 207 
 
 Symbolism in the later miracles, 206-207 
 
 Talents, the Wakefield, 176, 184-185; de- 
 scription of, 186-190 
 
 Terence, 2 
 
 Thersytes, 182, 299 
 
 Thiers, his Trahe des Jeux, 66 
 
 Three Children, the, 43 
 
 Three Famished Girls, the miracle of the, 
 63 
 
 Three Kernels and the History of the Cross- 
 Wood, the, 249-256; sources, 256-259 
 
 Three Kings, the, 96 
 
 Three Kings of Cologne, the, 98 
 
 Three Ladies of London, The, 320 
 
 Three Lordes and Three Ladies of London, 
 The, 320 
 
 Three Schoolboys, the miracle of the, 63 
 
 Tom Tyler, 181 
 
 Towneley plays, manuscripts, authorship, 
 and dates of the, 133-135; scope of the, 
 142-143 
 
 Traditions in the Cycles, Curious, 114-245; 
 246-178 
 
 Tragedy, Greek, i, 3; compared with 
 comedy, 3; religious motive of, 3; in 
 the miracles, 204
 
 INDEX 
 
 349 
 
 Transubstantiation, dramatic element in the 
 
 doctrine of, 5, u 
 Trial before Herod, the York play of the, 
 
 154, IS7, IS 8 
 Trial of Joseph and Mary, 146; description 
 
 of the, 196-197 
 
 Triall of Treasure, the, 303, 305, 307 
 Trinity Sunday, 10 
 Tropes, in Church Ritual, 14-32; fusion of, 
 
 in Orleans and Freising mss., 25, 26 
 Twelfth Day, 7 
 Tyde Taryeth no Man, 302 
 Tzetzes, Johannes, 2 
 
 UNGEMACH, Quellen d. funf ersten Chester 
 Plays, 230, 323, 324, 325, 328 
 
 VERGIL, 26 
 
 Vernacular in the miracle cycle, the use of 
 
 the, 125; in the Wakefield plays, 150 
 Versification in Wakefield plays, 161-166; 
 
 in York plays, 154-166; in the French 
 
 plays, 223 
 
 Vita Ada el Eva, 257-259, 268 
 Voragine, Legenda Aurea, 244-245, 246, 
 
 257, 2?i, 272, 274 
 Vulgate, the, 19 
 
 WAKEFIELD Master, the, 160, 161-190; his 
 relation to the schools of York, 161-166; 
 his relation to the school of humour, 166- 
 173 ; his relation to the school of realism, 
 173-179; his masterpiece and other 
 attributions, 180-190 ; 193 ; 222 
 
 Wakefield plays, manuscripts, authorship, 
 and dates of the, 133-135; scope of the, 
 142-143 ; 146, 149, 150; the master of 
 the, 161-190; the versification of the, 
 161-166; their relation tp the York plays, 
 
 161-179; quoted, 228; observations on 
 the sources of, 330-333 
 Ward, English Dramatic Literature, 125, 
 
 Ia 9> *33> '3 8 > 28 3> 28 5 
 Warton, Hist. Engl. Poet, 109 
 Weakest Goeth to the Wall, the, account of, 
 
 320 
 
 Whitsunday, 9, 28, 31 
 Whitsuntide and Corpus Christi Plays, 90- 
 
 94; times of production, 91; places of 
 
 production, 93-94 
 Winchester, early ritual of, 14-19 
 Wisdom that is Christ, the, 294 
 Wise and Foolish Virgins, the, 29-30 
 Wit plays, 299 
 Witte and Science, 299, 302 
 Witte and Wisdome, 287, 299, 307 
 Wonder, secular by-products in satire and, 
 
 70-82; the element of, 126, 148 
 Woodes, the Conflict of Conscience, 301-302 
 Wright, his ed. of Chester Plays, 100, 323, 
 
 3M 
 
 Wright and Halliwell, Reliquite Antiques, 
 285 
 
 YORK CYCLE, the, 26 (see York plays) 
 
 York plays, 85, 90, 146, 149, 150, 151 ; man- 
 uscripts, authorship, and dates of, 128, 
 133; scope of, 141-143; schools of 
 humour and realism in the, 153-160; 
 versification of the, 154-160, 161-166; 
 the Wakefield master's relation to the, 
 161-179; th e transition to the romantic 
 in the, 191-197; observations on the 
 sources of, 327-330 
 
 York Schools of Humour and Realism, the, 
 153-160 
 
 Youth, the Interlude of, 299 
 
 Youth plays, 299
 
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