from the Church to the Laity Here we have the drama in embryo, even to the stage directions. It was inevitable that these entertaining and instructive extensions of the liturgy should be elaborated and increased in number. For example, separate speeches were assigned to the Marys, and other characters were added-the disciples Peter and John, and even a spice merchant. Such plays were prepared for many of the church festivals Passing of the Drama and holy-days, and continued in use from the ninth to the thirteenth century. The people's appetite grew with what it fed on. The audience became too large for the choir of the church, so the play was moved to the nave, then to the graveyard adjoining the church, and then to the village green. When the play was once outside the church, it rapidly threw off the leading-strings of the priests, who had thus far been its only authors and actors, and with many new features passed into the hands of the laity. The plays were now written entirely in the language of the people, with a sprinkling of Latin retained for the sake of sanctity. The authors are unknown. The comic element was introduced, and a familiar realism was employed in the treatment of Bible events, as if they had occurred in Yorkshire. New plays were produced, until the principal scenes and events of the whole Bible history from the Creation and Fall to Doomsday were included, and presented in a consecutive series or cycle. Four such comprehensive cycles, out of many produced in England, have come down to us in a fair state of completion, the Chester, Towneley, York, and Coventry collections. At first the central theme of these religious plays was the mystery of Christ's birth, death, and mission of redemption. Therefore any play taken from the Bible came to be called a Mystery play (French mystère), while a play taken from the legends of the saints was called a Miracle play. This distinction was maintained in France, but in England the term "Miracle" was applied indifferently to all religious plays. Also, as one of the most popular occasions Mystery and Miracle Plays for presentation was the great midsummer feast of Corpus Christi, the plays were often called Corpus Christi plays. The presentation of these plays became the privilege, and duty, of the trade guilds, each guild being responsible for a single play. In the distribution of the plays some regard was shown for appropriateness, the play of Noah and the Building of the Ark, for example, being assigned to the Shipbuilders' Method of guild, the Last Supper to the Bakers, the Shepherds and the Star to the Chandlers, and the Harrowing of Hell to the Cooks, as best knowing how to get things out of the fire. Each guild had its own "pageant," or stage on wheels, consisting of two stories, the upper for the play and the lower for the dressing-room. Among the stage properties the most prominent was "Hell Mouth," a huge dragon's mouth out of which flames would frequently issue and into which the Devil would disappear with his victims. By skillful manipulation, this instrument was made especially terrifying, as well as edifying, to the simple spectators. Stations were prepared in different parts of the town for the gathering of the people and each pageant in turn appeared at a station, gave its play, and was then wheeled away to the next station. As there were as many as fifty acts, or plays, in some of the Miracle cycles, several days were often occupied in the presentation. Surviving bills of expenses afford many illuminating details of these spectacles. In one is the entry, "for six skins of white leather for God's garment, 18d,” and “for mending of Herod's head, 2s"; and one charge of 3s 4d is for a “yerthe-quake,” manifestly a bargain price. Civic pride and guild rivalry naturally tended to improve the acting and increase the magnificence of the shows. At Beverley the Painters were censured by the civic authorities because their play "was badly and confusedly played in contempt of the whole community, before many strangers." A spirit like this was preparing both actors and audiences for the great Elizabethan theaters. The earliest record of a Miracle play in England is that of the Ludus de S. Katharina, written in Latin, or possibly in French, which was acted at Dunstaple about the Extent and year 1110. The last guild performance of these plays at Coventry was in 1591, and at Kendal they were given as late as 1612. During these five centuries, especially in the fourteenth and fifteenth, the Miracle play was Popularity the most cherished form of popular amusement and doubtless also the most efficient form of religious instruction. But these entertainments were distinctively a product of the mediæval mind and faded away in the presence of the Renaissance. Moreover, the church became hostile and finally placed upon them the ban of its displeasure and prohibition. To our sophisticated age these plays seem childish and often inane, but upon unlearned folk with simple faith and free imagination such dramatic pictures of religious history and doctrine could not fail to exert a strong moral and spiritual influence. As literature they are of little value, but as literary history they are of great value and of absorbing interest, for out of these crude exhibitions came, by a natural growth, the plays of Shakespeare. They are written in verse of a haphazard meter, which, though seldom poetry, is often ambitious and sometimes shows a sense of appropriateness in fitting words to theme. In the York cycle as many as twenty-five different meters are attempted. The words of the Bible are turned into rhyme with a simple directness that at times is almost beautiful, as in the prayer of Gethsemane: Character of these Plays Fader, let this great payn be stylle, Bot not, fader, at my wylle, Bot thyn fulfylled be. The incongruous comic scenes contain the most original strokes, as in these the writers were not hampered by the Bible text. The Second Shepherds' Play, in the Townley cycle, is good low comedy, and the episode of Noah's trouble in getting his wife into the Ark is still laughter-provoking: NOE: Dame, as it is skill, here must us abide grace; On my rock [distaff]. Lightning and thunder are crashing, halls and bowers are falling, and Noah urges haste: NOE: Therfor, wife, have done; com into ship fast. UXOR: Yei, Noe, go cloute thi shone, the better will thai last. When the water "nighs so near that she sits not dry," Mrs. Noah hies into the ship and Noah addresses the audience philosophically: The Moralities Associated with the Miracle play was the Morality, a play in which the characters are personified abstractions, such as Avarice, Conscience, Sloth, Pity, Nought, Imagination. It was the product of the medieval love of allegory, and its purpose was thoroughly didactic. At first the theme was generally the struggle between the virtues and vices of human nature for possession of the soul. In Lusty Juventus, for example, the hero is instructed in religion by Good Counsel and Knowledge, but falls a victim to Hypocrisy and Abominable Living; finally, however, he is brought to repentance by his first friends, and to a proper abhorrence of Satan. Similar is The Castle of Perseverance, in which mankind is personified as Humanum Genus. The hero falls into the hands of Luxuria, but is persuaded by Pœnitentia to commit himself to Confessio, by whom he is conducted to the Castle of Perseverance, where he is protected by the garrison of virtues against the assaults of the vices. That there is genuine power in these plays, in spite of their apparent dullness, is shown in the remarkable revival in England and America of Everyman, which has been Everyman worthily called "the flower and crown of the literary species to which it belongs." Everyman, the representative of mankind, is summoned by Death to his last journey. He |