The year was divided by feasts; and those feasts, the importance of which in everybody's eyes has dwindled much, were then great events; people thought of them long before, saw them in the distance, towering above the common level of days, as cathedrals above houses Everyday life was arrested, and it was a time for rejoicings, of a religious, and sometimes of an impious, character: both kinds helped the formation of drama, and they were at times closely united On such great occasions, more than ever, the caricature and derision of holy things increased the amusement. Christmas-time had inherited the licence as well as it occupied the date of the ancient Roman saturnalia; and whatever be the period considered, be it early or late in the Middle Ages, it will be found that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, by sneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other; people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but did not doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him. "Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons," says the Pope, are bold enough, on those mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presence of the people, whom they ought rather to edify by preaching the Word of God."[761] In those bacchanals parodies of the Church prayers were introduced; a Latin hymn on the Nativity was transposed line for line, and became a song in honour of the good ale. Here, as a sample, are two stanzas, both of the original and of the parody, this last having, as it seems, been composed in England:

Letabundus Exultet fidelis chorus, Alleluia! Regem Regum Intacte perfundit thorus: Res miranda!

Angelus consilii Natus est de Virgine, Sol de Stella, Sol occasum nesciens, Stella semper rutilans, Semper clara.

Or i parra: La Cerveise nos chantera Alleluia! Qui que en beit, Se tele seit com estre deit, Res miranda!

Bevez quant l'avez en poing; Bien est droit, car mout est loing Sol de Stella; Bevez bien et bevez bel, El vos vendra del tonel Semper clara.

"You will see; the ale will make us sing, Alleluia! all of us, if the ale is as it should be, a wonderful thing! (Res miranda). Drink of it when you hold the jug; 'tis a most proper thing, for it is a good long way from sun to star (Sol de Stella); drink well! drink deep! it will flow for you from the tun, ever clear! (Semper clara)."[762]

So rose from earth at Christmastide, borne on the same winds, angels and demons, and the ancient feast of Saturn was commemorated at the same time as Christ's. In the same way, again, the scandalous feasts of the Fools, of the Innocents, and of the Ass, were made the merrier with grotesque parodies of pious ceremonies; they were celebrated in the church itself, thus transformed, says the bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosseteste, into a place for pleasure, amusement, and folly: God's house was defiled by the devil's inventions. He forbade, in consequence, the celebration of the feast of Fools, "festum Stultorum," on the day of Circumcision in his cathedral, and then in the whole diocese.[763]

The feast of the Innocents was even more popular in England. The performers had at their head a "boy bishop," and this diminutive prelate presided, with mitre on his head, over the frolics of his madcap companions. The king would take an interest in the ceremony; he would order the little dignitary to be brought before him, and give him a present. Edward II. gave six shillings and eight pence to the young John, son of Allan Scroby, who had played the part of the "boy bishop" in the royal chapel; another time he gave ten shillings; Richard II., more liberal, gave a pound.[764] Nuns even were known to forget on certain occasions their own character, and to carol with laymen on the day of the Innocents, or on the day of Mary Magdalen, to commemorate the life of their patroness, in its first part as it seems.[765]

The passion for sightseeing, which was then very keen, and which was to be fed, later, mainly on theatrical entertainments, was indulged in during the Middle Ages in various other ways. Processions were one of them; occasions were numerous, and causes for them were not difficult to find. Had the Pui of London awarded the crown to the writer of the best chanson, a procession was formed in the streets in honour of the event. A marriage, a pilgrimage to Palestine, a patronal feast, were sufficient motives; gilds and associations donned their liveries, drew their insignia from their chest, and paraded the streets, including in the "pageant," when the circumstance allowed of it, a medley of giants and dwarfs, monsters, gilt fishes, and animals of all sorts. On grand days the town itself was transformed; with its flower-decked houses, its tapestries and hangings, it gave, with some more realism about it, the impression we receive from the painted scenery of an opera.

The town at such times was swept with extraordinary care; even "insignificant filth" was removed, Matthew Paris notes with wondering pen in 1236.[766] The procession moved forward, men on horseback and on foot, with unfurled banners, along the decorated streets, to the sound of bells ringing in the steeples. At road-crossings the procession stopped; after having been a sight, the members of it became in their turn sightseers. Wonders had been prepared to please them: here a forest with wild beasts and St. John the Baptist; elsewhere scenes from the Bible, or from knightly romances, the "pas de Saladin," for example, where the champion of England, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, fought the champion of Islam. At times it was a dumb-show, a sort of tableau vivant, at others actors moved but did not speak; at others again they did both, and complimented the king. A day came when the compliments were cut into dialogues; such practice was frequent in the fifteenth century, and it approached very near to the real drama.

In 1236, Henry III. of England having married Alienor of Provence made his solemn entry into his capital. On this occasion were gathered together "so many nobles, so many ecclesiastics, such a concourse of people, such a quantity of histrions, that the town of London could scarcely hold them in her ample bosom—sinu suo capace.—All the town was adorned with silk banners, wreaths, hangings, candles and lamps, mechanisms and inventions of extraordinary kinds."[767]

The same town, fond above all others of such exhibitions, and one of the last to preserve vestiges of them in her Lord Mayor's Show, outdid all that had been seen before when, on the 29th of August, 1393, Richard II. made his entry in state, after having consented to receive the citizens again into his favour.[768] The streets were lined with cloth of gold and purple; "sweet smelling flowers" perfumed the air; tapestries with figures hung from the windows; the king was coming forth, splendid to look at, very proud of his good looks, "much like Troilus;" queen Anne took part also in the procession. A variety of scenes stop the progress and delight the onlookers; one had an unforeseen character. The queen was nearing the gate of the bridge, the old bridge with defensive towers and gates, and two cars full of ladies were following her, when one of the cars, "of Phaetonic make" says the classical-minded narrator, suddenly broke. Grave as saints, beautiful as angels, the ladies, losing their balance, fell head downwards; and the crowd, while full of admiration for what they saw, "could not suppress their laughter." The author of the description calls it, as Fragonard would have done, "a lucky chance," sors bona; but there was nothing of Fragonard in him except this word: he was a Carmelite and Doctor of Divinity.

Things having been set right again, the procession entered Cheapside, and there was seen an "admirable tower"; a young man and a young maiden came out of it, addressed Richard and Anne, and offered them crowns; at the Gate of St. Paul's a concert of music was heard; at Temple Bar, "barram Templi," a forest had been arranged on the gate, with animals of all sorts, serpents, lions, a bear, a unicorn, an elephant, a beaver, a monkey, a tiger, a bear, "all of which were there, running about, biting each other, fighting, jumping." Forests and beasts were supposed to represent the desert where St. John the Baptist had lived. An angel was let down from the roof, and offered the king and queen a little diptych in gold, with stones and enamel representing the Crucifixion; he made also a speech. At length the queen, who had an active part to play in this opera, came forward, and, owing to her intercession, the king, with due ceremony, consented to bestow his pardon on the citizens.

Many other examples might be adduced; feasts were numerous, and for a time caused pains to be forgotten: "oubliance etait au voir," as Froissart says so well on an occasion of this sort.[769] There were also for the people the May celebrations with their dances and songs, the impersonation of Robin Hood, later the performance of short plays of which he was the hero[770]; and again those chimes, falling from the steeples, filling the air with their joyous peals. At Court there were the "masks" or "ballets" in which the great took part, wrapped in starry draperies, disguised with gold beards, dressed in skins or feathers, as were at Paris King Charles VI. and his friends on the 29th of January, 1392, in the famous Ballet of Wild Men, since called, from the catastrophe which happened, "Ballet des Ardents" (of men in fire). The taste for ballets and Masks was one of long duration; the Tudors and Stuarts were as fond of them as the Plantagenets, so much so that a branch apart in dramatic literature was created on this account, and it includes in England such graceful and touching masterpieces as the "Sad Shepherd" of Ben Jonson and the "Comus" of Milton.

II.

While histrions and amusers give a foretaste of farce and comedy in castle halls, while romantic drama is foreshadowed in the "pas de Saladin" and the "Taking of Troy," and the pastoral drama begins with May games, other sources of the modern dramatic art were springing up in the shadow of the cloister and under the naves of churches.

The imitation of any action is a step towards drama. Conventional, liturgical, ritualistic as the imitation was, still there was an imitation in the ceremony of mass; and mass led to the religious drama, which was therefore, at starting, as conventional, liturgical, and ritualistic as could be. Its early beginning is to be sought for in the antiphoned parts of the service, and then it makes one with the service itself. In a similar manner, outside the Church lay drama had begun with the alternate chansons, debates, poetical altercations of the singers of facetious or love-songs. A great step was made when, at the principal feasts of the year, Easter and Christmas, the chanters, instead of giving their responses from their stalls, moved in the Church to recall the action commemorated on that day; additions were introduced into the received text of the service; religious drama begins then to have an existence of its own.

"'Tell us, shepherds, whom do you seek in this stable?—They will answer: 'Christ the Saviour, our Lord.'"[771]

Such is the starting-point; it dates from the tenth century; from this is derived the play of Shepherds, of which many versions have come down to us. One of them, followed in the cathedral of Rouen, gives a minute account of the performance as it was then acted in the midst of the religious service: "Be the crib established behind the altar, and be the image of the Blessed Mary placed there. First a child, from before the choir and on a raised platform, representing an angel, will announce the birth of the Saviour to five canons or their vicars of the second rank; the shepherds must come in by the great gate of the choir.... As they near the crib they sing the prose Pax in terris. Two priests of the first rank, wearing a dalmatic, will represent the midwives and stand by the crib."[772]

These adventitious ornaments were greatly appreciated, and from year to year they were increased and perfected. Verse replaced prose; the vulgar idiom replaced Latin; open air and the public square replaced the church nave and its subdued light. It was no longer necessary to have recourse to priests wearing a dalmatic in order to represent midwives; the feminine parts were performed by young boys dressed as women: this was coming much nearer nature, as near in fact as Shakespeare did, for he never saw any but boys play the part of his Juliet. There were even cases in which actual women were seen on the mediaeval stage. Those ameliorations, so simple and obvious, summed up in a phrase, were the work of centuries, but the tide when once on the flow was the stronger for waiting. The drama left the church, because its increased importance had made it cumbersome there, because it was badly seen, and because having power it wanted freedom.

Easter was the occasion for ornaments and additions similar to those introduced into the Christmas service.[773] The ceremonies of Holy Week, which reproduced each incident in the drama of the Passion, lent themselves admirably to it. Additions following additions, the whole of the Old Testament ended by being grouped round and tied to the Christmas feast, and the whole of the New Testament round Easter. Both were closely connected, the scenes in the one being interpreted as symbols of the scenes in the other; complete cycles were thus formed, representing in two divisions the religious history of mankind from the Creation to Doomsday. Once severed from the church, these groups of plays often got also separated from the feast to which they owed their birth, and were represented at Whitsuntide, on Corpus Christi day, or on the occasion of some solemnity or other.

As the taste for such dramas was spreading, a variety of tragical subjects, not from the Bible, were turned into dialogues: first lives of saints, later, in France, some few subjects borrowed from history or romance: the story of Griselda, the raising of the siege at Orleans by Joan of Arc, &c.[774] The English adhered more exclusively to the Bible. Dramas drawn from the lives of saints were usually called Miracles; those derived from the Bible, Mysteries; but these appellations had nothing very definite about them, and were often used one for the other.

The religious drama was on the way to lose its purely liturgical character when the conquest of England had taken place. Under the reign of the Norman and Angevin kings, the taste for dramatic performances increased considerably; within the first century after Hastings we find them numerous and largely attended.

The oldest representation the memory of which has come down to us took place at the beginning of the twelfth century, and had for its subject the story of that St. Catherine of Alexandria whom the Emperor Maximinus caused to be beheaded after she had converted the fifty orators entrusted with the care of bringing her back to paganism by dint of their eloquence. The fifty orators received baptism, and were burnt alive.[775] The representation was managed by a Mancel of good family called Geoffrey, whom Richard, abbot of St. Albans, had asked to come from France to be the master of the Abbey school. But as he was late in starting, he found on his coming that the school had been given to another; in his leisure he caused to be represented at Dunstable a play, or miracle, of St. Catherine, "quendam ludum de Sancta Katerina quem miracula vulgariter appellamus." He borrowed from the sacristan at St. Albans the Abbey copes to dress his actors in; but the night following upon the performance, the fire consumed his house; all his books were burnt, and the copes too: "Wherefore, not knowing how to indemnify God and St. Albans, he offered his own person as a holocaust and took the habit in the monastery. This explains the zeal with which, having become abbot, he strove to enrich the convent with precious copes." For he became abbot, and died in 1146, after a reign of twenty-six years,[776] and Matthew Paris, to whom we owe those details, and whose taste for works of art is well known, gives a full enumeration of the splendid purple and gold vestments, adorned with precious stones, with which the Mancel Geoffrey enriched the treasury of the Abbey.[777]

A little later in the same century, Fitzstephen, who wrote under Henry II., mentions as a common occurrence the "representations of miracles" held in London.[778] In the following century, under Henry III., some were written in the English language.[779] During the fourteenth century, in the time of Chaucer, mysteries were at the height of their popularity; their heroes were familiar to all, and the sayings of the same became proverbs. Kings themselves journeyed in order to be present at the representations; Chaucer had seen them often, and the characters in his tales make frequent allusions to them; his drunken miller cries "in Pilates vois"; "Jolif Absolon" played the part of "king Herodes," and is it to be expected that an Alisoun could resist king Herodes? The Wife of Bath, dressed in her best garments, goes "to pleyes of miracles," and there tries to make acquaintances that may be turned into husbands when she wants them. "Hendy Nicholas" quotes to the credulous carpenter the example of Noah, whose wife would not go on board, and who regretted that he had not built a separate ship for "hir-self allone."

A treatise, written in English at this period, against such representations, shows the extreme favour in which they stood with all classes of society.[780] The enthusiasm was so general and boundless that it seems to the author indispensable to take the field and retort (for the question was keenly disputed) the arguments put forward to justify the performance of mysteries. The works and miracles of Christ, he observes, were not done for play; He did them "ernystfully," and we use them "in bourde and pleye!" It is treating with great familiarity the Almighty, who may well say: "Pley not with me, but pley with thi pere." Let us beware of His revenge; it well may happen that "God takith more venjaunce on us than a lord that sodaynly sleeth his servaunt for he pleyide to homely with hym;" and yet the lord's vengeance cannot be considered a trifling one.

What do the abettors of mysteries answer to this? They answer that "thei pleyen these myraclis in the worschip of God"; they lead men to think and meditate; devils are seen there carrying the wicked away to hell; the sufferings of Christ are represented, and the hardest are touched, they are seen weeping for pity; for people wept and laughed at the representations, openly and noisily, "wepynge bitere teris." Besides, there are men of different sorts, and some are so made that they cannot be converted but by mirthful means, "by gamen and pley"; and such performances do them much good. Must not, on the other hand, all men have "summe recreatioun"? Better it is, "or lesse yvele, that thei han thyre recreacoun by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis." And one more very sensible reason is given: "Sithen it is leveful to han the myraclis of God peyntid, why is not as wel leveful to han the myraclis of God pleyed ... and betere thei ben holden in mennus mynde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peyntynge, for this is a deed bok, the tother a quick."

To those reasons, which he does not try to conceal, but on the contrary presents very forcibly, the fair-minded author answers his best. These representations are too amusing; after such enjoyments, everyday life seems plain and dull; women of "yvil continaunse," Wives of Bath maybe, or worse, flock there and do not remain idle. The fact that they come does not prevent the priests from going too; yet it is "uttirly" forbidden them "not onely to been myracle pleyere but also to heren or to seen myraclis pleyinge." But they set the decree at nought and "pleyn in entirlodies," and go and see them: "The prestis that seyn hemsilf holy, and besien hem aboute siche pleyis, ben verry ypocritis and lyeris." All bounds have been overstepped; it is no longer a taste, but a passion; men are carried away by it; citizens become avaricious and grasping to get money in view of the representations and the amusements which follow: "To peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche, and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothinge grucche." Merchants and tradesmen "bygilen ther neghbors, in byinge and sellyng," that is "hideous coveytise," that is "maumetrie"; and they do it "to han to spenden on these miraclis."

Many documents corroborate these statements and show the accuracy of the description. The fondness of priests for plays and similar pastimes is descanted upon by the Council of London in 1391.[781] A hundred years earlier an Englishman, in a poem which he wrote in French, had pointed out exactly the same abuses: from which can be perceived how deeply rooted they were. Another folly, William de Wadington[782] had said, has been invented by mad clerks; it consists in what is called Miracles; in spite of decrees they disguise themselves with masks, "li forsene!"[783] Purely liturgical drama, of course, is permissible (an additional proof of its existence in England); certain representations can be held, "provided they be chastely set up and included in the Church service," as is done when the burial of Christ or the Resurrection is represented "to increase devotion."[784] But to have "those mad gatherings in the streets of towns, or in the cemeteries, after dinner," to prepare for the idle such meeting-places, is a quite different thing; if they tell you that they do it with good intent and to the honour of God, do not believe them; it is all "for the devil." If players ask you to lend them horses, equipments, dresses, and ornaments of all sorts, don't fail to refuse. For the stage continued to live upon loans, and the example of the copes of St. Albans destroyed by fire had not deterred convents from continuing to lend sacred vestments to actors.[785] In the case of sacred vestments, says William, "the sin is much greater." In all this, as well as in all sorts of dances and frolics, a heavy responsibility rests with the minstrels; they ply a dangerous trade, a "trop perilus mester"; they cause God to be forgotten, and the vanity of the world to be cherished.

Not a few among these English dramas, so popular in former days, have come down to us. Besides separate pieces, histories of saints (very scarce in England), or fragments of old series, several collections have survived, the property whilom of gilds or municipalities. A number of towns kept up those shows, which attracted visitors, and were at the same time edifying, profitable, and amusing. From the fourteenth century the performances were in most cases intrusted to the gilds, each craft having as much as possible to represent a play in accordance with its particular trade. Shipwrights represented the building of the ark; fishermen, the Flood; goldsmiths, the coming of the three kings with their golden crowns; wine merchants, the marriage at Cana, where a miracle took place very much in their line. In other cases the plays were performed by gilds founded especially for that purpose: gild of Corpus Christi, of the Pater Noster, &c. This last had been created because "once on a time, a play setting forth the goodness of the Lord's Prayer was played in the city of York, in which play all manner of vices and sins were held up to scorn and the virtues were held up to praise. This play met with such favour that many said: 'Would that this play could be kept in this city, for the health of souls and for the comfort of citizens and neighbours!' Hence the keeping up of that play in times to come" (year 1389).[786]

In a more or less complete state, the collections of the Mysteries performed at Chester, Coventry, Woodkirk, and York have been preserved, without speaking of fragments of other series. Most of those texts belong to the fourteenth century, but have been retouched at a later date.[787] Old Mysteries did not escape the hand of the improvers, any more than old churches, where any one who pleased added paintings, porches, and tracery, according to the fashion of the day.

These dramatic entertainments, which thrilled a whole town, to which flocked, with equal zeal, peasants and craftsmen, citizens, noblemen, kings and queens, which the Reformation succeeded in killing only after half a century's fight, enlivened with incomparable glow the monotonous course of days and weeks. The occasion was a solemn one; preparation was begun long beforehand; it was an important affair, an affair of State. Gilds taxed their members to secure a fair representation of the play assigned to them; they were fined by the municipal authority in case they proved careless and inefficient, or were behind their time to begin.

Read as they are, without going back in our minds to times past and taking into account the circumstances of their composition, Mysteries may well be judged a gross, childish, and barbarous production. Still, they are worthy of great attention, as showing a side of the soul of our ancestors, who in all this did their very best: for those performances were not got up anyhow: they were the result of prolonged care and attention. Not any man who wished was accepted as an actor; some experience of the art was expected; and in some towns even examinations took place. At York a decree of the Town Council ordains that long before the appointed day, "in the tyme of lentyn" (while the performance itself took place in summer, at the Corpus Christi celebration) "there shall be called afore the maire for the tyme beyng four of the moste connyng discrete and able players within this Citie, to serche, here and examen all the plaiers and plaies and pagentes thrughoute all the artificers belonging to Corpus Christi plaie. And all suche as thay shall fynde sufficiant in personne and connyng, to the honour of the Citie and worship of the saide craftes, for to admitte and able; and all other insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice, or personne to discharge, ammove and avoide." All crafts were bound to bring "furthe ther pageantez in order and course by good players, well arayed and openly spekyng, upon payn of lesying 100 s. to be paide to the chambre without any pardon."[788] These texts belong to the fifteenth century, but there are older ones; and they show that from the beginning the difference between good and bad actors was appreciated and great importance was attached to the gestures and delivery. The Mystery of "Adam" (in French, the work, it seems, of a Norman), which belongs to the twelfth century, commences with recommendations to players: "Be Adam well trained so as to answer at the appropriate time without any slackness or haste. The same with the other actors; let them speak in sedate fashion, with gestures fitting the words; be they mindful not to add or suppress a syllable in the verses; and be their pronunciation constantly clear."[789] The amusement afforded by such exhibitions, the personal fame acquired by good actors, suddenly drawn from the shadow in which their working lives had been spent till then, acted so powerfully on craftsmen that some would not go back to the shop, and, leaving their tools behind them, became professional actors; thus showing that there was some wisdom in the reproof set forth in the "Tretise of Miraclis pleyinge."

Once emerged from the Church, the drama had the whole town in which to display itself; and it filled the whole town. On these days the city belonged to dramatic art; each company had its cars or scaffolds, pageants (placed on wheels in some towns), each car being meant to represent one of the places where the events in the play happened. The complete series of scenes was exhibited at the main crossings, or on the principal squares or open spaces in the town. The inhabitants of neighbouring houses sat thus as in a front row, and enjoyed a most enviable privilege, so enviable that it was indeed envied, and at York, for example, they had to pay for it. After 1417 the choosing of the places for the representations was regulated by auction, and the plays were performed under the windows of the highest bidders. In other cases the scaffolds were fixed; so that the representation was performed only at one place.

The form of the scaffolds varied from town to town. At Chester "these pagiantes or cariage was a highe place made like a house with two rowmes beinge open on ye tope: the lower rowme they apparrelled and dressed them selves; and in the higher rowme they played: and they stoode upon six wheeles. And when they had done with one cariage in one place, they wheeled the same from one streete to an other."[790] In some cases the scaffolds were not so high, and boards made a communication between the raised platform and the ground; a horseman could thus ride up the scaffold: "Here Erode ragis in the pagond and in the strete also."[791]

Sometimes the upper room did not remain open, but a curtain was drawn, according to the necessity of the action. The heroes of the play moved about the place, and went from one scaffold to another; dialogue then took place between players on the ground and players on the boards: "Here thei take Jhesu and lede hym in gret hast to Herowde; and the Herowdys scaffald xal unclose, shewyng Herowdes in astat, alle the Jewys knelyng except Annas and Cayaphas."[792] Chaucer speaks of the "scaffold hye" on which jolif Absolon played Herod; king Herod in fact was always enthroned high above the common rabble.

The arrangements adopted in England differed little, as we see, from the French ones; and it could scarcely be otherwise, as the taste for these dramas had been imported by the Normans and Angevins. Neither in England nor in France were there ever any of those six-storied theatres described by the brothers Parfait, each story being supposed to represent a different place or country. To keep to truth, we should, on the contrary, picture to ourselves those famous buildings stretched all along on the ground, with their different compartments scattered round the public square.

But we have better than words and descriptions to give us an idea of the sight; we have actual pictures, offering to view all the details of the performances. An exquisite miniature of Jean Fouquet, preserved at Chantilly, which has never been studied as it ought to be with reference to this question, has for its subject the life of St. Apollinia. Instead of painting a fancy picture, Fouquet has chosen to represent the martyrdom of the saint as it was acted in a miracle play.[793] The main action takes place on the ground; Apollinia is there, in the middle of the executioners. Round the place are scaffolds with a lower room and an upper room, as at Chester, and there are curtains to close them. One of those boxes represents Paradise; angels with folded arms, quietly seated on the wooden steps of their stairs, await the moment when they must speak; another is filled with musicians playing the organ and other instruments; a third contains the throne of the king. The throne is empty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with fleurs-de-lys, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part in the main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, with opening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the better accommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama, and to keep the interest of the crowd alive, by running suddenly through it, with their feathers and animals' skins, howling and grinning; "to the great terror of little children," says Rabelais, who, like Chaucer, had often been present at such dramas. Several devils are to be seen in the miniature; they have cloven feet, and stand outside the hell-mouth; a buffoon also is to be seen, who raises a laugh among the audience and shows his scorn for the martyr by the means described three centuries earlier in John of Salisbury's book, exhibiting his person in a way "quam erubescat videre vel cynicus."

Besides the scaffolds, boxes or "estableis" meant for actors, others are reserved for spectators of importance, or those who paid best. This commingling of actors and spectators would seem to us somewhat confusing; but people were not then very exacting; with them illusion was easily caused, and never broken. This magnificent part of the audience, besides, with its rich garments, was itself a sight; and so little objection was made to the presence of beholders of that sort that we shall find them seated on the Shakesperean stage as well as on the stage of Corneille and of Moliere. "I was on the stage, meaning to listen to the play ..." says the Eraste of "Les Facheux." In the time of Shakespeare the custom followed was even more against theatrical illusion, as there were gentlemen not only on the sides of the scene, but also behind the actors; they filled a vast box fronting the pit.

The dresses were rich: this is the best that can be said of them. Saints enwreathed their chins with curling beards of gold; God the Father was dressed as a pope or a bishop. For good reasons the audience did not ask much in the way of historical accuracy; all it wanted was signs. Copes and tiaras were in its eyes religious signs by excellence, and in the wearer of such they recognised God without hesitation. The turban of the Saracens, Mahomet the prophet of the infidels, were known to the mob, which saw in them the signs and symbols of irreligiousness and impiety. Herod, for this cause, wore a turban, and swore premature oaths by "Mahound." People were familiar with symbols, and the use of them was continued; the painters at the Renaissance represented St. Stephen with a stone in his hand and St. Paul with a sword, which stone and sword stood for symbols, and the sight of them evoked all the doleful tale of their sufferings and death.

The authors of Mysteries did not pay, as we may well believe, great attention to the rule of the three Unities. The events included in the French Mystery of the "Vieil Testament" did not take place in one day, but in four thousand years. The most distant localities were represented next to each other: Rome, Jerusalem, Marseilles. The scaffolds huddled close together scarcely gave an idea of geographical realities; the imagination of the beholders was expected to supply what was wanting: and so it did. A few square yards of ground (sometimes, it must be acknowledged, of water) were supposed to be the Mediterranean; Marseilles was at one end, and Jaffa at the other. A few minutes did duty for months, years, or centuries. Herod sends a messenger to Tiberius; the tetrarch has scarcely finished his speech when his man is already at Rome, and delivers his message to the emperor. Noah gets into his ark and shuts his window; here a silence lasting a minute or so; the window opens, and Noah declares that the forty days are past ("Chester Plays").

To render, however, his task easier to the public, some precautions were taken to let them perceive where they were. Sometimes the name of the place was written on a piece of wood or canvas, a clear and honest means.[794] It worked so successfully that it was still resorted to in Elizabethan times; we see "Thebes written in great letters upon an olde doore," says Sir Philip Sidney, and without asking for more we are bound "to beleeve that it is Thebes." In other cases the actor followed the sneering advice Boileau was to express later, and in very simple fashion declared who he was: I am Herod! I am Tiberius! Or again, when they moved from one place to another, they named both: now we are arrived, I recognise Marseilles; "her is the lond of Mercylle."[795] Most of those inventions were long found to answer, and very often Shakespeare had no better ones to use. The same necessities caused him to make up for the deficiency of the scenery by his wonderful descriptions of landscapes, castles, and wild moors. All that poetry would have been lost had he had painted scenery at his disposal.

Some attempts at painted scenery were made, it is true, but so plain and primitive that the thing again acted as a symbol rather than as the representation of a place. A throne meant the palace of the king. God divides light from darkness: "Now must be exhibited a sheet painted, know you, one half all white and the other half all black." The creation of animals comes nearer the real truth: "Now must be let loose little birds that will fly in the air, and must be placed on the ground, ducks, swans, geese ... with as many strange beasts as it will have been possible to secure." But truth absolute was observed when the state of innocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and look round with an air of admiration and wonder."[796] Beholders doubtless returned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practical recommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple: "Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed."[797] The proper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals "out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to be ashamed. The woman must also be seized with shame, and cover herself with her hands."[798]

If painted scenery was greatly neglected, machinery received more attention. That characteristic of modern times, yeast through which the old world has been transformed, the hankering after the unattainable, which caused so many great deeds, had also smaller results; it affected these humble details. Painted canvas was neglected, but people laboured at the inventing of machinery. While a sheet half white and half black was hung to represent light and chaos, in the drama of "Adam," so early as the twelfth century, a self-moving serpent, "serpens artificiose compositus," tempted the woman in Paradise. Wondering Eve offered but small resistance. Elsewhere an angel carried Enoch "by a subtile engine" into Paradise. In the Doomesday play of the Chester Mysteries, "Jesus was to come down as on a cloud, if that could be managed." But sometimes it could not; in Fouquet's miniature the angels have no other machinery but a ladder to allow them to descend from heaven to earth. In the "Mary Magdalene" of the Digby Mysteries a boat appeared with mast and sail, and carried to Palestine the King of Marseilles.

Hell was in all times most carefully arranged, and it had the best machinery. The mouth opened and closed, threw flames from its nostrils, and let loose upon the crowd devils armed with hooks and emitting awful yells. From the back of the mouth appalling noises were heard, being meant for the moans of the damned. These moans were produced by a simple process: pots and frying-pans were knocked against each other. In "Adam," the heroes of the play are taken to hell, there to await the coming of Christ; and the scene, according to the stage direction in the manuscript, was to be represented thus: "Then the Devil will come and three or four devils with him with chains in their hands and iron rings which they will put round the neck of Adam and Eve. Some push them and others draw them toward hell. Other devils awaiting them by the entrance jump and tumble as a sign of their joy for the event." After Adam has been received within the precincts of hell, "the devils will cause a great smoke to rise; they will emit merry vociferations, and knock together their pans and caldrons so as to be heard from the outside. After a while, some devils will come out and run about the place." Pans were of frequent use; Abel had one under his tunic, and Cain, knocking on it, drew forth lugubrious sounds, which went to the heart of the audience.

The machinery became more and more complicated toward the time of the Renaissance; but much money was needed, and for long the Court or the municipalities could alone use them. In England fixed or movable scenery reaches great perfection at Court: Inigo Jones shows a genius in arranging elegant decorations; some of his sketches have been preserved.[799] But such splendid inventions were too costly to be transferred to the stages for which Shakespeare wrote; and he never used any other magic but that of his poetry. Inigo Jones had fine scene-shiftings with the help of his machinists, and Shakespeare with the help of his verses; these last have this advantage, that they have not faded, and can still be seen.

III.

Whatever may be thought of so much simplicity, childishness, or barbarity of those ivy-clad ruins, the forms of which can scarcely be discerned, they must be subjected to a closer inspection; and if there were no other, this one consideration would be enough to incline us to it: while in the theatre of Bacchus the tragedies of Sophocles were played once and no more, the Christian drama, remodelled from century to century, was represented for four hundred years before immense multitudes; and this is a unique phenomenon in the history of literature.

The fact may be ascribed to several causes, some of which have already been pointed out. The desire to see was extremely keen, and there was seen all that could be wished: the unattainable, the unperceivable, miracles, the king's Court, earthly paradise, all that had been heard of or dreamt about. Means of realisation were rude, but the public held them satisfactory.

What feasts were in the year, sacraments were in the existence of men; they marked the great memorable stages of life. A complete net of observances and religious obligations surrounded the months and seasons; bells never remained long silent; they rang less discreetly than now, and were not afraid to disturb conversations by their noise. At each period of the day they recalled that there were prayers to say, and to those even who did not pray they recalled the importance of religion. Existences were thus impregnated with religion; and religion was in its entirety explained, made accessible and visible, in the Mysteries.

The verses spoken by the actors did not much resemble those in Shakespeare; they were, in most cases, mere tattle, scarcely verses; rhyme and alliteration were sometimes used both together, and both anyhow. And yet the emotion was deep; in the state of mind with which the spectators came, nothing would have prevented their being touched by the affecting scenes, neither the lame verse nor the clumsy machinery; the cause of the emotion was the subject, and not the manner in which the subject was represented. All the past of humanity and its eternal future were at stake; players, therefore, were sometimes interrupted by the passionate exclamations of the crowd. At a drama lately represented on the stage of the Comedie Francaise, one of the audience astonished his neighbours by crying: "Mais signe donc! Est-elle bete!..." In the open air of the public place, at a time when manners were less polished, many such interjections interrupted the performance; many insulting apostrophes were addressed to Eve when she listened to the serpent; and the serpent spoke (in the Norman drama of "Adam") a language easy to understand, the language of everyday life:

"Diabolus.—I saw Adam; he is an ass."

"Eva.—He is a little hard."

"Diabolus.—We shall melt him; but at present he is harder than iron."

But thou, Eve, thou art a superior being, a delicate one, a delight for the eyes. "Thou art a little tender thing, fresher than the rose, whiter than crystal, or snow falling on the ice in a dale. The Creator has badly matched the couple; thou art too sweet; man is too hard.... For which it is very pleasant to draw close to thee. Let me have a talk with thee."[800]

And for such cajolery, for such folly, thought the crowd, for this sin of our common mother, we sweat and we suffer, we observe Lent, we experience temptations, and under our feet this awful hell-mouth opens, in which, maybe, we shall some day fall. Eve, turn away from the serpent!

Greater even was the emotion caused by the drama of the Passion, the sufferings of the Redeemer, all the details of which were familiar to everybody. The indignation was so keen that the executioners had difficulty sometimes in escaping the fury of the multitude.

The Middle Ages were the age of contrasts; what measure meant was then unknown. This has already been noticed a propos of Chaucer; the cleverest compensated, as Chaucer did, their Miller's tales with stories of Griselda. When they intend to be tender the authors of Mysteries fall in most cases into that mawkish sentimentality by which the man of the people or the barbarian is often detected. A feeling for measure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it. Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-paths always represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetness unspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, in the middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound of his horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape, with a blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected in Dickens, many also in the Mysteries. After a truly touching scene between Abraham and his son, the pretty things Isaac does and says, his prayer not to see the sword so keen, cease to touch, and come very near making us laugh. The contrast between the fury of Herod and the sweetness of Joseph and Mary is similarly carried to an extreme. This same Joseph who a minute ago insulted his wife in words impossible to quote, has now become such a sweet and gentle saint that one can scarcely believe the same man addresses us. He is packing before his journey to Egypt; he will take his tools with him, his "smale instrumentes."[801] Is there anything more touching? Nothing, except perhaps the appeal of the street painter, calling our attention to the fact that he draws "on the rude stone." How could the passer-by not be touched by the idea that the stone is so hard? In the Middle Ages people melted at this, they were moved, they wept; and all at once they were in a mood to enjoy the most enormous buffooneries. These fill a large place in the Mysteries, and beside them shine scenes of real comedy, evincing great accuracy of observation.

The personages worst treated in Mysteries are always kings; they are mostly represented as being grotesque and mischievous. The playwrights might have given as their excuse that their kings are miscreants, and that black is not dark enough to paint such faces. But to this commendable motive was added a sly pleasure felt in caricaturing those great men, not only because they were heathens, but also because they were kings; for when Christian princes and lords appear on the stage, the satire is often continued. Thus Lancelot of the Lake appears unexpectedly at the Court of king Herod, and after much rant the lover of queen Guinevere draws his invincible sword and massacres the Innocents ("Chester Plays").

Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Pharaoh, the King of Marseilles, always open the scenes where they figure with a speech, in which they sound their own praise. It was an established tradition; in the same way as God the Father delivered a sermon, these personages made what the manuscripts technically call "their boast." They are the masters of the universe; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear and curse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The English Herod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects of Angevin monarchs would have shrugged their shoulders at the representation of a prince who did not speak French. It was for them the sign of princeship, as a tiara was the sign of godhead. Herod therefore spoke French, a very mean sort of French, it is true, and the Parliament of Paris which was to express later its indignation at the faulty grammar of the "Confreres de la Passion" would have suffered much if it had seen what became of the noble language of France on the scaffolds at Chester. But it did not matter; any words were enough, in the same way as any sword would do as an emblem for St. Paul.

One of the duties of these strutting heroes was to maintain silence. It seemed as if they had a privilege for noise making, and they repressed encroachments; their task was not an easy one. Be still, "beshers," cries Augustus; "beshers" means "beaux sires" in the kingly French of the Mysteries:

Be stylle, beshers, I commawnd you, That no man speke a word here now Bot I my self alon. And if ye do, I make a vow, Thys brand abowte youre nekys shalle bow, For-thy by stylle as ston.[802]

Silence! cries Tiberius. Silence! cries Herod:

Styr not bot ye have lefe, For if ye do I clefe You smalle as flesh to pott.[803]

Tiberius knows Latin, and does not conceal it from the audience:

Stynt, I say, gyf men place, quia sum dominus dominorum, He that agans me says rapietur lux oculorum.[804]

And each of them hereupon moves about his scaffold, and gives the best idea he can of the magnitude of his power:

Above all kynges under the cloudys crystall, Royally I reigne in welthe without woo ... I am Kyng Herowdes.[805]

Be it known, says another:

That of heven and hell chyff rewlar am I, To wos magnyfycens non stondyt egall, For I am soveren of al soverens.[806]

Make room, says a third:

A-wantt, a-want the, on-worthy wrecchesse! Why lowtt ye nat low to my lawdabyll presens?... I am a sofereyn semely, that ye se butt seyld; Non swyche onder sonne, the sothe for to say ... I am kyng of Marcylle![807]

Such princes fear nothing, and are never abashed; they are on familiar terms with the audience, and interpellate the bystanders, which was a sure cause of merriment, but not of good order. Octavian, being well pleased with the services of one of his men, tells him:

Boye, their be ladyes many a one, Amonge them all chouse thee one, Take the faierest, or elles non, And freely I geve her thee.[808]

Every lord bows to my law, observes Tiberius:

Is it nat so? Sey yow all with on showte.

and a note in the manuscript has: "Here answerryt all the pepul at ons,'Ya, my lord, ya.'"[809] All this was performed with appropriate gesture, that is, as wild as the words they went with, a tradition that long survived. Shakespeare complained, as we know, of the delivery of those actors who "out-heroded Herod."

The authors of English Mysteries had no great experience of Courts; they drew their caricatures somewhat haphazard. They were neither very learned nor very careful; anachronisms and mistakes swarm under their pen. While Herod sacrifices to Mahomet, Noah invokes the Blessed Virgin, and the Christmas shepherds swear by "the death of Christ," whose birth is announced to them at the end of the play.

The psychology of these dramas is not very deep, especially when the question is of personages of rank, and of feelings of a refined sort. The authors of Mysteries speak then at random and describe by hearsay; they have seen their models only from afar, and are not familiar with them. When they have to show how it is that young Mary Magdalen, as virtuous as she was beautiful, consents to sin for the first time, they do it in the plainest fashion. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her that he finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir," the young lady replies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prostitute)?" Not at all, says the other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall we drink something?

Soppes in wyne, how love ye?

Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers:

As ye dou, so doth me; I am ryth glad that met be we; My love in yow gynnyt to close.

Then, "derlyng dere," let us go, says the "galaunt."

Mary. Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng! Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd, I wol never from yow wynd (turn).[810]

Clarissa Harlowe will require more forms and more time; here twenty-five verses have been enough. A century and a half divides "Mary Magdalene" from the dramatised story of the "Weeping Bitch"; the interpretation of the movements of the feminine heart has not greatly improved, and we are very far as yet from Richardson and Shakespeare.

But truth was more closely observed when the authors spoke of what they knew by personal experience, and described men of the poorer sort with whom they were familiar. In this lies the main literary merit of the Mysteries; there may be found the earliest scenes of real comedy in the history of the English stage.

This comedy of course is very near farce: in everything people then went to extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were among the most popular.

In all the collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders somewhat at first:

A! worthy lorde, wolde thou take heede, I am full olde and oute of qwarte.

He sets to work, however; rain begins; the time for sailing has arrived: Noah calls his wife; she does not come. Get into the ark and "leve the harde lande?" This she will not do. She meant to go this very day to town, and she will:

Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne.

She does not fear the flood; Noah remarks that the rain has been terrific of late, and has lasted many days, and that her idea of going just then to town is not very wise. The lady is not a whit pacified; why have made a secret of all this to her? Why had he not consulted her? It turns out that her husband had been working at the ark for a hundred years, and she did not know of it! Life in a boat is not at all pleasant; anyhow she will want time to pack; also she must take her gossips with her, to have some one to talk to during the voyage. Noah, who in building his boat has given some proof of his patience, does not lose courage; he receives a box on the ear; he is content with saying:

I pray the, dame, be stille.

The wife at length gets in, and, as we may believe, stormy days in more senses than one are in store for the patriarch.[811]

St. Joseph is a poor craftsman, described from nature, using the language of craftsmen, having their manners, their ignorances, their aspirations. Few works in the whole range of mediaeval literature contain better descriptions of the workman of that time than the Mysteries in which St. Joseph figures; some of his speeches ought to have a place in the collections of Political Songs. The Emperor Augustus has availed himself of the occasion afforded by the census to establish a new tax: "A! lorde," says the poor Joseph,

what doth this man nowe heare! Poore mens weale is ever in were (doubt), I wotte by this bolsters beare That tribute I muste paye; And for greate age and no power I wan no good this seven yeaire; Nowe comes the kinges messingere, To gette all that he maye. With this axe that I beare, This perscer and this nagere, A hamer all in feare, I have wonnen my meate. Castill, tower ne manere Had I never in my power; But as a simple carpentere With these what I mighte gette. Yf I have store nowe anye thing, That I must paye unto the kinge.[812]

Only an ox is left him; he will go and sell it. It is easy to fancy that, in the century which saw the Statutes of Labourers and the rising of the peasants, such words found a ready echo in the audience.

As soon as men of the people appear on the scene, nearly always the dialogue becomes lively; real men and women stand and talk before us. Beside the workmen represented by St. Joseph, peasants appear, represented by the shepherds of Christmas night. They are true English shepherds; if they swear, somewhat before due time, by Christ, all surprise disappears when we hear them name the places where they live: Lancashire, the Clyde valley, Boughton near Chester, Norbury near Wakefield. Of all possible ales, Ely's is the one they prefer. They talk together of the weather, the time of the day, the mean salaries they get, the stray sheep they have been seeking; they eat their meals under the hedge, sing merry songs, exchange a few blows, in fact behave as true shepherds of real life. Quite at the end only, when the "Gloria" is heard, they will assume the sober attitude befitting Christmas Day.

In the Mysteries performed at Woodkirk, the visit to the new-born Child was preceded by a comedy worthy to be compared with the famous farce of "Pathelin," and which has nothing to do with Christmas.[813] It is night; the shepherds talk; the time for sleeping comes. One among them, Mak, has a bad repute, and is suspected of being a thief; they ask him to sleep in the midst of the others: "Com heder, betwene shalle thou lyg downe." But Mak rises during the night without being observed. How hard they sleep! he says, and he carries away a "fatt shepe," and takes it to his wife.

Wife. It were a fowlle blotte to be hanged for the case.

Mak. I have skapyd, Gelott, oft as hard as glase.

Wife. Bot so long goys the pott to the water, men says, At last Comys it home broken.

I remember it well, says Mak, but it is not a time for proverbs and talk; let us do for the best. The shepherds know Mak too well not to come straight to his house; and so they do. Moans are heard; the cause being, they learn, that Mak's wife has just given birth to a child. As the shepherds walk in, Mak meets them with a cheerful countenance, and welcomes them heartily:

Bot ar ye in this towne to-day? Now how fare ye? Ye have ryn in the myre, and ar weytt yit; I shalle make you a fyre, if ye wille syt.

His offers are coldly received, and the visitors explain what has happened.

Nowe if you have suspowse, to Gille or to me, Com and rype oure howse!

The woman moans more pitifully than ever:

Wife. Outt, thefys, fro my barne! negh hym not thore.

Mak. Wyst ye how she had farne, youre hartys wold be sore. Ye do wrang, I you warne, that thus commys before To a woman that has farne, bot I say no more.

Wife. A my medylle! I pray God so mylde, If ever I you begyld, That I ete this chylde That lyges in this credylle.

The shepherds, deafened by the noise, look none the less about the house, but find nothing. Their host is not yet, however, at the end of his trouble.

Tertius Pastor. Mak, with youre lefe, let me gyf youre barne Bot six pence.

Mak. Nay, do way, he slepys.

Pastor. Me thynk he pepys.

Mak. When he wakyns he wepys; I pray you go hence.

Pastor. Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowth. What the deville is this? he has a long snowte!

And the fraud is discovered; it was the sheep. From oaths they were coming to blows, when on a sudden, amid the stars, angels are seen, and their song is heard in the night: Glory to God, peace to earth! the world is rejuvenated.... Anger disappears, hatreds are effaced, and the rough shepherds of England take, with penitent heart, the road to Bethlehem.

IV.

The fourteenth century saw the religious drama at its height in England; the fifteenth saw its decay; the sixteenth its death. The form under which it was best liked was the form of Mysteries, based upon the Bible. The dramatising of the lives of saints and miracles of the Virgin was much less popular in England than in France. In the latter country enormous collections of such plays have been preserved[814]; in the other the examples of this kind are very few; the Bible was the main source from which the English dramatists drew their inspiration. As we have seen, however, they did not forbear from adding scenes and characters with nothing evangelical in them; these scenes contributed, with the interludes and the facetious dialogues of the jongleurs, to the formation of comedy. Little by little, comedy took shape, and it will be found existing as a separate branch of dramatic art at the time of the Renaissance.

In the same period another sort of drama was to flourish, the origin of which was as old as the fourteenth century, namely, Moralities. These plays consisted in pious treatises and ethical books turned into dramas, as Mysteries offered a dramatisation of Scriptures. Psychology was there carried to the extreme, a peculiar sort of psychology, elementary and excessive at the same time, and very different from the delicate art in favour to-day. Individuals disappeared; they were replaced by abstractions, and these abstractions represented only a single quality or defect. Sins and virtues fought together and tried to draw mankind to them, which stood doubtful, as Hercules "at the starting point of a double road;" in this way, again, was manifested the fondness felt in the Middle Ages for allegories and symbols. The "Roman de la Rose" in France, "Piers Plowman" in England, the immense popularity in all Europe of the Consolation of Boethius, had already been manifestations of those same tendencies. In these works, already, dialogue was abundant, in the "Roman de la Rose" especially, where an immense space is occupied by conversations between the Lover and Fals-Semblant.[815] The names of the speakers are inscribed in the margin, as if it were a real play. When he admitted into his collection of tales the dialogued story of Melibeus and Prudence, Chaucer came very near to Moralities, for the work he produced was neither a treatise nor a tale, nor a drama, but had something of the three; a few changes would have been enough to make of it a Morality, which might have been called the Debate of Wisdom and Mankind.

Abstractions had been allowed a place in the Mysteries so far back as the fourteenth century; death figures in the Woodkirk collection; in "Mary Magdalene" (fifteenth century) many abstract personages are mixed with the others: the Seven Deadly Sins, Mundus, the King of the Flesh, Sensuality, &c.; the same thing happens in the so-called Coventry collection.

This sort of drama, for us unendurable, gradually separated from Mysteries; it reached its greatest development under the early Tudors. The authors of Moralities strove to write plays not merely amusing, as farces, then also in great favour, but plays with a useful and practical aim. By means of now unreadable dramas, virtues, religion, morals, sciences were taught: the Catholic faith was derided by Protestants, and the Reformation by Catholics.[816] The discovery, then quite new, of America was discoursed about, and great regret was expressed at its being not due to an Englishman:

O what a thynge had be than, If they that be Englyshemen Myght have ben furst of all That there shuld have take possessyon![817]

Death, as might be expected, is placed upon the stage with a particular zeal and care, and meditations are dedicated to the dark future of man, and to the gnawing worm of the charnel house.[818]

Fearing the audience might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the science and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad pranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in the play, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor. Shakespeare had seen Vice still alive, and he commemorated his deeds in a song:

I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again, In a trice, Like to the old Vice, Your need to sustain, Who, with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries, ah ha! to the devil.[819]

This character also found place on the French stage, where it was called the "Badin." Rabelais had the "Badin" in great esteem: "In this manner we see, among the jongleurs, when they arrange between them the cast of a play, the part of the Sot, or Badin, to be attributed to the cleverest and most experienced in their company."[820]

In the meanwhile, common ancestors of the various dramatic tribes, source and origin of many sorts of plays, the Mysteries, which had contributed to the formation of the tragical, romantic, allegorical, pastoral, and comic drama, were still in existence. Reformation had come, the people had adopted the new belief, but they could not give up the Mysteries. They continued to like Herod, Noah and his wife, and the tumultuous troup of devils, great and small, inhabiting hell-mouth. Prologues had been written in which excuses were offered on account of the traces of superstition to be detected in the plays, but conscience being thus set at rest, the plays were performed as before. The Protestant bishop of Chester prohibited the representation in 1572, but it took place all the same. The archbishop of York renewed the prohibition in 1575, but the Mysteries were performed again for four days; and some representations of them took place even later.[821] At York the inhabitants had no less reluctance about giving up their old drama; they were sorry to think that religious differences now existed between the town and its beloved tragedies. Converted to the new faith, the citizens would have liked to convert the plays too, and the margins of the manuscript bear witness to their efforts. But the task was a difficult one; they were at their wits' end, and appealed to men more learned than they. They decided that "the booke shalbe carried to my Lord Archebisshop and Mr. Deane to correcte, if that my Lord Archebisshop do well like theron," 1579.[822] My Lord Archbishop, wise and prudent, settled the question according to administrative precedent; he stored the book away somewhere, and the inhabitants were simply informed that the prohibition was maintained. The York plays thus died.

In France the Mysteries survived quite as late; but, on account of the radical effects of the Renaissance there, they had not the same influence on the future development of the drama. They continued to be represented in the sixteenth century, and the Parliament of Paris complained in 1542 of their too great popularity: parish priests, and even the chanters of the Holy Chapel, sang vespers at noon, a most unbecoming hour, and sang them "post haste," to see the sight. Six years later the performance of Mysteries was forbidden at Paris; but the cross and ladder, emblems of the "Confreres de la Passion," continued to be seen above the gates of the "Hotel de Bourgogne," and the privilege of the Confreres, which dated three centuries back, was definitely abolished in the reign of Louis XIV., in December, 1676.[823] Moliere had then been dead for three years.

In England, at the date when my Lord Archbishop stopped the representation at York,[824] the old religious dramas had produced all their fruit: they had kept alive the taste for stage plays, they left behind them authors, a public, and companies of players. Then was growing in years, in a little town by the side of the river Avon, the child who was to reach the highest summits of art. He followed on week-days the teaching of the grammar school; he saw on Sundays, painted on the wall of the Holy Cross Chapel, a paradise and hell similar to those in the Mysteries, angels of gold and black devils, and that immense mouth where the damned are parboiled, "ou damnes sont boulus," as the poor old mother of Villon says in a ballad of her son's.[825]

At the date of the York prohibition, William Shakespeare was fifteen.

FOOTNOTES:

[742] "Nostra aetas prolapsa ad fabulas et quaevis inania, non modo sures et cor prostituit vanitati, sed oculorum et aurium voluptate suam mulcet desidiam.... Nonne piger desidiam instruit et somnos provocat instrumentorum suavitate, aut vocum modulis, hilaritate canentium aut fabulantium gratia, sive quod turpius est ebrietate vel crapula?... Admissa sunt ergo spectacula et infinita tyrocinia vanitatis, quibus qui omnino otiari non possunt perniciosius occupentur. Satius enim fuerat otiari quam turpiter occupari. Hinc mimi, salii vel saliares, balatrones aemiliani, gladiatores, palaestritae, gignadii, praestigiatores, malefici quoque multi et tota joculatorum scena procedit. Quorum adeo error invaluit, ut a praeclaris domibus non arceantur, etiam illi qui obscenis partibus corporis oculis omnium eam ingerunt turpitudinem, quam erubescat videre vel cynicus. Quodque magis mirere, nec tunc ejiciuntur, quando tumultuantes inferius crebro sonitu aerem foedant, et turpiter inclusum turpius produnt.... Jucundum quidem est et ab honeste non recedit virum probum quandoque modesta hilaritate mulcere." "Policraticus," Book i. chap. viii., in "Opera Omnia," ed. Giles, Oxford, 1848, vol. iii. p. 42.

[743] C., xvi. 205.

[744] "De Mimo et Rege Francorum," in Wright, "Latin Stories," 1842, No. cxxxvii.

[745]

Le roi demaund par amour: Ou qy estes vus, sire Joglour? E il respount sauntz pour: Sire, je su ou mon seignour. Quy est toun seignour? fet le Roy. Le baroun ma dame, par ma foy.... Quei est le eve apele, par amours? L'em ne l'apele pas, eynz vint tous jours.

Concerning the horse:

Mange il bien, ce savez dire. Oil certes, bel douz sire; Yl mangereit plus un jour d'aveyne Que vus ne frez pas tote la semeyne.

Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil general des Fabliaux," vol. ii. p. 243.

[746] "Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus," in prose, ed. Kemble, AElfric Society, 1848, 8vo. See also the "estrif" between Joseph and Mary in "Cynewulf's Christ," ed. Gollancz, 1892, p. 17; above, p. 75.

[747] "The Owl and the Nightingale," ed. J. Stevenson, Roxburghe Club, 1838, 4to. "The Thrush and the Nightingale"; "Of the Vox and the Wolf" (see above, p. 228); "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools," in Hazlitt, "Remains of the early Popular Poetry of England," 1864, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. i. pp. 50, 58, 79.

[748] "Anonymi Petroburgensis Descriptio Norfolcensicum" (end of the twelfth century); "Norfolchiae Descriptionis Impugnatio," in Latin verse, with some phrases in English, in Th. Wright, "Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries," London, 1838, 8vo.

[749] "Harrowing of Hell." This work consists in a dramatic dialogue or scene, but it was not meant to be represented. Time of Henry III.; text in Pollard, "English Miracle Plays," Oxford, 1890, p. 166.

[750] This game is described in the (very coarse) fabliau of the "Sentier batu" by Jean de Conde, fourteenth century:

De plusieurs deduis s'entremistrent Et tant c'une royne fistrent Pour jouer au Roy qui ne ment. Ele s'en savoit finement Entremettre de commander Et de demandes demander.

Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil general des Fabliaux," vol. iii. p. 248.

[751] "Prohibemus etiam clericis ne intersint ludis inhonestis, vel choreis, vel ludant ad aleas, vel taxillos; nec sustineant ludos fieri de Rege et Regina," &c. "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo, Wigorniensis episcopi ... promulgatae ... A.D. 1240," art. xxxviii., in Labbe, "Sacrorum conciliorum ... Collectio," l. xxiii. col. 538.

[752] The two sorts are well described by Baudouin de Conde in his "Contes des Hiraus," thirteenth century. The author meets a servant and asks him questions about his master.

Dis-moi, par l'ame de ton pere, Voit-il volentiers menestreus? —Oil voir, biau frere, et estre eus En son hostel a giant solas.... ... Et quant avient C'aucuns grans menestreus la vient, Maistres en sa menestrandie, Que bien viele ou ki bien die De bouce, mesires l'ascoute Volenticis.... Mais peu souvent i vient de teus Mais des felons et des honteus,

who speak but nonsense and know nothing, and who, however, receive bread, meat, and wine,

... l'un por faire l'ivre, L'autre le cat, le tiers le sot; Li quars, ki onques rien ne sot D'armes s'en parole et raconte De ce preu due, de ce preu conte.

"Dits et Contes de Baudouin de Conde," ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1866, 3 vols. 8vo, vol. i. p 154.

[753] "Ad quid illa vocis contractio et infractio? Hic succinit, ille discinit.... Aliquando, quod pudet dicere, in equinos hinnitus cogitur; aliquando virili vigore deposito in femineae vocis gracilitates acuitur.... Videas aliquando hominem aperto ore quasi intercluso habitu expirare, non cantare, ac ridiculosa quadam vocis interceptione quasi minitari silentium; nunc agones morientium, vel extasim patientium imitari. Interim histrionicis quibusdam gestibus totum corpus agitatur, torquentur labia, rotant, ludunt humeri; et ad singulas quasque notas digitorum flexus respondet. Et haec ridiculosa dissolutio vocatur religio!.... Vulgus ... miratur ... sed lascivas cantantium gesticulationes, meretricias vocum alternationes et infractiones, non sine cachinno risuque intuetur, ut eos non ad oratorium sed ad theatrum, nec ad orandum sed ad spectandum aestimes convenisse." "Speculum Chantatis," Book ii. chap. 23, in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. cxcv. col. 571.

[754] Latin text in "The Exempla ... of Jacques de Vitry," thirteenth century, ed. T. F. Crane, London, 1890, 8vo, p. 105 (No. ccl.), and in Th. Wright, "A Selection of Latin Stories," 1842, Percy Society, p. 16: "De Dolo et Arte Vetularum." French text in Barbazan and Meon, "Fabliaux," vol. ii., included into the "Castoiement d'un pere a son fils," thirteenth century. English text in Th. Wright, "Anecdota Literaria," London, 1844, 8vo, p. 1; the title is in French: "Ci commence le fables et le cointise de dame Siriz."

[755] Text in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," London, 1841, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 145. "Hic incipit interludiam de Clerico and Puella."

[756] "Here bigynnis a tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge," end of fourteenth century, in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," vol. ii. p. 46. Elsewhere in the same treatise, "to pley in rebaudye" is opposed to "pley in myriclis," p. 49.

[757] "Ludi theatrales, etiam praetextu consuetudinis in ecclesiis vel per clericos fieri non debent." Decretal of Innocent III., year 1207, included by Gregory IX. in his "Compilatio." Richter and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici," Leipzig, 1879, vol. ii. p. 453.

[758] "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo, A.D. 1240," in Labbe's "Sacrorum Conciliorum ... Collectio," vol. xxiii. col. 526.

[759] Wilkins, "Concilia Magnae Britanniae," London, 1737, 4 vols. fol., vol. i. p. 617, Nos. lxxiv., lxxv. The same prohibition is made by Walter de Chanteloup, ut supra, art. lv. The custom was a very old one, and existed already in Anglo-Saxon times; see "AElfric's Lives of Saints," 1881, E.E.T.S., p. 461.

[760] "... Ne quis choreas cum larvis seu strepitu aliquo in ecclesiis vel plateis ducat, vel sertatus, vel coronatus corona ex folus arborum, vel florum vel aliunde composita, alicubi incedat ... prohibemus," thirteenth century, "Munimenta Academica," ed. Anstey, Rolls, 1868, p. 18.

[761] Decretal of Innocent III., reissued by Gregory IX. "In aliquibus anni festivitalibus, quae continue natalem Christi sequuntur, diaconi, presbyteri ac subdiaconi vicissim insaniae suae ludibria exercere praesumunt, per gesticulationum suarum debacchationes obscoenas in conspectu populi decus faciunt clericale vilescere, quem potius illo tempore verbi Dei deberent praedicatione mulcere." Richter and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici," vol. ii. p. 453.

[762] Thirteenth century. See Gaston Paris, "Romania," vol. xxi. p. 262. Songs of a much worse character were also sung at Christmas. To deter his readers from listening to any such Gascoigne writes (first half of the fifteenth century): "Cavete et fugite in hoc sacro festo viciosa et turpia, et praecipue cantus inhonestos et turpes qui libidinem excitant et provocant ... et ymagines imprimunt in mente quas expellere difficillimum est. Novi ego, scilicet Gascoigne, doctor sacrae paginae qui haec scripsi, unum magnum et notabilem virum talem cantum turpem in festo Natalis audivisse." He could never forget the shameful things he had heard, and fell on that account into melancholy, by which he was driven to death. "Loci e libro veritatum ... passages selected from Gascoigne's Theological Dictionary," ed. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, 4to. On the Christmas festivities at the University and on the "Rex Natalicius" (sixteenth century and before), see C. R. L. Fletcher, "Collectanea," Oxford, 1885, 8vo, p. 39.

[763] "Cum domus Dei, testaute propheta Filioque Dei, domus sit orationis, nefandum est eam in domum jocationis, scurrilitatis et nugacilatis convertere, locumque Deo dicatum diabolicis adinventionibus execrare; cumque circumcisio Domini nostri Jesu Christi prima fuerit nec modicum acerba ejusdem passio, signum quoque sit circumcisionis spiritualis qua cordium praeputia tolluntur ... execrabile est circumcisionis Domini venerandam solemnitatem libidinosarum voluptatum sordibus prophanare: quapropter vobis mandamus in virtute obedientiae firmiter injungentes, quatenus Festum Stultorum cum sit vanitate plenum et voluptatibus spurcum, Deo odibile et daemonibus amabile, ne de caetero in ecclesia Lincolniensi, die venciandae solemnitatis circumcisionis Domini permittatis fieri." "Epistolae," ed. Luard, Rolls, 1861, p. 118, year 1236(?). Same defence for the whole diocese, p. 161.

[764] "Wardrobe Accounts," in "Archaeologia," vol. xxvi. p. 342; "Issue Roll of Thomas de Brantingham," ed. Devon, 1835, p. xlvi; "Issues of the Exchequer," ed. Devon, p. 222, 6 Rich. II.

[765] "Inhibemus ne de cetero in festis Innocentium et Beate Marie Magdalene ludibria exerceatis consueta, induendo vos scilicet vestis secularium aut inter vos, sed cum secularibus, choreas ducendo, nec extra refectorium comedatis," &c. Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, to the nuns of Villarciaux, thirteenth century. "Registrum Visitationum" ed. Bonnin, 1842, 4to, p. 44.

[766] "Historia Major," Rolls, vol. iii. p. 336.

[767] Matthew Paris, ibid.

[768] Described by Richard of Maidstone (d. 1396) in a Latin poem: "Richardi Maydiston de Concordia inter Regem Ricardum II. et civitatem London," in the "Political Poems and Songs" of Wright, Rolls, vol. i. p. 282.

[769] Entry of Isabeau of Bavaria into Paris, in 1384.

[770] On the popularity of Robin Hood in the fourteenth century, see above, p. 224. In the fifteenth century he was the hero of plays performed during the May festivities: "Reced for the gathering of the May-play called Robin Hood, on the fair day, 19s." Accounts of the church of St. Lawrence at Reading, year 1499, in the Academy, October 6, 1883, p. 231.

[771] "Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores? Respondent: Salvatorem Christum Dominum." Petit de Julleville, "Histoire du Theatre en France.—Les Mysteres," 1880, vol. i. p. 25.

[772] Petit de Julleville, ibid., vol. i. p. 26.

[773] Same beginning and same gradual development: "Quem queritis in sepulchro o Christicole?—Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum o celicole.—Non est hic, surrexit sicut predixerat; ite nunciate quia surrexit. Alleluia." In use at Limoges, eleventh century. "Die lateinischen Osterfeiern, untersuchungen ueber den Ursprung und die Entwicklung der liturgisch-dramatischen Auferstehungsfeier," by Carl Lange, Munich, 1887, 8vo, p. 22.

[774] "Ci comence l'estoire de Griselidis;" MS. fi. 2203, in the National Library, Paris, dated 1395, outline drawings (privately printed, Paris, 1832, 4to).—"Le Mistere du siege d'Orleans," ed. Guessard and Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to (Documents inedits).

[775] This story was very popular during the Middle Ages, in France and in England. It was, e.g., the subject of a poem in English verse, thirteenth century: "The Life of St. Katherine," ed. Einenkel, Early English Text Society, 1884, 8vo.

[776] "Vitae ... viginti trium abbatum Sancti Albani," in "Matthaei Paris monachi Albanensis [Opera]," London, 1639-40, 2 vols. fol., vol. ii. p. 56 "Gaufridus decimus sextus [abbas]."

[777] Ibid., p. 64.

[778] He writes, twelfth century: "Londonia pro spectaculis theatralibus, pro ludis scenicis, ludos habet sanctiores, representationes miraculorum...." "Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis Londoniae," printed with Stow's "Survey of London," 1599, 4to

[779] This can be inferred from the existence of that "estrif" the "Harrowing of Hell," written in the style of mysteries, which has come down to us, and belongs to that period. See above, p. 443. Religious dramas were written in Latin by subjects of the kings of England, and, among others, by Hilary, a disciple of Abelard, twelfth century, who seems to have been an Anglo-Norman; "Hilarii versus et Ludi," ed. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1838. A few lines in French are mixed with his Latin.

[780] "Here bigynnis a tretise of miraclis pleyinge," in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," London, 1842, vol. ii. p. 42; end of fourteenth century.

[781] "Item quod tabernas, spectacula aut alia loca inhonesta, seu ludos noxios at illicitos non frequentent, sed more sacerdotali se habeant et in gestu, ne ipsorum ministerium, quod absit, vituperio, scandalo vel despectui habeatur." Labbe, vol. xxvi. col. 767. The inhibition is meant for priests of all sorts: "presbyteri stipendarii aut alii sacerdotes, propriis sumptibus seu alias sustentati." Innocent III. and Gregory IX. had vainly denounced the same abuses, and tried to stop them: "Clerici officia vel commercia saecularia non exerceant, maxime inhonesta. Mimis, joculatoribus et histrionibus non intendant. Et tabernas prorsus evitent, nisi forte causa necessitatis in itinere constituti." Richter and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici," ii. p. 454.

[782] "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne (written A.D. 1303), with the French treatise on which it is founded, 'Le Manuel des Pechiez,' by William de Wadington," ed. Furnivall, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, pp. 146 ff.

[783]

Un autre folie apert Unt les fols clercs controve, Qe "miracles" sunt apele; Lur faces unt la deguise Par visers, li forsene.

[784]

Fere poent representement, Mes qe ceo seit chastement En office de seint eglise Quant hom fet la Deu servise, Cum Jesu Crist le fiz Dee En sepulcre esteit pose, Et la resurrectiun Pur plus aver devociun.

[785]

Ki en lur jus se delitera, Chivals on harneis les aprestera. Vesture ou autre ournement, Sachez il fet folement. Si vestemens seient dediez, Plus grant d'assez est le pechez; Si prestre ou clerc les ust preste Bien dust estre chaustie.

[786] Toulmin Smith, "English Gilds," London, 1870, E.E.T.S., p. 139.

[787] The principal monuments of the English religious stage are the following: "Chester Plays," ed. Th. Wright, Shakespeare Society, 1843-7, 2 vols., 8vo (seem to have been adapted from the French, perhaps from an Anglo-Norman original, not recovered yet).

"The Pageant of the Company of Sheremen and Taylors in Coventry ... together with other Pageants," ed. Th. Sharp, Coventry, 1817, 4to. By the same: "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry ... to which are added the Pageant of the Shearmen and Taylors Company," Coventry, 1825, 4to (illustrated).

"Ludus Coventriae," ed. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1841, 8vo (the referring of this collection to the town of Coventry is probably wrong).

"Towneley Mysteries" (a collection of plays performed at Woodkirk, formerly Widkirk, near Wakefield; see Skeat's note in Athenaeum, Dec. 3; 1893) ed. Raine, Surtees Society, Newcastle, 1836, 8vo.

"York Plays, the plays performed by the crafts or mysteries of York on the day of Corpus Christi, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries," ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, Oxford, 1885, 8vo.

"The Digby Mysteries," ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere Society, 1882, 8vo.

"Play of Abraham and Isaac" (fourteenth century), in the "Boke of Brome, a commonplace book of the xvth century," ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith. 1886, 8vo.—"Play of the Sacrament" (story of a miracle, a play of a type scarce in England), ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society Transactions, Berlin, 1860-61, 8vo, p. 101.—"A Mystery of the Burial of Christ"; "A Mystery of the Resurrection": "This is a play to be played on part on gudfriday afternone, and the other part opon Esterday afternone," in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiae Antiquae," 1841-3, vol. ii. pp. 124 ff., from a MS. of the beginning of the sixteenth century.—See also "The ancient Cornish Drama," three mysteries in Cornish, fifteenth century, ed. Norris, Oxford, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo (with a translation).—For extracts, see A. W. Pollard, "English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes," Oxford, 1890, 8vo.

On the question of the formation of the various cycles of English mysteries and the way in which they are connected, see A. Hohlfield, "Die altenglischen kollektivmisterien," in "Anglia," xi. p. 219, and Ch. Davidson, "Studies in the English Mystery Plays, a thesis," Yale University, 1892, 8vo.

[788] "York Plays," pp. xxxiv, xxxvii.

[789] This preliminary note is in Latin: "Sit ipse Adam bene instructus quando respondere debeat, ne ad respondendum nimis sit velox aut nimis tardus, nec solum ipse, sed omnes persone sint. Instruantur ut composite loquentur; et gestum faciant convenientem rei de qua loquuntur, et, in rithmis nec sillabam addant nec demant, sed omnes firmiter pronuncient." "Adam, Mystere du XIIe. Siecle," ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877, 8vo.

[790] "Digby Mysteries," p. xix.

[791] "The Pageants ... of Coventry," ed. Sharp.

[792] [So called] "Coventry Mysteries," Trial of Christ.

[793] The French drama written on this subject is lost (it is, however, mentioned in the catalogue of a bookseller of the fifteenth century; see "Les Mysteres," by Petit de Julleville, vol. ii. chap, xxiii., "Mysteres perdus"); but the precision of details in the miniature is such that I had no difficulty in identifying the particular version of the story followed by the dramatist. It is an apocryphal life of Apollinia, in which is explained how she is the saint to be applied to when suffering toothache. This episode is the one Fouquet has represented. Asked to renounce Christ, she answers: "'Quamdiu vivero in hac fragili vita, lingua mea et os meum non cessabunt pronuntiare laudem et honorem omnipotentis Dei.' Quo audito jussit [imperator] durissimos stipites parari et in igne duros fieri et praeacutos ut sic dentes ejus et per tales stipites laederent, radices dentium cum forcipe everentur radicitus. In illa hora oravit S. Apollinia dicens: 'Domine Jesu Christe, precor te ut quicumque diem passionis meae devote peregerint ... dolorem dentium aut capitis nunquam sentiant passiones.'" The angels thereupon (seated on wooden stairs, in Fouquet's miniature) come down and tell her that her prayer has been granted. "Acta ut videntur apocrypha S. Apolloniae," in Bollandus, "Acta Sanctorum," Antwerp, vol. ii. p. 280, under the 9th February.

See also the miniatures of a later date (sixteenth century) in the MS. of the Valenciennes Passion, MS. fi. 15,236 in the National Library, and the model made after one of them, exhibited in the Opera Museum, Paris.

[794] What the place is—

... Vous le povez congnoistre Par l'escritel que dessus voyez estre.

Prologue of a play of the Nativity, performed at Rouen, 1474; Petit de Julleville, "Les Mysteres," vol. i. p. 397.

[795] "Digby Mysteries," ed. Furnivall, p. 127.

[796] "Mystere du vieil Testament," Paris, 1542, with curious cuts, "pour plus facile intelligence." Many other editions; one modern one by Baron J. de Rothschild, Societe des Anciens Textes Francais, 1878 ff.

[797] "Chester Plays," ii.

[798] "Adoncques doit Adam couvrir son humanite, faignant avoir honte. Icy se doit semblablement vergongner la femme et se musser de sa main." "Mystere du vieil Testament."

[799] Reproduced by Mr. R. T. Blomfield, in the Portfolio, May, June, July, 1889.

[800]

Diabolus. Jo vis Adam, mais trop est fols.

Eva. Un poi est durs.

Diabolus. Il serra mols; Il est plus durs que n'est un fers ... Tu es fieblette et tendre chose, Et es plus fresche que n'est rose; Tu es plus blanche que cristal, Que nief qui chiet sor glace en val. Mal cuple en fist le criatur; Tu es trop tendre et il trop dur ... Por co fait bon se treire a tei; Parler te voil.

[801]

All my smale instrumentes is putt in my pakke.

("Digby Mysteries," p. 11.)

[802] "Towneley Mysteries."

[803] Ibid.—Magnus Herodes.

[804] "Towneley Mysteries."—Processus Talentorum.

[805] "Digby Mysteries."—Candlemas Day, p. 3.

[806] "Digby Mysteries."—Mary Magdalen, p. 55.

[807] Ibid., p. 90.

[808] "Chester Plays."—Salutation and Nativity.

[809] "Digby Mysteries," p. 56.

[810] "Digby Mysteries," pp. 74, 75. After living wickedly Mary Magdalen repents, comes to Marseilles, converts the local king and performs miracles. This legend was extremely popular; it was told several times in French verse during the thirteenth century; see A. Schmidt, "Guillaume, le Clerc de Normandie, insbesondere seine Magdalenenlegende," in "Romanische Studien" vol. iv. p. 493; Doncieux, "Fragment d'un Miracle de Sainte Madeleine, texte restitue," in "Romania," 1893, p. 265. There was also a drama in French based on the same story: "La Vie de Marie Magdaleine ... Est a xxii. personages," Lyon, 1605, 12mo (belongs to the fifteenth century).

[811] "York Plays," viii., ix. See also, e.g., as specimens of comical scenes, the discussions between the quack and his man in the "Play of the Sacrament": "Ye play of ye conversyon of ser Jonathas ye Jewe by myracle of ye blyssed sacrament." Master Brundyche addresses the audience as if he were in front of his booth at a fair. He will cure the diseases of all present. Be sure of that, his man Colle observes,

What dysease or syknesse yt ever ye have, He wyll never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave.

Ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society, Berlin, 1860-61, p. 127 (fifteenth century).

[812] "Chester Plays."—Salutation and Nativity.

[813] "Towneley Mysteries."—Secunda Pastorum.

[814] See, for instance, "Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages," ed. G. Paris and U. Robert, Societe des Anciens Textes, 1876-91, 6 vols. 8vo.

[815] In Meon's edition, Paris, 1813, vol. ii. pp. 326 ff.

[816] Plays of this kind were written (without speaking of many anonyms) by Medwall: "A goodly Enterlude of Nature," 1538, fol.; by Skelton, "Magnyfycence," 1531, fol.; by Ingelend, "A pretie Enterlude called the Disobedient Child," printed about 1550: by John Bale, "A comedye concernynge thie Lawes," London, 1538, 8vo (against the Catholics); all of them lived under Henry VIII., &c. The two earliest English moralities extant are "The Pride of Life" (in the "Account Roll of the priory of the Holy Trinity," Dublin, ed. J. Mills, Dublin, 1891, 8vo), and the "Castle of Perseverance" (an edition is being prepared, 1894, by Mr. Pollard for the Early English Text Society), both of the fifteenth century; a rough sketch showing the arrangement of the representation of the "Castle" has been published by Sharp, "A Dissertation on the Pageants at Coventry," plate 2.

[817] "Interlude of the four Elements," London, 1510(?), 8vo.

[818] See, for example, the mournful passages in the "Disobedient Child," the "Triall of Treasure," London, 1567, 4to, and especially in "Everyman," ed. Goedeke, Hanover, 1865, 8vo, written at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII.

[819] Song of the Clown in "Twelfth Night," iv. 3.

[820] "Pantagruel," iii. 37.

[821] Furnivall, "Digby Mysteries," p. xxvii.

[822] "York Plays," p. xvi.

[823] Petit de Julleville, "Les Mysteres," 1880, vol. i. pp. 423 ff.

[824] They continued later in some towns, at Newcastle, for example, where they survived till 1598. At this date "Romeo" and the "Merchant of Venice" had already appeared. There were even some performances at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

[825] A drawing of this fresco, now destroyed, has been published by Sharp: "Hell-mouth and interior, from the chapel at Stratford-upon-Avon"; "A Dissertation on the pageants ... at Coventry," 1825, plate 6.



CHAPTER VII.

THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

I.

In the autumn of the year 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of the Thames Street vintner, universally acknowledged the greatest poet of England, had been borne to his tomb in the transept of Westminster Abbey. Not far from him sleep the Plantagenet kings, his patrons, Edward III. and Richard II. wrapped in their golden robes. With them an epoch has drawn to its close; a new century begins, and this century is, for English thought, a century of decline, of repose, and of preparation.

So evident is the decline that even contemporaries perceive it; for a hundred years poets unceasingly mourn the death of Chaucer. They are no longer able to discover new ways; instead of looking forward as their master did, they turn, and stand with eyes fixed on him, and hands outstretched towards his tomb. An age seeking its ideal in the epoch that has just preceded it is an age of decline; so had been in past times the age of Statius, who had professed such a deep veneration for Virgil.

For a century thus the poets of England remain with their gaze fastened on the image of the singer they last heard, and at each generation their voice becomes weaker, like an echo that repeats another echo. Lydgate imitates Chaucer, and Stephen Hawes imitates Lydgate.[826]

Around and below them countless rhymers persist in following the old paths, not knowing that these paths have ceased to lead anywhere, and that the time has come to search for new ones. The most skilful add to the series of English fabliaux, borrowed from France; others put into rhyme, disfiguring them as they go along, romances of chivalry, lives of the saints, or chronicles of England and Scotland. Very numerous, nearly all devoid of talent, these patient, indefatigable word-joiners write in reality, they too, as M. Jourdain, "de la prose sans le savoir."[827]

These poets of the decline write for a society itself on the decline, and all move along, lulled by the same melody to a common death, out of which will come a new life that they can never know. The old feudal and clerical aristocracy changes, disappears, and decays; many of the great houses become extinct in the wars with France, or in the fierce battles of the Two Roses; the people gain by what the aristocracy lose. The clergy who keep aloof from military conflicts are also torn by internecine quarrels; they live in luxury; abuses publicly pointed out are not reformed; they are an object of envy to the prince and of scorn to the lower classes; they find themselves in the most dangerous situation, and do nothing to escape from it. Of warnings they have no lack; they receive no new endowments; they slumber; at the close of the century nothing will remain to them but an immense and frail dwelling, built on the sand, that a storm can blow over.