Towneley Plays | Alfred W. Pollard (essay date 1897)
Alfred W. Pollard (essay date 1897)
SOURCE: An introduction to The Towneley Plays, edited by George England, 1897. Reprint by Oxford University Press, 1925, pp. ix-xxxi.
[In the following excerpt from his introduction to George England's highly respected edition of The Towneley Plays, Pollard discusses the relative merits of several of the plays and singles out The Second Shepherd's Play as "perfect as a work of art."]
Long before the publication of the York Plays, the composite character of the Towneley was recognized by its first editor, though the reasons he assigned were less happy than his surmise itself [In a footnote, the critic adds: "He says that there are no Yorkshireisms in the Pharao, which we now know to be mainly borrowed from the York cycle, and remarks Cœsar Augustus is plainly by the same hand as Pharao. The heroes in both swear by "Mahowne"—a habit shared by most potentates in...
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