A note to the University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature
[In the following excerpt, Craig surveys nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholarship on the N-Town plays and suggests Lincoln as the home of the cycle.]
It has never been known where the cycle of mystery plays published by the Shakespeare Society in 1841 as "Ludus Coventriae: a Collection of Mysteries formerly represented at Coventry on the Feast of Corpus Christi," were acted, although it has long been known that they are not the Coventry plays. The editor of the cycle, J. O. Halliwell(-Phillips), follows a tradition to the effect that this cycle was formerly acted by the Grey Friars of Coventry. The first connection of the manuscript with Coventry is an entry on folio l*r, said by Halliwell to be in the handwriting of Dr. Richard James, librarian to Sir Robert Cotton to the following effect: "Contenta Novi Testamenti scenice expressa et actitata olim per monachos sive fratres mendicantes; vulgo dicitur hic liber Ludus Coventriae, sive Ludus Corporis Christi; scribitur metris Anglicanis." The manuscript had formerly belonged to Robert Hegge of Durham, a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford; he has written his name on it in several places. At his death in 1630 the manuscript passed into the hands of Sir Robert Cotton. Halliwell states on the basis of a letter in the Cottonian collection that James was about that time engaged at Oxford in collecting manuscripts for Sir Robert Cotton. The only other descriptive entry on the manuscript is at the top of folio 1r: "The plaie called Corpus Christi." This is in a seventeenth-century hand, I should think, but not the hand of Robert Hegge, as stated by Mr. S. B. Hemingway [in English Nativity Plays], or that of James in the preceding entry. Sharp attributes the former entry to Dr. Smith, a later Cottonian librarian, who enters it in a catalogue of the Cottonian MSS. in 1696, as "A collection of plays, in old English meter: h. e. Dramata sacra, in quibus exhibentur historiae veteris et N. Testamenti, introductis quasi in scenam personis illic memoratis, quas secum invicem colloquentes pro ingenio finget Poeta. Videntur olim coram populo, sive ad instruendum sive ad placendum, a Fratribus mendicantibus representata." It should be noted with regard to the former entry that James does not say that the cycle is "Ludus Coventriae," but merely that "vulgo dicitur Ludus Coventriae." It is obvious that James had not read the plays, since he speaks of "Contenta novi testamenti," whereas there are Old as well as New Testament subjects treated. It may or may not be significant that Dr. Smith says nothing about Coventry.
The connection of this cycle with Coventry was perpetuated by the following passage from Dugdale's History of Warwickshire, edition of 1656, page 116: "Before the suppression of the monasteries, this city [Coventry] was very famous for the pageants that were played therein, upon Corpus-Christi day; which occasioning very great confluence of people thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the friars of this house [the Gray Friars of Coventry], had theaters for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent parts of the city, for the better advantage of spectators: and contained the story of the New-Testament, composed into old English Rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. (in bibl. Cotton. sub effigie Vesp. D. 9 [8]) intituled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludus Coventriae. I have been told by some old people, who in their younger years were eye-witnesses of these pageants so acted, that the yearly conflunce of people to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yielded no small advantage to this city."
Thomas Sharp, writing in 1825, perceived that Ludus Coventriae "were no part of the Plays or Pageants exhibited by the Trading Companies of the City," but he did not reject Dugdale's tradition as to plays by the Grey Friars, and this he thought might be the cycle they had acted. In this opinion he is followed by Halliwell. Sharp cites an entry in the Coventry Annals, "solitary mention in one MS. (not older than the beginning of Chas. I.'s reign) of Henry VIIth's visit to the City in 1492, 'to see Plays acted by the Grey Friars.'" In this I think we may find the source of Dugdale's error. Dugdale was born in 1605, and the Coventry Corpus Christi plays were discontinued in 1580. He pretends to give only a somewhat general tradition as to the plays and the crowds that they attracted. This vague tradition is rendered definite for him by two things; the first is the note on the MS. by James. James died in 1638, and Dugdale, according to Sharp, page 6, was introduced to Sir Thomas Cotton and the Cottonian MSS. that year. Sir William Dugdale was working on his History of Warwickshire as early as 1642, and, according to the Dictionary of National Biography, was using Sir Thomas Cotton's library in 1652, and no doubt used it a great deal during the years he was at work on the book. The second document that misled him was the MSS. Annals. There are at least four of these books of annals still to be found in manuscript. Two, A. 26 and A. 43, are among the Corporation manuscripts at Coventry; neither is of very great age, and both contain pretty much the same materials: lists of mayors, notable or miraculous events, and a number of mentions of plays. There are also two at the British Museum, Harl. 6388 and 11346 Plut. CXLII. A.; the latter is of no great value as regards pageants. Harl. 6388 was written by Humphrey Wanley, and is dated Dec. 17, 1690. Wanley says: "This book was taken out of manuscripts, the one written by Mr. Cristofer Owen Mayor of this citty which contains the charter of Walter de Coventre concerning the commons etc. to Godfrey Leg Mayor 1637, the other beginning at the 36 mayor of this citty and continued by several hands and lately by Edmund Palmer late of this city…, and another written by Mr. Bedford and collected out of divers others and continued to Mr. Septimius Bott. And two other collected by Tho. Potter and continued to Mr. Robert Blake, and another written by Mr. Francis Barnett, to the first year of Mr. Jelliffs Majoralty, and another written by Mr. Abraham Astley, and continued to Mr. Sept. Bott, and another written by Mr. Abraham Boune to Humfrey Wrightwick, 1607." In Dugdale's Warwickshire there is also a list of mayors of Coventry with annals. Sharp quotes MS. Annals and Codex Hales, and there was at least one copy of Coventry annals in the Birmingham Free Reference Library at the time of the fire in 1879, so that Sharp may represent an original.
The entry with which we have to do is given as follows: "Corp. MSS. A. 26 and A. 43: Thomas Churchman, bucklemaker, Mayor, 1492. This year the King and Queen came to Kenilworth; from thence they came to Coventry to see our plays at Corpus Christitide and gave them great commendation. Dugdale and 11346 Plut. CXLII. A: In his Mayoralty K. H. 7. came to see the playes acted by the Grey Friars and much commended them. Harl. 6388: The King and Queen came to see the playes at the greyfriers and much commended them." The entry as given in Dugdale gave rise to the impression in his mind, I think, as it certainly did in the mind of Thomas Sharp, that there were plays in Coventry acted by the brotherhood of the Grey Friars. James's note had suggested monks or mendicant friars; here was this entry in the Coventry annals which he prints. It is easy to see that we have to do with a misunderstanding. "Acted by the Grey Friars" need not mean that grey friars were the actors; but may mean "at the Gray-friars church." The grey-friars was a common way of indicating the church. Wanley so understands the entry, for he says in Harl. 6388, "to see the playes at the greyfriers." He worked from a large number of manuscripts, and there is no doubt but that the entry means simply that the King and Queen watched the Corpus Christi play as it was presented by the craft guilds in front of the Grey Friars church, where there would certainly have been a station; just as Queen Margaret had seen them at a station in Earl Street in 1456.
The only mention of a place of performance in the cycle itself is at the end of the general Prologue:
A Sunday next, yf that we may,
At vj. of the belle we ginne oure play,
In N. towne, wherfore we pray,
That God now be Youre Spede.
This was understood by somebody, Sharp does not say whom, to indicate a series of plays for exhibition at Corpus Christi festival generally, rather than expressly for Coventry, since N. (nomen) is the usual mode of distinguishing a person or place under such circumstances, "as N. stands in the marriage ceremony unto this day." Halliwell says, "If the opinion I have formed of their locality be correct, I can account for this by supposing that the prologues of the vexillators belong to another series of plays, or that these mysteries were occasionally performed at other places…. it must be confessed that the conclusion would suit a company of strolling players much better than the venerable order of the Grey Friars." The idea that Ludus Coventriae is the play-book of a strolling company has been very generally entertained since that time. Ten Brink [in English Literature] follows that idea and assigns their dialect to the North-East Midlands; so also Pollard [in English Miracle Plays]. Ten Brink's conclusion as to dialect is in part confirmed by a study of the dialect by M. Kramer, Sprache und Heimat des sogen. Ludus Coventriae, who, however, thinks that the plays are of southern origin but rewritten in the North-East Midlands. Chambers does not consider the strolling company hypothesis as proved. He perceives that they are stationary plays in their present form, but does not take the trouble to ascertain that the manuscript is divided into separate plays, although the numbers are large and in red. Another mistake he makes is that, although he sees that the Prologue must have been written for the plays, he thinks that it is later in date than they are. It represents, as Miss Swenson's dissertation [An Inquiry into the Composition and Structure of Ludus Coventriae] clearly shows, an earlier, purely cyclic stage of the same plays. Still Chambers does not rule out the idea that we have to do in the Hegge cycle with a series of craft-plays. He suggests Norwich and says that the elaborate treatment of the legends of the Virgin suggests a performance, like that of the Lincoln plays, and of the Massacre of the Innocents in the Digby MS., on St. Anne's day (July 26).
I wish to make the last suggestion much more definitely, having arrived at considerable certainty with regard to it from other points of view. There are, I think, good reasons for fixing upon Lincoln as the home of these plays. The somewhat scanty records of the Lincoln plays seem to point to a Corpus Christi play which was transferred to St. Anne's day, and acted regularly as a St. Anne's play until near the middle of the sixteenth century. It was apparently an ordinary cyclic play with certain features appropriate to St. Anne's day. The so-called Coventry cycle, or to use the name of a former owner of the manuscript, the Hegge cycle, is unique in the possession of a group of plays dealing with the nativity and childhood of the Virgin Mary, a subject of unmistakable connection with St. Anne's day. The Corporation records show that each Lincoln alderman was required to furnish a silk gown for one of the "kings" in the procession of St. Anne. This has been supposed to refer to the Three Kings of Cologne in the Magi play; but there were only three of the magi, and there must have been more than three aldermen. The Hegge prophet play calls for no less than thirteen kings, and is, moreover, unique among prophet plays. The prophets foretell the birth of Mary and not of Jesus. The play might be described as a dramatic form of the mediaeval theme of the "Root of Jesse." They had, as we shall see presently, some special kind of prophet play known particularly as visus, or "sights," though the name was applied to the whole St. Anne's play too, and this Jesse, it is so called in the manuscript, with the accompanying Virgin plays would be most appropriate.
The available information about the Lincoln plays is contained in the 14th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, and in an article entitled Some English Plays and Players by Mr. A. F. Leach in the Furnivall Miscellany. Canon Wordsworth has also published a few bits of information in his Lincoln Statutes and his Notes on Mediaeval Services in England. One can not be sure whether or not the principal manuscripts have been read carefully for the purpose of getting all possible information about the plays, or whether a study of completer forms of the references already found might not yield a good deal more information than they do in their imperfect versions. The Chapter Act Books and the Chapter Computi seem particularly promising. The Historical MSS. Report on the Manuscripts of the Dean and the Chapter of Lincoln gives no information, and that which we have comes from Mr. Leach's article.
We know of unusual dramatic activities on the part of vicars of the choir and clerks of the Cathedral in the thirteenth century from the hostile writings of Bishop Grosseteste [in his Letters]. He denounces ludos and miracula together with the Feast of Fools. In 1390 the vicars and clerks are still liable to censure because they dressed like laymen, laughed, shouted, and acted plays, which they commonly and fitly called the Feast of Fools. There was apparently much dramatic activity in the minster. Chapter Computi for 1406, 1452, 1531, have entries of payments, "In serothecis emptis pro Maria et Angelo et Prophetis ex consuetudine in Aurora Natalis Dñi hoc anno." There is one very puzzling entry given by Canon Wordsworth in these terms: "In 1420 tithes to the amount of 8s 8d were assigned to Thomas Cham berleyn for getting up a spectacle or pageant ('cujusdam excellentis visus') called Rubum quern viderai at Christmas." This is possibly to be connected with the prophet play mentioned above, since Moses was in most versions of the processus the first prophet—hence the allusion to the burning bush—and with him possibly the play of the Tables of the Law.
Further references point to an identification of the Corpus Christi play with the play acted on St. Anne's day. Leach gives entries from a list of mayors and bailiffs of the reign of Henry VIII with annals of the city. Amongst the entries are references to plays, two being to the Corpus Christi play, namely, in 12 of Edw. IV, 1471–2, and 14 of Edw. IV, 1473–4. One of the Chapter Act books, according to Leach, has a reference in 1469 to the Show or Play of St. Anne. And if we trace this St. Anne's play by means of the Corporation Minute Book covering the early fifteenth century, we find that it was probably the Corpus Christi play under a new name. There were no doubt extensive changes in the play to make it more appropriate to St. Anne's day; but it is evidently, to all intents and purposes, a Corpus Christi play transferred to another date, a thing familiar in the Chester and Norwich Whitsun plays. The following entries will indicate the circumstances of the St. Anne's play so far as they can be determined from the materials at hand:
1515, 27 July. It is agreed that whereas divers garments and other "heriorments" are yearly borrowed in the country for the arraying of the pageants of St. Anne's guild, but now the knights and gentlemen are afraid with the plague so that the "graceman" (chief officer of the Guild of St. Anne) cannot borrow such garments, every alderman shall prepare and set forth in the said array two good gowns, and every sheriff and every chamberlain a gown, and the persons with them shall wear the same. And the constables are ordered to wait upon the array in procession, both to keep the people from the array, and also to take heed of such as wear garments in the same.
1517, 10 June, 22 Sept. Sir Robert Denyas appointed St. Anne's priest…having yearly 5l., he promising yearly to help to the bringing forth and preparing of the pageants in St. Anne's guild.
1518, 16 June. Ordered that every alderman shall send forth a servant with a torch to be lighted in the procession with a rochet (1521, "an onest gowne") upon him about the Sacrament, under pain of forfeiture of 6s. 8d., and also under like penalty, send forth one person with a good gown upon his back to go in the procession. That every constable shall wait on the procession on St. Anne's day by 7 of the clock…. In 1525 the alderman are each to provide a gown of silk for the kings…. It is ordered that every occupation shall prepare and apparel in all preparation except plate and cups ("copes"). List of defaulters in 1526. In 1527 the parishioners of St. John Evang. in Wykford refuse to lend "honroments."
1519, 18 June. Agreed that every man and woman in the city, being able, shall be brother and sister in St. Anne's guild, and pay yearly 4d., man and wife, at the least.
Every occupation belonging to St. Anne's guild to bring forth their pageants sufficiently, upon pain of forfeting 10l.
1521, 16 July. George Browne, alderman, elected in the place of the graceman of St. Anne's gild, complains that as the plague is reigning in the city he can not get such garments and "honourments" as should be in the pageants of the procession; wherefore it is agreed to borrow a gown of my lady "Powes" for one of the Maries, and the other Mary to be arrayed in the crimson gown of velvet that belongeth to the gild; and the prior of St. Katharine's to be spoken with to have such "honourments" as we have had aforetime.
30 Oct. The foundation of a priest to sing in the church of St. Michael upon the hill…with a proviso that the said chaplain shall yearly be ready to help to the preparing and bringing forth of the procession of St. Anne's day, and after Mr. Dighton's decease to be called for ever St. Anne's priest.
31 Dec. (?) Every alderman to make a gown for the kings in the pageant on St. Anne's day, and the Pater Noster play to be played this year.
1539, 18 July. Agreed that St. Anne's gild shall go up on the Sunday next after St. Anne's day in manner and form as it hath been had in time past.
12 Nov. The stuff belonging to St. Anne's gild to be laid in the chapel of the bridge, and the house in which it lieth to be let.
1540, 2 June. Agreed that St. Anne's gild shall go forward as it hath done in times past; that every alderman shall have a gown and a torch, and every sheriff to find a gown, and every occupation to bring forth their pageants according to the old custom, and every occupation that hath their pageants broken to make them ready against that day, on pain of forfeiting 20s.
1542, 10 June. St. Anne's gild to be brought forth the Sunday after St. James' day (St. Anne's day in 1539 and 1547).
On Nov. 14, 1545, the Great Gild made over its lands, tenements, and hereditaments for the relief of the city and its plate on the 5th of February, 1546. On Nov. 5, 1547, jewels, plate, and ornaments belonging to St. Anne's Gild are ordered sold for the use of the common chamber; but that year, 13 June, the procession and sight upon the Sunday next after St. Anne's day shall be brought forth as hath been in times past, and every occupation shall pay to the same as hath been accustomed.
1554, 6 July. Agreed at a Secret Council that St. Anne's gild with Corpus Christi play shall be brought forth and played this year, and that every craft shall bring forth their pageants as hath been accustomed, and all occupations to be contributories as shall be assessed.
1555, 3 June. St. Anne's gild to be brought forth as hath been heretofore accustomed.
To these entries add the following one summarized by Leach, page 224, "Again, on Nov. 12, 31 Henry VII, it was agreed by the Common Council that a large door should be made at the late schoolhouse that the pageants may be sent in, and rent was to be charged for warehousing of 4d. for each pageant, 'and Noy schippe 12d.'"
There were, therefore, a Corpus Christi play and a procession on St. Anne's day, directed by the mayor and the graceman; the guild priest helped in the preparation of the pageants; the host was carried in the procession; the content, so far as it can be determined, is normal; Noah, a play containing kings, an Ascension and an Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin. In 1555 the order is for "St. Anne's guild and Corpus Christi play." It is altogether probable that the entries in the annals for 1471–2, 1473–4, refer to the same play. The Hegge cycle has the striking quality of possessing elaborate St. Anne's day characteristics and of having been at the same time, it is stated in the Prologue, a Corpus Christi play. Both these plays and the Lincoln plays were apparently regularly acted on Sunday.
The Lincoln plays seem to have been processional, and yet to have been acted, at least in part, upon a fixed stage. We have, on the one hand, the records of the procession, and, on the other, a record which proves that the Assumption of the Virgin was acted in the nave of the cathedral. We possess, moreover, a list of stage properties which may reasonably be believed to have been employed in the Corpus Christi play, and were certainly the properties of a stationary stage. Leach, page 223, gives an entry in this form: "For example, in 1469, one of the Chapter Act Books (A. 2. 36, fol. 32) has a reference to the Show or Play of St. Anne. The Chapter provided for the expenses of J. Hanson, chaplain, about the show (visum) of the Assumption of the Virgin on St. Anne's day last past, given in the nave of the church, with a reward to him out of the money coming from the next opening of the high altar, i. e., of the collection box there." And again to quote the same authority, this time following more closely a passage in one of the "act-books or minute-books of the Chapter A. 31, f. 18:" "On Saturday, the Chapter Day, June, 1483, in the high choir of the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Mary of Lincoln, after compline, Sir Dean with his brethren, the Precentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, and Alford standing according to custom before the west door of the choir, and discussing the procession of St. Anne to be made by the citizens of Lincoln on St. Anne's day next, determined that they would have the play or speech (sermonium) of the Assumption or Coronation of the Blessed Mary repaired and got ready, and played and shown in the procession aforesaid, as usual in the nave of the said church. The question being raised at whose expense this was to be done: they said at the expense of those who were willing to contribute and give anything to it, and the rest to be met by the common fund and the fabric fund in equal shares, and Sir Treasurer and T. Alford were made surveyors of the work."
This state of things is exactly reflected in the Hegge cycle. The Prologue of the cycle is divided into pageants and the word is freely used in the Prologue. "Pageant" frequently meant the vehicle on which plays were acted and was usually associated with that idea. This Prologue contemplates a regular processional play; but what do we find? We find that the mass of the plays were acted on a fixed stage; so far as we find indications at all. Those which are unmodified and agree with the Prologue may possibly at any time, however late, have been acted on pageants. In two plays pageants were actually employed, namely, in the Noah play, where Noah goes out and brings in the ark, and then when the play is over, withdraws with it; and in the Trial of Joseph and Mary where the play begins with the stage-direction: "Hic intrabit pagentum de purgatione Mariae et Joseph." Pageants may have been used in many other parts of the cycle for all you can tell from the manuscript. The cycle is, moreover, divided in the manuscript into separate plays, even when there is no break in the action. Now, why should this have been done? It seems to me that it was done to preserve the identity of these different plays, although they were no longer separate pageants; and that would have been necessary in order to preserve the responsibility of the different trading companies. This responsibility was preserved at Lincoln and thus fulfills the special conditions of the manuscript. The manuscript of the Hegge plays (Brit. Mus. Cotton MS. Vesp. D. viii.) shows the play of the Assumption of the Virgin written in a different hand from the rest of the manuscript, but evidently of about the same date as the other plays; it was incorporated in the manuscript at the time that it was made up. It is numbered and rubricated and even corrected in the hand of the scribe. It was evidently a separate play-book; another case of that is certainly the Passion play in two parts, the first pages of which look as if they had been exposed as outside covers. We evidently have to do with an "original" which has been made up of old and new parts. It is probably an official document analogous to the Corporation Register at York.
There is preserved at the back of a Lincoln Corporation minute-book the following entry of stage properties: 1564, July.—"A note of the perti…the properties of the staige…played in the moneth of July anno sexto regni, reginae Elizabethae, etc., in the tyme of the mayoralty of Richard Carter, whiche play was then played in Brodgaite in the seid citye, and it was of the storye of Tobias in the Old Testament. First, hell mouth with a neither chap; item, a prison with a coveryng; item, Sara ('s) chamber: lying at Mr. Norton's house in the tenure of William Smart. Item a greate idoll with a clubb; item, a tombe with a coverying; item, the citie of Jerusalem with towers and pynacles; item, the citie of Raiges with towers and pynacles; item, the citie of Nynyve; item, the King's palace of Nynyve; item, olde Tobyes house; item, the Isralytes house and the neighbures house; item, the Kyngs palace at Laches; remanyng in Saynt Swythunes churche. Item, a fyrmament with a fierye clowde and a duble clowde, in the custodye of Thomas Fulbeck, alderman." It has been suggested that some of these properties, if not all, are those of the defunct Corpus Christi play; but be that as it may, it is evident that a number of these properties could have been employed in presenting plays in the Hegge cycle. "Hell mouth with a neither chap," "Jerusalem with towers and pynacles," a "tombe with a coveryng," and a "fyrmament with a fierye clowde and a duble clowde," could have been used in presenting the play of the Assumption of the Virgin. In the case of the first three it is not a matter of much significance; but with regard to the last-mentioned strange piece of mechanism it is certainly most significant to find evidence of its use. Before the death of the Virgin Mary she desires to see the Apostles, who are abroad in distant lands; suddenly St. John appears and says:
In Pheso I was prechyng a fer contre ryth,
And by a whyte clowde I was rapt to these hyllys.
Later all the Apostles suddenly appear; only Peter and Paul speak; Peter says:
In dyveris contreys we prechid of youre sone and his blis,
In dyveris clowdys eche of us was suddenly curyng;
And in on were brouth before youre yate here i-wys
The cause why no man cowde telle of oure comyng.
One further slight point of some value is that the Hegge play of the Assumption of the Virgin makes use of a choir and an organ, as if it were acted in a church.
The suggestion that the plays belonged to Lincoln has been made before, and there are apparent agreements in the matter of dialect and content with what we should expect to find there. The hypothesis explains at a glance many of the perplexities and problems which have involved the cycle. In fact it would be so rare to find in any other place such a set of conditions as those of Lincoln that the identification must gain in credibility the more it is considered. Lincoln was a great ecclesiastical center, and at that place we have a close and intimate connection between the cathedral clergy and the town plays, a set of circumstances which exactly accounts for the remarkable homiletic and apochryphal interest of the Hegge cycle.
In her recent paper, entitled "The Problem of the Ludus Coventriae" [Modern Language Review 9] Miss M. H. Dodds has also reached the same general conclusion as Miss Swenson's study; namely, that the Prologue represents an earlier cycle which was the foundation of the present Ludus Coventriae; but disagrees widely with Miss Swenson's paper when she concludes that we have in Ludus Coventriae a composite made up of five cycles from five different places. Miss Swenson's conclusion is that we have to do with one cycle and the changes it has undergone in one place.
Arguing from the last stanza of the general Prologue, she makes two statements with regard to the original N. Town plays: (1) That the plays must have been accurately described by the Prologue; (2) that they must have been founded upon stories from the Bible. With the first of these propositions I agree perfectly, and, in general, I agree that the earlier plays were simple and scriptural in their nature; but I find many disagreements with her application of the principles stated.
In the first place, Miss Dodds' study of the relations between Prologue and plays has taken no account of meters, nor of minor differences in incident, and an insufficient account of stage-directions. This leads her to conclude that the play dealing with the girlhood of the Virgin and the Easter play have been incorporated as wholes and not simply combined with old plays on the same subjects, and she makes no attempt to discriminate between old and new elements in these plays. She says that the first seven plays, including the Prophets, belong to the original cycle, but she fails to note the emphasis upon the Virgin both in the Prologue and the play of the Prophets and consequently concludes that all the plays treating the subject of the girlhood of the Virgin (Barrenness of Anna to the Visit to Elizabeth), as well as the stanzas in the Prologue which correspond to them, have been incorporated about 1468 by some compiler who was eager to glorify the Virgin.
The theory that the Prologue has been left intact except in the case of the quatrains numbered fourteen and fifteen, as noted by Miss Swenson above, and that the Girlhood plays are made up of old and new elements can not, I think, be refuted simply by the statement in the Prologue that
Of holy wryth this game xal bene
And of no fablys be no way.
The people of England in 1468 did not draw a very sharp distinction between those stories which were definitely in the Bible and those generally accepted as "gospel truth" by the Church at large. Such stories as the Betrothal of Mary might be included and accepted as very truth and "no fablys." Miss Dodds also fails to notice the strange mixture of elements in the Easter cycle; although in this case she concludes somewhat inconsistently that the Prologue has been allowed to stand as it was. The play thus incorporated, or, as I think, the play thus rewritten, she would end with the Three Maries. It seemed to Miss Swenson more probable, from a study of meter, stage-directions, and minute differences in incident, and also because the prologue spoken by Contemplacio promises only a Passion play (not a Resurrection play) that the influence ends with the scene of the Burial.
There is, I think, no reason for considering the plays from the Adoration of the Shepherds to the Death of Herod as a separate cycle, as Miss Dodds does. They are not self-consistent in style or independent of the rest of the cycle in style or meter, but seem to be a normal Nativity group. The Purification is evidently from a different source altogether. It is not mentioned in the Prologue and is in a meter rarely used in the cycle; but otherwise the Nativity group has seemed to me to belong with the rest of the cycle. And so I should not agree that any of Miss Dodds' five groups are independent of the cycle or imported from the outside.
There are other significant omissions in Miss Dodds' paper; such as her failure to make note of such excrescences as the Lamech episode, the Cherry-tree episode, and in general the passages written in tumbling meter; also the way in which stage-directions are employed and plays introduced and concluded and many points of disagreement between Prologue and cycle; but these will be sufficiently plain by a comparison of her paper with the…one by Miss Swenson.
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