Although the date of composition of the York Plays is not known, it may, I believe, safely be set as far back as 1340 or 1350…. The references to them…in 1378 and 1394…lead to this conclusion, no less than the style of language and the metre in which they are written. The unknown author, whoever he was, possessed much skill in versification at that period when the old alliteration of the English, altered though it were from its earlier forms, was still popular, yet when the poet had found the charms of rime, and the delights of French verse allured him to take on new shackles while casting off the old. That he belonged to one of the religious houses of the North in the Yorkshire district may well be hazarded, on account of the knowledge of the scriptures, and especially the careful concordance of the narrative from the gospels shown in the plays….

Well-read in the bible, especially in the New Testament, and in the dependent legends allowed in those times, the imagination of this author had considerable play within his prescribed limits; a facile versifier (albeit aided by the conventional rules for his craft handed down from old time), he displayed not a little dramatic power in the arrangement of scenes with the means at his command (see especially Play XXV). Observant of human nature and sympathetic, his calls on the domestic affections are well worth notice, in the womanly weakness of Mary and the trustfulness of Joseph in the Flight into Egypt, outraged motherly affection in the Massacre of the Innocents, parental distress between love and duty in Abraham's Sacrifice, in the dutiful relationship of children shown by Isaac, and the sons of Noah and Pilate. The figures of Mary and Jesus stand out with simplicity and dignity, in no way grotesque. These finer touches stand in relief to the brutality of the scenes connected with the Passion which were deemed necessary to heighten the effect of the Saviour's sufferings.

Like a true artist, the dramatist called up mirth over incidents harmless enough; he allowed Noah's wife to flout her husband, the Shepherd to sing with a cracked throat, and Judas to be covered with ridicule and abuse by the Porter. The Porter or Beadle, in fact, plays an important part in several plays (XXV, XXX, &c). The people must have fun and show, noise and light. The principal personage in a play, whether he is wanted at the beginning or not, generally comes on the stage first, with a long speech, in the case of Noah, Abraham, Deus, and Jesus, with befitting gravity and seriousness; in the case of Satan, Pharaoh, Herod, Pilate, and Caiaphas it is daring, pompous, and blustering, in that of Pilate tempered by a sense of benevolence and justice which runs through his actions. (This writer was surprisingly lenient to Pilate, and cannot have been tained by the old legend of his gruesome fate.) We can picture the people expectant, listening with eyes and ears for the entry and the rant of the hero of the piece. Nor were the effects of music and light neglected; the Shepherds must have both heard singing and sung themselves; the music itself is actually written for Play XLVI, and in several places we have stage directions for singing. The Transfiguration was accompanied by a cloud and a 'noys herde so hydously,' possibly for thunder. Besides the star of Bethlehem bright lights were used at the Birth, Transfiguration, and Betrayal of Jesus, and in the Vision of Mary to Thomas.

Touches of current life and usage here and there stand out amid the ancient story; the carpenters' tools and measurement used by Noah, as well as those employed at the Crucifixion; the bitter cold weather at the Nativity, telling of a truly northern Christmas; the quaint offerings of the shepherds; the ruin of the poor by murrain in the account of the Ten Plagues; the drinking between Pilate and his wife; the sleeping of Herod; and the excellent representation of a heavy manual job by a set of rough workmen in the Crucifixion. Illustrative too of English custom and forms of justice are the borrowing of the town beast; Judas offering himself as bond-man in his remorse; the mortgage of a property (raising money by wed-set); and the trial scenes in Plays XXIX, XXX, XXXII, and XXXIII, in which Pilate 'in Parlament playne' vindicates the course of law, and puts down the eager malice of the accuser Caiaphas and the sharp pursuer Annas. Even Herod makes proclamation for the accusers to appear, and sympathizes with the oppressed,

Sen þat he is dome [dumb], for to deme hym,
Ware þis a goode lawe for a lorde?

Note too the sturdy common morality that will not tell a lie and that scorns a traitor's baseness.

Opportunity is improved in Play VII to enforce the necessity of tithes, and in XXI to inculcate the virtue of baptism, repeated in XLIII, stanza 17.

The value of the religious plays and players in leading up to what is called 'the regular drama' has not yet perhaps been fully recognized. Many allusions to them in old writers, Robert of Brunne, Chaucer, Langland, Heywood, &c. have been noticed. If Chaucer and Shakespeare caught at Herod, Erasmus or his translator Udall remembered Pilate's voice, 'when he heard a certain oratour speaking out of measure loude and high, and altogether in Pilate's voice,' and Sackville, in his Induction to the 'Mirror for Magistrates' describes the gloominess of Hell mouth. Reforming preachers very early began the crusade against them. Wiclif deprecates those 'þat kan best pleie a pagyn of the deuyl' at Christmas ["English Works," Early English Text Society] and an interesting witness to their effect and popularity is the treatise or sermon against miracle plays, written in the fourteenth century, showing how men and women wept at the sights before them, and gave credence to many lies as well as truths by their means. Shakespeare, in his good humoured way, laughs at the alliteration, the craftsmen players, and the stage bombast all grown conventional and out of date, as he does at the Vice of the moralities, but he too was not ashamed to borrow one of their prominent characters. The study of the Janitor or Porter who appears twice, needs must with a great deal of knocking, always with a voluble tongue, in several plays of this series, will, I think, add conviction to Prof. Hales' suggestion ["On the Porter in Macbeth," New Shakspere Society Transactions] that the idea of the Porter, and his action in Macbeth, Act II. Sc. 3, was an adaptation of an old familiar friend, although it happens that he does not appear here in the Harrowing of Hell…. The Janitor in Play XXV is an important person, but not Shakespeare's model; it is in the Porters of XXVI…and XXX that we may seek the likeness of their much discussed successor, with the knocking that accompanied him.