Many have seen bad men a while abide, His earthly pomp is gone when that he died: Save virtue ; well for him who hath this feir [companion].1 Bishop Douglas also wrote another semi-religious allegory in verse. It is entitled King Hart, meaning the heart of man in its progress through life. The It is well known what delight was taken throughout the middle ages in the Miracle Plays or Mysteries, in which most of the leading events recorded in the Old and New Testaments, as well as many of a more apocryphal kind, were represented before the people in dramatic verse with all such show and pageantry as the resources of the age and place would permit. Some writers have thought that their origin dates back to quite the first centuries of the Christian era. Xρíoтos Пáσxwv, or Christ's Passion, is generally attributed to Gregory Nazianzen in the fourth century. It seems, however, most probable that religious drama had its beginning in mediæval times with the excitement of the early Crusades, about which time they suddenly became common both in England and the Continent. The first mention of them in this country is by Matthew of Paris, who, writing about 1240, says that Geoffrey, afterwards Abbot of St. Albans, brought out the miracle-play of St. Catherine while he was yet a secular person. This must have been at the end of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century, for he was made Abbot in 1119, and had probably assumed the religious habit a long time previously. In the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries they were very frequent and popular. The series of Chester Mysteries, 1 Gavin Douglas's Palice of Honour. Works, ed. by J. Small, i. 75: To papis, bischoppis, prelatis and primaitis, Empreouris, kingis, princes, potestatis. 2 Marriott's Preface, ix. Quarterly Review, vol. xlvi. p. 481. of which twenty-four are extant, begins in 1268, and continues to 1577. The Towneley collection, thirty in number, acted at Widkirk Abbey in Yorkshire, date back (judging from internal evidence) almost as far. The York Mysteries began at the end of the thirteenth century. There is extant a very elaborate programme of the sacred pageant in that city for 1415, in which special parts are assigned to no less than a hundred trade guilds. There are forty-two of the famous Coventry Mysteries still existing. In many places the clergy took part in them; in others, especially in the later dates, they appear to have been almost entirely under the management of the laity. They were pressed, to a certain extent, into the service of the Reformation. Edward the Sixth is said by Bale to have written one, De Meretrice Babylonica; and Queen Mary thought them so pernicious, from their connection with the new teaching, that she issued a proclamation against them. The last miracle-play represented in England is supposed to have been that of Christ's Passion, acted in the time of James the First at Eli House, Holborn, on a Good Friday, in the presence of thousands of people. Fragments, however, of the miracle-play of St. George are still common enough in country parts in the Christmas mummeries. The earliest miracle-plays were probably either in Latin or Norman-French. Even when English had become the prevailing tongue, they were sometimes much interlarded with Latin. But the spectacle was at all times eloquent to the eyes of the populace, and doubtless often left a deep impression on those who witnessed it. And when the scenes thus acted before them were worded in homely vernacular English, the better kind of religious dramas must have conveyed a great deal of very effective teaching. Even to the modern reader some of them are full of graphic, picturesque force; and the rude, unlettered style, the 1 A full list is given in the preface to Marriott's Collection of Miracle Plays, xviii. rustic humour, the quaint touches of popular English life, however incongruous in themselves, all tended to inspire the spectators with a sense of vividness and reality. They differ indeed greatly in religious value. There are some of them in which the Scripture element seems little more than a cloak and pretence for the introduction of what would otherwise be undisguised farce. In some, on the other hand, there is only enough admixture of humour and common life to clothe the personages of the sacred history with a familiar colouring, such as would serve to bring them thoroughly home to the imaginations of the common people. As for irreverence, where none was intended or thought of, it can scarcely be spoken of as such. The Creator Himself, was, for instance, constantly introduced without the slightest sense of anything unfitting. In one of the later mysteries, written by John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, in 1535, entitled God's Promises-a drama in which the distinctively religious element is everywhere made prominent-the Divine Being is represented in each of the seven acts in interlocution successively with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, and John the Baptist. Occasionally, especially in the later periods, the mysteries almost merged into moralities, the Scripture personages being blended with allegorical ones, and the serious element being the inculcation of certain virtues rather than the teaching of some Scripture fact or the illustration of some religious doctrine. I will quote a few passages, and first one which, without containing anything objectionable to modern feeling, will illustrate the broad humour which is continually found in these dramas. It is from The Deluge, one of the Chester Mysteries. Noah and his wife and sons have just been represented as busily employed in getting tools and timber for building the ark: Noah. Now in the name of God I will begin That we be ready for to swim At the coming of the flood. These boards I join together, That we may roam both hither and thither After a few more lines, he declares that— I hold all meet To sail forth at the next weete [tide]. This ship is at an end. Wife, in this castle we shall be keeped ; My children and thou, I would ye inleaped. Noah's wife. In faith, Noah, I had as lief thou hadst slept For I will not do after thy rede. Noah.-Good wife, do as I thee bid. Noah.-Lord, that women be crabbed aye! In witness of you each one. Good wife, let be all this beere [noise] (Then the animals are supposed to come in, the actors mentioning aloud their names, and bearing figures of them on parchment.) Japhet.-Mother, we pray you altogether Come into the ship for fear of the weather, Noah's wife. That will I not for your call, But if I have my gossips all. Shem. In faith, mother, yet you shall, Noah.-Welcome, wife, into this boat! Noah's wife. And have that for thy note ! (She goes in.) (She gives him a box on the ear.) Noah.-Aha! marry, this is hot! It is good to be still, Ah, childer, methinks this boat removes, Over the land the water spreads. From The Nativity, one of the Coventry Mysteries: Shepherd 1.-Now God that art in Trinity, Thou saw my fellowés and me; For I know not where my sheep or they be, Now it is nigh the middle of the night, But now, to make their heartés light, Now will I full right stand upon this looe [knoll], Full well my voice they know : Shepherd 2.--Hark, Sim, hark! I hear our brother on the looe, And follow his voice aright. See, Sim, see where he doth stond: I am right glad we have him fond. Brother, where hast thou been so long, And this night it is so cold? 1st Shepherd.-Eh, friends, there came a gust of wind with a mist suddenly, That forth of my way went I, And great heaviness made I, Then for to go wist I not whither, But travelled on this down hither and thither. I was so put out with this cold weather, That near past was my might. 3d Shepherd.-Brother, now we be past that fright, And it is far within the night, Full soon will spring the day light, It draweth full near the tide. Here awhile let us rest, And repast ourselves of the best, (Then the Shepherds draw forth their meat, and do eat and drink, and as they drink, they find the star, and say thus)—— 1 The Deluge, a Chester miracle-play, ed. by Marriott, 6. |