Early writers of miracle plays vernacular gained ground slowly; and at one time was the language of the inferior characters, while the more exalted personages spoke the learned tongue, an arrangement exactly analogous to the distribution of Sanscrit and Pracrit between the characters of a Hindoo play. So long as French continued to be the Court language in England, royal personages used it on the stage as a token of their dignity. In one of the mystery plays King Herod gravely remarks that he is tired of talking French. Although the religious drama became as much a part of the national life in England as in any other country, it was probably introduced by the Normans, a livelier people and more impressionable by the mimetic art. The earliest religious play preserved, one on the story of Adam, is apparently Norman, and not Anglo-Norman, as supposed at one time. GEOFFREY OF ST. ALBANS, author of the play on the history of St. Katharine, already mentioned as the first example of its class in England, was a native of Maine. He taught a school at Dunstable, and probably wrote the play for representation by his pupils. The performers, whoever they were, were vested in splendid ecclesiastical apparel borrowed from the Abbey of St. Albans. The night after the representation a fire broke out in Geoffrey's house, and all the borrowed vestments perished. Overcome with confusion and remorse, he made what seemed the only possible atonement by entering the abbey as a monk. Ere long he was abbot, but whether the religious drama flourished under his administration we are not told. The next religious dramatist whose name is preserved, HILARIUS, reverses Geoffrey's case; he appears to have been an Englishman, but lived and wrote in France. Three of his plays are preserved, upon a miracle of St. Nicholas, the raising of Lazarus, and the history of Daniel. The language is Latin interspersed with French. The drama continued to make progress in England throughout the twelfth century, and, which was far from being the case in France, the subjects seem to have been almost invariably taken from sacred history or legend. Such is the testimony of William Fitzstephen, the biographer of Becket, who, writing between 1170 and 1180, says: “Instead of theatrical exhibitions, instead of scenic plays, London has plays of a holier kind to wit, representations of the miracles which the holy confessors worked, or of the sufferings in which the constancy of the martyrs was gloriously confirmed." Fitzstephen had been Becket's intimate friend and confidant, and it is clear from his evidence that the sacred drama was in his time encouraged by the Church. It is remarkable, however, that he seems to speak merely of miracle plays or dramatic exhibitions founded on the legends of martyrs and confessors, and ignores the mystery or Scriptural drama, which was always the most popular in England, and to which almost all extant specimens belong. Whatever the nature of the representations, it would seem a fair inference from Fitzstephen's words that they were public and accessible to all, and not merely private performances within the walls of an abbey or convent. Not long after, about 1220, mention is found of a play on the Resurrection being acted in the churchyard of Beverley Minster. Two circumstances are now to be mentioned which had the greatest THE STAGE AND THE GUILD 223 influence upon the development of the miracle play. One was the institution, decreed in 1264, but not fully effected until 1311, of the festival of Corpus Christi, involving a great procession in the open air. The time fixed for this display, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, was well adapted for open-air shows and performances: while, from the religious character of the ceremony, the jousts and games which might otherwise have amused the populace were out of place, and the problem was how to combine enjoyment with edification. Nothing could seem fitter for this purpose than the miracle play, which equally met the popular demand for amusement and the ecclesiastical requisite that the entertainments of Corpus Christi should partake of the nature of a religious solemnity. Here the second important circumstance to which we have referred came in, a circumstance as distinctly mediæval as the institution of Corpus Christi itself. The trade guilds, in England at least, came forward to charge themselves with the expense and assume the direction of the representation, and in many cities England had at length a national drama, rude indeed, but appreciated by the people, patronised by the clergy, not wholly slighted by the aristocracy, and preface and presage of the drama to come. The very name of guild, except with reference to small associations founded Connection of the trade guilds for some object of limited scope and usually of more or less of an amateur with dramatic character, is strange to us at this day. We have to consider all that the performances Guildhall implies, and to reflect that the great City Companies were once guilds in the strictest sense of the term, ere we can in any measure realise the state of things prevailing when every workman was actually the member of a guild, and bound by the regulations which it pleased this body to enforce. Of the two great classes of guilds which covered England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the social guild generally existing for the sake of charitable works, and the craft guild or association of workmen and tradesmen, we are here only concerned with the latter.. This, with its offshoot the merchants' guild, was a kind of minor corporation, able within limits to organise its members, and levy contributions upon them for any legal purpose. When once the idea had found currency that it beseemed such a body to give a dramatic exhibition for the enhancement of the Corpus Christi solemnity, the future of these entertainments was assured, for the resources of the guilds were extensive, and mutual emulation guaranteed their being exerted to the uttermost. Kepausùç κεραμέι κοτέει, καὶ τέκτονι τέκτων. An additional incitement was afforded by the fines levied upon the crafts which failed to give the performance allotted to them, or broke down in the representation. Each guild was entrusted as far as possible with a performance in harmony with the character of its own craft; thus the building of the Ark was represented by the shipwrights. The number of these associations seems startling, until the great subdivision of labour in the Middle Age is considered, and the jealousy lest one craft should encroach on the domain of another. We hear of bladesmiths, sheathers, buckle-makers, girdelers, corvisors (shoemakers), spicers, fletchers (arrow-makers), pinners, needlers, and whittawers (workers in white leather). The co-operation of the various guilds rendered it practicable to exhibit System of dramatic exhibition one great piece composed of a number of consecutive plays, so arranged as to embrace the entire course of sacred history, each company taking one. The machinery employed carried us back to the days when Thespis and his fellowperformers-if Horace may be believed-perambulated Attica in a cart. It consisted of two movable stages, one the pageant (Greek pegma or Latin pagina-plank) or platform upon which the representation was given, a term now transferred to the show itself; and a scaffold for the spectators. The stage for the performers was in two storeys, in the lower of which they dressed and undressed, while the piece was acted in the upper. The scaffolds, with a slow solemnity worthy of the Trojan Horse or the Car of Juggernaut, passed through the town and paused at places convenient for a concourse of spectators. When the representation was finished, platform and scaffold moved on, and THE SACRED DRAMA ON THE STAGE 225 1 new company and a new piece came forward in their place. A stage direction seems to imply that the performance was not strictly confined to the "pageant"; but that King Herod, at least when extra furious, "raged in the street." There could be little attempt at scenery, but details of costume and stage fittings are abundantly supplied by the account books of the municipalıties, when these have been preserved, and are full of curiosity and interest. The representation of Paradise naturally surpassed the powers of the scenic artists of that period, but they were perfectly at home in Hell, and especial pains were taken with Hell mouth, delineated as the literal mouth of an enormous monster, and with the pitchforks and clubs of the demons. The latter implements were considerately made of wadding: but the gunpowder which the fiends are enjoined to carry about various parts of their persons, if not mere brutum fulmen, in which case it might as well have been omitted, must have been productive of considerable inconvenience to the performer. The whole of this department of the representation is a strange mixture of the terrible and the ludicrous, entirely in the spirit of the grotesque carvings of cathedral corbels; and the semblances of the fiends preserved in some contemporary delineations offer strong affinity to the figures in ancient editions of the Ars Moriendi. Elsewhere there is abundant simplicity, but no intentional irreverence; the comic scenes, coarse as they sometimes are, being confined to inferior characters, and kept apart from the main action. Music was not wanting, and some of the few songs which have been preserved possess real grace and lyrical spirit. The following are examples of the songs of shepherds at the Nativity As I outrode this enderes' night, Of three Jolly shepherds I saw a sight, So meryly the shepherds their pipes can blow. Down from heaven from heaven so high, Of angels ther came a great company, So meryly the shepherds their pipes can blow. One shepherd offers the infant Saviour his flute, another his hat, another his mittens, in language simple and quaint, but embodying the sentiment, "Take this, O Lord, 'tis all I have to give." In another version a shepherd offers his wife's old stockings, and a lad, foreseeing that the infant Christ will one day have occasion for a nuthook, presents his own :- To pull down apples, pears and plums. Old Joseph shall not need to hurt his thumbs. It is easy to realise how much life and colour the miracle play must have brought into the existence of mediæval society, and to what extent the happy idea of making its representation the business of a particular order of the VOL. I 1 Last. P |