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REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH PLAYS

REPRESENTATIVE ENGLISH PLAYS

I. THE MIDDLE AGES

MIRACLE PLAYS

Pope Urban IV, when he instituted in 1264 church festival of Corpus Christi, bea real though unwitting patron of the On the continent, Corpus Christi the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, soon established as an occasion for preg religious plays. In England espewas the day notable, for the trade the associations of craftsmen roughly sponding to the trade unions of our adopted it as their chief holiday, and d the church in its celebration with procession through the town. In another also they came to the aid of the church aking over a form of activity which had me time been growing in disfavor with hurch authorities; namely, the pernce of the liturgical plays. Originally duced at Christmas and Easter for the iation of ignorant audiences, these beso popular that their primary didactic rose was in danger of being forgotten. motives in which religion and busifor the church feast brought visitors ad trade to town-were oddly mixed, the added pageantry to their procession, were soon giving performances on a e more sumptuous than the church had

e reached.

E the time that the miracle, or, as they te sometimes called, mystery, plays passed the hands of Mother Church into the the guilds, they had already developed a great drama of many acts, covering ral and apocryphal history from the the Angels to the Last Judgment. were, therefore, well adapted for guild erance. Each guild took one section Bible story and tried to outdo its in effectiveness of presentation. A Babumor often marked the distribution

separate plays among the various It is not difficult to see why, in the plays, the Shipwrights undertook the g of the Ark, and the Fishmongers the c nor why in the same cycle the Goldis selected the story of the Three Kings, it their offerings of gold and spices; the irre, the Miracle at Cana; the Bakers, Last Supper. To the Tanners was asthe Fall of Lucifer and the torments the fallen angels in hell, where the tan

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ning process was likely to be thorough; while the Cooks, well trained in taking things from the fire, could present, more fittingly than any other craft, the Harrying of Hell, with its delivery of well-roasted prophets and martyrs.

The performances took place upon pageant wagons, which could be drawn from place to place through the town. At street corners or open squares stations were assigned for the acting of the plays. When the play of the creation had been acted at the first station the pageant wagon moved on to the second station, while the story of the fall of Adam and Eve took its place at the first station, and so on. This method made possible the simultaneous production of many plays, each little audience, of course, seeing the entire sequence in the proper order. The wagons seem usually to have been built with two platforms, the lower curtained in and serving as a dressing room for the actors, the upper as the stage. Stage properties were of the simplest. Among the most prominent was Hell mouth, a great gaping pair of jaws at one side of the stage, painted flame color and belching forth the smoke of the torment, from which leaped forth the Devil with his boisterous "Ho! Ho!" and into which he pitched the lost souls with his wooden pitchfork and himself plunged at the end of the play. Some attempt was made at appropriateness of costume: God appeared in white leather, with gilded face and hair, the Devil in black leather, with full equipment of horns, hoofs, and a tail. But Herod boasted the full panoply of a knight of chivalry, and in general anachronism of attire as well as of speech was rampant.

We have records of such dramatic activity lasting from the thirteenth until far into the sixteenth century, all over England, as well as in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Not only the cathedral towns but market towns and even villages had their collective or individual miracle plays. The greatest activity, however, seems to have been localized in certain places. There are extant manuscripts, the earliest belonging to the fifteenth century, for four great cycles of miracle plays: the York, Chester, Towneley or Wakefield, and Coventry cycles. While each has its indi

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