99 11

occasions. The feast of Corpus Christi was instituted in 1264 by Pope Urban IV; after an intermission it was reinstituted in 1311; and very soon the celebration came to represent within itself all the splendor and solemnity of the Church. "This feast commemorated a miracle which was believed to have given ocular evidence of transubstantiation, that is, the change of the bread and wine of the sacrament to the actual Body and Blood of Christ, and its characteristic feature was, and in certain Continental cities is still, a procession in which the Host was carried through the streets so as to make a circuit of the parish or town.' This procession became a sort of triumphal progress by which the Church not only emphasized her own power but also "satisfied the perennial inclination of the people for disguisings and festal shows." 12 In England especially these processions assumed a dramatic character, the different scenes being distributed in such a way as to bear some relation to the craft that performed it; thus the carpenters or shipbuilders would be given the scene or play of Noah's Flood, and the goldsmiths that of the Adoration of the Magi. The actors stood on a stage ("pageant ") moving about on wheels. In the course of the procession a certain number of stations was appointed, at which the several pageants stopped as they went along, and on which the respective scenes were performed. Naturally the progress of the action was interrupted as one pageant rolled away and another approached; meanwhile the attention of the people had to be held if disorder was to be prevented. "The function of calling the people to order was, wherever possible, intrusted to a tyrant, say Herod, the murderer of the Innocents, or Pilate, who, dressed up grotesquely and 11 Child, Introduction, xviii.

12 Creizenach.

armed with a resounding sword, raged about among the audience and imposed silence on the disturbers of peace.

5. Cycles. More and more the control of plays and of processions such as those just remarked passed from the Church to the municipal authorities, and especially to the gilds. These organizations were associations of men engaged in the same craft and they had the advantage of being able to assist financially in the performance of productions that showed a tendency to be increasingly expensive. Gradually in some of the larger centers the town took entire charge of the presentation, and a complete series of plays or pageants might embrace as many as forty or fifty scenes running all the way from the Creation through the Prophets and the Life of Christ to Doomsday. Four great series or cycles have been preserved for us. These are the York cycle, with forty-eight scenes (exclusive of the Innholder's fragment); 1 the Chester cycle, with twentyfive scenes; the Wakefield cycle (commonly called the Towneley cycle" from the family that owned the manuscript), with thirty-two scenes or plays, and the so-called Coventry cycle, with forty-two scenes. In these four great cycles are to be found not less than one hundred and fifty distinct plays. The York cycle is marked by many original features; for instance, the presentation of Judas is especially dramatic and impressive, both in the scene in which he offers his services as betrayer and in the one in which he begs the high priest to take back the money he received for selling his Lord. The Chester cycle is on the whole more didactic and less dramatic than the others.

1 Creizenach.

14 The rest of the paragraph is chiefly indebted to Creizenach, C. H. E. L., III, 50-54.

The Towneley cycle is noteworthy for its realism and humor. The so-called Coventry cycle is, like that of Chester, especially didactic, and it introduces several curiosities of mediaeval theology. Obviously the York and Towneley cycles had most to do with the advance of the drama. The performance of a whole cycle of plays was a serious undertaking. It might consume several days. That of the Chester group took three days; that of the York cycle was completed within one day, but the first scene began at half-past four in the morning.15

6. Secular Elements.-The outline just given obviously gives no conception of the very strong human qualities that entered into the new literary form and that did so much to make for its ultimate success. Some of these were observable even while the miracle play was still a part of the church service; when it was removed from the church to the churchyard and to the streets, extraneous elements developed space. The actors began to capitalize anything that made for personal success, or for that of the business or gild which they represented. Especially important was an ever-increasing emphasis on the comic motive. As human nature loves to watch any kind of a contest, the unwillingness of Noah's wife to enter the ark was made more and more farcical. Herod, chagrined at the escape of the Wise Men, entertained his audience by roaring and ranting and tearing his beard. Episodes that had no generic connection with the main theme of a play were sometimes introduced, the most noteworthy instance being a little farce of sheepstealing in the Second Shepherd's Play. This same play also illustrates the portrayal of the life of the agricultural laborer of England in the Middle Ages,

15 Child, Introduction, xxii.

there being stock complaints of bad weather, poor crops, and heavy taxes. Of an entirely different kind of dramatic portrayal, and noteworthy as the representation of pure sentiment, was the tender and pathetic pleading of Isaac in Abraham and Isaac, this faintly resembling little Arthur's entreaties to Hubert in Shakespeare's King John. Very important was the influence that crept into the drama from folk-lore, games, and festivals—in short, from the everyday customs of the people. Old pagan festivals of Summer and Winter incidentally cultivated many contributing elements, such as disguise or action, the procession or the combat. The sword-dance used as one of its chief characters the Fool, who wore the skin of a fox or some other animal; and it became mimetic in character. It seems to have had its origin in the conflict between Winter and Summer, with the expulsion of Winter (or Death) and the resurrection of Summer (or Life). "In several of the extant sword-dances in Britain and on the Continent, one of the dancers is, in different manners, attacked or killed, or, perhaps, merely symbolically surrounded or approached, with the swords; and this feature, which enshrines the memory of the sacrifice, becomes the principal point of action in the mummers' or St. George plays which developed from the sword-dance." 16 "The invariable incident of the death and restoration to life of one of the characters is the point upon which has been based the descent of this play from pagan festivals celebrating the death and resurrection of the year." Perhaps the best examples, however, of the turning of a folkfestival into a play was the development of the incidents of

16 H. H. Child: "Secular Influences on the Early English Drama," C. H. E. L., V, 35.

the May game into the play of Robin Hood. The great hero of the ballads seems to have had his origin in France, where in some old plays he was the type of the shepherd lover and Marion was his mistress. In course of time Marion became Maid Marian; and the Mayday king and queen became the central figures in a play in which secondary characters-Friar Tuck, Little John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and others-found their places. Thus, although the drama ultimately placed emphasis on aristocratic elements, at the same time that the glorious Arthur was regnant in romance and legend, there arose a hero of the people who thus early became the first real representative of the "drama of democracy."