No More Learning

The
coming of the Lombards, in the sixth century, dealt the death-
blow to the scotched art of public amusement.
Private amusement, however, in which these scenici had been
as busily employed as on public stages, continued in all parts
of the empire, and was the means of prolonging the existence of
the class. Its members became confused and intermingled with the
lower orders of entertainer, tumblers, rope-walkers, bear-leaders
and so forth, and shared with them a precarious and a wandering
existence. The evidence as to their dramatic répertoire in England
a


## p. 25 (#49) ##############################################

25
Strolling Performers
is very slight; but the conclusion is reasonable that it decreased to
the smallest dimensions and may, in time, have come to include
little more than imitations of beasts and of drunken or half-witted
men, combined with displays of such indecent buffoonery and ribald
rimings as naturally delighted the medieval population in both
castle and village. For several reasons, however, it is almost
necessary to suppose that these tricks were linked together by some
sort of dramatic interest, however rude. They are more amusing
when 80 treated. Dialogue was certainly among the strollers
accomplishments; and so was the use of marionettes, which implies
not only dialogue but plot. The literature of medieval Germany
and France contains several works, such as Le Roi đ Angleterre
et le Jougleur d Ely, and Le Garçon et l'Aveugle, which seem to
show the existence of a répertoire founded more or less on mere
farce. And, by the fourteenth century, we find in England not
only a mention in the Tretise of miraclis pleyinge of 'other
japis ’ distinct from miracles", but a fragment of the text of the
Interludium de Clerico et Puella, a humorous little play, founded
on the popular medieval story of Dame Siriz? There is, however,
in England scarcely a trace of anything corresponding to the
Schembartlaufen of the Meistersingers of Nürnberg, or such
amateur organisations as the Enfants sans souci or the Basoche
in Paris, which secured a healthy existence for farce. In the four-
teenth century (1352), indeed, we find bishop Grandison of Exeter
prohibiting a performance by the youths of the city in contumeliam
et opprobrium allutariorum, a satirical attack on the cloth-dressers'
guild, who had been charging too high for their wares. But, for
the most part, the early history of the comic element in secular
drama in England is dark. It appears to have remained in the
hands of the descendant of the ribald mimus, and seldom, if ever,
to have achieved the honour of association with his betters. Until
its appearance in literature in the work of John Heywood, its
existence in England can only be inferred. Nevertheless, merely
for preserving its existence, however rudely, the mimus deserves
our gratitude. When English drama became secularised, the
interlude found at least some sort of criticism of social types and
of the actual world on which to work.
Another stream of tradition, affecting mainly the serious, as
distinct from the comic, side of his répertoire, contributed to the
formation of the medieval entertainer. This flowed from the
minstrels, who were in England some centuries before the spread
i Chambers, Mediaeval Stage, vol. I, p. 84. * Cf. ante, vol. I, pp. 305~0.


## p. 26 (#50) ##############################################

26 Secular Influences on the Early Drama
>
of Latin civilisation opened the country to invasion by mimi
as well as by ecclesiastics. When the bard emerged from the
communal singing of pagan races it is impossible to say; but
the state of war for which, in their migrations westward, they
exchanged their pastoral life brought into existence a class of
heroes, and the existence of heroes accounts for the singing of
cantilenae to celebrate their exploits. By the fifth century, there
is plenty of evidence of the existence of a class of professional
singers attached to the courts of great leaders. Such a singer was
not despised, like the mimus and the joculator, his successors, but
honoured, an owner of land and gold, the professional representa-
tive of an art in which his master himself was not ashamed to be
his rival. Such a scop or minstrel was Widsith', who was both
attached to a leader's court and allowed to wander abroad. The
complaint of Deor and the feast in Hrothgar's hall in Beowulf
give other pictures of the Teutonic minstrel's life. The duty of
such a minstrel was to sing to the harp the praises of his lord and
the delights of war, and, under the names of scop and gleeman? ,
he was a prominent figure in unconverted England. In converted
England, the ecclesiastic, as a man, encouraged this minstrelsy; as
an official, he discouraged it; and, from the eighth to the eleventh
centuries, its history is obscure. During these centuries began
the gradual assimilation of Teutonic and Latin entertainer, of
scop and mimus. During the same centuries in France, there
grew up the distinction between the Norman trouvères, or minstrels
of war, and the Provençal troubadours, who sang in the south their
songs of love. The Norman conquest opened up England still
further, not only to the trouvères or jongleurs, the Taillefers
and Raheres who brought honour and glory to the exploits of
feudal lords, but to entertainers of all kinds, from respectable
musicians and reciters to the juggling, tumbling rogues who
haunted the highways of Europe. Under this invasion, the English
minstrel sank yet lower. He was forced to appeal, not to the
great ones of the land, whose language he did not speak, but to
the down-trodden of his own race; and the assimilation with the
vagabond mime must be supposed to have become more complete.
In the eyes of the church, at any rate, the confusion between the
higher and the lower class of minstrel was always an accomplished
)
I
? See vol. 1 of the present work, chaps. I and in, and Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 2830.
> Scop=maker; gleeman=the man of glee or mirth ; but, originally at any rate,
the two terms were interchangeable and do not imply the separation into a higher and
lower class of minstrel which will be seen later.


## p. 27 (#51) ##############################################

English Minstrels
27
fact; but her indiscriminate condemnation of both kinds was not,
on the whole, to the disadvantage of the lower class, inasmuch as,
in conjunction with the common taste of both noble and peasant
for something a little more amusing than the court minstrel could
supply, it helped to break down a class distinction between the
various kinds of entertainer. To some extent, the court minstrel
learned to be a buffoon; to some extent, the despised English
minstrel learned the language and the stories of the conquerors,
and began to translate the disputations, the jeux-partis and the
tençons, which were popular in Norman castles, following them in
time with the estrifs, among which The Harrowing of Hell
formed an important link between the répertoire of the minstrels
and the early drama, and may, indeed, be considered one of the
sources of the morality. Aided, no doubt, by the goliardi or
wandering scholars, vagabond disseminators of learning and wit,
English minstrels formed at least part of the means of union
between conquerors and conquered. In this, they may be con-
trasted with the Celtic minstrels, the harpers and the bards, who,
though they sang their own heroes, as English minstrels had
continued to sing of Hereward, did not, like the English minstrels,
act, whether in intention or in fact, as peace-makers between the
conquered, Wales, and the conqueror, England.
In France, where conditions were more favourable, a definite
influence was exerted by professional minstrels on the religious
drama. In England, it was not so. There is, indeed, some slight
evidence that minstrels, to some extent, took up the composition
and performance of religious plays! For the most part, however,
their share appears to have been limited to supplying the music and,
occasionally, some comic relief, in the later days when town, parish or
guild had taken over from the church the production of the miracle.
When, therefore, we look for the influence of the minstrel on
the formation of the English drama, we find it to be, at any rate
until the fifteenth century, of the very slightest. The superior
class, whose art descended from that of scop and trouvère, may
have prepared the ground for the morality by the composition, if
not the recitation by two mouths, of estrifs in dialogue form.
The lower class may have been of service in two ways : first, by
their preservation of the art of the puppet-showor 'motion,
though, even here, during the later period, when a dramatic
1
1 Ward, vol. I, p. 50.
On the subject of marionnettes see Magnin, Ch. , Histoire des Marionnettes (2nd
edition, 1862), especially Books 11 and vi.


## p. 28 (#52) ##############################################

28 Secular Influences on the Early Drama
1
literature for puppets can be distinctly traced and the nascent
secular drama was ripe for its influence, that art appears to have
been chiefly practised by new-comers from the continent; and,
secondly, by their relation, noted above, to the art of farce. But,
perhaps, the most genuine service performed by both classes up to
the fifteenth century was nothing more than that of keeping alive
the desire to be amused; while, in the case of the lower class, we
may add to this the fact that they did consistently carry on, no
matter how poorly, the practice which lies at the root of dramatic
art and of the pleasure to be gained from it—that of pretending to
be someone or something else.
By the fifteenth century, religious drama had passed out of
the hands of the church into those of the amateur performers
of town or guild. Moreover, the stimulus given to the love of
dramatic performances had resulted in the birth of the interlude
the short play, sometimes religious, but usually moral, in character,
which could be played in the banqueting hall of the noble or in
the market place or village green by a few players, and without
the expensive and elaborate machinery of the miracle. The
popularity and ease of preparation of the interlude soon induced
its amateur performers to extend a practice not unknown in the
case of miracles, and take it on tour,' as we should say now, from
town to town and village to village. The minstrels had already
suffered, not only from the invention of printing, which left them
no longer the sole repositories of story and poem, but from the
increasing command of literature by the amateur (knight or
tradesman) which followed the development of the English language.
The poaching on their preserves of the amateur interlude player
spurred them to double action. In the first place, they con-
.
,
solidated their formation into guilds. A charter of Edward IV
(1469)_after reciting that certain 'rude rustics and artificers'
were pretending to be minstrels and neglecting their business, to go
about the country, levying heavy exactions on the liegesorders
all minstrels to join the guild on pain of suppression; and this guild
still exists in the corporation of the Musicians of London. In the
second place, they took the wind out of the sails of the amateurs
by becoming interlude players themselves. They are found doing
this probably so early as 14272; and it was not long before the
greater convenience of hiring professional players than of training
amateurs began to make itself felt-not to mention the element of
· Analysed in Chambers, vol. 11, Appendix F, pp. 260-1.
3 Rymer, Foedera, vol. 2, p. 387.


## p. 29 (#53) ##############################################

Primitive Festivals
29
farce, which the minstrels had kept alive and were ready and able
to contribute to the attractions of the show. While the great towns
continued to produce miracle-plays by means of their craft-guilds,
smaller places and private houses depended on the transformed
minstrels. They are found attached to the establishments of
nobles by the middle of the fifteenth century, and Henry VII
and his successors kept their own companies. Under Elizabeth,
they, in their turn, made way before, or were incorporated into,
the professional actors of the new drama'.
The history of the other influence on our early drama with which
this chapter has to deal belongs in a large measure to the study of
folk-lore? The pagan festivals of summer and winter which had,
or came to have, the object of securing by ritual observance
plenteous crops and fruitful herds, had, also, a side which explains
what influence they may have had on the drama—the holiday mood,
the desire for the exercise of activity purely for the pleasure in it,
to which we give the name of play. The churl who would not
play on festival days was, from immemorial times, the object of
the holiday-makers' dislike and rough treatment
At the same time, the ritual itself came to include many
elements—disguise, combat, procession, dance, song, action-
which, arising from whatever symbolical and ritual origins, lent
themselves easily to the spirit of play, and approximated to the
acted drama. It is not possible, of course, to trace any such direct
road from village festival to drama in England as in Greece; but a
certain connection, besides the mere fostering of the spirit of play,
is to be observed between the early drama and pagan observance,
wholly or partly or not at all absorbed by Christianity.
On the literary side, the connection is very slight. The folk
had their cantilenae, or songs celebrating mythological or historical
heroes &; but epic poetry owes more to these than does the drama.
The people had, also, their festival songs, sung in procession or during
the dance round the sacred fire or tree, of which Sumer is i-cumen
in is a sophisticated remnants; and in these songs the growth of
the amoebaean form shown in the existence of the burden implies
1 See vol. vi, chap. x below.
· For a fuller treatment of the subject of early village festivals and their develop-
ment, from the point of view both of the student of folk-lore and the historian of the
stage, see Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 89 ff.
* Ten Brink, History of English Literature, vol. I, p. 148; Chambers, vol. I, p. 26.
• Ante, vol. I, pp. 360—1.
• Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics.


## p. 30 (#54) ##############################################

30 Secular Influences on the Early Drama
the same seed of drama which grew in Greece to the pre-
Aeschylean tragedy, with its protagonist and chorus, but had no
corresponding development in England.
The influence, or the remnants, of cantilenae may, indeed, be
traced in certain later growths, like the mummers' play and the
Hock-Tuesday play, to which we shall return; but folk-song, either
heroic or pastoral, may be held to have been practically without
effect on the main stream of English drama. A more valid in-
fluence is to be traced from the dances, combats and ritual actions
of village-festivals. Writers on folk-lore point out that such
games as football and hockey descend from the struggles for the
possession of the head of the sacrificial victim, and the tradition
still survives in special varieties, such as the 'Haxey-hood' contest
at Haxey in Lincolnshire. They point out, also, that disguise has
its origin in the clothing of leaves and flowers or of the skin or
head of the sacrificed animal, with which the worshipper made him-
self 'a garment of the god' thus bringing himself into the closest
possible contact with the spirit of fertilisation. The maypole,
which was a common feature of every green in England till the
Rebellion, and enjoyed a shadow of its former glory after the
Restoration, stands for the sacred tree, and the dance round it for
the ritual dance of the pagan worshipper, just as some children's
games, like 'Oranges and Lemons,' enshrine the memory of the
sacrifice and of the succeeding struggle for possession of the victim's
head. In some instances, folk-observances have grown into some-
thing like plays, or have affected plays drawn from other sources;
and of these a few words must now be said.
In the form in which its scanty remnants have reached us, the
folk-play has mainly been affected by humanist learning through
the hands of the local scholar. A play—at least a performance
consisting of 'actionz and rymez'-which appears to have com-
paratively or entirely escaped that kind of improvement, was the
‘olld storiall sheaw' of the Hock-Tuesday play at Coventry. Our
knowledge of it is chiefly derived from the description in Robert
Laneham's letter to his friend Humfrey Martin, mercer, of London,
describing the festivities before Elizabeth at Kenilworth in 1575,
during which the play was revived? We there read that it was
‘for pastime woont too bee plaid yeerely’; that it
had an auncient beginning, and a long continuauns: tyll noow of late laid dooun,
they knu no cauz why, onless it wear by the zeal of certain theyr Preacherz.
1 Reprinted by Furnivall for the Ballad Society in 1871. The reprint, with additional
notes, is included in The Shakespeare Library, 1908. See pp. 26-28, 31, 32, of that edition.


## p. 31 (#55) ##############################################

a
>
Hock-Tuesday Play and Sword-Dance 31
Its argument, according to Laneham, was: how the English under
Huna defeated the Danes and rid the realm of them in the reign of
Ethelred on St Brice's night (13 November 1002—he gives the date
in error as 1012). Rous? ascribed to it another origin, the sudden
.
death of Hardicanute, and the suspicion of his having been poisoned
at a wedding, together with the delivery of England from the Danes
at the accession of Edward the Confessor in 1042. Both explana-
tions are held by some to be later substitutes for the real origin,
which, in their opinion, was the immemorial folk-custom of obtain-
ing by force a victim for the sacrifice. Hocktide—the Monday and
Tuesday after the second Sunday after Easter-has parallel customs
in other parts of the country, in which the women 'hocked' the
men (caught and bound them with ropes), or vice versa, or strangers
or natives were whipped or 'heaved. ' Women acted prominently
on the offensive in these customs, and they did the same in the
Hock-Tuesday Coventry play. First of all, the Danish 'launs-
knights' and the English, armed with alder poles, entered on
horseback and fought together; then followed the foot and, after
manoeuvring, engaged.
Twise the Danes had the better; but at the last conflict, beaten doun,
overcom, and many led captive for triumph by our English wéemen.
It is possible that the combat for the victim's head referred to
above may have had some influence on the game; and the
evolutions of the footsoldiers in ranks, squadrons, triangles, ‘from
that intoo rings, and so winding oout again' may be connected
with the sword-dance, mentioned below. It seems clear, however,
that this was a genuine folk-play; and it is suggested that 'the
rymez' had been worked up from local cantilenae of the folk. The
Hock-Tuesday play, as we have seen, was only a revival in the
early days of Elizabeth, and it is not heard of afterwards.
Another folk-custom, out of which grew a play of more im-
portance than the Hock-Tuesday play, was the sword-dance. This
dance seems to have had its ritual origin in the primitive
expulsion of Death or Winter, the death and resurrection of
Summer, or in that conflict between Winter and Summer which, on
the literary side, was also the origin of many débats and estrifs.
It was, moreover, a natural mode of play for warlike peoples.
Like all dancing, it became mimetic in character. Its chief per-
sonages are the fool, who wears the skin of a fox or some other
animal, and the ‘Bessy,' a man dressed in woman's clothes-figures
1 Historia Regum Angliae (1716), pp. 105, 106.
• Chambers, vol. u, p. 155.


## p. 32 (#56) ##############################################

32 Secular Influences on the Early Drama
>
in which folk-lore finds the survival of the ritual of agricultural
worship. One of its off-shoots in England is held to be the morris-
dance, which, however, in Robin Hood (who sometimes appears)
and in Maid Marian (who always does) has drawn to itself features
of other celebrations to be mentioned later. The points of interest
in the sword-dance, for our present purpose, are its use of rimed
speeches to introduce the characters, and its development into
the mummers' or St George play, still to be seen in many rural
districts of the British Isles.
Some types of sword-dance still or recently extant, mainly in
the north of England, have many more characters than the fool or
'Bessy? ' In one case at least, that of the Shetland dance, they
include the seven Champions of Christendom. ' It is possible that
their names only superseded those of earlier national heroes, and
that the verses introducing the characters in the dance are, in
fact, the remains of the folk cantilenae which have been mentioned
before. 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. In
these, the dance has developed into a play. Amid a bewildering
variety of nomenclature and detail, 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. The
fact that this play is nowadays usually performed at Christmas-
time is largely due to a well-known shifting of the seasons of
festivals, due to the fixing of the Christian ecclesiastical feasts.
Analysis of the many varieties known would extend this
chapter unduly? , and it must be our task rather to point out
what is common to all. A transition stage between the sword-
dance and the play may be noticed in the performance of the
plow boys or morris dancers' at Revesby in Lincolnshire, pro-
bably on Plough Monday (the Monday after Twelfth Night)
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and several
Plough Monday performances in the eastern midlands. These
have retained their original season that of the resumption of
| The motley crew are collected by Cbambers, vol. 11, pp. 193, 194.
The reader is referred to Chambers, vol. II, pp. 208 ff. and to Ordish.
8 Printed by Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama, vol. I, p. 296.


## p. 33 (#57) ##############################################

The Mummers' Play
33
agricultural work after winter, and they are entirely unaffected
by heroic influences. In both, the characters are the traditional
grotesques of village festivals—the fool and the Hobby-horse,
who represent worshippers disguised in skins of beasts, and
the ‘Bessy,' the woman or man dressed in woman's clothes. The
latter custom is recorded as obtaining among the Germans by
Tacitus. Some of the eastern midlands performances introduce
farm-labourers. In both there is much dancing; at Revesby, the
fool, and, in the eastern midlands the old woman, Dame Jane,
are killed and brought to life again.
The mummers' plays show another stage of advance. In them,
the central incident is still the killing and restoring to life of one
of the characters, and there is still enough dancing to show their
descent from the sword-dance. First, the characters are intro-
duced in a speech; then comes the drama, in which each personage
has his own introductory announcement; and the whole winds up
with the entrance of subsidiary charaoters, more dancing and the
inevitable collection in itself a survival of hoary antiquity. The
old grotesques of the village festival are mainly relegated to the
third part of the performance; and the principal characters, pre-
sented under almost infinite variety of manner and style, are a
hero, his chief opponent and the (usually comic) doctor. The hero
sometimes kills and sometimes is killed by his opponent; in either
case, the doctor comes to restore the dead man to life. The name
of the hero is almost always saint, king, or prince George; the
chief opponent is divisible into two types : the Turkish knight,
who sometimes has a black face, and a kind of capitano or
blustering Bobadill. There is also a large variety of subsidiary
fighters. The grotesques of the sword-dance, now pushed away
into the third part of the performance, include such figures as the
fool, or the Beelzebub, who, perhaps, are the same person under
different names, the ‘Bessy' and the Hobby-horse. Sometimes,
these figures are allowed a subordinate position in the drama
itself.
The presence of St George (for king and prince George may be
regarded as Hanoverian 'improvements ') implies the influence of
heroic legend and literature. It is very seldom that anything more
than a passing reference to the exploits of the saint is found in
the mummers' play; and, though the dragon appears here and
there, the contest with him is never the main point of the action.
How St George came into the story at all is a matter of some
obscurity. He was, undoubtedly, the patron saint of England.
E. L. V.
3
CH. IL


## p. 34 (#58) ##############################################

34 Secular Influences on the Early Drama
His day, 23 April, was a day on which processions or 'ridings' in
his honour-in which the representations of his defeat of the
dragon had replaced, perhaps, the earlier subject of the victory of
summer over winter-were organised by the guilds of St George
in many parts of England. These 'ridings,' which lasted even as
late as the eighteenth century, were dumb shows or pageants
rather than plays; but cases are known of religious dramas on
the subject. It is possible that the sword-dance, in its development
into the mummers' play, was influenced by these 'ridings' and by
the miracle-plays. On the other hand, the name of St George
may have come into them by way of Richard Johnson's History
of the Seven Champions, first published in 1596—7. In either
case, the introduction of this character has modified the popular
cantilenae which formed the basis of the rude dialogue accompany-
ing the symbolical representation.
Another instance of folk-festivals turned into plays and modi-
fied by the introduction of principal characters of later date is
the development of the May-game into the Robin Hood play.
From the earliest times, dance and song bad celebrated the
coming of spring; and we have seen the elements of drama in
the amoebaean form of the reverdies as well as in the use of the
cantilenae.
In France, a direct descent can be traced from the
chansons of the folk to the plays of Adam de la Halle; the lack
of English folk-song makes a corresponding deduction impossible
with regard to English drama. But it is known that, both in
spring or summer and in autumn, a 'king,' or 'queen,' or both,
were appointed leaders of the revel; and the May-game-the
* Whitsun Pastorals' to which Perdita in The Winter's Tale (act iv,
sc. 4) likens her play with the flowers—was protested against by
the clergy as early as the thirteenth century.
The influence of the May-game on the drama may be traced
in such plays as The Winter's Tale, Chapman's May Day and
Jonson's Sad Shepherd; but it achieves its highest importance
through an impetus towards the dramatic form derived from the
minstrels. In France, Robin, as we see from de la Halle's plays,
was the type-name of the shepherd lover, and Marion of his
mistress. It is suggested that these names were brought to
England by French minstrels, and that here, by the sixteenth
century, Robin became confused with the Robin Hood (or
6
1
i
1
1
1
1
1 For a description of the 'riding' at Norwich see Chambers, vol. I, p. 222.
? At Lydd and Bassingbourne. See Chambers, Appendix W, vol. II, p. 383.
s By Chambers, vol. 1, pp. 175, 176.


## p. 35 (#59) ##############################################

Robin Hood Plays
35
d-Wood) who first appears in Piers the Plowman, but who,
perhaps, bad, long before this time, been a popular hero of the
ballads, his origin being purely fictitious, or, perhaps, nothing less
than the personality of Woden himself. Robin becoming Robin
Hood, Marion became Maid Marian, who does not appear at all in
the earliest ballads; the May-game king and queen were now the
central figures of a story, in which subsidiary characters-Friar
Tuck, Little John, the sheriff of Nottingham and others-found
their places; and the old May-game-probably consisting merely
of dances, processional or circular, with the inevitable quête or
collection, still maintained by small boys who go a-maying in the
streets of London-was transformed into the Robin Hood play.
The Paston letters mention a servant who played Robin Hood
and the sheriff of Nottingham. A fragment of such a play dating
from the fifteenth century is extant? . And the Garrick collection
in the British Museum includes a 'mery geste' of Robin Hood,
‘wyth a newe playe for to be played in Maye games' printed
about 1561. In Scotland the play of Robin Hood survived, in
spite of Puritan protest and of legal prohibition, at least till
15784; and in England the new drama was not slow to avail itself
of the story. Anthony Munday was writing for Henslowe in
February 1598 a Downfall and Death of Robert Earl of
Huntingdon, 'surnamed Roben hoodes,' and introduced him again
in his pageant, Metropolis Coronata (1615). He appeared, also, in
Haughton's Roben hooď s penerthese and other lost plays, as well
as in Peele's Edward I, Greene's George a Greene—the Pinner of
Wakefield and the anonymous Look About You. After the
Restoration, he is to be found in Robin Hood and his Crew of
Soldiers (1661). At least four other Robin Hood plays or operas
are noticed in Biographia Dramatica, and a recent production
in London proves that the public is not yet tired of the old story.
More important, however, than the actual subject is the fact that
Robin Hood, whatever his origin, became a national hero, and, as
such, was celebrated in the drama. The new national spirit
awakened in the days of Elizabeth was destined to extend this
narrow field into the spacious domain of the chronicle play.
i Gairdner's edition, vol. in, p. 89.
Manly, vol. 1, p. 279.
3 Furnivall's Laneham's Letter, pp. li, liii, liv.
• See Chambers, vol. 1, p. 181, vol. II, pp. 335, 336, and references.
s Greg's Henslowe's Diary, Part I, pp. 83, 84. 6 Ibid. pp. 124, 125.
3--2


## p. 36 (#60) ##############################################

CHAPTER III
THE EARLY RELIGIOUS DRAMA
MIRACLE-PLAYS AND MORALITIES
THE growth of the medieval religious drama pursued the same
course in England as in the other countries of Europe joined
together in spiritual unity through the domination of the Roman
Catholic church. Everywhere, we may follow the same process,
and note how, from about the tenth century, the production in
churches of a certain species of alternating songs is combined
with a sort of theatrical staging; how, simultaneously with the
progress of this staging, the texts of the songs were enlarged by
free poetical additions, till, finally, a separation of these stage per-
formances from their original connection with religious service
took place, and they were shifted from the church into the open air.
Most of the literary monuments that enable us to reconstruct
the gradual rise of the Christian drama are of German or
French origin; but England, too, furnishes us with several such
monuments representing the earliest stage of the growth in
question. One of special importance is Concordia Regularis,
which contains rules for divine service in English monasteries, and
which was composed during the reign of Edgar (959—975). In
this, we have the oldest extant example in European literature of
the theatrical recital of an alternating song in church. These
rules prescribe that, during service in the night before Easter,
an alternating song between the three women approaching the
grave, and the angel watching on it, shall be recited; the monk
who sings the words of the angel is to take his seat, clad in an
alb and with a palm-twig in his hand, in a place representing
the tomb; three other monks, wearing hooded capes and with
censers in their hands, are to approach the tomb at a slow pace, as
if in quest of something. This alternating song was composed at
St Gallen about the year 900 and was intended to be sung during
mass on Easter morning? ; the statement as to its theatrical
1 The original is as follows:
Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae ?
Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum, o caelicolae.
Non est hic, surrexit, sicut praedixerat. Ite, nuntiate, quia surrexit de sepulchro.


## p. 37 (#61) ##############################################

a
Liturgical Drama
37
production can hardly be a fiction that originated at St Gallen, or
Ekkehard, the historian of that monastery, who generally gives
detailed reports of such matters, would surely not have failed to
mention it. But the custom, undoubtedly, is of continental origin;
in the preface to Concordia Regularis, it is expressly stated
that customs of outlandish monasteries, such as Fleury-sur-Loire
and Ghent, served as models for the present composition; and, in
the description of the ceremonies at the place which is to represent
the tomb, reference is made to a commendable practice of
priests in some monasteries who ‘had introduced this custom, in
order to fortify the unlearned people in their faith. ' These words
also reveal to us the original purpose of Christian drama: it was
to be a sort of living picture-book; the people, ignorant of Latin,
were to perceive by sight what was inaccessible to the ear. For
this reason, also, the tendency to place the whole action visibly
before the eyes of the spectator, to leave nothing to be done behind
the scenes or told by messengers, prevailed in medieval drama
from the very beginning. Thus, the chief difference between
ancient classical and modern romantic drama manifests itself
in the first stage of medieval drama.
That the theatrical development of Easter celebrations in
England did not stop short at this initial stage is proved by several
MSS, more especially by one of the fourteenth century, and of
Sarum origin, where the scene is enlarged by various additions,
including a representation of the race to the tomb run by Peter
and John (St John xx, 4). Nor can it be doubted that, in England
as on the continent, & drama on Christ's birth and childhood
gradually shaped itself out of the Christmas service, where the
dramatic development likewise began with an alternating song ;
thus, e. g. , the tin crowns, mentioned in an inventory of Salisbury
cathedral, drawn up in 1222, were evidently for the use of the
magi at the crib of Bethlehem.
Another species of Latin church drama consisted of the plays
acted by pupils in monastery schools in honour of their patron
saints. The younger pupils honoured as their patron St Nicholas,
whose cult, after the transportation of his body from Asia Minor to
Bari in 1087, spread over all Europe, and of whom legends told
how, on one occasion, he restored to life three convent pupils put
to death for the sake of their money. The patron of older pupils
was St Catharine of Alexandria, who had been victorious in
disputes against heathen philosophers. The best evidence of the
existence of these plays is, again, furnished from England. About


## p. 38 (#62) ##############################################

38
The Early Religious Drama
the year 1110, Godefroy of Le Mans, a Frenchman, headmaster of
the monastery school at Dunstable, caused his pupils to perform
a play on St Catharine; as costumes for the players, he borrowed
church robes from the abbey of St Albans, to which the school
belonged. As it chanced that, on the following night, these
robes were burnt in his lodgings, Godefroy-80 Matthew Paris
tells us-offered himself in compensation and entered the monas-
tery as a monk. But the most remarkable of all school dramas
are those composed by Hilarius, a pupil of Abelard, about 1125.
Hilarius, probably, was an Englishman, for a large proportion of
his verses are addressed to English persons ; at all events, he is
the first definite personality in the way of a dramatic author who
crosses the student's path. In the collection of his poems, worldly
merriment and loose libertinism are apparent, together with all
the enchanting melody characteristic of the songs of vagrant clerks.
This collection contains three small religious dramas, two of which
belong to the Christmas and Easter-cycles, respectively; the third
is a half-humorous play about St Nicholas, who helps a bar-
barus to recover a treasure stolen from him. In this play, the
poet intersperses his Latin verses with French.
The often-quoted mention by William Fitzstephen of religious
plays in London may also, possibly, relate to performances in Latin.
Fitzstephen observes, in his Life of Thomas Becket (c. 1180), that
London, instead of the spectacula theatralia acted in Rome,
possesses other, holier, plays-representations of miracles wrought
by holy confessors, or of the tribulations in which the con-
stancy of martyrs splendidly manifested itself. It is, however,
possible that performances in Anglo-Norman are here intended;
for we see that in France, too, after the vernacular language
had taken possession of the drama, subjects from legends of the
saints were preferred to Scriptural themes. It is well worth note
that here, for the first time, we hear of dramatised martyria,
which take a prominent place in the religious répertoire of the
later Middle Ages. By 'miracles,' it would seem that chiefly
those are to be understood which saints wrought after their
death, when invoked by their faithful worshippers. In any case,
all the miracles produced in the Nicholas plays are of this sort;
and, in France, the application of the word ‘miracle,' as a
theatrical term, continued to be restricted to plays treating of
subjects of this kind only; whereas, in England, it assumed a more
general meaning. Thus, in the statutes of Lichfield cathedral,
c. 1190, mention is made of repraesentatio miraculorum in nocte


## p. 39 (#63) ##############################################

The Vernacular in Medieval Drama
39
Paschae; and bishop Grosseteste, likewise, seems to use the word
in a more general sense, when ordering, in 1244, the suppression
of miracula in the diocese of Lincoln.
The use of the vernacular as the language of religious drama
was not brought about in England by any process analogous to
that observable in continental countries. For the normal develop-
ment of the English language was interrupted by the Norman
conquest, in consequence of which the chief offices in bishoprics
and abbeys were occupied by men of foreign origin. Thus it
happened that the oldest vernacular dramas written in England
belong not to English, but to French, literary history: the play
of Adam and the play of the Resurrection, the oldest two
dramatic poems in the French language, were, according to general
opinion, composed in England in the twelfth century. Only a
very small number of dramatic works and accounts of performances
have been preserved belonging to the long period which begins
with the introduction of the vernacular into medieval drama and
ends at the point at which it had reached its height—that is,
from about 1200 to 1400—in England, as well as in Germany
and France. The material is insufficient for reconstructing the
process of growth, and the historian must needs limit his task
to that of a mere recorder. Later monuments, however, suffice
to indicate how, in this domain too, the native English element
regained its superiority. A remarkable document has been dis-
covered recently at Shrewsbury, which shows how, in English
literature also, the vernacular drama was prepared by the insertion
of vernacular verses in Latin songs. The MS, written in a
northern dialect, is not a complete play, but consists of three
parts written out in full in both English and Latin, with the
respective cues : namely, the part of one of the three Maries at
the tomb, the part of a shepherd at Christ's nativity and the part
of a disciple on the way to Emmaus. The English words para-
phrase the Latin by which they are preceded; but they are not,
like the Latin, provided with musical notes. As the vernacular
found its way into Latin texts, declamation simultaneously took
its place by the side of song, which, till then, had been the only
form in use. Here, we observe a remarkable analogy to the Easter
play of Treves, which represents the same transitional stage in the
history of the German drama.
The earliest purely English drama known to us (if ten Brink's
date be right) was a play on Jacob and Esau, now only
preserved as part of one of the large collections of mysteries of


## p. 40 (#64) ##############################################

40
Religious Drama
The Early
the fifteenth century, the Towneley Mysteries, where it is dis-
tinguished from its surroundings by its short, detached manner
of representing facts, as well as by the simplicity of its versi-
fication (short riming couplets). It is possible that this play,
in its original connection, belonged to a series of prophetical
plays: that is to say, plays in which some of the chief passages from
Old Testament history are selected in chronological order, and
which were produced in the Christmas season, with the intention
of showing forth the birth of Christ as the fulfilment and con-
clusion of the whole process of historical evolution preceding it.
Hereupon, however, the tendency manifested itself to compose
in English, too, legendary narratives of miracles, besides Bible
stories. We met with early instances of this in the period immedi-
ately after the Norman conquest; and the custom was specially
fostered by the increasing cult of the Virgin Mary in the Roman
Catholic church. Ever since the great religious movement of the
eleventh century, we find in all European literatures a multitude
of miraculous stories, which relate how those who devote them-
selves to the service of Mary are aided by her in seasons of
oppression and peril, and how her protection is not denied even
to wrongdoers and criminals, if they but show her the reverence
which is her due. Dramatic handlings of the miracles of Mary
are particularly frequent in French literature, where an example
occurs so far back as the thirteenth century; and, in a MS dating
from the beginning of the fifteenth century, no less than forty
of these plays are preserved. Events which have, originally, nothing
to do with the legend of Mary are here, also, represented in dramatic
form: thus, for instance, the story of Bertha, mother of Charle-
magne, is fitted into this cycle by the single link of the heroine's
losing her way in a wood, where the Mother of God appears to her
and consoles her. Such plays were probably known and popular
in England also, though only one possible specimen of this group is
now extant. In a parchment roll of the fourteenth century,
a single part belonging to a drama in the east midland
dialect has been preserved: that of a duke Moraud. It is still
recognisable that this drama was based on a story widely spread
in medieval literature: that of a daughter who lived in incest
with her father and, to keep the crime secret, murdered her child
and her mother ; whereupon, the father repenting of his sin, she
murdered him also, but, shortly afterwards, fell herself into a state
of deep contrition, confessed her crimes with tears and died a re-
pentant sinner. This story was certainly quite suitable for dramatic
a


## p. 41 (#65) ##############################################

Progressive Popularity of Religious Drama 41
treatment after the manner of the miracles of Mary; though this
cannot be said to be satisfactorily proved by the one part pre-
served, that of the father. From the first words, addressed by the
duke to the spectators, we learn that the play was produced for
payment within an enclosed space ('fold')—whether by the
members of some brotherhood, as was usually the case with French
miracles, is not evident.
A remarkable proof of the widespread popularity of religious
plays at this period is furnished by the Manuel des Pechiez by
William of Wadington, composed, probably, about the end of
the thirteenth century, and translated into English out of the
author's clumsy Anglo-Norman as early as 1303. William of
Wadington finds no fault with the representation in churches
of Christ's burial and resurrection, for this promotes piety; but
he most energetically censures the foolish clergy who, dressed up
in masks and provided with borrowed horses and armour, perform
in the streets and churchyards plays of the sort generally called
miracles. About the beginning of the thirteenth century we meet
with an account of such a performance in St John's churchyard at
Beverley, where the resurrection, 'according to traditional custom,
was acted in word and gesture by people in disguise. The per-
formance, perhaps, took place in English ; at least, we are told
that boys climbed up into the triforium gallery of the church, in
order better to see the action and hear the dialogue from the height
of the windows ; on which occasion, one boy fell down into the
church and was saved by a miracle. A poem on Christ's descent
to hell, from the middle of the thirteenth century (The Har-
rowing of Hell), which has often been called the oldest English
drama, does not, in reality, belong to this species; it is, for the most
part, in dialogue; but, in the beginning, the author says: 'A strif
will I tellen on, Of Jesu and of Satan'; and, at the end, he likewise
speaks in his own person. Evidently, the poem was intended to be
delivered, with changes of voice, by a professional reciter—an art
that had been brought to great perfection by the wandering
jongleurs.
From the last period of the Middle Ages—otherwise than for
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—we have an abundance
of texts and documentary statements. We can perceive how, at
this time, in England, just as in Germany and France, the great
advance of town life caused religious drama likewise to progress
with increasing vigour, the plays constantly assuming larger
dimensions. Historians of literature, from Dodsley onwards,


## p. 42 (#66) ##############################################

42
The Early Religious Drama
usually call these large dramas of the late Middle Ages by the
name, given them in France, 'mysteries'; whereas, in England,
the simple word 'play' was generally used. The treatment of
facts from Bible story is much the same in England and in other
countries ; additions, intended either to adorn the argument
poetically or to furnish the actions of the dramatis personae with
a psychological foundation, are here, as elsewhere, not of the author's
own invention, but are taken over from ecclesiastical literature, for
the most part from the works of contemplative theologians absorbed
in meditation on the work of salvation, the passion, the pains of
the Blessed Virgin, or from the sermons of enthusiastic preachers,
whose brilliant imagination, in its lofty flight, brought before their
audience all the different stages of our Lord's life and passion.
Thus, in the York Mysteries, use is made of one of the most
famous works of contemplative literature, the Meditations of
St Bonaventura ; from this source, for instance, are borrowed the
following details: Joseph, at Christ's birth, observes how the ox
and the ass press close to the crib in which the Child lies, in order
to protect it by their warm breath from the cold; and Mary adores
the new-born as Father and Son. Some decorative additions,
too, can be traced back to the works of medieval Bible com-
mentators-above all, to the most erudite and famous work of this
sort, the Postilla of Nicholas of Lyra. The appearance of
Mary Magdalene, for instance, in the mystery called by her name,
surrounded by the seven deadly sins, is founded on Lyra's inter-
pretation of the words in the Gospel of St Mark (xvi, 9) as to the
seven devils driven out of her by Jesus. When the Gospel of St
John tells us (viii, 7) how Christ, after the adulteress had been
brought before Him, wrote something with His finger on the
ground, but, during the writing, looked up and said to the scribes :
'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
at her,' whereat the scribes went away one after another, Lyra
explains that Christ had written the secret sins of the scribes in
the sand; and this explanation is followed by the authors of
the mysteries. Some additions, again, are from the apocryphal
Gospels. Thus, for instance, in the York Mysteries, the standards
in Pilate's house bow of themselves at the entrance of Christ. In
this way, many agreements between French and English plays can
be accounted for, which used to be wrongly explained by the
supposition that English poets had used French models; as a
matter of fact, these coincidences are either accidental or due to
the identity of intellectual aliment and conformity of religious
6


## p. 43 (#67) ##############################################

Traditional and Original Elements 43
thought throughout the whole of society in the Middle Ages.
Only in the case of several purely theatrical effects can it be
supposed that they came over from France, where the art of stage
management was more developed than anywhere else.
On the whole, however, in considering these mysteries, we
cannot escape the impression that, neither in Germany nor in
France and England, were the later Middle Ages a period of
great poetical splendour. True, in England, authors of mysteries
attach a great value to artistic metrical form ; so early as the
miracle of duke Moraud, manifold and complicated forms of
stanzas are used; but this is an artistic embellishment which is not
necessarily advantageous to the vivid interchange of dramatic
speech. It would, however, be unjust to judge these plays alto-
gether from a literary standard. The authors, apparently, had
scarcely any other intention than, by recasting traditional materials
from their narrative form into a dramatic mould, to make
concrete representation possible; they had but little thought of
their productions as procuring literary enjoyment by reading.
Only once is any reference made in any English play to a reader:
namely, in a play on the lowering of Christ from the cross,
intended for performance on Good Friday and, therefore, pre-
serving a more severe style. It was composed about the middle
of the fifteenth century; but, in the MS, which dates from the
beginning of the sixteenth century, the play is preceded by a pro-
logue, exhorting pious souls to read the tract ensuing. It is equally
characteristic that, in England, during the whole of this period, no
authors of religious dramas are known by name, and that not a
single play appears to have been printed.
In England, as everywhere, it is in comic scenes that writers
of mysteries are most original. Here, of course, they could
not borrow anything from theological authors, and they moved in
a domain much more appropriate to the spirit of the later Middle
Ages than the tragical. If, in the fragmentary remains of the
English religious drama of earlier times, the element of burlesque
is entirely missing, this, assuredly, can be nothing else than mere
accident; the mingling of comic with tragic elements, which is
characteristic of the romanticism of the medieval drama, must, be-
yond doubt, here as elsewhere, have been accomplished at a period
when Latin was still the language, and the church the place, of these
performances; the protests of some rigorous moralists against
religious drama, mentioned above, are, unmistakably, to be explained
in the main, in England as well as in other countries, by this


## p. 44 (#68) ##############################################

44 The Early Religious Drama
!
intrusion of the comic element. Some comic effects in English
mysteries belong to the common and international stock of literary
property : such, for instance, as the merry devil Tutivillus or
Titinillus, whose special task it is to watch and denounce women
who talk in church. Another comic intermezzo, a grotesque
dance, performed by the Jews, with accompaniment of music,
round the cross on which Christ hangs, is to be met with
not only in the Coventry Mysteries, but, likewise, in some German
mystery plays Other comic devices, chiefly in the Mary
Magdalene mysteries and some of those in the shepherds' scenes of
the Christmas plays, seem to be borrowed from France. But,
besides these, in England as well as in other countries, it is
precisely in comic scenes that national traditions were developed.
A scene especially characteristic of English mysteries is the quarrel
between Noah and his shrewish wife, who obstinately opposes her
husband's will when he is about to take the whole family into the
newly built ark.
The performance of one of these mysteries was a serious ander-
taking, requiring long preparation and considerable expense.
On the continent, the stage for performances was generally erected
in a large open square, and on the stage were represented, one
beside the other, the places of action—thus, in a passion play, the
garden of Gethsemane, the praetorium of Pilate, the hill of Calvary,
the entrance to hell. The personages moved from one place to the
next before the eyes of the spectators; if the performance, as was
more frequently the case, lasted for several days together, change
of scenery was possible. Such monster productions were known in
London in the time of Richard II; thus, in 1384, the 'clerks' of
London gave a ludus valde sumptuosus at Skinnerswell, which
lasted five days; in 1391, one, of four days, on the Old and New
Testaments; then, again, in 1409, in the presence of Henry IV, one
lasting four days, comprising events from the creation of the world
to the last judgment. For such a stage arrangement, the play of
Mary Magdalene, preserved in the Digby MS, was, likewise, in-
tended, and, undoubtedly, many other English mysteries of whose
existence only documentary evidence survives. But, in the majority
of texts and accounts of performances handed down to us, we find
a different sort of mise-en-scène adopted, in accordance with
national custom and preference.
The usual method of treatment developed, not like that
mentioned above, from liturgical scenes performed within churches,
but from the procession on Corpus Christi day. In 1264, the feast


## p. 45 (#69) ##############################################

Corpus Christi Plays
45
of Corpus Christi was instituted ; this soon grew into a solemnity
in the celebration of which the church displayed her highest
splendour. The Corpus Christi procession was a sort of triumphal
progress, by which the church, after centuries of struggle,
solemnised her absolute and full victory over the minds of men,
and by which, at the same time, she satisfied the perennial in-
clination of the people for disguisings and festal shows. Very soon
it became customary for groups to walk in the Corpus Christi
procession, which groups, in their succession, were to typify the whole
ecclesiastical conception of universal history from the creation to
the judgment day. It was a frequent practice to distribute the
arrangement of these groups among the different crafts, which
always made it a point of ambition to be represented in the
procession as splendidly as possible. In some countries, these
processions assumed a dramatic character, especially in England,
where the processional drama was fully developed as early as the
fourteenth century. Here, it was customary for each of the crafts
presenting a certain group to explain its significance in a dramatic
scene. The different scenes, whenever possible, were distributed
in such a way as to bear some relation to the occupation of
the craft that performed it: e. g. , the task of producing Noah's
ark was entrusted to the boat-builders, the adoration of the
magi to the goldsmiths. 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 in passing, and on which the respective scenes were
performed. For instance, the first craft at the first station
acted the creation of the world; then it passed to the place
where it stopped for the second time, and repeated the perform-
ance; at the same time, the second craft acted at the first station
the sin of our first parents, and afterwards repeated the same at
the second station. In the meantime, the first craft had proceeded
to the third station, and the third craft began at the first station
to act the play of Cain and Abel. If, in such a processional play,
one character appeared in several scenes, it was, necessarily, repre-
sented by different persons : Christ on the Mount of Olives was a
different individual from Christ before Pilate or on Golgotha. As
early as 1377, Corpus Christi plays are mentioned at Beverley;
and, in 1394, this system of plays is spoken of in an ordinance of
the municipality of York, as of old tradition. The earliest docu-
mentary mention of them in this city dates from the year 1378.
By this stage arrangement, every drama was divided into
>


## p. 46 (#70) ##############################################

46
The Early Religious Drama
a series of little plays. The progress of the action was, necessarily,
interrupted as one pageant rolled away and another approached;
on each occasion, order had to be kept, and the attention of
the multitude crowding the streets had to be attracted anew.
The function of calling the people to order was, wherever feasible,
entrusted to a tyrant, say Herod, the murderer of the Innocents,
or Pilate, who, dressed up grotesquely and armed with a re-
sounding sword, raged about among the audience and imposed
silence on the disturberg of peace. Repetitions, also, frequently
became necessary, in order to take up again the broken thread of
action; on the other hand, authors could not give way so freely
to an easy flow of speech as in 'standing plays' (plays performed
in one fixed place, so called in contrast with processional plays).
Of such processional plays, three complete, or almost complete,
cycles have been handed down to us—those of York, Wakefield and
Chester. Besides these, we possess single plays from the cycles of
Coventry, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Norwich; two fifteenth century
plays of Abraham and Isaac are also, probably, to be considered as
originally forming part of a cycle. Of the collective mysteries,
none is uniform in character; in all of them may be distin-
guished, besides older parts, sundry later additions, omissions and
transpositions ; and a comparison of the collections with each
other reveals mutual agreements as to whole scenes as well as
to single stanzas. Nevertheless, each cycle has distinguishing
qualities and a pronounced character of its own. The York series,
preserved in a fifteenth century MS and consisting of forty-nine
single plays (inclusive of the Innholders' fragment), is notable
for many original features in the representation of the passion.
Tyrants, especially, and the enemies of our Lord, are depicted with
powerful realism : Annas, for example, shows a grim joy at
holding the defenceless victim in his power, but then falls into
a violent passion at what he takes to be that victim's obduracy;
he says, 'we myght as wele talke tille a tome tonne'; he even
attempts to strike Jesus, but Caiaphas holds him back. When
Herod addresses Jesus in a jumble of French and Latin, and
Jesus gives no answer, the bystanders think He is afraid of the
boisterous tyrant. But, above all, the figure of Judas is repre-
sented in a way more dramatic and more impressive than in any
other medieval mystery, both in the scene where he offers his
services as betrayer, and in another where, in an agony of
remorse, he implores the high priest to take back the money and
spare Jesus. He is coldly refused, and, when he grows more and


## p. 47 (#71) ##############################################

Towneley Mysteries
47
more violently importunate, Caiaphas bids him be off, or he will
be taught how to behave to his betters.
The so-called Towneley Mysteries are preserved in a MS of
the second half of the fifteenth century, and consist of thirty-two
plays. They were, probably, intended to be produced by the
crafts of Wakefield town, and it seems that, in this case, they were
not played on movable scenes but on fixed stages erected along
the route of the procession, so that the actors did not go to
the spectators, but vice versa. The characteristic feature of this
collection is a certain realistic buoyancy and, above all, the
abundant display of a very robust kind of humour. Thus, the
merry devil Tutivillus has found access into the last judgment
scene (which, otherwise, is in accordance with the corresponding
play in the York collection); the family quarrels in Noah's house-
hold are nowhere else depicted so realistically; and, in the shepherds’
Christmas Eve scenes, the adventures of Mak the sheep-stealer
take the foremost place. But the most grotesque figure of all
is certainly Cain, who appears as the very type of a coarse and
unmannerly rustic. According to medieval tradition, the reason
why the Lord did not look graciously upon Cain's offering was
that Cain offered it unwillingly; and thence grew the commonplace
of church literature, that Cain was the prototype of stingy
peasants who tried to evade the obligation of paying tithes to the
priests. Though moral teaching does not play a great part in
mysteries, clerical authors repeatedly made use of the occasion
to impress the payment of tithe upon peasants as an important
moral duty; and nowhere is this done with so palpable a directness
as here. Cain selects sixteen sheaves for his offering, and, in doing
SO, he feels more and more heavy at heart, until, instead of sixteen,
he gives but two. And when, after the ungracious reception of
his offering, he swears and curses, the Lord Himself appears and
says that the recompense for the offering will be exactly according
as Cain delivers his tithes in a right or in a wrong proportion.