THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS
[_Bibliographical Note._—The best general account of the
vernacular religious drama of Europe is that of W. Creizenach,
_Geschichte des neueren Dramas_ (vol. i. 1893), Books 2-4;
and this may be supplemented by K. Hase, _Das geistliche
Schauspiel_ (1858, trans. A. W. Jackson, 1880); R. Proelss,
_Geschichte des neueren Dramas_ (1880-3), vol. i. ch. 1; C.
Davidson, _English Mystery Plays_ (1892), and G. Gregory
Smith, _The Transition Period_ (1900), ch. 7. There is also
the cumbrous work of J. L. Klein, _Geschichte des Dramas_
(1865-86). The nearest approach to a general bibliography is
F. H. Stoddard, _References for Students of Miracle Plays
and Mysteries_ (1887).—For Germany may be added R. Froning,
_Das Drama des Mittelalters_ (1890-1); K. Pearson, _The
German Passion Play_ (in _The Chances of Death and Other
Studies in Evolution_, 1897, vol. ii); L. Wirth, _Die Oster-
und Passionsspiele bis zum 16. Jahrhundert_ (1889); J. E.
Wackernell, _Altdeutsche Passionsspiele aus Tirol_, 1897;
R. Heinzel, _Beschreibung des geistlichen Schauspiels im
deutschen Mittelalter_ (1898), and the articles by F. Vogt on
_Mittelhochdeutsche Literatur_, § 73, and H. Jellinghaus on
_Mittelniederdeutsche Literatur_, § 5, in H. Paul, _Grundriss
der germanischen Philologie_, vol. ii (2nd ed. 1901). F. Vogt
gives a few additional recent references. Older works are F.
J. Mone, _Schauspiele des Mittelalters_ (1846); H. Reidt,
_Das geistliche Schauspiel des Mittelalters in Deutschland_
(1868), and E. Wilken, _Geschichte der geistlichen Spiele in
Deutschland_ (1872). Many of the books named print texts.
Lists of others are given by Pearson and by Heinzel, and
full bibliographical notices by K. Goedeke, _Grundriss zur
Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung_ (2nd ed.), vol. i (1884),
§§ 67, 92, and vol. ii (1886), § 145.—For France, L. Petit de
Julleville, _Les Mystères_ (1880), is excellent and exhaustive,
and contains many bibliographical references, although the
‘Liste des ouvrages à consulter’ intended as part of the work
seems never to have been printed. M. de Julleville is also the
writer of the article on _Théâtre religieux_ in the _Hist. de
la Langue et de la Littérature françaises_, vol. ii (1896). G.
Gröber’s article on _Französische Litteratur_, §§ 129, 362 in
his _Grundriss der romanischen Philologie_, vol. ii (1901-2),
brings the subject up to date and adds some recent authorities.
Mortensen, _Medeltidsdramat i Frankrike_ (1899), is beyond my
range. G. Paris, _La Littérature française au moyen âge_ (2nd
ed., 1890), is a brief summary, and L. Clédat, _Le Théâtre
au moyen âge_ (1897), a useful popular account. G. Bapst,
_Essai sur l’Histoire du Théâtre_ (1893), is good on matters
of stage arrangement. Older works are O. Le Roy, _Études sur
les Mystères_ (1837), and J. de Douhet, _Dictionnaire des
Mystères_ (1854). Only fragments of C. Magnin’s investigations
are available in the _Journal des Savants_ (1846-7) and the
_Journal général de l’Instruction publique_ (1834-6). Texts are
in A. Jubinal, _Mystères du 15ᵉ siècle_ (1837); Monmerqué et
Michel, _Théâtre français au moyen âge_ (1842); E. Fournier,
_Le Théâtre français avant la Renaissance_ (1872), and the
series published by the _Société des Anciens Textes français_.
The most recent text of _Adam_ is that by K. Grass, _Das
Adamsspiel_ (1891). M. Wilmotte, _Les Passions allemandes du
Rhin dans leur Rapport avec l’ancien Théâtre français_ (1898),
deals with the interrelations of the French and German texts.
C. Hastings, _Le Théâtre français et anglais_ (1900, trans.
1901), is a compilation of little merit.—For Italy there is A.
D’Ancona, _Origini del Teatro italiano_ (2nd ed. 1891), with
texts in the same writer’s _Sacre Rappresentazioni_ (1872), in
Monaci, _Appunti per la Storia del Teatro italiano_ (_Rivista
di Filologia Romana_, vols. i, ii), and in F. Torraca, _Il
Teatro italiano dei Secoli xiii, xiv, e xv_ (1885).—For Spain,
A. F. von Schack, _Geschichte der dramatischen Litteratur
und Kunst in Spanien_ (1845-54), and G. Baist, _Spanische
Litteratur_, §§ 19, 63, in Gröber’s _Grundriss_, vol. ii
(1897).—For the minor Romance dramatic literatures, Provençal,
Catalan, Portuguese, I must be content to refer to the
last-named authority, and for that of Holland to the similar
_Grundriss_ of H. Paul.]
The evolution of the liturgic play described in the last two chapters may
be fairly held to have been complete about the middle of the thirteenth
century. The condition of any further advance was that the play should
cease to be liturgic. The following hundred years are a transition
period. During their course the newly-shaped drama underwent a process
which, within the limits imposed by the fact that its subject-matter
remained essentially religious, may be called secularization. Already,
when Hilarius could write plays to serve indifferently for use at Matins
or at Vespers, the primitive relation of _repraesentatio_ to liturgy had
been sensibly weakened. By the middle of the fourteenth century it was
a mere survival. From ecclesiastical the drama had become popular. Out
of the hands of the clergy in their naves and choirs, it had passed to
those of the laity in their market-places and guild-halls. And to this
formal change corresponded a spiritual or literary one, in the reaction
of the temper of the folk upon the handling of the plays, the broadening
of their human as distinct from their religious aspect. In their origin
_officia_ for devotion and edification, they came, by an irony familiar
to the psychologist, to be primarily _spectacula_ for mirth, wonder, and
delight.
It is, however, the formal change with which I am here mainly concerned;
and of this it will be the object of the present chapter to trace as
briefly as possible the outlines. The principal factor is certainly
that tendency to expansion and coalescence in the plays which has been
already seen at work in the production of such elaborate pieces as the
_Quem quaeritis_ of the Tours or that of the Benedictbeuern manuscript,
the Fleury _Stella_, the Rouen _Prophetae_ and the _Antichristus_. This
culminates in the formation of those great dramatic cycles of which the
English Corpus Christi plays are perhaps the most complete examples.
But before we can approach these, we must consider a little further the
independent development of the Easter and Christmas groups.
It is noteworthy that, during the period now under discussion, the
importance of Christmas falls markedly into the background when compared
with that of Easter; and a reason for this will presently suggest
itself. The _Stella_, indeed, as such, appears to have almost reached
its term[244]; for such further growth as there is we must look chiefly
to the _Prophetae_. The process by which little episodic dramas, as
of Balaam and Nebuchadnezzar at Rouen, bud out from the stem of the
_Prophetae_, is one capable of infinite extension. By 1204 the play had
found its way to Riga, on the extreme border of European civilization,
and the _ludus prophetarum ordinatissimus_ there performed included
scenes from the wars of Gideon, David, and Herod[245]. The text of the
Riga play is unfortunately not preserved, but the famous Norman-French
_Ordo repraesentationis Adae_ is an example of a _Prophetae_, in which
the episodes, no longer confined to the stories of the prophets in the
stricter sense, have outgrown and cast into the shade the original
intention[246]. Most things about the _Adam_ are in dispute. Scholars
differ as to whether the manuscript belongs to the twelfth or the
thirteenth century, and as to whether it is the work of a Norman or
of an Anglo-Norman scribe. The piece is manifestly incomplete, but
how far incomplete it is hard to say. What we have consists of three
sections. There is a long play of nearly six hundred lines on the Fall
and Expulsion from Paradise, in which the speakers are Adam and Eve, the
_Figura_ of God and the _Diabolus_. Then comes a much shorter one of Cain
and Abel; and finally a _Prophetae_, which breaks off after the part
of Nebuchadnezzar. Of the general character of this interesting piece
something further will be said presently, but the point to notice here is
that, although Adam and Abel may of course be regarded as prophetic types
of Christ, if not exactly prophets, yet there is a real extension of the
dramatic content of the _Prophetae_ in the prefixing to it of a treatment
of so momentous a subject as the Fall[247]. For with the addition of the
Fall to the already dramatized Redemption, the framework of a structural
unity was at once provided for the great cosmic drama of the future. And
the important motive seems to have been still further emphasized in a
lost play performed at Regensburg in 1195, which treated, besides the
Prophets and the Creation and Fall of Man, the Creation of the Angels and
the Fall of Lucifer[248].
Yet another step towards the completion of the Christmas cycle was
taken when the _Prophetae_ and the _Stella_ were brought together in a
single drama. Such a merging is represented by two related texts from
German sources[249]. One is from a fourteenth-century manuscript now
at St. Gall[250]. The structure is of the simplest. The setting of the
pseudo-Augustine sermon has altogether disappeared. Eight prophets
deliver a speech apiece, announcing their own identities after a naïve
fashion—_Ich bin der alte Balaam_, and so forth—which strongly recalls
the ‘folk’ or ‘mummers’’ plays. Then follows without break a _Stella_,
whose scenes range from the Marriage of the Virgin to the Death of Herod.
Far more elaborate is the Christmas play found in the famous repertory
of the _scholares vagantes_ from Benedictbeuern[251]. A peculiarity of
this is that for the first time Augustine appears _in propria persona_.
He presides over the prophecies, taking the place of the _Precentor_ of
the Limoges _Prophetae_, and the _Appellatores_ or _Vocatores_ of Laon
and Rouen. The only prophets are Isaiah, Daniel, the Sibyl, Aaron, and
Balaam, and there is once more a special episode for Balaam’s ass.
‘_Quinto loco procedat Balaam sedens in asina et cantans_:
vadam, vadam, ut maledicam populo huic.
_Cui occurrat Angelus evaginato gladio dicens_:
cave, cave ne quicquam aliud quam tibi dixero loquaris.
_Et asinus cui insidet Balaam perterritus retrocedat. Postea
recedat angelus et Balaam cantet hoc_:
orietur stella ex Iacob, etc.’
A long _disputatio_ follows between Augustine, an _Archisynagogus_, and
the prophets, in which at one point no less a person intervenes than
the _Episcopus Puerorum_, affording an interesting example of that
interrelation between the religious plays and the festivities of the
_triduum_ and the Feast of Fools, about which something has already
been said[252]. Presently the prophets retire and sit _in locis suis
propter honorem ludi_. The _Stella_ extends from the Annunciation to
the Flight into Egypt. Here the original play seems to have ended; but
a later writer has added a scene in Egypt, in which the idols fall at
the approach of the Holy Family, and some fragments adapted from the
_Antichristus_, and hardly worked up into anything that can be called a
scene.
The form of Christmas play, then, characteristic of the transition
century, consists of a version of the _Prophetae_ extended at the
beginning by a dramatic treatment of the Fall, or extended at the end
by the absorption of the _Stella_. It so happens that we do not, during
the period in question, find examples in which both extensions occur
together. But this double amplification would only be the slightest step
in advance, and may perhaps be taken for granted. The Rouen _Mystère
de l’Incarnation et la Nativité_ of 1474 offers, at a much later date,
precisely the missing type[253].
The Easter cycle, also, received memorable accretions during the period.
The _Quem quaeritis_ of the Tours manuscript, it will be remembered,
included a series of scenes beginning with the Setting of the Watch
before the Sepulchre, and ending with the Incredulity of Thomas.
Important additions had still to be made, even within the limits of
this _cadre_. One was a more complete treatment of the Resurrection
itself through the introduction of the figure of Christ stepping with
the _labarum_ out of the sepulchre, in place of a mere symbolical
indication of the mystery by the presence of angels with lighted candles
and the dismay of the soldiers[254]. Another, closely related to the
Resurrection, was the scene known as the Harrowing of Hell. This was
based upon the account of the _Descensus Christi ad Inferos_, the
victory over Satan, and the freeing from limbo of Adam and the other
Old Testament Fathers, which forms part of the apocryphal _Gospel of
Nichodemus_[255]. The narrative makes use of that _Tollite portas_
passage from the twenty-fourth Psalm, which we have already found
adapted to the use of more than one semi-dramatic ceremonial[256], and
naturally this found its way into the Harrowing of Hell, together with
the so-called _canticum triumphale_, a song of welcome by the imprisoned
souls:
‘Advenisti, desirabilis, quem exspectabamus in tenebris, ut educeres
hac nocte vinculatos de claustris.
te nostra vocabant suspiria.
te larga requirebant lamenta.
tu factus es spes desperatis, magna consolatio in tormentis.’
I cannot share the view of those who look upon the East Midland English
_Harrowing of Hell_ as intended for dramatic representation. The
prologues found in two of the three manuscripts leave it clear that
it was for recitation. It is in fact of the nature of an ‘estrif’ or
_débat_, and may be compared with an Anglo-Saxon poem of the eighth or
tenth century on the same subject[257]. But there is evidence that the
scene had found its way into the Easter cycle at least by the beginning
of the thirteenth century, for it occurs amongst the fragments of a
play of that date from Kloster Muri; and in later versions it assumed a
considerable prominence[258].
The liturgical drama proper abstained in the main from any strictly
dramatic representation of the Passion. The nearest approach to such a
thing is in the dialogued versions of the _Planctus Mariae_ and in the
Benedictbeuern _Ludus breviter de Passione_, which extends very slightly
beyond these. The central event of the transition period is, therefore,
the growth side by side with the _Quem quaeritis_ of a Passion play,
which in the end rather absorbs than is absorbed by it. A marked advance
in this direction is shown in an Anglo-Norman fragment, probably written
in the twelfth century, which includes, not indeed the Crucifixion
itself, but the Descent from the Cross, the Healing of Longinus, and the
Burial of Christ[259]. The first recorded Passion play is in Italy. It
took place at Siena about 1200[260]. In 1244 the Passion and Resurrection
were played together at Padua[261]. The earliest text of a Passion play
is contained in the Benedictbeuern manuscript[262]. It opens with the
Calling of Andrew and Peter, the Healing of the Blind, Zacchaeus and the
Entry into Jerusalem. Then follows a long episode of Mary Magdalen. She
is represented with her lover, buying cosmetics of a _Mercator_—we have
had the _Mercator_ in the _Quem quaeritis_ and in the _Sponsus_—and with
a profane song upon her lips:
‘Mundi delectatio dulcis est et grata,
cuius conversatio suavis et ornata.’
She is converted in a dream, puts on black, buys ointments from the same
_Mercator_, and adores the Lord in the house of Simon. Then come, far
more briefly treated, the Raising of Lazarus, the Betrayal by Judas, the
Last Supper, the Mount of Olives, the Passion itself, from the Taking in
Gethsemane to the Crucifixion. The introduction here of some _planctus
Mariae_ points to the _genesis_ of the drama, which closes with the
Begging of the Body of Christ by Joseph of Arimathaea. And so, at a blow,
as it were, the content of the Easter play is doubled. Certain episodes,
such as the Conversion of Mary Magdalen and the Raising of Lazarus had,
as we know, received an independent dramatic treatment; but in the main
the play before us, or its source, bears the character of a deliberate
composition on the lines of the pre-existing _Quem quaeritis_. That it
was to be followed in representation by a _Quem quaeritis_ may perhaps
be taken for granted. Indeed there is one personage, the wife of the
_Mercator_, who is named in a list at the beginning, but has no part in
the text as it stands[263]. She may have come into the Benedictbeuern
_Quem quaeritis_, of which a fragment only survives, and this may have
been intended for use, as might be convenient, either with the _Ludus
breviter de Passione_, or with the longer text now under consideration.
At all events, Passion and Resurrection are treated together in two
slightly later texts, one from the south of France[264], the other from
St. Gall[265]. The St. Gall Passion play takes the action back to the
beginning of the missionary life of Christ, giving the Marriage at Cana,
the Baptism, and the Temptation. It also includes a Harrowing of Hell.
Certain forms of the Passion play, as the conjoint Passion and
Resurrection may now be termed, show an approximation to the type of the
Christmas play. It is obvious that the Fall and the _Prophetae_ would
be as proper a prologue to the Passion which completes the Atonement
as to the Nativity which begins it. And the presence of Adam and other
Old Testament characters in the Harrowing of Hell would be the more
significant if in some earlier scene they had visibly been haled there.
The first trace of these new elements is in the St. Gall play, where the
Augustine of the _Prophetae_ is introduced to speak a prologue. A long
Frankfort play of the fourteenth century, of which unfortunately only
the stage directions and actors’ cues are preserved, carries the process
further[266]. Again Augustine acts as presenter. A _Prophetae_ begins the
performance, which ends with the Ascension, a _Disputatio Ecclesiae et
Synagogae_ and the baptizing of the incredulous Jews by Augustine. On the
other hand, the Fall forms the first part of an early fourteenth-century
Passion play from Vienna[267]. Both the Fall of Lucifer and that of
Adam and Eve are included, and there is a supplementary scene in hell,
into which the souls of a usurer, a monk, a robber, and a sorceress are
successively brought. Lucifer refuses to have anything to do with the
monk, an early use of the Tomlinson motive.
The dramatic evolution is now within measurable distance of the ‘cosmic’
type finally presented by the English Corpus Christi plays. Two further
steps are necessary: the juxtaposition of the Nativity and Passion scenes
behind their common Old Testament prologue, and the final winding up
of the action by the extension of it from the Ascension to the second
coming of the Christ in the Last Judgement. The eschatological scenes
of the _Sponsus_ and the _Antichristus_ are already available for such
an epilogue. That the whole of this vast framework was put together by
the beginning of the fourteenth century may be inferred from the notices
of two performances, in 1298 and 1303 respectively, at Cividale[268].
The first included the Passion, Resurrection, Ascension, Advent of
the Holy Spirit, and Advent of Christ to Judgement: the second added
to these the Creation, Annunciation, Nativity, with much else, and the
Antichrist. Any further development could now be merely episodic. The
text could be amplified at the fancy of the individual writer, or upon
the suggestion of the great epic narratives, such as the _Cursor Mundi_,
the _Passional_, the _Erlösung_[269]. An infinity of new scenes could be
added from the Old Testament[270], from the apocryphal gospels and acts,
from the historic narratives of the vengeance of the Crucified One upon
Rome and Jewry[271]. But beyond the limits of the fixed _cadre_ it was
now impossible to go, for these were coincident with the span of time and
eternity.
It is now necessary to consider briefly some modifications in the general
character of the religious plays which accompanied or resulted from this
great expansion of their scope. These all tend towards that process of
secularization, that relaxing of the close bonds between the nascent
drama and religious worship, which it is the especial object of this
chapter to illustrate. Of capital importance is the transference of the
plays from the interior of the church to its precincts, to the graveyard
or the neighbouring market-place. This must have been primarily a matter
of physical necessity. The growing length of the plays, the increasing
elaboration of their setting, made it cumbrous and difficult to
accommodate them within the walls. It is a big step from the early _Quem
quaeritis, Pastores_ or _Stella_, with their simple _mises-en-scène_ of
_sepulchrum_ and _praesepe_ to the complicated requirements, say, of the
Fleury group, the _tabernaculum in similitudinem castelli Emaus_ for the
_Peregrini_, the half-dozen _loca_, _domus_, or _sedes_ demanded by the
_Suscitatio Lazari_ or the _Conversio Pauli_. Still more exigent is the
_Antichristus_ with its _templum domini_ and its seven _sedes regales_,
and its space in between for marchings and counter-marchings and the
overthrowing of kings. Yet for a long time the church proved sufficient.
The Tours _Quem quaeritis_ and some, if not all, of the Fleury plays
were demonstrably played in the church. So was the Rouen _Prophetae_,
and an allusion of Gerhoh of Reichersberg makes it extremely probable
that so was the _Antichristus_[272]. One must conceive, I think, of the
performances as gradually spreading from choir to nave, with the _domus_,
_loca_, or _sedes_ set at intervals against the pillars, while the people
crowded to watch in the side aisles. It is in the twelfth century that
the plays first seek ampler room outside the church. Of the transition
plays dealt with in the present chapter, the _Adam_, the Benedictbeuern
Christmas play, the Anglo-Norman _Resurrection_, were certainly intended
for the open, and the contrary cannot be affirmed in any case with the
same assurance. Again, the Riga _Prophetae_ of 1204 was _in media Riga_,
the Padua Passion play of 1244 was in a meadow, the _Pratum Vallis_,
while in England an early thirteenth-century biographer of St. John
of Beverley records a miracle wrought at a Resurrection play in the
churchyard of the minster.
Of the type of performance now rendered possible, a very good notion is
given by the full stage directions of the _Adam_. These are so valuable
a document for the history of stage management that I must take leave to
excerpt from them somewhat liberally. The opening rubric recalls at once
the minute stage directions of Ibsen and the counsel to the players in
_Hamlet_.
‘A Paradise is to be made in a raised spot, with curtains and
cloths of silk hung round it at such a height that persons
in the Paradise may be visible from the shoulders upwards.
Fragrant flowers and leaves are to be set round about, and
divers trees put therein with hanging fruit, so as to give the
likeness of a most delicate spot. Then must come the Saviour
clothed in a dalmatic, and Adam and Eve be brought before him.
Adam is to wear a red tunic and Eve a woman’s robe of white,
with a white silk cloak; and they are both to stand before
the Figure, Adam the nearer with composed countenance, while
Eve appears somewhat more modest. And the Adam must be well
trained when to reply and to be neither too quick nor too
slow in his replies. And not only he, but all the personages
must be trained to speak composedly, and to fit convenient
gesture to the matter of their speech. Nor must they foist in a
syllable or clip one of the verse, but must enounce firmly and
repeat what is set down for them in due order. Whosoever names
Paradise is to look and point towards it.’
After a _lectio_ and a chant by the choir, the dialogue begins. The
_Figura_ instructs Adam and Eve as to their duties and inducts them into
Paradise.
‘Then the Figure must depart to the church and Adam and Eve
walk about Paradise in honest delight. Meanwhile the demons are
to run about the stage (_per plateas_), with suitable gestures,
approaching the Paradise from time to time and pointing out the
forbidden fruit to Eve, as though persuading her to eat it.
Then the Devil is to come and address Adam.’
The _diabolus_ thinks he is prevailing upon Adam. He joins the other
demons and make sallies about the _plateae_. Then he returns _hylaris et
gaudens_ to the charge. But he fails.
‘Then, sadly and with downcast countenance, he shall leave
Adam, and go to the doors of hell, and hold council with the
other demons. Thereafter he shall make a sally amongst the
people, and then approach Paradise on Eve’s side, addressing
her with joyful countenance and insinuating (_blandiens_)
manner.’
Eve, too, is hard to persuade, and is scolded by Adam for listening to
the _diabolus_. But when a _serpens artificiose compositus_ rises hard by
the trunk of the forbidden tree, she lends her ear, is won over, takes
the apple and gives it to Adam.
‘Then Adam is to eat part of the apple; and after eating it he
shall immediately recognize his sin and debase himself. He must
now be out of sight of the people, and shall put off his solemn
raiment, and put on poor raiment sewn together of fig-leaves,
and with an air of extreme dolour shall begin his lament.’
When the Figure ‘wearing a stole’ comes again, Adam and Eve hide in a
corner of Paradise, and when called upon stand up, ‘not altogether erect,
but for shame of their sin somewhat bowed and very sad.’ They are driven
out, and an angel with a radiant sword is put at the gate of Paradise.
The Figure returns to the church.
‘Then Adam shall have a spade and Eve a hoe, and they shall
begin to till the soil and sow corn therein. And when they
have sown, they shall go and sit down a while, as if wearied
with toil, and anon look tearfully at Paradise, beating their
breasts. Meanwhile shall come the devil and shall plant thorns
and thistles in their tillage, and avoid. And when Adam and Eve
come to their tillage and see the thorns and thistles sprung
up, they shall be smitten with violent grief and shall throw
themselves on the earth and sit there, beating their breasts
and thighs and betraying grief by their gestures. And Adam
shall begin a lament.’
Now the last scene is at hand.
‘Then shall come the devil and three or four devils with
him, carrying in their hands chains and iron fetters, which
they shall put on the necks of Adam and Eve. And some shall
push and others pull them to hell; and hard by hell shall be
other devils ready to meet them, who shall hold high revel
(_tripudium_) at their fall. And certain other devils shall
point them out as they come, and shall snatch them up and
carry them into hell; and there shall they make a great smoke
arise, and call aloud to each other with glee in their hell,
and clash their pots and kettles, that they may be heard
without. And after a little delay the devils shall come out and
run about the stage; but some shall remain in hell.’
The shorter play of Cain and Abel is similarly conceived. The sacrifices
are offered on two great stones ‘which shall have been made ready for
the purpose’; and at the end of the performance the devils hale off Cain
and Abel also to hell ‘beating Cain often; but Abel they shall lead more
gently.’ The prophets, who have been prepared in a secret spot, now
advance one by one and deliver their prophecies. Their appearance is
described much as in the earlier _Prophetae_, and it is noted that each
in turn at the finish of his harangue is to be led off to hell by the
devils.
Unless the _Adam_ extended much beyond the text left to us,
a comparatively small number of _loca_ would suffice for its
representation. The contemporary Anglo-Norman Resurrection play required
thirteen, as is set out at length in a versified prologue:
‘En ceste manere recitom
La seinte resurreccion.
Primerement apareillons
Tus les lius e les mansions:
Le crucifix primerement
E puis apres le monument.
Une jaiole i deit aver
Pur les prisons emprisoner.
Enfer seit mis de cele part,
E mansions de l’altre part,
E puis le ciel; et as estals
Primes Pilate od ces vassals.
Sis u set chivaliers aura.
Caïphas en l’altre serra;
Od lui seit la jeuerie,
Puis Joseph, cil d’Arimachie.
El quart liu seit danz Nichodemes.
Chescons i ad od sei les soens.
El quint les deciples Crist.
Les treis Maries saient el sist.
Si seit pourvéu que l’om face
Galilée en mi la place;
Jemaüs uncore i seit fait,
U Jhesu fut al hostel trait;
E cum la gent est tute asise,
E la pés de tutez parz mise,
Dan Joseph, cil d’Arimachie,
Venge a Pilate, si lui die.’
I have ventured to arrange these _lius_ (_loca_) and _mansions_ (_domus_)
or _estals_ (_sedes_), upon the indications of the prologue, in the
following plan:
[Illustration]
And I would point out that such a scheme is simply a continuation of the
arrangement down the choir and nave of a church suggested above[273].
The crucifix is where it would stand in the church, above the altar. The
place of the monument corresponds to that most usual for the _sepulchrum_
on the north side of the chancel. The positions of heaven and hell are
those in the former case of the stairs up to the rood-loft, in the
latter of the stairs down to the crypt; and what, in a church, should
serve for hell and heaven but crypt and rood-loft[274]? The Galilee
answers to the porch at the west end of the church, which we know to have
been so called[275]; and the castle of Emmaus stands in the middle of
the nave, just as it did in the Fleury _Peregrini_. With my conjectural
plan may be compared this actual plan of a sixteenth-century stage from
Donaueschingen, in which a similar principle is apparent, the three
divisions formed by cross-barriers corresponding to the three divisions
of a church—sanctuary, choir, nave[276].
[Illustration: PLAN OF DONAUESCHINGEN PASSION-PLAY STAGE (_sixteenth
century_).
A. B. C. The three divisions of the stage, corresponding to the nave,
choir, and sanctuary of a church.
1. The first door.
2. Hell.
3. The Garden of Gethsemane.
4. Mount Olivet.
5. The second door.
6. Herod’s palace.
7. Pilate’s palace.
8. The pillar of scourging.
9. The pillar for the cock.
10. The house of Caiaphas.
11. The house of Annas.
12. The house of the Last Supper.
13. The third door.
14, 15, 16, 17. Graves from which the dead arise.
18, 19. Crosses of the two thieves.
20. Cross of Christ.
21. The Holy Sepulchre.
22. Heaven.]
The Anglo-Norman Resurrection play was pretty clearly out of doors[277];
and the double line of _sedes_ may be thought of as stretching from the
west door of the church right across the market-place. In _Adam_ the
_Figura_ comes and goes from and to the church, which thus serves for
a _ciel_; in the Benedictbeuern Christmas play, the chair of Augustine
is set _in fronte ecclesiae_. This arrangement, also, can be paralleled
from later plays, both French and German. At Freiburg in 1504 the stage
was built across the cathedral yard from the south door to the Kaufhaus,
a space of some 110 feet long[278]. At Rouen, in 1474, the _establies_
went across the market-place from the Axe and Crown to the Angel[279].
It must not, however, be supposed that the rectangular stage survived as
the invariable type. In particular a round type was sometimes preferred.
The Cornish guary-plays were given in rounds, and a round is figured in a
fifteenth-century miniature by Jean Fouquet, representing a play of Saint
Apollonia[280].
I have spoken of a stage, but I am not sure that there was any stage in
the sense of a platform. There is certainly no such scaffold in Fouquet’s
miniature, and the _plateae_ of the Fleury _Suscitatio Lazari_ and
the _Adam_ are probably only the open spaces kept free for the actors
between the _sedes_[281]. In the _Adam_ the devils are able to make
sallies from the _plateae_ amongst the spectators. The latter probably
crowded upon barriers between the _sedes_. In the miniature, however,
the _sedes_ stand close together and are considerably raised, with
ladders running up to them. The spectators stand beneath. The prologue
to the Anglo-Norman _Resurrection_ speaks of _la gent_ as seated, and
possibly raised scaffolds for the audience were already in use. These
were certainly known later, and the descriptions of some of them as
no less than nine stories high have given rise to an erroneous theory
that the plays were performed upon a many-storied stage[282]. It is
clear that this was not really the case. All the _sedes_ were on the
same level, except that, for greater dignity, the Calvary, the Heaven,
the Paradise might be, as in _Adam_, _loco eminentiore_, and that the
_infernum_ or hell, conventionally represented by the head and open
gullet of a monstrous dragon, was low down, as if in the bowels of the
earth[283]. It should be added that, as early as the first quarter of
the twelfth century, plays had begun to make their way from the church,
if not into the open, at any rate into buildings of domestic use. The
authority for this is Gerhoh of Reichersberg, who speaks of performances
in the refectory of Augsburg, when he was _magister scolae_ there about
1123[284]. Some of the Fleury or other early plays may conceivably have
been intended for the refectory.
The expansion of the cycles caused difficulties of time, as well as of
space. Without a compression of manner alien to the long-winded Middle
Ages, it was sometimes impossible to get the whole of the matter to be
treated within the limits of a single day. The problem was amenable to
more than one solution. The performance could be spread over two or
more sittings. The first recorded example of such an arrangement is at
Cividale in 1298[285], but it is one that would naturally suggest itself,
especially for the Easter cycle, which fell naturally enough into the two
dramas of Passion and Resurrection, from which, indeed, it sprang. In
the Frankfort cue-book of the fourteenth century, it is carefully noted,
that if the audience are being kept too long, the _rectores_ of the play
shall defer the Resurrection to a second day[286]. Another device, which
does not occur so early, was to divide the cycle into parts and play them
in successive years. This method was adopted with the play of the Seven
Joys of Mary at Brussels[287], and English examples will be found in a
later chapter[288].
The cycles required in many cases a larger number of actors than the
ecclesiastical bodies, even with the aid of wandering clerks and the
cloister schools, could supply. It was necessary to press the laity into
the service. The Easter play, of which the thirteenth-century anchoress
Wilburgis was disappointed, was acted _tam a clero quam a populo_[289].
It was a further step in the same direction when the laity themselves
took over the control and financing of plays. For this one must look
mainly to that most important element in mediaeval town life, the guilds.
Just as the Feast of Fools passed from the hands of the clergy into
those of the _sociétés joyeuses_, so did the religious drama into those
of more serious confraternities. The _burgenses_ of Cahors, who in 1290
and 1302 played a _ludum de miraculis beati Marcialis_ in the graveyard
of St. Martial of Limoges, not improbably belonged to a guild formed
to do honour to the patron[290]. The primary purpose of such guilds as
these was devotional, and if they acted plays, it was doubtless with
the countenance and assistance of the clergy to whose church they were
affiliated. But those more secular and literary guilds, the _puys_, also
undertook to act religious plays no less than _sotties_ and farces; and
in them it may be suspected that the influence of the clergy would have
to contend shrewdly with that of the minstrels[291]. It is not surprising
to come in time upon signs of a rivalry between lay and clerical actors.
Thus, in 1378, the scholars of St. Paul’s are said to have presented a
petition to Richard II, praying him to prohibit a play by some ‘unexpert
people’ of the History of the Old Testament, a subject which they
themselves had prepared at great expense for the ensuing Christmas. It
may have been some similar dispute which led about the same date to the
formation of the Parisian _Confrérie de la Passion_, which received from
Charles VI a privilege to perform in and about the city, and became a
model for many similar _confréries_ throughout France. The charter bears
the date of 1402. In 1398 the provost of Paris seems to have been moved
to forbid dramatic performances without special sanction in the city
or suburbs, a prohibition which, by the way, was flouted on the day of
its proclamation at Saint-Maur. Exactly what led to this interposition
of authority is not clear; but it probably induced the _confrérie_,
who may have had a previous less formal existence, to apply for their
privilege[292]. The _confrérie de la Passion_ seem to have acted, as a
rule, in closed rooms. It is not unlikely that the _puys_ did the same.
The altered conditions of representation naturally reacted upon the style
and temper of the plays themselves. This is not a subject that can be
discussed in detail here, but a few points may be briefly noted. The
first is the gradual substitution of vernacular tongues for the Latin of
the liturgical drama. This was almost inevitable, where laymen performed
to a lay audience. But the liturgical drama itself did not absolutely
exclude the vernacular. In the _Sponsus_, and in the _Suscitatio Lazari_
and the Nicholas play of Hilarius, fragments of French are inserted,
just as they are in the ‘farced’ epistles used at the feasts of certain
saints, notably at that of St. Stephen[293]. It was a step further when
in the fourteenth century the nuns of Origny Ste.-Benoîte rewrote their
liturgical _Quem quaeritis_, leaving indeed some of the more solemn
parts, such as the dialogue of the Maries with the angel, or that of
the Magdalen with the risen Christ, in Latin, but turning the rest into
French[294]. Such an arrangement as this of Origny Ste.-Benoîte became in
the transition plays, intended for out-of-door performance to a popular
audience, the rule. There was naturally some local variation. Of the two
longer scholars’ plays in the Benedictbeuern manuscript, the Christmas
play is wholly, the Passion play mainly, in Latin. A large proportion of
Latin seems to have been retained in the Frankfort Passion play of the
fourteenth century. But on the whole, as the texts grow, and especially
as they draw upon the apocryphal books or the great mediaeval vernacular
epics for matter not in the liturgical plays, the vernacular steadily
gets the upper hand, until in the latest versions the traces of Latin
must be regarded as mere survivals.
In some cases where Latin and vernacular appear together, the latter
is of the nature of a translation, or rough and often much expanded
paraphrase, of the former. This type of mixed and obviously transitional
text can, as it happens, be illustrated from French, German, and English
sources. It occurs, for instance, in the _Adam_. Here the Adam and Eve
and Cain and Abel scenes are wholly, but for the preliminary _lectio_ and
the interpolated chants by the choir, in Norman-French. The prophecies,
however, are given in the double form. Thus Isaiah says:
‘Egredietur virga de radice Jesse, et flos de radice eius
ascendet, et requiescet super eum spiritus domini.
‘Or vus dirrai merveillus diz:
Jessé sera de sa raïz.
Verge en istra, qui fera flor,
Qui ert digne de grant unor.
Saint espirit l’avra si clos,
Sor ceste flor iert sun repos.’
There are many similar examples in German plays, of which the most
complete is a _Quem quaeritis_ in a fourteenth-century manuscript at
Trèves[295]. In England Professor Skeat discovered at Shrewsbury a
fragmentary text of this type in a manuscript of the early fifteenth
century[296]. It is written in a northern, probably Yorkshire, dialect,
and contains the part, with cues, of a single actor in three plays, a
_Pastores_, a _Quem quaeritis_, and a _Peregrini_. In the first he played
the Third Shepherd, in the second the Third Mary, in the last probably
Cleophas. The fragment shows clearly enough the way in which the Latin
text was first sung by a group of performers together, and then expanded
by them separately in the vernacular. The two documents last quoted mark
not only the transition from Latin to the vernacular, but also that from
the sung drama of the liturgies to the spoken drama of the great cycles.
In Professor Skeat’s Shrewsbury fragments the Latin alone is musically
noted. In the Trèves _Quem quaeritis_ the Latin and portions of the
German are noted, and a careful distinction is made between the lines
to be spoken and those to be sung by the use of the terms _cantat_ and
_dicit_ in the rubrics[297].
Again, the laicization of the drama was accompanied by a further
development of the secular and even comic elements, of which the germs
already existed in the plays. A more human and less distinctively
ecclesiastical handling became possible[298]. The figure of Herod
offered a melodramatic type of ranting tyrant which the tradition of the
stage did not readily forget. The life of the unconverted Magdalen _in
gaudio_ gave the dramatist his opportunity to paint scenes of wholly
secular luxury and romance. Naturally the comic developments attached
themselves largely to personalities not already defined in the Testament
narratives. The _Mercator_, for instance, whose domesticities with his
wife and his apprentice do so much to enliven the later German plays, is
a thoroughly characteristic production of the mediaeval folk spirit, for
the delectation of which Rutebeuf wrote the _Dit de l’Erberie_[299]. It
is not, perhaps, altogether unjustifiable to trace a relation between him
and the inveterate quack doctor of the spring folk drama itself[300].
This would not be the only point of contact between the _ludi_ of the
Church and those of the folk. The significance, from this point of view,
of Balaam’s ass has already been touched upon[301]. And in the growth of
the devil scenes, from their first beginnings in the _Sponsus_ or in the
devil-deacon of the _Tollite portas_[302], to their importance in the
_Adam_ or the various treatments of the Fall of Lucifer and the Harrowing
of Hell, may we not trace the influence of those masked and blackened
demon figures who from all time had been a dear scandal of the Kalends
and the Feast of Fools[303]? It is certain that the imps who sallied
amongst the spectators and haled the Fathers off to their limbo of
clashed kettles and caldrons must have been an immensely popular feature
of the _Adam_; and it is noteworthy that in more than one place the
_compagnies joyeuses_ who inherited the Feast of Fools joined forces with
more serious _confréries_ and provided comic actors for the religious
plays[304].
In yet another way the coming of the vernacular affected the character
of the religious drama. It had been cosmopolitan; it was to be
national: and from the fourteenth century, in spite of a few lendings
and borrowings, and of a certain uniformity in the general lines of
development, it really requires separate treatment in each of the
European countries[305]. In Italy the divergence from the common type
was perhaps most marked of all, although I think that Signor D’Ancona
and others have perhaps pushed the doctrine of the independence and
isolation of Italian drama to an extreme. They consider that it almost
began afresh with the religious stirrings of the Umbrian Flagellants
in 1260. The _compagnie_ or associations of _disciplinati_, who were
the outcome of this thoroughly folk movement, were wont, as they
lashed themselves, to sing hymns of praise, _laudes_, whence they got
the secondary name of _laudesi_. The lauds were mostly sung in the
chapels of the _compagnie_ after mass and a sermon on Sundays. Several
fourteenth-century collections are extant, and contain examples intended
for use throughout the circle of the ecclesiastical year. Many of them
were dialogued, and appear to have been recited in costume with scenic
accessories. The dramatic lauds were specifically known as _devozioni_,
and by the end of the fourteenth century were in some cases performed
rather elaborately upon a _talamo_ or stage in the nave of a church,
with _luoghi deputati_ for the accommodation of the chief actors.
According to Signor D’Ancona, the _devozioni_, which were composed by
poor folk, were taken direct from the liturgy and owed little more than
the initial hint or impulse to the liturgical drama; while at the other
end of these developments, they became the source of the out-of-door
and splendidly-staged _sacre rappresentazioni_ which originated in
Florence in the fifteenth century and thence spread to other Italian
cities[306]. On this theory it must be observed that the _devozioni_ have
not been shown to be independent of the liturgical drama, and that the
derivation of the _sacre rappresentazioni_ from the _devozioni_ is purely
conjectural. The _sacre rappresentazioni_ were out of doors and produced
by the clergy or laity; the _devozioni_, which have not been traced to
Florence, were produced indoors by religious guilds of a very distinct
type. The _sacre rappresentazioni_, moreover, included subjects, such
as the _profeti_, which are not within the cycle of the _devozioni_,
but do belong to the liturgical drama. It is at least a tenable view,
that the _devozioni_ were merely a backwater of the drama, and that the
_sacre rappresentazioni_ were derived, like the fifteenth-century plays
of other countries, from the liturgical drama through the medium of such
transitional types as those already noted at Padua, Siena, and Cividale.
The fact that the only transitional texts preserved are those of the
_devozioni_ has perhaps led to an exaggerated estimate of the importance
of these. Even liturgical dramas are rare in Italy, although there are
sufficient thoroughly to establish their existence. The chroniclers,
however, mention one or two events which point to another dramatic
tradition in Italy than that of the _devozioni_. At Florence itself, in
1306, there was a show of Heaven and Hell upon the Arno, which though
merely pantomimic, may have been based on some dramatic representation
of the Last Judgement[307]. At Milan, in 1336, was a _Stella_, in which
the _Magi_ rode through the streets, and Herod sat by the columns of
San Lorenzo[308]. Both of these performances, like those at Padua and
Cividale and the _sacre rappresentazioni_ themselves, were out of doors.
It is true that the _sacre rappresentazioni_ fell less into big cycles
than did the contemporary plays of other countries: but cycles were not
unknown[309], and it must be borne in mind that the extreme beauty and
elaboration of the Florentine _mise-en-scène_ made a limited scheme, on
grounds both of time and expense, almost imperative.
With out-of-door plays climatic conditions began to be of importance.
Even in sunny France, Christmas is not exactly the season to hang about
the market-place looking at an interminable drama. It is not to be
denied that Christmas plays continued to be occasionally acted well
through the fifteenth century[310], but the number of these, compared
with the Passions, is small[311]. Even Easter weather is not invariably
genial. Nor, as the cycles lengthened, was the attachment of them to
any one of the feasts, whose events they commemorated, a matter of
first-rate importance. A tendency set in towards playing them as far
as possible in the long warm days of the summer months. The first
Whitsuntide performances are those at Cividale in 1298 and 1303; and
Whitsuntide became a very favourite date[312]. At Florence the great
patronal feast and procession of St. John the Baptist on June 24 was a
natural occasion for _sacre rappresentazioni_[313]. Another high day
for the cyclical drama from the fourteenth century onwards, notably in
England[314] and Spain[315], and to a much less degree in Germany[316]
and France[317], was the recently-established feast of Corpus Christi.
This, the most materialistic of all the Church’s celebrations, is in
honour of the mystery of the transubstantiated sacrament. It originated
locally in an alleged revelation to Juliana, a Cistercian religious of
Liège. Pope Urban IV designed in 1264 to make it a universal festival,
but he died in the same year, and the bull which he had issued remained
inoperative until it was confirmed by Clement V at the council of Vienne
in 1311. Corpus Christi day was the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.
An office was compiled for it by St. Thomas Aquinas, and the leading
ceremony was a great procession in which the host, escorted by local
dignitaries, religious bodies and guilds, was borne through the streets
and displayed successively at out-of-door stations[318]. When the plays
were transferred to Corpus Christi day, they became more or less attached
to this procession. Sometimes, perhaps, the procession served as a mere
preliminary parade for the actors, such as sometimes preceded plays at
other times[319]. The play itself would follow on a fixed stage of the
ordinary type. But the method of the great English cycles seems to point
to a more complete merging of play and procession than this. The _domus_,
_loci_, or _sedes_ were set upon wheels, and known as ‘pageants[320]’;
and the performance was gone through during the procession, being
repeated at the various stations made by the host. If the cycle was a
very long one, time could be saved by making an early play at one station
coincident with a later play at that in front of it. It is, however,
easy to see that with the arrangement here suggested the popularity of
the pageants might throw the strictly religious aspect of the procession
rather into the shade. The two would then be severed again, but the play
might still retain its processional character. This is not, I think, an
unreasonable conjecture as to how the type of play found, say at York,
may have come into existence[321]. To Chester, where the plays were not
on Corpus Christi day, but at Whitsuntide, the method must have been
transferred at a later date.
During this brief survey of the critical period for the religious drama
between the middle of the thirteenth and the middle of the fourteenth
century, I have attempted to bring into relief the tendencies that were
at work for its remodelling. But it must not be supposed that either
the tendency to expansion or the tendency to secularization acted
universally and uniformly. The truth is quite otherwise. To the end of
the history of the religious drama, the older types, which it threw out
as it evolved, co-existed with the newer ones[322]. The Latin tropes and
liturgical dramas held their place in the church services. And in the
vernaculars, side by side with the growing Nativities and Passions, there
continued to be acted independent plays of more than one sort. There
were the original short plays, such as the _Stella_, the _Annunciation_,
the _Sponsus_, the _Antichrist_, by the running together of which the
cycles came into being. There were plays, on the other hand, which
originated as episodes in the cycles, and only subsequently attained
to an independent existence. The majority of these were Old Testament
plays, budded off, like the _Daniel_, from the _Prophetae_. And finally
there were numerous plays drawn from hagiological legends, many of which
never came into connexion with the cycles at all. Thus in the transition
period we find, not only plays on St. Nicholas and St. Catherine for
which liturgical models existed, but also the great French series of
Miracles of the Virgin, and plays on Saints Theophilus, Dorothy, Martial,
and Agnes[323]. The natural tendency of great churches to magnify their
own patron saints led to further multiplication of themes. In the same
way, long after the lay guilds and corporations had taken up the drama,
performances continued to be given or superintended by the clergy and
their scholars[324]. Priests and monks supplied texts and lent vestments
for the lay plays. To the last, the church served from time to time as
a theatre. All these points, as well as the traces of their liturgical
origin lingering in the cycles, will be fully illustrated, so far as
England is concerned, in the following chapters.
The question presents itself: What was the official attitude of the high
ecclesiastical authorities towards the growing religious plays? It is
not precisely answered, as the history of the Feast of Fools has shown,
by the fact that the chapters and inferior clergy encouraged and took
part in them. The liturgical drama had its motive, as St. Ethelwold
is careful to point out, in a desire for devotion and the edification
of the vulgar[325]. The hope of affording a counter-attraction to
the spring and winter _ludi_ of hard-dying paganism probably went for
something. Herrad of Landsberg, in the twelfth century, utters a regret
that the _Stella_ rightly instituted at Epiphany by the Fathers of
the Church had given place to a shameless revel[326]. But a contrary
opinion to Herrad’s arose almost contemporaneously amongst the reforming
anti-imperial clergy of Germany. This finds expression more than once
in the writings of Gerhoh of Reichersberg[327]. He scoffs at the monks
of Augsburg who, when he was _magister scolae_ there about 1122, could
only be induced to sup in the refectory, when a representation of Herod
or the Innocents or some other quasi-theatrical spectacle made an excuse
for a feast[328]. And he devotes a chapter of his _De Investigatione
Antichristi_, written about 1161, to an argument that clergy who turn
the churches into theatres are doing the work of that very Antichrist
of whom they make a show[329]. Evidently Gerhoh has been stung by the
lampooning of his party as the _Hypocritae_ in the pro-imperialist
_Antichristus_ which is still extant. But he includes in his condemnation
plays of a less special and polemical character, referring especially
to the Nativity cycle and to a lost play of _Elisaeus_. He repeats some
of the old patristic objections against _larvae_ and _spectacula_, and
tells tales, such as Prynne will tell after him, of how horrors mimicked
by actors have been miraculously converted into verities[330]. Literary
historians occasionally commit themselves to the statement that Innocent
III forbade the clergy to participate in miracle-plays[331]. It is
more than doubtful whether this was so. The prohibition in question
is familiar to us, and it is clear that the _ludi theatrales_ which
Innocent barred from the churches were primarily the Feasts of Fools,
and the like[332]. And as a matter of fact the _glossa ordinaria_ to the
decretal by Bernard de Bottone, which itself dates from about 1263, so
interprets the words of the Pope as expressly to allow of Christmas and
Easter representations calculated to stimulate devotion[333]. Yet there
would have been no need for the gloss to have been written had not an
opposite interpretation also been current. It was perhaps on the strength
of the decree that another reformer, Robert Grosseteste, justified his
action when in 1244 he directed his archdeacons to exterminate, so
far as they could, the _miracula_, which he put on the same level as
May-games and harvest-Mays, or the _scotales_ of the folk[334]. And it
is certainly appealed to before the end of the thirteenth century in
the _Manuel des Péchés_ of the Anglo-Norman William of Waddington[335].
Robert Grosseteste presumably, and William of Waddington specifically,
objected to _miracula_ even out of doors, which is surely stretching the
words of Innocent III beyond what they will reasonably bear. In any case
the austere view of the matter was not that which prevailed. The lax
discipline of the ‘Babylonish captivity’ at Avignon, which allowed the
Feast of Fools to grow up unchecked through the fourteenth century, was
not likely to boggle at the plays. The alleged indulgence, not without
modern parallels[336], of Clement VI to the spectators of the Chester
plays and the performance of a _Stella_ given by the English bishops in
honour of their continental colleagues at the council of Constance in
1417[337] are two out of many proofs that the later mediaeval Church
found no difficulty in accommodating itself to the somewhat disconcerting
by-product of its own liturgy[338]. Such opposition to the religious
drama as can be traced after the thirteenth century came not from the
heads of the Church but from its heretics. It is chiefly represented
by a curious _Tretise of miraclis pleyinge_ which dates from the end
of the fourteenth century and may safely be referred to a Wyclifite
origin[339]. The burden of it is the sin of making ‘oure pleye and bourde
of tho myraclis and werkis that God so ernestfully wrouȝt to us.’ On this
note the anonymous preacher harps rather monotonously, and adds that
‘myraclis pleyinge ... makith to se veyne siȝtis of degyse, aray of men
and wymmen by yvil continaunse, eyther stiryng othere to letcherie and of
debatis.’ Like Gerhoh of Reichersberg, he thinks the plays ‘gynnys of the
dyvul to drawen men to the byleve of Anti-Crist.’ He elaborately confutes
the views that they are for the worship of God, or the more compassion of
Christ, or lead to conversion. He will not allow that ‘summe recreatioun
men moten han, and bettere it is or lesse yvele that thei han theyre
recreacoun by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of other japis.’ The
analysis of the piece need not, perhaps, be pushed further. The opinions
expressed do not appear to have had any weight either of popular or of
ecclesiastical sentiment behind them; but they curiously antedate the
histriomastic tracts of many a sixteenth and seventeenth-century Puritan.
This chapter may be fitly closed by a few words on the subject
of nomenclature[340]. The old classical terms of _tragoedia_ and
_comoedia_ are not of course normally used of the religious plays until
the Renaissance influences come in towards the end of the fifteenth
century. Their mediaeval sense, in fact, implies nothing distinctively
dramatic[341]. The liturgical plays have often a purely liturgical
heading, such as _Processio Asinorum_[342], or _Officium Sepulchri_[343],
or _Ordo Rachaelis_[344]. Perhaps _officium_ may be taken to denote
the thing itself, the special service or section of a service; _ordo_
rather the book, the written directions for carrying out the _officium_.
Or they have a title derived from their subject, such as _Visitatio
Sepulchri_[345], or _Suscitatio Lazari_[346]. Or they are introduced
in terms which cannot be said to have a technical signification at
all, _ad faciendam similitudinem_[347], _ad suscipiendum_[348], _ad
repraesentandum_[349]. _Similitudo_ I do not find outside Fleury, nor
the corresponding _exemplum_ outside the Benedictbeuern manuscript[350].
From _ad repraesentandum_, however, a technical term does arise, and
_repraesentatio_ must be considered, more than any other word, as the
mediaeval Latin equivalent of ‘dramatic performance[351].’ This the
Italian vernacular preserves as _rappresentazione_. A synonym for
_repraesentatio_, which naturally came into use when the intention of
recreation began to substitute itself for devotion, is _ludus_, with its
vernacular renderings, all in common use, of _jeu_, _Spiel_, ‘play.’ But
_ludus_, as already pointed out[352], is a generic term for ‘amusement,’
and the special sense of ‘dramatic play’ is only a secondary one[353].
‘Clerks’ play’ as a variant for miracle-play is occasionally found[354].
Yet another synonym which makes its appearance in the twelfth century,
is _miraculum_; and this, originally a mere convenient shorthand for
_repraesentatio miraculi_, came, especially in England, to stand for
‘religious play’ in general[355]. _Mystère_, or ‘mystery,’ on the other
hand, is not English at all, in a dramatic sense[356], and in France
first appears as _misterie_ in the charter given by Charles VI in 1402
to the Parisian _confrérie de la Passion_[357]. This term also acquires
a very general signification by the end of the fifteenth century. Its
radical meaning is still matter of dispute. Probably it is derived from
_ministerium_, should be spelt _mistère_, and is spelt _mystère_ by
a natural confusion with the derivative of μυστήριον. Even then the
question remains, what sort of _ministerium_? M. Petit de Julleville
would explain it as a ‘religious function,’ and thus equate it precisely
with _officium_[358]. Only it does not appear in connexion with the
liturgical plays[359], and perhaps it is more plausible to regard it
as denoting the ‘function’ of the guild of actors, just as its doublet
_menestrie_, the English ‘minstrelsy,’ denotes the ‘function’ of the
minstrels[360], or its doublet _métier_, which in English becomes in fact
‘mystery,’ denotes the ‘function’ of the craft guilds. Perhaps the theory
of M. de Julleville finds a little support from the term _actio_, which
appears, besides its meaning in connexion with the Mass[361], to be once
at least used for a play[362]. At any rate _actus_ is so used as a Latin
equivalent of the Spanish _auto_[363].