I made my moan even and morn, Alas! that I was woman wrought! Of lechery I never wrought, But ever to that sin I sought, That of that sin in deed and thought Yet had I never my fill. Fie on pearls! fie on pride! These harrow me to hell. I that so seemly was in sight, The Coventry Plays make use of this same stanza, but are more partial to quatrains of alternating rhymes in verses of different lengths and measures. Speaking broadly, the construction of both Cycles shows a highly developed prosody, a familiarity with complicated metrical resources on the part of their compilers. The Widkirk, Chester, and Coventry plays abound in local references, and illustrate the dialects of their several districts. 1 Guyde-? 2 Hide-skin. s Bleye-complexion. 5 Dight-assume. MODES OF EXHIBITION. 109 Besides these three places, we know for certain that Miracles were commonly performed at Wymondham, York, Newcastle, Manningtree, and Tewkesbury. One William Melton of York in 1426 was termed 'a professor of holy pageantry,' which seems to prove that the actors in these dramas, and probably the monkish scribes who wrote them, formed a recognised class of artists. The city of Bristol exhibited a 'Shipwrights' Play,' most likely in dumb show, upon the Ark of Noah, before Henry VII. Cornwall had its so-called Guary Miracles, which were religious spectacles of a like nature. There is no reason to suppose that any district of England was unprovided with the means of producing them, though some towns, like Coventry and Chester, took a special pride in presentthem with more than common splendour. VI. The Miracles were exhibited on wooden scaffolds, either stationary in churches, or moved about the streets on wheels. The Latin name for these erections was pagina, which has been correctly derived from the same root as pegma, and which merged into the English pageant. From the stage directions to the plays it appears that in some cases the scaffold contained several rooms or storeys, and this was no doubt usual when the structure was set up in a church or on a meadow. The movable carts on which the players performed in towns like Chester consisted of two rooms, a lower in which they dressed, and an upper, open to the air, in which they acted. These carts were drawn in order round the town, stopping at fixed points for recitation, so that when one pageant was finished, another arrived to continue the show before the same group of spectators. From the processional character communicated in this way to the Miracle, the name processus as well as pagina was sometimes given to each act in the Drama. For scenes involving movement, actors in the streets were associated with the actors on the stage. Messengers rode up on horseback, and Herod or the Devil leapt from the cart to rage about among the people. It is interesting to compare these English customs of the religious Drama with those of other countries. In Italy we know that the Divozioni, when shown in church, were performed upon a wooden scaffold raised across the nave and divided into several departments, with a central space for the chief action, smaller siderooms for subordinate scenes, a gallery for the celestial personages, and a sunken pit for Satan and his crew. The Edifizi, or movable towers, exhibited by the chief guilds of Florence on S. John's Day, corresponded in all essential respects to the pageants of Chester, except that they were undoubtedly adorned with greater richness of artistic details. This Florentine procession set forth the whole of Christian history from the Fall of Lucifer to the Last Judgment; but the show was strictly pantomimic, being presented in tableaux without speech. In France, before the establishment of a regular religious theatre in 1402, Mysteries were performed, after a like fashion, either processionally in the streets or on temporary scaffolds erected for the purpose in a consecrated building. In Spain the exhibition of the Autos took place in churches, until this practice was forbidden in 1565. Yet the highly elaborated form of art developed from them with such magnificence by Calderon retained the nature of a sacred show. Late on into the seventeenth century the Auto was presented on an open square in daylight, with accompaniment of flambeaux and candles. It must have been a spectacle of singular and curious magnificence: the wide piazza in the white glare of a Southern noontide, crowded with Court, clergy, and people; the sumptuous scene of Calderon displayed; God, saints and angels, heathen deities and metaphysical abstractions, elements of nature and deadly sins, brought into harmony and moulded to one type of art by the artist's plastic touch. Altar candles flared and guttered round the stage in the fierce heat of the meridian sun, symbolising, as it were, the blending of diverse lights, the open life of man on earth, and the dim religious mysteries of the sanctuary, the night of pagan myths and the noon of Christian faith, which genius had assembled and combined upon that hieroglyphic of the world, the theatre. As in Florence, so in Chester, special portions of the sacred spectacle were consigned by old tradition to each guild. Thus the good simple water-leaders and drawers of Dee' had the superintendence of the Deluge and the Ark appropriately left to them. The tanners, not perhaps without ironical reference to their trade, exhibited the Fall of Lucifer; and the cooks set forth the Harrowing of Hell. When the time drew near, proclamation in the town was made, warning the several companies to be ready with their pageants. At Coventry this proclamation was spoken by three Vexillatores or banner-bearers in speeches. which described the argument of each pageant. At Chester it was termed the Banes or Banns. Our copy of these Banes, dated in 1600, is interesting for the apologetic tone in which it comments on the Miracles. to be exhibited. After mentioning that they were written by one Don Rendall, the prologue proceeds: This monk, monk-like, in Scriptures well seen, Some things not warranted by any writ, Which to glad the hearers he would men to take it. It then compliments the monkish author on his good digestion of the matter into twenty-four plays, and on his boldness in bringing the sacred lore forth in a common English tongue,' and finally begs the audience not to judge the antique style of the performance too harshly: As all that shall see them shall most welcome be, Not to compare this matter or story With the age or time wherein we presently stay, But in the time of ignorance wherein we did stray. And again: Go back, I say, to the first time again; Then shall you find the fine wit at this day abounding, Considering that Shakspere's plays were being brought upon the London stage in 1600, this recommendation to the audience was hardly superfluous. |
