The slaying of Abel is introduced by Garcio, not a scriptural character, in an impudent speech; and then Cain enters, ploughing, cursing his horses, and wrangling with his boy, who offers to fight him. Abel enters, full of human kindness, but Cain insults him in the coarsest rustic manner, "Go to the Devil and say I bade". Abel insists that Cain should offer a burnt-sacrifice of a tenth of his corn, but Cain loves paying tithes no more than any other farmer. He grumbles in the true natural tone of the depressed agriculturist,
When all men's com was fair in field,
There was mine not worth a held.
The weather is such, says Cain, that the farmer owes no gratitude to providence, no tithes. He selects his worst sheaves, as pay tithe he must. The Deity intervenes, but Cain treats him with the most serene insolence, kills the remonstrating Abel with the jaw-bone of some animal, and, in short, is no more edifying than Mr. Punch, whose lawless and irreverent behaviour in the popular street drama is a survival of the humour of Cain.
The "Rejoicing of the Shepherds," the second play, is much more human and various: the shepherds are full of the complaints of their condition with which Piers Plowman has made us familiar, but the provisions at their picnic are rich and various, and the adventure of Mak, the sheep stealer, is of the best comedy. Hospitably entertained by the shepherds, Mak steals a sheep, flays it, and takes it home to his wife. They put it in a cradle, and cover it with blankets, next Mak hies to the shepherds again, grumbling that his wife has a new baby. They suspect and follow him; he denies his theft, and will eat the child in the cradle, if the sheep can be found on his premises. It is found. This child, says a shepherd, has too long a snout. Mrs. Mak, with much presence of mind, admits the fact, but declares that her child is a fairy changeling: fairies stole the baby at midnight, and left this ugly substitute. The shepherds forgive Mak, for the joke's sake, after tossing him in a sheet.
The same story is told of Archy Armstrong, the border reiver and jester. When the shepherds go back to their flocks, the Angel sings Gloria in excelsis; and the shepherds criticize the music learnedly, "there was no crochet wrong," and imitate the air. The sacred part of the play, the Adoration, and offering of balls and toys to the new-born babe, is very brief. The play is a most humorous and lively representation of "our liberal shepherds," the sacred narrative merely affords a pretext for the gambol. England was merry England in the fifteenth century, in spite of defeats in France, murder and civil war at home, preachings and burnings of Lollards, and all the grievances of Piers Plowman, the cruelty of the great, and the greed and cunning of the Friars.
The play of "Lazarus," on the other hand, is not only solemn, closely following the words of the Gospel, but is as full as the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Grave," of sepulchral horrors.
Of the costumes we may judge by that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, in "The Digby Plays"—the Apostle is "dressed like an adventurous knight," and is mounted. In place of scene-shifting the audience shifted from one open-air stage in the street to another. There were dances between the scenes. Paul's servant has a scene of banter with an ostler. He maintains that he is a gentleman's servant, a superior person. Says the ostler: "I saw such another gentleman with you, a barrowful he bare of horse dung... and such other gear".
There are forty characters and a crowd in the play of "Mary Magdalene," and much skill in stage management must have been needed. In this play of more than two thousand lines allegorical characters abound, including the Seven Deadly Sins; much of the Gospel story of the Magdalene is introduced, with lively scenes from the unconverted career of the Lady of the Castle of Magdala, and there is a long passage of sheer romance; we have a storm at sea; the abandonment of the King's wife and child on a rock; their discovery later, alive and well—in fact the story is akin to that in Shakespeare's "Pericles".
We see that the secular entertainment, the drama of romance, is ousting its religious occasion and pretext. In "Mary Magdalene," too, we observe that the "Miracle Play" on sacred subjects, is combined with the "Morality," the drama with allegorical characters (as in the "Romance of the Rose"), presented in flesh and blood, and therefore more entertaining than they are in the endless allegorical poems. The Morality of "Everyman" has been revived with much success in our own time. In all these plays the verse takes many rhyming forms, mainly lyric. The chief collections are the Townley, York, Chester, Digby, Coventry, and a Macro (named from an owner of the manuscript). In the Macro play, "Mankind," the actors make collections of money from the audience: they must have belonged to a professional strolling company, not to an honourable and disinterested trading guild. The piece is a gross burlesque of morality, full of blatant jests and dog-Latin rhymes.
There is a scientific Morality, an "Interlude," "The Four Elements," in which Nature, Humanity, Studious Desire, Sensual Appetite, Experience, and Ignorance play their parts. Much novel information about the dimensions of the earth and meteorology is given; Studious Desire is an apt pupil, but Sensual Appetite and the Taverner offer instruction more palatable to "the Man in the Street". They introduce