The scenes that now succeed each other, marking each stage of the sorrowful descent to death, are notable chiefly for that quality to which attention has already been drawn, namely, the dignity which surrounds the character of the Hero. This dignity is not accidental. On the contrary it would have been easy to fall into the error of exciting so much compassion that the sufferer became a pitiably crushed victim of misfortune. With much skill the writer places his most pathetic lines in the mouths of the two Maries, diverts upon them the sharpest edge of our pity, and never for a moment allows Jesus to appear overwhelmed. When a Jew, in 'The Trial of Christ', speaks in terms of low insolence, addressing him as 'thou, fela (fellow)' and striking him on the cheek, Jesus replies:
Yf I have seyd amys,
Thereof wytnesse thou mayst bere;
And yf I have seyd but weyl in this,
Tho dost amys me to dere[13].
Again, in answer to Cayphas's outrageous scream of fury, 'Spek man, spek! spek, thou fop!... I charge the and conjure, be the sonne and the mone, that thou telle us and (if) thou be Goddys sone!', Jesus says calmly, 'Goddys sone I am, I sey not nay to the!' Still later in the same scene, the silence of Jesus before Herod (sustained through forty lines or more of urging and vile abuse, besides cruel beatings) lifts Him into infinite superiority over the blustering, bullying judge and his wretched instruments. It is true that the Bible gives the facts, but with the freedom allowed to the dramatist the excellence of the original might have been so easily spoilt.
To Mary is reserved perhaps the deepest note of pathos within the play. The scene is 'The Crucifixion of Christ', and she is represented lying at the foot of the Cross. Jesus has invoked God's forgiveness for His murderers, He has promised salvation to the repentant thief, but to her He has said nothing, and the omission sends a fear to her heart like the blackness of midnight. Has she, unconsciously, by some chance word or deed, lost His love at the close of life? The thought is too terrible.
O my sone! my sone! my derlyng dere!
What[14] have I defendyd[15] the?
Thou hast spoke to alle tho[16] that ben here,
And not o word thou spekyst to me!
To the Jewys thou art ful kende,
Thou hast forgeve al here[17] mysdede;
And the thef thou hast in mende,
For onys haskyng mercy hefne is his mede.
A! my sovereyn Lord, why whylt thou not speke
To me that am thi modyr in peyn for thi wrong?
A! hert! hert! why whylt thou not breke?
That I were out of this sorwe[18] so stronge!
The remaining scenes bring on the final triumph of the Hero over Death and Hell, and the culmination of the great theme of the play in the Redemption of Man. Adam is restored, not indeed to the Garden of Eden, but to a supernal Paradise.
Certain common features of the Miracles remain to be pointed out before we close our volume of the Coventry Play, for it will provide us with examples of most of them.
One of the first things that strike us is the absence of dramatic rules. Not an absence of dramatic cohesion. To its audience, for whom the story of the Mission of Jesus still retained its freshness, each scene unfolded a further stage in the rescue of man from the bondage of Hell. It is not a mere matter of chronology. The order may be the order of the sacred chronicle, but to these early audiences it was also the order of a sacred drama. The 'Sacrifice of Isaac' is not merely the next event of importance after the 'Flood': it is a dramatic forecast of the last sacrifice of all, the Sacrifice of Christ. Even though we admit, as in some cases we must, that the Plays are heterogeneous products of many hands working separately, and therefore without dramatic regard for other scenes, it is not unreasonable to suppose that when the official text was decided upon, the several scenes may have been accommodated to the interests of the whole. Moreover, the innate relationship of scenes drawn from the Bible gives of itself a certain dramatic cohesion. Of the so-called Dramatic Unities of Time and Place, however, there is no suggestion; there is no unity of characters; there is no consideration of what may be shocking, what pleasing as a spectacle. Whoever saw the whole play through was hurried through thousands of years, was carried from heaven to earth and down to hell; he beheld kings, shepherds, high priests, executioners, playing their parts with equal effect and only distinguished by the splendour or meanness of their apparel; he was a witness to Satan's overthrow, to Abel's death, and was a spectator at the flogging and crucifixion of Jesus. It is easy for those acquainted with the later drama (of Greene especially) to see the direct line of descent from these Miracles to the Shakespearian stage.