Upon your swete sonnys feete
Send me grace for to slepe
And good dremys for to mete
Slepyng wakyng til morowe daye bee
Our Lorde is the frute, Our Ladye the tree
Blessid be the blossom that sprange lady of thee.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.”
The inventories of parish churches and the churchwardens’ accounts show how very common a feature the religious plays—“miracle or mystery plays,” as they were generally called—were in the village life of the fifteenth century. It requires very little examination of the “books” of those plays that have come down to us to see that these sacred dramas must have been most powerful aids to the religious teaching of the Church among the simple and unlettered villagers of England, and even among the crowds which thronged great cities like Coventry, Chester, and York to witness the traditional acting of the more elaborate performances.
As to their popularity there can be no question. Dramatic representations of the chief events in the life of our Lord, etc., were intimately associated with the religious purposes for which they were originally produced. They were played on Sundays and feast-days, sometimes in the aisles of the churches, in church porches and churchyards. The author of Dives and Pauper says—
“Spectacles, plays, and dances that are used on great feasts, as they are done principally for devotion and honest mirth, and to teach men to love God the more, are lawful if the people be not thereby hindered from God’s service, nor from hearing God’s word, and provided that in such spectacles and plays there is mingled no error against the faith of Holy Church and good living. All other plays are prohibited, both on holidays and work-days (according to the law), upon which the gloss saith that the representation in plays at Christmas of Herod and the Three Kings, and other pieces of the Gospel, both then and at Easter and other times, is lawful and commendable.”