Is it nat so? Sey yow all with on showte.
and a note in the manuscript has: "Here answerryt all the pepul at ons,'Ya, my lord, ya.'"[809] All this was performed with appropriate gesture, that is, as wild as the words they went with, a tradition that long survived. Shakespeare complained, as we know, of the delivery of those actors who "out-heroded Herod."
The authors of English Mysteries had no great experience of Courts; they drew their caricatures somewhat haphazard. They were neither very learned nor very careful; anachronisms and mistakes swarm under their pen. While Herod sacrifices to Mahomet, Noah invokes the Blessed Virgin, and the Christmas shepherds swear by "the death of Christ," whose birth is announced to them at the end of the play.
The psychology of these dramas is not very deep, especially when the question is of personages of rank, and of feelings of a refined sort. The authors of Mysteries speak then at random and describe by hearsay; they have seen their models only from afar, and are not familiar with them. When they have to show how it is that young Mary Magdalen, as virtuous as she was beautiful, consents to sin for the first time, they do it in the plainest fashion. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her that he finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir," the young lady replies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prostitute)?" Not at all, says the other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall we drink something?
Soppes in wyne, how love ye?
Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers:
As ye dou, so doth me;
I am ryth glad that met be we;
My love in yow gynnyt to close.
Then, "derlyng dere," let us go, says the "galaunt."
Mary. Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng!
Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd,
I wol never from yow wynd (turn).[810]