Comedies were not known, nor tragedies according to the modern acceptation of the word in Chaucer's time; for what he calls tragedies, are simply tales of persons who have fallen from a state of prosperity, or worldly grandeur, to great adversity; as he himself tells us in the following lines:
Tragedy is to tel a certayne story,
As olde bokes maken memory,
Of them that stode in great prosperite,
And be fallen out of hye degre
Into misery, and ended wretchedly. [545]
X.—PLAYS PERFORMED IN CHURCHES.
The ecclesiastical plays, as we observed before, were usually performed in churches, or chapels, upon temporary scaffolds erected for that purpose; and sometimes, when a sufficient number of clerical actors were not to be procured, the churchwardens and chief parishioners caused the plays to be acted by the secular players, in order to collect money for the defraying of the church expenses; and in many instances they borrowed the theatrical apparel from other parishes when they had none of their own. The acting of plays in churches was much declaimed against by the religious writers of the sixteenth century; and Bonner, bishop of London, in 1542, the thirty-third year of the reign of Henry VIII., issued a proclamation to the clergy of his diocese, prohibiting all manner of common plays, games, or interludes, to be played, set forth, or declared, within their churches or chapels.