We touch surer ground when we come to examine the craft-plays, whereof we have abundance of evidence. Unlike those of Chester, York and Wakefield, the Coventry plays were few in number, having been fused together, and, it seems, formed a series illustrating the life of Christ, closing with His second coming on the Day of Judgment. The absence of Old Testament scenes would be a rare feature, and the point has been disputed,[684] but so few of the pageants remain unidentified, and such striking scenes in the life of Christ have no play assigned to them, that there hardly seems room for scenes drawn from the Old Testament. The procession of prophets[685]—Processus Prophetarum—the nucleus whence the Old Testament cycle spread, is likewise very undeveloped in Coventry. None of the prophets are individualized in the plays that have come down to us, except Isaiah, who appears as prologue to the tailors' and sheremen's play of the Nativity; others appear as rather "defuce" commentators—to use their own word—further on in the action, and again as prologue to the weavers' play of the Purification.[686] It is impossible to construct the whole series of the Coventry plays, for, save two pageants—that of the sheremen and tailors, and that of the weavers—all are missing, and in some cases the very titles of the plays cannot be recovered. The first pageant set forth was probably that of the guild of the Nativity, the company of tailors and sheremen, representing the Annunciation, Joseph's Trouble, the Journey to Bethlehem, the Birth of Christ, the Angels and the Shepherds, the Offering of the Magi, the Flight into Egypt, and the Murder of the Innocents. The weavers' pageant, wherein was set forth the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and Christ and the Doctors, would follow as a matter of course. The titles of four pageants—those of the mercers, tanners, whittawers, and girdlers—are lost, though Dr Craig has made the shrewd guess that the subject of the first was the Assumption.[687] The story of Christ's Trial and Crucifixion was the theme of the smiths' show, the Burial or the "taking down of God from the Cross" was played by the pinners and needlers, the Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection was enacted on the stage furnished by the cardmakers, later cappers, and this, with the drapers' Doomsday, closes the list of the plays that are known to us. It will thus be seen that the inferior clothing crafts represented the Christmas cycle, and the workers in iron, smiths, pinners, cardmakers, the Passion-Resurrection one, so that we may suppose that the subject of the girdlers' pageant, since they were workers in iron, would be a subject nearly connected with this latter group—possibly the "Maundy" and the Agony in the Garden.
The shearmen and tailors' pageant of the Nativity and the weavers' Presentation in the Temple, both plays whereof the text has been preserved, were discovered by the antiquary, Thomas Sharp, and printed early in the last century, a fortunate circumstance, since the former with all Sharp's collection perished in the fire at Birmingham in 1879. One manuscript alone remains, now in the possession of the broad weavers and clothiers, a small volume of seventeen leaves, one missing, bound in ancient boards and leather, with end-papers of Holbeinesque wood-cuts. The whole—save two songs at the end—is in the handwriting of Robert Croo, by whom it was "newly translate" in 1534.
Both these plays are written in many metres, and obviously show the workmanship of many hands. Rhythm and versification often betray the 'prentice; indeed on the whole it is but clumsy writing; and yet here and there that wonderful instrument, the English language, gives out its music though it be stricken with an unsure and careless hand. Isaiah's prologue, the scenes between Simeon and Anna,[688]—even the lines of that sublime braggart, Herod, have a hint of that wonderful quality to which English verse attained when Spenser wrote it. The kernel of the story is told in rough, simple quatrains; here and there—particularly in the comic parts—a rollicking stanza, derived apparently from one employed in the Chester cycle, breaks in; while some portions of the piece have been so worked over that the verse defies metrical analysis.[689]
There is no comedy connected with the shepherds' scenes in the Coventry Christmas plays, such as occurs in the Towneley (Wakefield) cycle, where the sheep-stealing episode is the work of a master-hand. Nor is the presentation of their gifts to the Child as charming as the "bob of cherries" passage in the northern dramatist's verses, still the scene is full of the tender feeling, which it never fails to draw forth.
"I have nothing," says the first shepherd to Mary,—
"I haue nothyng to present with thi chylde
But my pype; hold, hold, take yt in thy hond;
Where-in moche pleysure that I haue fond;
And now, to oonowre thy gloreose byrthe,
Thow schallt yt haue to make the myrthe.
II. Pastor. Now, hayle be thow, chyld, and thy dame!
For in a pore loggyn here art thow leyde,
Soo the angell seyde and tolde vs thy name;
Holde, take thow here my hat on thy hedde!
And now off won thyng thow art well sped,
For weddur thow hast noo nede to complayne,
For wynd, ne sun, hayle, snoo and rayne.
III. Pastor. Hayle be thou, Lorde ouer watur and landis!
For thy cumyng all we ma make myrthe
Have here my myttens to pytt on thi hondis.
Other treysure have I non to present the with."
A pipe, a hat, a pair of mittens! How homely it sounds! In the York Plays the Child receives a broach with a tin bell, two cob-nuts on a string, and a horn spoon that can hold forty pease!
In the Nativity scene Joseph warms the Child at the breath of the beasts in the manger.
Mare. A! Josoff, husebond, my chyld waxith cold,
And we haue noo fyre to warme hym with.
Josoff. Now in my narmys I schall hym fold,
Kyng of all kyngis be fyld and be fryth;
He myght haue had bettur, and hym-selfe wold,
Then the breythyng of these bestis to warme hym with.
Mare. Now, Josoff, my husbond, fet heddur my chyld,
The Maker off man and hy Kyng of blys.
Josoff. That schalbe done anon, Mare soo myld,
For the brethyng of these bestis hath warmyd [hym] well, i-wys.