The innocent maiden who lived a blameless life in her uncle’s home has, by one night’s experience, become a hardened sinner. It is difficult for a modern reader to believe in Mary’s sudden wickedness. But we must remember that the mediaeval playwright did not mean to show his audience the consecutive stages of her degradation. The action on the stage is an epitome of that mental process, condensing temptation and surrender into one simple scene, the intervening phases of mental struggle and agony being left to the imagination of the audience. The language, which is more conservative than the stage, has retained that simple allegory which modern drama has discarded: we still speak of “a fallen girl”, although we demand from the modern playwright that he show us how she slid into sin.
While the inner life is thus translated into the simplest of allegories, life’s visible pageant is mirrored in all its variety. Its realistic portrayal is the chief beauty of this drama. In the romantic playlets of “Esmoreit” and of “Lanseloot” a faint reflection is seen of courtly manners imported from France. In “Mary of Nimmegen” the everyday life of Netherlands burghers is astir on the stage. We get a glimpse of the simple household of a village priest, who, not unknown to his niece, dabbles in necromancy, we are introduced into the low life of Antwerp and hear the drawer’s call to the tapster repeating an order, “A first, ho, a first! Draw of the best and fill to the brim!”, we watch with the good people of Nimmegen the performance of a mystery on a pageant-wain in the market-place, and see women take a passionate part in the political factions of the day.
This participation of women in politics was evidently characteristic of the Netherlands. Their meddling with affairs of state suggested to an English dramatist of a later period a vivid scene between an English gentlewoman and a group of Dutch Pankhursts. They counsel her to follow their example:
“You are wellcom, Lady
And your comming over hether is most happy;
For here you may behold the generall freedom
We live and traffique in, the ioy of woemen.
No emperious Spanish eye governes our actions,
Nor Italian jealouzie locks up our meetings: