The Coventry Mysteries are contained in a quarto volume, the principal part of which was written in the year 1468, now preserved in the Cottonian collection of manuscripts, under the press-mark Vespas. D. viii. The date of the MS. is ascertained from the verso of fol. 100, a fac-simile of which page will be found at the commencement of this work. The history of the manuscript is unfortunately wrapped in obscurity, and it cannot be distinctly traced back to those who are presumed to have been its former possessors—the Grey Friars of Coventry. The principal authority for its appropriation to this body is contained in the following memorandum on the fly-leaf of the manuscript in the hand-writing of Dr. Richard James, librarian to Sir Robert Cotton:—“Contenta Novi Testamenti scenice expressa et actitata olim per monachos sive fratres mendicantes: vulgo dicitur hic liber Ludus Coventriæ, sive Ludus Corporis Christi: scribitur metris Anglicanis.” The MS. was previously in the possession of Robert Hegge of Christ Church, Oxford, who died in 1629,[2] and was, most probably, purchased by James about that time for Cotton, as it appears from a letter in the same library[3] that James was engaged about that period at Oxford in procuring manuscripts for his patron.
James, in his MS. collections in the Bodleian, does not notice the MS. of the Ludus Coventriæ, and I have been unsuccessful in endeavouring to trace either the destination of Hegge’s library, or the authority for James’s assertion that this volume was commonly (vulgo dicitur) known under the above title.[4] That it was so, there cannot, I imagine, be the slightest doubt, for what object could James—a man who was, most probably, uninterested about the subject of the manuscript, and inserted the account above given as Cotton’s librarian, according to his usual custom—have had in making a misrepresentation? It must be remembered, also, that the last leaf, or, perhaps, the last few leaves, are now deficient, and there is no improbability in the conjecture that these may not have been lost when James wrote his description, and that a colophon supplied him with his information.
Robert Hegge has given us his autograph in two places, and in both added the cognomen of “Dunelmensis.” On this account, some writers have conjectured that the volume originally came from Durham; but this supposition is not supported by any evidence and very little probability. The principal mark of dialect which the Mysteries contain, viz., x for sh in such words as xal, xulde, &c., belong to that part of the country in which Coventry is situated.
If, then, we have not complete and absolute evidence that Ludus Coventriæ is the proper title of these Mysteries, yet the probabilities are greatly in favour of the correctness of this appellation, and no urgent reasons have been given for any different conclusion. By this name, at all events, the MS. has been known since the time of Dr. James, who died in 1639.
The external evidence is also greatly in favour of the claim of Coventry to these plays. Coventry was a place formerly famous for the performance of its Corpus Christi plays by the Grey Friars, in the same manner as Chester was for the performances of its trading companies. Mr. Sharp’s Dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries, 4to., Cov. 1816, contains a most curious and valuable collection of information[5] relative to the plays once performed there, and the manner in which the actors were dressed. In 1456, Queen Margaret was at Coventry, when she saw “alle the pagentes pleyde save domesday, which might not be pleyde for lak of day.” Even as late as 1575, “certain good harted men of Coventree” had the honour of performing before Queen Elizabeth in the celebrated entertainment at Kenilworth, and gained considerable applause.[6] And Heywood, in a passage which has been frequently quoted, alludes to the devil as a famous character in the old Coventry mysteries:—
“For as good happe wolde have it chaunce,
Thys devyll and I were of olde acqueyntaunce;
For oft, in the play of Corpus Christi,
He hath played the devyll at Coventry.”[7]
The Coventry Mysteries attracted the attention of the antiquary, Dugdale, at an early period, and he has given us the following curious and important account of them:—