The following twentieth-century opinion is from a paper by the late Mrs. Henry Sandford, a woman of sound judgment and of great educational experience:—
“In the first place, we cannot but observe that, with all their faults, they did keep vividly before the mind of the English nation the leading outlines of Christian teaching, and that, in the historical form suggested by the Apostles’ Creed. Much that was legendary, coarse, incongruous, was there also, no doubt, but that was there above all.
“The old religious drama created in the popular mind a high ideal of the true use and purpose of dramatic art, namely, to present to the imagination a living picture of the realities of life and feeling.”
But I will not pursue the arguments any further. Suffice it to say that the sense of humour and the representation of everyday life occur in all the arts of the Middle Ages. Those who would eliminate all this human part of the plays, or would forbid their use, must, to be consistent, rip the Misereres out of the choir of Chester Cathedral and burn them for firewood.
It is sometimes said that not only was there irreverence, but even indecency, especially in the play of the Creation and Fall, where Adam and Eve are commanded to “stand nackede.” I believe this stage direction to be merely figurative,[8] and the Cornish play of the Creation of the World[9] gives a clue to the whole matter, as it contains specific instructions that Adam and Eve are to be “apparelled in white leather.”[10] At Norwich also we know that Adam wore “a wig, gloves, and a cote of hosen steyned,” and Eve “a wig, gloves, and two cotes of hosen steyned.”
[8] Thomas Wright, the able editor of the Chester plays, comes, I am glad to say, to the same conclusion.
[9] The Creation of the World. A Cornish Mystery, edited by Whitley Stokes.
[10] The Person of God was also occasionally represented in white leather with the face gilded.
Further, there can be no doubt whatever that women were not allowed to take part in plays or to appear on the stage in public until some years after Mystery Plays had completely died out.[11]
[11] Miss Hamilton Moore, in English Miracle Plays and Moralities, seems to think that I assert in my Introduction to the Chester Plays (published for the revival in 1906) that women acted the play of The Assumption. Not so: I merely stated that the ale-wives of the city provided and furnished the play, but I am quite sure they did not perform it.