Evidence of this may also be found in the music of the plays. In the Coventry Mysteries the “Lullaby,” supposed to be sung by the women in the Slaughter of the Innocents, actually has Tenor and Bass parts.[12]
[12] This trio would be sung by two men and a boy. Similarly the trio in Chester Noah’s Play would be sung by the “Three clerkes from the Minster,” who, as we shall see, were duly engaged as professionals.
Origin of Plays.
These plays sprang from the Church, and “all evidence points to Easter as the festival with which the earliest religious dramas were most intimately connected, and it is probable that the first form which the Easter play assumed was that of a ceremony in which the Crucifix was solemnly buried on Good Friday and again disinterred on Easter Day amid a pompous ritual.”[13]
[13] Professor Pollard.
So long as the Church controlled the plays, the clergy were favourable to their performance; but when their popularity and their growth rendered it necessary to perform them out of doors, when the stage was pitched on the green or in the street before the Abbey gate, it became another matter.
The following rimes, written in 1303 by Robert Manning (Le Brunne), show this distinctly:—
“Hyt ys forebode in the decree
Miracles for to make or se
For miracles yf you begynne