The number of plays now existing is twenty-five, but we know that the Assumption has been lost, and there are signs of two plays being compressed into one, as in the Histories of Lot and Abraham, so that the original number was no doubt larger. Fluctuations would undoubtedly take place with the rise and fall of City Companies, if for no other reasons. As the number of gilds expanded or were reduced, so the plays were increased or amalgamated.[38] The list of plays and the gilds that performed them will be found in the “Banes” already printed. The Chester series is noted for two plays that occur nowhere else, viz. No. 23, on Prophecies, and No. 24, on Anti-Christ.
[38] At York the MS. of the plays (c. 1430) shows 48; but in 1415 there had been 51; and another earlier list shows 57.
The English employed seems to be of the beginning of the fifteenth century, many of the stage directions are in Latin, and the Three Kings, Octavian, and Herod occasionally use French, that being the Court language.[39]
[39] It is not generally considered to afford any argument as to the plays being derived from the French.
It is not to be supposed that we have the text of the plays as written at first, for the original plays are without doubt much older than the fifteenth century. We find that the quarrels of Noah and his wife formed so familiar a story that they became proverbial. Chaucer says:—
“Hast thou not heard (quod Nicholas) also
The sorowe of Noe with his felowship
Or that he might get his wife to ship.”
Chaucer wrote this about 1390, and it appears certain, therefore, that our play of Noah, and probably those on the same subject at Wakefield and Newcastle-on-Tyne, were often performed by the middle of the fourteenth century.
The metre employed varies, but a large proportion is in eight line stanzas, sometimes with two rimes:—