Now, the contiguity of what is undoubtedly borrowed from the York with what is imitated from it and what is elaborated upon it, is strong proof of a conscious relation between these Wakefield productions and those of York; and since the work of the poet, especially the provincial poet, was in those days (though verse forms, like air, are free to all) likely to be cast in a fixed mould—his favourite metrical and strophaic medium, there is at any rate a possibility that the plays and portions of plays in the Wakefield cycle, written in this fully developed and distinctive stanza, were the work of one man. When we examine the contents of the plays and their style, we find that the possibility becomes more than a probability, practically a certainty; and that being so, I can hardly deem it an accident that the most dramatic portions of the Wakefield cycle show so close an external resemblance to the best comic and realistic portions of the York. It is, then, with something of the interest in an individual, not a theory, that one may segregate the plays and bits of plays bearing this metrical stamp, look for the personality behind them, and attempt to discover the relation of the Wakefield group of comedies to its forerunners of York.
The Wakefield cycle is still in flux when its distinctive poet-humorist takes it in hand. Insertions in his nine-line stanza are found in one[21] of the five plays derived from the York cycle. Of the two plays which show a general resemblance to a corresponding York, one[22] is in this stanza, and to the other[23] a dozen of the stanzas are prefixed. The Fflagellacio (XXII.), the second half of which is an imitation, sometimes loose, sometimes literal, of York XXXIV. (Christ Led up to Calvary), opens with twenty-three of these stanzas,—nearly the whole of the original part. One of them, No. 25, is, by the way, based upon stanza 2 of that part of York XXXIV. which is not taken over by the Wakefield play. In the Wakefield Ascension (XXIX.), which adapts, but in no slavish manner, a few passages from the York (XLIII.), we find two of this playwright's nine-line stanzas;[24] and in the Wakefield Crucifixion (XXIII.), which has some slight reminiscence of York XXXV. and XXXVI., we find one. In that part of the Wakefield less directly, or not at all, connected with the York cycle, four whole plays,[25] the Processus Noe, the two Shepherds' Plays, and the Buffeting, and occasional portions of other plays[26] are written in this stanza. This contribution in the nine-line stanza amounts to approximately one-fourth of the cycle; and, allowing for modifications due to oral and scribal transmission, is of one language and phraseology. Not merely the identity of stanza and diction, however, leads one to suspect an identity of authorship; but the prevalence in all these passages, and not in others, of spiritual characteristics in approximately the same combination,—realistic and humorous qualities singularly suitable to the development of a vigorous national comedy. "If any one," says Mr. Pollard, "will read these plays together, I think he cannot fail to feel that they are all the work of the same writer, and that this writer deserves to be ranked—if only we knew his name!—at least as high as Langland, and as an exponent of a rather boisterous kind of humour had no equal in his own day." And, speaking of the Mactacio Abel, where we lack the evidence of identity of metre, this authority continues, "The extraordinary youthfulness of the play and the character of its humour make it difficult to dissociate it from the work of the author of the Shepherds' Plays, and I cannot doubt that this, also, at least in part, must be added to his credit."[27]
To this conclusion I had come before reading Mr. Pollard's significant introduction to the Towneley Plays; and I may say that I had suspected the Wakefield master in the Processus Talentorum as well; for though, with the exception of some insertions, the stanzaic form of that pageant is not his favourite, the humour, dramatic method, and phraseology of the whole are distinctly reminiscent of him. In the revising and editing of the Wakefield cycle as he found it this playwright was brought into touch with the York schools of comic and realistic composition. What he derived from them and what he added may be gathered from a comparative view of the related portions of these cycles. That, however, I must defer until another time. The best of his plays are of course the Noe and the Secunda Pastorum; the latter a product of dramatic genius. It stands out English and alone, with its homespun philosophy and indigenous figures,—Mak and Gyll and the Shepherds,—its comic business, its glow, its sometimes subtle irony, its ludicrous colloquies, its rural life and manners, its naïve and wholesome reverence: with these qualities it stands apart from other plays of cycles foreign or native, and in its dramatic anticipations, postponements, and surprises is our earliest masterpiece of comic drama. A similar dramatic excellence characterizes all this poet's plays, as well as the insertions made by him in other plays. But he is no more remarkable for his dramatic power than for his sensitive observation and his satire.
Of the realism of his art much might be said. To be sure, we cannot accredit to him the grim photography of certain plays—the preparations for the crucifixion, for instance, which are the counterpart of scenes in the York. But the Buffeting proves his power in this direction, and parts of the Scourging—each a genre picture on a background of horrors. Of conversations caught from the lip those in the second and fourth scenes of the Processus Noe are his, and those between the shepherds in Prima and Secunda Pastorum,—all of them unique. So also the description of the dinners in these Shepherds' Plays: the boar's brawn, cow's foot, sow's shank, blood puddings, ox-tail, swine's jaw, the good pie, "all a hare but the loins," goose's leg, pork, partridge, tart for a lord, calf's liver "scored with the verjuice," and good ale of Ely to wash things down. What more seasonable than the afterthought of collecting the broken meats for the poor? what more naïve than the night-spell in the name of the Crucified just preceding the angelic announcement of his birth? what more typical of unquestioning faith than the reverence of these "Sely Shepherds" before the Saviour Child, the simplicity and acceptability of their rustic gifts? This is the fresh and sympathetic handling of a well-worn theme. But the Wakefield poet is no sentimentalist: his anger burns as sudden as his pity. Otherwhere genially ironical, it is in his revision of the Judicium that he displays his full power as a satirist. Here his hatred of oppression, his scorn of vice and self-love, his contempt of sharp and shady practice in kirk or court, upon the bench, behind the counter, or by the hearth are welded into one and brought to edge and point. He strikes hard when he will, but he has the comic sense and spares to slay. We may hear him chuckling, this Chaucerian "professor of holy pageantry," as he pricks the bubble of fashion, lampoons Lollard and "kyrkchaterar" alike, and parodies the latinity of his age. When his demons speak the syllables leap in rhythmic haste, the rhymes beat a tattoo, and the stanzas hurtle by. Manners, morals, folly, and loose living are writ large and pinned to the caitiff. But the poet behind the satire is ever the same, sound in his domestic, social, political philosophy, constant in his sympathy with the poor and in godly fear.
Though there are comic scenes of some excellence in the later Chester and so-called Coventry plays, they add little to the variety of the Wakefield. I would, however, call attention to a few other comparatively modern, but, generally speaking, contemporaneous, characteristics of these and the remaining cycles: the foreshadowing of the chivalrous-romantic in the Joseph and Mary plays of York, Wakefield, and especially Coventry; of the melodramatic in the wonder and mediæval magic of the York and Chester cycles, and again especially in the Coventry; of the allegorical in the Coventry, and of the burlesque in all cycles when Pride rides for a fall or Cunning is caught in his own snare.
In respect of the sensational, the older cycles are surpassed by the surviving plays of Newcastle and Digby; so also in the increasing complexity of motive and interest. These Digby plays were acted, probably one by one in some midland village from year to year during the latter half of the fifteenth century, and maybe somewhat earlier. They are of interest, not only because they emphasize the sensational element, but because they stand half-way, if not in time, at any rate in spirit and method, between the miracles that we have so far discussed and the moral plays of which we shall presently treat. The Digby Killing of the Children of Israel lends a decided impetus to the progress of the comic and secular tendencies of the drama. The Herod brags as usual, but he is artistically surpassed in his metier by a certain miles gloriosus, the descendant of Bumbommachides and Sir Launscler Depe, and himself the forerunner of Thersites and Roister Doister, and countless aspirants for knighthood, whose valour "begynnes to fayle and waxeth feynt" under the distaff of an angry wife. Such is the Watkyn of this Digby play. Both here and in the Conversion of St. Paul, the joyous element has been enhanced, as Dr. Furnivall points out, by the introduction of dancing and music. In the Conversion the charm supplied by the ammoniac Billingsgate of Saul's servant and the ostler adds thrills galore. Saul, "goodly besene in the best wyse, like an aunterous knyth," the thunder and lightning, the persecutor felled to earth, "godhed speking from hevyn," the Holy Ghost, the "dyvel with thunder and fyre" sitting cool upon a "chayre in hell, another devyll with a fyeryng, cryeng and roryng,"—the warning angel, Saul's escape,—there is sign enough of invention here. To be sure, these seductions are counterbalanced by a didactic on the Seven Deadly Sins, worthy of a preceding or contemporary moral drama; but that was part of the bargain. The spectacular plays of this group, especially the Mary Magdalene, comic and didactic by turns, denote a further advance in a still different direction. They portray character in process of formation: the rejection of former habits and motives, and the adoption of new, the resulting change of conduct, and the growth of personality. From this point of view Mary Magdalene is a figure of as rare distinction in the history of romantic comedy as the Virgin Mary,—perhaps even of greater importance. Interesting as the sensational elements of the play may have been, and novel—the vital novelty here is that of character growing from within. Wonderful as the career of the virgin mother was,—an essential propædeutic to that woman worship which characterizes a broad realm of Christian romance,—her career could never have awakened the peculiar interest, dramatic and humane, that was stirred by the legend so often dramatized of the wayward, tempted, falling, but finally redeemed and sainted Mary of Magdala.
With regard to the transitional character of the Digby plays, it has been maintained that this particular play, combining materials of the biblical miracle and the saint's play or marvel, approaches more nearly than any other of the group to the morals and moral interludes, because of the prominence of the Sensual Sins in the dramatic career of the Magdalene. Professor Cushman, in his excellent thesis on The Devil and the Vice, even asserts that the downfall of the heroine, as the result of sensual temptation which is the office of seven personified deadly sins "arayyd lyke vij dylf," is a special 'development' of this play. I can hardly go so far: the church of the Middle Ages, Caxton's Golden Legend of 1483, and Voragine's of 1270-90 had already amalgamated the biblical narratives of the Mary of seven devils, Mary of Bethany, and the woman who was a sinner. In fact, the suggestion of the 'device,' if such was necessary, is contained in seven consecutive lines of Caxton's Life of the Magdalene. This biblical and legendary play is, however, undoubtedly well on the way toward the drama of the conflict of good and evil for possession of the human soul. And this appears, as the author just cited has pointed out, when we consider a later work on the same subject, called a Moral Interlude, by Lewis Wager. Although the Seven Deadly Sins no longer figure as such, their place is here supplied by four characters,—Infidelitie the Vice, and his associates, Pride of Life, Cupiditie, and Carnal Concupiscence,—who, arrayed like gallants, instruct the Magdalene in their several follies, and are themselves all "children of Sathan." These later Vices are nothing other than selected Deadly Sins,—the Pride, the Covetyse, and the Lechery of the earlier miracle play.
3. The Dramatic Value of the English Miracle Plays
Taken as a whole, the craft cycle possesses the significance, continuity, and finality requisite to dramatic art; taken in its parts or pageants, however, it presents to the modern reader the appearance of a mosaic, an historical panel picture, or stereopticon show. I set down these words, "the modern reader," because I do not believe that the audience of contemporaries was aware of any break in the sequence of the collective spectacle. This histrionic presentment of the biblical narrative lacked neither motive nor method to the generations of the ages of belief. For them the history of the world was thus unrolled in episodes the opposite of disconnected,—each a hint or sign or sample, a type or antitype of the scheme of salvation, which was itself import and impulse of all history. No serious scene, but was confirmation or prophecy. Characters, institutions, and events of the Old-Testament drama had their raison d'être not only in themselves but in the New Testament antitype which each in turn prefigured. No profound theological training was needed to comprehend each symbol and its significance, to esteem all as centring in the Person of history, in the sacrifice and atonement. And still it is largely because historians have failed to appreciate the scriptural training of our ancestors that they have unfairly emphasized the episodic nature of the miracle cycles, at any rate of the English.
The integral quality of the English cycle is infinitely superior to that of the French; and the separate plays are more frequently artistic units. This is due, among other things, to facts long ago pointed out by Ebert.[28] The smaller stage in England, which in turn restricted the scope of the play, made it impossible to split up the action into two or more parallel movements, such as frequently occupied the stage in France. The scene, moreover, was in England limited to earth, save when the plot expressly required the presentation of heaven or hell. It very rarely required all three at once. The conduct of the English play is therefore less dependent upon the supernatural, and the persons bear a closer resemblance to actual human beings. Neither plot nor character is distracted by the irresponsible intrusion of devils, whereas these, idling about the French stage, frequently turned the action into horse-play,—if the fool (likewise absent from the English miracle) had not already turned it into a farce out of all relation to the fable. The comic element in the English play had to exist by virtue of its relation to the main action or not at all. It was therefore compelled to conquer its position within the artistic bounds of the drama. The comic scenes of the English miracle should accordingly be regarded, not as interruptions, nor independent episodes, but as harmonious counterpoint or dramatic relief. Those who have witnessed in recent times the reproduction of the Secunda Pastorum at one of the American universities bear testimony to the propriety and charm, as well as the dramatic effect, with which the foreground of the sheep-stealing fades into the radiant picture of the nativity. The pastoral atmosphere is already shot with a prophetic gleam, the fulfilment is, therefore, no shock or contrast, but a transfiguration—an epiphany. I do not forget that a less humorous analogue of the Shepherds' Play exists in such French mysteries as that of the Conception, but I call attention to the fact that by devices, technical sometimes, sometimes naïve, elaborated through the centuries in response to the demands of a popular æsthetic consciousness, the cycles, preëminently in England, acquired a delicacy and variety of colour, an horizon, and an atmosphere, not only as wholes, but in the parts contributing to the whole.