“Then doth ensue the solemne feast of Corpus Christi Day,
Who then can shewe their wicked use, and fond and foolish play?
The hallowed bread, with worship great, in silver pix they beare
About the church, or in the citie passing here and theare.
His armes that beares the same two of the welthiest men do holde,
And over him a canopey of silke and cloth of golde.
Christe’s passion here derided is, with sundrie maskes and playes,
Faire Ursley, with hir maydens all, doth passe amid the wayes:
And, valiant George, with speare thou killest the dreadfull dragon here,
The Devil’s house is drawne about, wherein there doth appere
A wondrous sort of damned sprites, with foule and fearefull looke,
Great Christopher doth wade and passe with Christ amid the brooke:
Sebastian full of feathred shaftes, the dint of dart doth feele,
There walketh Kathren, with hir sworde in hand, and cruel wheele:
The Challis and the singing Cake with Barbara is led,
And sundrie other pageants playde, in worship of this bred.
* * * * *
* * * * * *
The common ways with bowes are strawde, and every streete beside,
And to the walles and windowes all are boughes and braunches tide.
The monkes in every place do roame, the nonnes abrode are sent,
The priestes and schoolmen lowd do rore, some use the instrument.
The straunger passing through the streete, upon his knees doe fall:
And earnestly upon this bread, as on his God, doth call.
For why, they counte it for their Lorde, and that he doth not take
The form of flesh, but nature now of breade that we do bake.
A number great of armed men here all this while do stande,
To looke that no disorder be, nor any filching hande:
For all the church-goodes out are brought, which certainly would bee
A bootie good, if every man might have his libertie.”[162]
The Religious Plays performed on Corpus Christi Day, in the times of superstition, were such as were represented at other periods, though with less ceremony. From a volume on the subject, by the editor of the Every-Day-book, he relates so much as may set forth their origin and the nature of the performances.
Origin of Religious Plays.
A Jewish play, of which fragments are still preserved in Greek iambics, is the first drama known to have been written on a scripture subject. It is taken from Exodus: a performer, in the character of Moses, delivers the prologue in a speech of sixty lines, and his rod is turned into a serpent on the stage. The play is supposed to have been written at the close of the second century, by one Ezekiel, a Jew, as a political spectacle to animate his dispersed brethren with the hopes of a future deliverance from their captivity.
The emperor Julian made a law that no Christian should be taught in the heathen schools, or make use of that learning; but there were two men living at that time, who exerted their talents to supply the deficiency of instruction and entertainment that the Christians experienced from Julian’s edict: these were Apollinarius, bishop of Laodicea, and his father, a priest of the same city; they were both scholars, well skilled in oratory and the rules of composition, and of high literary renown. Apollinarius, the elder, a profound philologer, translated the five books of Moses into heroic verse, and in the same manner composed the history of the Israelites to the time of Saul, into a poem of twenty-four books, in imitation of Homer. He also wrote religious odes, and turned particular histories and portions of the Old and New Testament into comedies and tragedies, after the manner of Menander, Euripides, and Pindar. His son the bishop, an eloquent rhetorician, and already an antagonist of Julian’s, anxious that the Christians might not be ignorant of any species of Greek composition, formed the writings of the evangelists, and the works of the apostles, into dialogues, in the manner of Plato.
About the same time, Gregory Nazianzen, patriarch and archbishop of Constantinople, one of the fathers of the church, and master to the celebrated Jerome, composed plays from the Old and New Testament, which he substituted for the plays of Sophocles and Euripides at Constantinople, where the old Greek stage had flourished until that time. The ancient Greek tragedy was a religious spectacle; and the sacred dramas of Gregory Nazianzen were formed on the same model; he transformed the choruses into Christian hymns. One only of the archbishop’s plays is extant: it is a tragedy called “Christ’s Passion;” the prologue calls it an imitation of Euripides; the play is preserved in Gregory Nazianzen’s works. The remainder of his dramas have not survived those inimitable compositions over which they triumphed for a time.