vidual characteristics, all cover about the same ground and influences of one cycle upon another are evident. Of the authors practically nothing is known, but we infer that they were churchmen. What we know of the history of the miracles makes it seem improbable that any one man should have created all the plays of a cycle. As they come down to us they may rather represent the bringing together and amplification of the work of many hands, and such a cycle as that of York, with its forty-eight episodes, may have been in process of development for decades before its text was reduced to the comparative orderliness of our manuscript version. Occasionally, as in some plays of the Towneley cycle, there are manifest excellences in the handling of situation, the characterization, and the quality of the verse, which lead us to infer composition by a hand more competent than that of the average clerical playwright.

A modern reader is likely to underestimate the dramatic effectiveness of the miracle plays. Their writers had, of course, little or no apprehension of the niceties of technique

- they were concerned chiefly with making the teaching of the play so plain that the most ignorant spectator must understand; hence the wearisome repetitions, the expounding of Christian doctrines in long didactic passages which sadly interrupt the action, the introduction of Doctor or Expositor to drive the moral home. The literary value of the miracles is not great. But they possess the virtues of strength and sincerity and human interest. With no finesse but with indubitable power they present some of the great episodes in the Bible story, in particular those of Christ's life and passion. By frequent bits of homely realism they made their audiences realize the humanness of the Bible figures, and that was a useful service. The occasional coarseness of language and situation should not blind us to the simple reverence of purpose and treatment. The impressiveness of the Passion Play at Oberammergau is sufficient evidence that the theory of the miracle play is sound.

The three plays which follow fairly represent the miracle at its best. Though the long didactic beginning of the Towneley Noah's Flood is characteristic in its dullness, the play brightens up at once when Noah returns to the bosom of his family. From the rank and file of miracle personages a few stand out with special clearness, usually because the spirit of comedy has touched them into life. Of these Noah's wife seems to have been a particular favorite, for in the York and Chester cycles she plays the shrew as she does here, and in them also the taming of the shrew is done in the same rough-andtumble fashion. One of the unintentionally

amusing things about the play is the naïveté with which the passage of time is recorded, (e. g., on p. 11). The local allusion of Noah's wife ("Stafford blue," p. 8), and the oaths by Peter (p. 10), Mary (p. 8), and "God's pain" (i.c., Christ's sufferings on the cross, p. 8), illustrate the lack of historical

sense.

The Brome play is so called because the manuscript was found in Brome Hall, Suffolk. Abraham and Isaac is the most truly pathetic of all the miracle plays. The scene is pathetic rather than tragic because, since Abraham is from the first determined to obey the will of God, his natural revulsion against killing his son never reaches the intensity of the struggle with fate, involved in true tragedy. But this is as close an approach to tragedy as we find at this stage of the drama. Despite the ineptitude and slowness of the beginning, the playwright really understands how to handle his material in such a way as to produce on the audience the effect he desires. A briefer treatment would have been better- he holds the situation till he gets the maximum emotional response, but the tension of suspense is undeniable. The characterization is not quite individual; we feel about Abraham and Isaac that they are rather types of parenthood and childhood than an individual father and an individual son. The child's actual physical terror of the bright sword and his messages to his mother are notable as showing how the miracle authors sometimes visualized and humanized their material.

The Towneley Second Shepherds' Play (Second because the Towneley cycle contains two versions of the announcement to the shepherds) is the flower of the miracle plays. Here is an admirable acting play, with plot, characterization, atmosphere. The exposition is clear and reasonably rapid, providing a neat differentiation of the three shepherds as they make their appearance one after another. Mak and Gill are masterpieces in miniature of comic characterization, done with deftness and gusto. The action mounts steadily to the climax; the understanding of the value of suspense at the climactic point, when the discomfited shepherds actually leave the house, only to return in response to the youngest shepherd's kindly thought of a gift to the child is proof enough that the man who made this play was a real dramatist. After the punishment of Mak there is an artless transition to the angels' song and the traditional bit of the gifts to the Christ child. The blending of Yorkshire setting and figures with the Bible story is naïve and delightful. This episode of Mak is true farce comedy, comedy better than anything else England was to produce till the middle of the sixteenth century.

Noah. Mightful God very, maker of all that is,

Three persons without nay,1 one God in endless bliss,

Thou made both night and day, beast, fowl, and fish;

All creatures that live may, wrought thou at thy wish,

As thou well might;

The sun, the moon, verament,2

Thou made, the firmament,
The stars also, full fervent,

To shine thou made full bright.

Angels thou made full even, all orders that is,

To have the bliss in heaven: this did thou more and less,

Full marvelous to neven; 3 yet was there unkindness

More by folds seven than I can well express.

For why?

Of all angels in brightness

God gave Lucifer most lightness;
Yet proudly he flitted his dais,
And set him even him by.

He thought himself as worthy as him that him made

In brightness, in beauty; therefore he him degraded,

Put him in a low degree soon after, in a braid,

Him and all his meinie, where he may be unglad

For ever.

Shall they never win away

Hence unto doomsday,

FIRST WIFE. SECOND WIFE. THIRD WIFE.

Alway;

And now I wax old,
Sick, sorry, and cold,
As muck upon mould
I wither away.

But yet will I cry for mercy and call:
Noah thy servant am I, Lord over all!
Therefore me and my fry,21 shall with
me fall,

Save from villainy, and bring to thy hall In heaven,

And keep me from sin

This world within;
Comely King of mankind,

I pray thee hear my steven! 22

God. Since I have made all-thing that is living,

Duke, emperor, and king, with mine own hand,

For to have their liking by sea and by sand,

Every man to my bidding should be bowing

will say,

And I am aghast that we get some fray
Betwixt us both;

For she is full teethy,47
For little oft angry,
If anything wrong be,
Soon is she wroth.

Then he goes to his wife.

God speed, dear wife; how fare ye? Wife. Now, as ever might I thrive, the worse I thee see!

Do tell me belive,48 where has thou thus long been?

To death may we drive, or life for thee,49
For want.

When we sweat or swink,50
Thou does what thou think,
Yet of meat and of drink

Have we very scant.

Noah. Wife, we are hard stead with tidings new.

38 device. 39 tiers of.

42 kind of wrong.