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LOST SOULS.

From a Fresco of the Day of Judgment, discovered in 1804 over the great arch separating nave and chancel in the Chapel of Holy Cross. Stratford-on-Avon. Engraved in Thomas Sharp's "Coventry Mysteries."

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Why weepest thou and art sorry?
Lo, Piers," he said, "this is thy clothe.
For he sold it were thou wroth?
Know it well, if that thou can,-

For me thou gave it the poor man.
That thou gave him in charity

Everydeal thou gave it me."

Piers of sleepé out abraid 10

And thought great wonder and sethen" said, "Blessed be allé pooré men,

For God Almighty loveth them!

And well is them that poor are here,

They are with God both lief and dear!

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He yede2 and soldé it as swithe.3

Piers stood and did behold

And I shall fonde 12 both night and day
To be poor, if that I may."

How the man the kirtle sold,

And was therewith ferly wroth,

That he sold so soon his clothe;

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He might no longer for sorrow stand,
But yede home full sore greetánd,'

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7 Began in some degree to slacken or cease from it.

8 For, because.

9 Swevening (First-English "swefen "), dream.

10 Out abraid, started out. So after Pharaoh's dream in the metrical story of Genesis and Exodus, "The king abraid and woc in thogt." 11 Sethen, afterwards. Icelandic "bregtha," to move swiftly.

4 Greetand, weeping.

12 Fonde, seek. First-English "fandian," to try to find.

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Hastily he took his catél

And gave it to poor men each deal.

Piers called to him his clerk,

That was his notary and bade him hark,

"I shall thee show a privity,

A thing that thou shalt do to me,

I will that thou no man it tell.

My body I take thee here to sell

To some man as in bondage,
To live in povert and in servåge.

But thou do this, I will be wroth,
And thou and thine shall be me loth.3

If thou do it, I shall thee give
Ten pound of gold, well with to live.

Those ten pound I take thee here,

And me to sell in bond manere.

I ne recké unto whom,

But only he have the Christendom. The ransom thou shalt for me take, Therefore thou shalt sickerness make 4 For to give it blithely and well

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And knew the clerk well by sight.

They spake of old acquaintance And Yolë told him of his chance.

Yolë, his lord, well understood

That all his grace and all his good

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Befel that serjeaunts and squiers
That were wont to servé Piers
Went in pilgrimage, as in case,3
To that country where Piers was.
Yole full fair gan them call

And prayed them home to his hall;
Piers was there, that eaché sele,*
And, every one, he knew them wele.
All he served them as a knave,
That was wont their service to have,
But Piers not yet they knew,
For penance changed was his hue.
Not forthé they beheld him fast 5

And often to him their eyes they cast,
And saidé, "He that standeth here

Is like to Piers tollere."

He hid his visage all that he might
Out of knowledge of their sight;
Natheless they beheld him more

And knew him well, all that were thore,
And said, "Yolë, is yon thy page?

A rich man is in thy serváge!
The Emperor, both far and near,
Hath do him seek 6 that we find here."

Piers listened and heard them speaking And that they had of him knowing; And privily away he name 7

Till he to the porter came.

The porter had his speeché lore,8

And hearing also, since he was bore;
But through the grace of sweet Jesu
Was shewed for Piers fair virtú.
Piers said, "Let me forth go!"
The porter spake, and saidé, " Yo." 9
He that was deaf and dumb also
Spake, when Piers spake him to.
Piers out at the gaté went

And thither yede where God him sent.

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Blessed be God and Piers to-day."
The lord and the guestés all,
One and other that were in hall,
Had merveil that it was so,
That he might such miracle do.
Then as swithé Piers they sought.

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320

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7 Name, took himself. First-English "niman," to take. (See line

243.)

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To rest withouten end to lede,

For his meekness and his good deed.

Robert of Brunnne, in one part of his poem, reproduced objections to the miracle plays, except when acted in church by the clergy at Easter and Christmas. But the taste for them was spreading, and in the fourteenth century they attained to a development in this country, strongly illustrative of the national desire to bring the Bible story and what were held to be the essentials of its teaching home to all. We have seen the early form of such plays in the "Raising of Lazarus." That was a single play, not one of a reries, and was acted by the persons employed usually in the services of the Church. An early sequence of three plays from the Bible story, in a MS. of the twelfth century, was found in the Library of Tours. The first play set forth the Fall of Adam and Eve; after which, said the stage directions, "devils shall take them, and put them into hell, and they shall make a great smoke to rise in it, and cry aloud." The second play was of the death of Abel, after which, "devils coming, Cain is led to hell, being often struck, but they shall take Abel more mildly; then the Prophets shall be ready each in a convenient place of concealment." The third play consisted in their coming forward to prophesy of Christ, and when each had prophesied, devils took him also into hell. This sequence was evidently meant as a short summary from the Old Testament, showing man's need of Christ through the Fall, and the looking of the old world to his coming. The hell in such plays was always represented by the type of the whale's open jaws. A hell-mouth of painted

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paste-board, with a fire lighted behind the lower jaw, so that it might seem to breathe flame, was a common property of the miracle play; and through this mouth those who played the devil's parts would, by passing behind it, have their apparent entrances and exits.

HELL MOUTH.

From an old German Print copied in Thomas Sharp's "Dissertation on the Coventry Mysteries."

The acting was at first within the church, in service time. The crowds attracted became greater than the church would hold. The acting was then specially arranged on a stage, built outside the church door, so that a large audience might be assembled in the square in front.

There were, for representation of the Fall, an upper stage representing heaven, approached by inhabitants of heaven from within the church; below that a stage representing Paradise on earth; and below that an enclosed open space, within which there was clanking of chains, and a burning of wet straw to produce smoke. A door from this enabled demons to come out and, as they were instructed to do, mix sometimes among the audience. This made them too familiar; and they seem really to have sometimes degenerated in France into comic characters. In England there was usually but one stage, with hell-mouth in a corner of it, and demons only appeared when they were to do demons' work. Very remarkable also was, in this country, the development of sequences of plays, and these were acted after the year 1328, or thereabout, in the language of the people. In 1264, Pope Urban IV. founded the feast of Corpus Christi, in honour of the consecrated Host. The institution was confirmed by Clement IV., in the year 1311. The grand procession of this day was the only one of the year in which laity and clergy marched together. The guilds were out, not only carrying pictures, but walking

in procession as living representatives of the saints and apostles. Then the guilds dined at their halls, and it has been suggested that the acting of Scripture incidents before them by the characters they had exhibited may have led to what followed. This was the combination of guilds, representing the religious laity of England, to produce at the festival of Corpus Christi, or at Whitsuntide, or on other fit occasions, complete representations of the leading facts in Bible History from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By dividing the several parts of the great history among themselves, and taking the requisite time-three or more successive days they produced, in fact, before the multitude a Living Bible in the streets. A wide diffusion of this very thorough use of the miracle play, by clergy and laity, as a means of religious instruction, was characteristic of English religious feeling. good monk would write a sequence of two or three dozen plays, which might be acted by the guilds of any town in which they chose to combine for the purpose. Each guild would then take a play for its own, provide properties, train actors, and undertake to put out corporate strength for its efficient annual performance in the streets of the town. Corpus Christi day was the first Thursday after Trinity, and as Trinity Sunday is eight weeks after Easter, Corpus Christi was, like Whitsuntide, a summer holiday time, convenient for out-of-door performances. It is said that Randal Higgenet, or Ralph Higden, a monk of Chester Abbey, having obtained leave of the Pope to put Latin aside, and write these plays in English, the first English series -which was of twenty-four plays-was acted at Chester, in the year 1327 or 1328, the performance occupying three days. The Tanners first set forth the Fall of Lucifer; then came the Drapers with the Creation and Fall and the Death of Abel; then the Water-carriers and Drawers of Dee represented the pageant of Noah's Flood and the Ark. Then the histories of Lot and Abraham were played by the guilds of the Barbers and Waxchandlers. Such sequences of Scripture stories are known to have been acted at Chester, Coventry, Wakefield, York, Newcastle, Lancaster, Preston, Kendal, Wymondham, Dublin, and other places. Three whole sets have come down to us and form part of our literature: -the Chester series of twenty-four plays; a series of forty-two said to have been acted at Coventry (these add to the Scripture story legendary incidents in the life of the Virgin); and the Wakefield Mysteries, a series of thirty-two, known also as the Towneley Mysteries, because the MS. containing them belonged to the Towneley family in Lancashire. The Wakefield series is much the best. The several plays are not plays in the sense in which we use the word in the modern drama, and though we are often told that it did,' the modern drama most certainly did not arise

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TO A.D. 1400.]

RELIGION.

The

out of the miracle play. It arose in the Universities
and among men bred as scholars, who had long been
in the habit of acting plays of Seneca, Terence, or
Plautus, or Latin plays of their own written upon
When it began to occur to
the classical models.
them to write such plays in English instead of
Latin, the first English dramas were produced. The
Italian drama began a little before the English in
exactly the same way, and the miracle plays had
nothing whatever to do with the matter in one
country or another. Miracle plays went through no
transition stages after the manner of the caterpillars
till they were transformed to something altogether
different. They survived unchanged long after they
had passed their prime; indeed, till the time of the
youth of Shakespeare; and they disappeared then
altogether because the use for them had passed away.
The Bible in their own tongue had been given to the
people. Inasmuch as these sequences of incidents
from Scripture, always chosen for their bearing upon
cardinal points of Christian faith, imposed a more
continued strain on powers of serious attention than
it would be possible to maintain, places of relaxation
were provided by the interpolation of jest, and this
was drawn always in England from incidents not
Noah would be provided
in themselves Scriptural. Noah would be provided
with an obstinate wife to provide comic business,
and so forth. Between the Old Testament and New
Testament series there was an Interlude, the Shep-
herd's Play, that led up to the birth of Christ.
shepherds supposed to be keeping their flocks at
Bethlehem were presented as common shepherds
talking, jesting, wrestling, one of them playing
especially the part of the country clown, till the song
of the angels was heard. At first they mimicked
it rudely, afterwards they became impressed, they
were led to the infant Christ in the manger, knelt,
offered their rustic gifts, and arose prophets. There
is reason to believe that this Shepherd's Play had
its independent origin in rustic sports outside a
town, arranged by the clergy, who concealed a choir
arrayed as angels to raise the Gloria in Excelsis at
the proper time, and then lead the rude actors
and their audience into the lighted church. Here
there had been set up a representation of the
new-born Saviour; and as the shepherds knelt by
the manger the organ pealed, the Gloria resounded
through the church, and the people, realising the
occasion, had their hearts stirred with emotion. The
Magi too, in Eastern robes, would ride into the
town and bring their offerings. So also when Easter
was at hand, persons in Oriental dress entered the
market-place selling spices, spices to be bought for
the anointment of the Lord. It happens that in the
Wakefield series there are two Shepherd's Plays pro-
vided, either of which might be chosen by the guilds
who acted the whole series. One of these furnishes
the usual dialogue and sport, but the other happens
to develope a short farcical story which accidentally
fulfils the requisite conditions, and so becomes our

tion; treating the fancy as a fact; and English compilers, paying just
respect to the authority of so good a student of dramatic literature,
have followed one another in the steady reproduction of a very great
mistake.

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It is so by

earliest known piece of acted drama.
accident; it was not imitated or developed, and has
no relation to the origin of the true drama. Still,
out of a form of literature that has many points
in common with the drama, something which in a
rude way fulfilled all its conditions was by chance
produced. It will be, therefore, the first piece in
the volume of this Library which has been planned
to illustrate the course of our English Dramatic
Literature.

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At Coventry there are still preserved accountbooks of the guilds, which show in what way money was paid for the production of the miracle plays. The rehearsals, the fees to actors, the provision or repair of stage appointments, are so recorded, that it is not difficult to construct from the entries a somewhat full detail of the method of procedure. This was done by Mr. Thomas Sharp when he published in 1825 by private subscription his valuable "Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries anciently performed at Coventry by the Trading Companies of that City; chiefly with reference to the Vehicles, Characters, and Dresses of the Actors." The entries of expenses for the Drapers' Pageant of Doomsday, include, among machinery, hell-mouth and the keeping of the fire at it, "an earthquake and "barrel for the same," "three worlds, painted," and a link to set the world on fire." Among dresses are the black and white suits for souls lost and saved, "gold skins" for the angels, and three pounds of hair for the demon's coat and hose; also a "Hat for the Pharisee." Among payments to actors are sixteenpence to "Worms of Conscience," three shillings to two demons, and only two shillings to four angels; the demons being better paid, because they had more stage business to go through efficiently. One entry is of a payment of two shillings for a demon's face, and another of ten shillings "for making the ij devells facys." There are frequent entries for souls' coats. One entry is "payd to Crowe for makyng of iij worldys, ijs," and another is of fivepence "for settyng the world of fyer." These are entries of the sixteenth century, into which the practice of acting these plays at Coventry was continued. They were acted at Chester as late as 1577, Let us take from and at Coventry as late as 1580. the Wakefield series the Mystery Play of

ABRAHAM.

Abraham. Adonay,' thou God veray,
Thou hear us when we to thee call!
As thou art he that best may,
Thou art most succour and help of all!
Mightful Lord! to thee I pray,
Let once the oil of mercy fall!
Shall I ne'er abide that day?
Truly yet I hope I shall.

Mercy, Lord omnipotent!

Long since He this world has wrought:
Whither are all our elders went ?

1 Adonay. The Hebrew Adonai, for Lord, was used to avoid repetition of the sacred name, Jehovah.

2 Veray (French "vrai "), true: so "very God of very God."

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