soo moche as yours / And there with Galahad entryd in to the foreste / And the wynde aroos and drofe Launcelot more than a moneth thurgh oute the see where he slepte but lytyl but prayed to god that he myght see some tydynges of the Sancgreal / Soo hyt befelle on a nyghte at mydnyghte he aryued afore a Castel on the bak syde whiche was ryche and fayre / and there was a posterne opened toward the see / and was open withoute ony kepynge / sauf two lyons kept the entre and the moone shone clere /

Malory completed his redaction of the Morte Darthur from numerous originals about 1470; it was published by Caxton in 1485.

William Caxton (1422-91). The art of printing from movable types had been introduced into some eight European countries before a press was established in

Ew math the book namedy the diacs or sayengis of the philosophhres oprynted by me William Capton at Bestmestæ the yewe of our lozdy -MCCCC • £vy vyj• Whiche book is late translated out of Hensle into onglyflh, by the Noble andy puissant lozdy Lezd) Antone Eike of pupers lord of Sales of the C Yle of Lyght, Defendur andy directour of the siege aps, tolique, for our holy Hatz the Pope in this Xoyame of Englondy and Geueznour of my lord Pryna of Bales

Extract from Caxton's First Book printed in England,

"The Dictes and Sayeings of the Philosophers."

England. Caxton learned printing during a long stay on the Continent, and before coming home to set up a press at Westminster published at Cologne (c. 1474) the first book printed in English, his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, which he had himself translated from a great French redaction of the Troy romances. The first book actually printed and dated in England, The Dictes and Sayeings of the Philosophers, was issued at the Westminster press in 1477. He revised and extended The Chronicles of England from Brute, two editions of which came out in 1480 and 1482, and printed Higden's Polychronicon. Caxton's own renderings of The Mirror of the World, Reynard the Fox, and Godfrey of Boulogne appeared in 1481. He had printed single works of Lydgate and Chaucer, and an edition of the Canterbury Tales. edition of the latter was published in 1483, and Lydgate's Life of Our Lady and Gower's Confessio Amantis the same year. Next year appeared the great edition

An

of The Golden Legend, translated by Caxton from a French and Latin version with the help of an English one. Æsop's Fables and The Book of the Knight of the Tower came out in 1484, and in 1485, besides the Morte Darthur, he printed The Life of Charles the Grete and Paris and Vienne, both from the French. Later issues from Caxton's press included Lord Berners's fine rendering of The Four Sons of Aymon, The History of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, and the Eneydos, a romance founded on the Æneid.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts.-Specimens of English Literature, 1394-1579, ed. W. W. Skeat (Clarendon Press, 1894); Marvellous Adventures of Sir John Maundeville, ed. A. Layard (Constable, 1895); Paston Letters, ed. J. Gaird ner, 4 vols. (Constable, 1901); Selections from the Paston Letters, ed. A. D. Greenwood (Bell, 1920).

CHAPTER 7. ORIGINS OF ENGLISH DRAMA

THE MIRACLE, MYSTERY, AND MORALITY PLAYS

Like the great drama of the Greeks, the English drama owed its origin to the demands of religious ritual. It began in a simple attempt to render clear and actual the central doctrine of the Church, the Resurrection of Christ. These Easter plays were performed in the church itself by clerics only, and their purpose was purely didactic, Gradually they were extended to other parts of the Liturgy, to scenes from the Old and New Testaments, and to the lives of saints; and as they became more elaborate and more dramatic the representations were moved from the interior of the church to the porch, and then to the churchyard; but their popularity caused a further removal to village greens, the streets, and other public places. This of course tended to give a more secular character to the performances, and the regular clergy began to view them with a suspicious disfavour when friars and laymen took part. But the revival of the festival of Corpus Christi in 1311 gave an impetus which was too strong to be resisted, and provided a public holiday which was dedicated to a complete representation in dramatic pageantry of Biblical history, from the creation to the resurrection. The impulse was strengthened by the growing importance of fairs, by the increase in wealth of the trading classes, and especially by the prosperous development of the trade guilds. Under these influences the miracle plays towards the year 1400 had become a regular annual feature of English life, retaining their religious basis, but developing dramatically at the same time.

The miracle play proper, dealing with the lives of the saints, has been traced back to the early years of the 12th century, when, as Matthew Paris records, a play of St. Katherine was performed at Dunstable (c. 1119). This miracle play was probably the work of the Abbot Geoffrey of St. Albans; like all its kind, it was doubtless in Latin, but it has not survived. A little later a Norman clerk named Hilarius composed several miracles, of which plays on St. Nicholas and the Raising of Lazarus are extant; the oldest English fragment is the Harrowing of Hell, and seems to date from the end of the 13th century.

The mystery plays, which deal entirely with the Scripture history, were developed more particularly in England from the Easter and Christmas plays, and were especially associated with the Corpus Christi festival. They were performed in a cycle of pageants, each individual pageant representing a single episode, such as the murder of Abel, the Flood, the sacrifice of Isaac, the appearance to the Shepherds, or the Massacre of the Innocents. The municipality took the responsibility for the whole performance, and each scene was assigned to a separate guild. They were carried

out with especial thoroughness at various towns in the North, notably York, Wakefield, and Chester, and at Norwich and Coventry. The stage, or pageant, was a crude contrivance in two stories: the lower represented hell and was used as a kind of retiring-room for the players, and the upper floor often had a canopy to signify heaven. The plays themselves are of multifarious value. Their literary merit is slight. Sometimes the dialogue is vivacious and witty, but the verse is crude and limping, and gives us no foretaste of the dramatic use of the heroic line even in such inferior hands as those of Greene and Peele. In treatment they were hampered by the imperative claims of their subject. There could

be no freedom in the plot, no development of personal points of view, when the least suspicion of heresy might be fatal; but there is often a lively sense of character, sometimes a display of crude humour. The jostling of a lofty idealism with a realism that tends frequently to coarseness is stranger to modern minds than the mixture of tragedy and comedy in King Lear, but it is the product of the same native dramatic unconventionality. Noah's wife, Herod, and the Devil are the favourite humorous types, and it is in such figures, with their racy dialogue, that the mysteries show their affinity with the later English drama.

Several complete cycles of mysteries have been preserved. The York cycle consists of forty-eight plays, which may probably be ascribed in their present form to the century 1350-1450. The Towneley Mysteries,

(From Chambers's "Book of Days.")

consisting of thirty plays, were performed at Wakefield, and should perhaps be dated a little later: they treat their themes in a freer, less refined and less religious spirit, but are for that reason more dramatic; there is more of the incongruous horse-play and less of the didactic purpose; the human interest is considerably heightened. The Chester group of twenty-four plays is more uneven; and those of Coventry, forty-two in number, return to the serious vein and even lean towards a moralizing allegorical tone. Nothing is known of the authors of any of the plays. They are possibly the climax of a tradition, the plays we have being the final versions of a composite development extending

over 150 or 200 years. In their heyday they were extraordinarily popular with all classes we have record of Richard II. attending the York festival in 1397, while Henry V. patronized the performance at Coventry in 1416.

In the group of four plays known as the Digby Mysteries (c. 1500), an unmistakable advance in the direction of true drama is made, especially in the play of Mary Magdalene; but this realistic line of growth was delayed by the vogue of the morality play, which was a natural development from the older type of mystery. The morality retained the rude versification of the mystery, making use of alliteration as well as rhyme and of frequent stanza arrangements. It was equally serious in intention, and at bottom dealt with the same big problem of good and evil. But the authors of the moralities took advantage of the fashionable allegory; their characters were abstractions, who played their parts like the shadowy figures of the Roman de la Rose. On the whole they were an advance on the mystery play. Their theme made a definite plot necessary, and thus a great advance was taken in the art of dramatic construction. The earliest mention of such an allegorical play is that of the lost Play of the Paternoster in the reign of Edward III.; the oldest extant is The Castle of Perseverance, a long, dull, but dignified discussion which traces the adventures of Humanum Genus and his encounters with Mundus, Caro, and Belial. Even more abstract are such plays as Mind, Wit and Understanding, The Four Elements (c. 1517), and Wit and Science. The interest in these is purely theological and philosophical; but there is a livelier and more human note in short pieces like Lusty Juventus and Hickescorner; the latter indeed has flashes of humour and pictures vividly the peccadilloes of its hero, who is almost a person. But the best of the older moralities is the impressive play of Everyman (c. 1500), in which the powerful allegory is reinforced by considerable knowledge of human nature and by significant and well-handled dialogue.

Under Henry VIII., who was a patron of the drama, the morality grew into the interlude, a short dramatic representation filling the intervals of the prolonged spectacular pageants that he loved. Under him the interlude lost its didactic. purpose; in the interludes of John Heywood (c. 1500-80), like The Foure PP, we have an essentially English product, with witty dialogue, humorous characterization, and plenty of farcical incidents. Nevertheless, the spirit of the morality survived in more august drama. The "humours" of Ben Jonson have a similar purpose to the allegorical devices of Hickescorner and Everyman; and a play like The Staple of News is a satirical morality, with such characters as Pecunia, Mortgage, and Lady Wax as the centre of its plot.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST

Texts. GAYLEY, C. M.: Representative English Comedies, Vol. I. From the Beginnings to Shakespeare (Macmillan, New York, 1912).-Everyman, with other Interludes, including eight Miracle Plays, introduction by E. Rhys (Everyman, Dent).-MANLY, J. M.: Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama (2 vols. Ginn, 1897).