MYSTERIES 7
burlesque clement, and contain many curious illustra- tions of contemporary manners. The Coventry mys- teries were famous in Kngland. Of these, Dugdale re- lates, in his //i.i/ori/ of H'uricicLf/iir,', i>ublished in 1G5C, that, "Before the suppression of the monasteries this city was very famous for the pageants that were play'd therein, u])iiii Corpus Chrisli day (one of their ancient fairs), wliich occasioning very great continence of peo- ple thither from far and near, was of no small benefit thereto; which pageants being acted with mighty state and reverence by the Grey Friers, had theatres for the several scenes, very large and high, placed upon wheels, and drawn to all the eminent jiarts of the city, for the better advantage of spectators, and contain'd the story of the Old and New Testament, composed in the old Englishe rithme, as appeareth by an ancient MS. (in liibl. Cotton. Vesp. D. VIII), entituled, Lucius Corporis Christi, or Ludus Coventria." The celebrity of the per- formances may be inferred from the rank of the audi- ences; for at the festival of Corpus Christi in 1483 Kichard III visited Coventry to see the plays, and at the same season in 1492 they were attended by Henry VII and bis queen, by whom they were highly com- mended. Of them it is said, " Every company had his pagiante, or parte, which pagiantes were a highe scaf- olde with two rowmes, a higlier and a lower, upon four wheeles. In the lower they apparelled themselves, in the higlier rowme they played, being all open on the tope, that all behoulders might heare and see them. The places where they played them was in every streete. They begane first at the Abay Gates, and when the pa- giante was played, it was wheeled to the High Cross Ix-fore tlie mayor, and so to every streete; and so every streete had a pagiante playing before them, till all the pagiantes for the daye appointed were jilayed; and when one pagiante was neere ended, worde was brougbte from streete to streete, that soe the mighte come in place thereof, exceedinge orderlye, and all the streetes had their pagiante afore them, all at one time, playing to- getlicr, to sc which playcs was great resorte, and also scafoldes, and stages made in the streetes, in those places wheare they determined to playe their pagiantes." The first mystery performed in Scotland was at Aber- deen, in 1445, and was called the Jl<ify lilade. One was called Candlemas Day. and anotlier JNIary Magda- lene. Tlie records of the town council of Edinburgh. in 15.')4, contain an order to jiay Walter Bynning for making, among other theatrical implements, a mitre, a fool's hood, a pair of angel's wings, two angels' hair, and a chaplet of triumph. Other and coarser scenes were enacted by the Boy-bishop (q.v.), and at the Feast of Asses (<i. v.).
Out of the mysteries and miracle plays sprang a third class of religious plays called ^forulities, in which alle- gorical personifications of the Virtues and Vices were introduced as dramatis persoiuT. These personages at first only took part in the play along with the scriptural or legendary characters, but afterwards entirely super- seded them. This change from mysteries to moralities corresponded to a remarkable modification of the public mind. Keason, eager to produce and combine ideas, had been .substituted for the simjde, unquestioning faith of the ^Middle Ages. Allegory, no longer the concrete and material rendering of un<lisputed facts, became a work of intelligence, abstrattion, and analysis. Nature, her high and undying loveliness unguessed, appeared commonplace and insipid, and in need of the fictitious combinations of imagination. The mind of man hav- ing shaken itself free from its old trammels, sometimes in its pride and joy abused its new-found freedom. The nionilitics were perhaps best |ironiulgated in France, where a guild was established by Philip the Fair about 1303, with special privileges for their representations. In one of such dramas, of which Demogeot furnishes an extract, the gay boon companions Ktif-al/, Thirst, Driiik-to-j/oii, and Suns Wn/er, are politely invited liy the rich and si)k'ndid Banquet. The ladies of the party
8 MYSTERIES
are Daintiness, Gluttony, and Lust. The feast is all that can be desired, the guests are more than satisfied; when suddenly a band of enemies— To/ic, Gout, Jaundice, Quinsy, and J)ropsy—TUih in and seize the as.sembled
I revellers by the leg or the throat or the stomach, as the case may be. Some are ovenvhclmed — some rush
I for succor to <S'o6nV/y, who calls Cure to help him. Ban- quet is condemned to death by the judge, Experience, and
I Diet is his executioner. The oldest -known English compositions of this kind are of the time of Henry VI;
I they are more elaborate and less interesting than the miracle plays. Moralities continued in fashion in Eng- land till the time of Elizabeth, and were there the im- mediate precursors of the regular drama. In I'rance they were the precursors of the light play known as farce, which " may be reckoned a middle fink between the extemporaneous effusions of the mimes and the le- gitimate drama" (llallam, IJt. i, 2G [109]). And this seems the more natural result of the two. From such pieces as the one of which we give a synopsis above the step to farces was but a short one. Moralities could not long enchain a people on whom refinement of satir- ical wit is generally thrown away. The mysteries no longer made them weep — it would be well to make them laugh, and farce was invented. In Germany, es- pecially in the Alpine districts, they were composed and acted by the jjcasants. These peasant-plays had less regularity in their dramatic form, were often inter- spersed with songs and processions, and in their union of simplicity with high -wrought feeling were most characteristic of a people in whom the religious and dramatic element are both so largely developed. In the early part of the sixteenth centurj- they began to partake in some degree of the comic character which has been their frequent tendency; and thus, although designed at first for the religious instruction of the peo- ple, they had long before the Reformation so far deiiarted from their original character as to be mixed up in many instances with buffoonery and irreverence, intentional or unintentional, and to be the means of inducing con- tempt rather than respect for the Church and religion. It is a mistake to suppose that the hostility <if the Reformers was what suppressed these pojjular exhibi- tions of sacred subjects. The fathers of the Reforma- tion showed no unfriendly feeling towards them. Lu- ther is reported to have said that they often did more good and produced more impression than s( rmons. The most direct encouragement was given to them by the founders of the Swedish Protestant Church, and by the earlier Lutheran bishops, Swedish and Danish. The authorship of one drama of the kind is assigned to Grotius. In iMigland, the greatest check they received was from the rise of the secular drama; yet they con- tinued to be occasionally performed in the times of James I and Charles I, and it is well known that the first sketch of Milton's Paradise Lost was a sacred dra- ma, in w hich the opennig speech was Satan's address to the sun. A degenerate relic of the miracle play may yet be traced in some remote districts of ICngland, where the story of St. (ieorge, the dragon, and Beelze- bub is rudely represented by the peasantr}-. " In S(iain," says Ticknor, "as late as 1840, something resembling a mystery of the earliest time was represented at Valencia during the shows of the Corpus Christi (comp. Lamarca, Tentro de VaUncia, 1840, p. 11). This, I suppofC, is the dramatic entertainment which Julius von Jlinutoli wit- nessed in the Feast of the Sacrament at Valencia in 1853, and which lie not only describes, but jirints entire in the dialect of the country just as he heard it" (Hist, of Spanish Literature, iii, 347, foot-note\ In Mexico, too, the mysteries have been kept up to this day. Thus Bayard Taylor, during his travels in that country, wit- nessed the performance of such a religious play.