Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction | Page 2

of the World, played in
London at the Skinner's Well. It lasted seven days continually, and
there were the most part of the lords and gentles of England. No copy
of this play exists, but of its character we have a pretty sensible idea
from various other plays of the Creation handed down from the
north-country cycles. In the best of them the predestined Adam is
created after a fashion both to suggest his treatment by Giotto in the
medallion at Florence, and his lineaments as an English mediæval
prototype:--
"But now this man that I have made, With the ghost of life, I make him
glad, Rise up, Adam, rise up rade,[1] A man full of soul and life!"
But to surprise the English mediæval smith or carpenter, cobbler or
bowyer, when he turns playgoer at Whitsuntide, assisting at a play
which expressed himself as well as its scriptural folk, we must go on to
later episodes. The Deluge in the Chester pageant, that opens the
present volume, has among its many Noah's Ark sensations, some of
them difficult enough to mimic on the pageant-wagon, a typical recall
of the shipwright and ark-builder. God says to Noah:--
A ship soon thou shalt make thee of trees, dry and light. Little
chambers therein thou make, And binding pitch also thou take, Within
and out, thou ne slake To anoint it thro' all thy might.
In the York Noah's Ark pageant, which seems to be the parent-play in
England of all its kind, we have this craftsman's episode much enlarged.
"Make it of boards," God says, "and wands between!"
Thus thriftily and not over thin, Look that thy seams be subtly seen
And nailéd well, that they not twin: Thus I devised it should have been;
Therefore do forth, and leave thy din
Then, after further instructions, Noah begins to work before the

spectators, first rough-hewing a plank, then trying it with a line, and
joining it with a gynn or gin. He says:--
More subtilely can no man sew;[2] It shall be clinched each ilk and deal,
With nails that are both noble and new, Thus shall I fix it to the keel:
Take here a rivet, and there a screw, With there bow,[3] there now,
work I well, This work, I warrant both good and true.
To complete the pedigree of this scene we must turn to the old poem,
the "Cursor Mundi," which, written in the fourteenth century, the time
when the northern miracle-plays were taking decisive shape, appears to
have served their writers as a stock-book. The following passage is own
brother to that in the York miracle-play:--
A ship must thou needs dight, Myself shall be the master-wright. I shall
thee tell how broad and long, Of what measure and how strong. When
the timber is fastened well, Wind the sides ever each and deal. Bind it
first with balk and band, And wind it then too with good wand. With
pitch, look, it be not thin! Plaster it well without and in!
The likeness we see is startling: so near to the other indeed as to
suggest almost a common authorship.
As for the pastoral plays in the same towns, we find the shepherds and
countrymen were just as well furnished with rough cuts from the life.
The most real and frankly illustrative, and by no means the least idyllic
of them is perhaps the Chester play of the three shepherds. It was not
played by countrymen but by townsmen, like the other plays in the
town cycles, being in this case the "Paynters and Glasiors" play. The
first shepherd who opens it talks of the "bower" or cote he would build,
his "sheep to shield," his "seemly wethers to save:"--
From comely Conway unto Clyde Under tyldes[4] them to hide A
better shepherd on no side No earthly man may have For with walking
weary I have methought Beside thee such my sheep I sought My
long-tail'd tups are in my thought Them to save and heal
In the Death of Abel, another Chester play, Cain comes in with a

plough, and says:--
A tiller I am, and so will I be, As my daddy hath taught it me I will
fulfil his lore
In the subsequent incident of the corn that Cain is to offer for his
sacrifice, we hear the plain echo of the English farmer's voice in the
corn-market mixing with the scriptural verse: "This standing corn that
was eaten by beasts," will do:
God, thou gettest no better of me, Be thou never so grim
So throughout the plays the folk-life of their day, their customs and
customary speech, are for ever emerging from the biblical scene.
In trying to realise how the miracle-plays were mounted and acted, we
shall find the