The Growth of English Drama | Page 9

behind
it. At the rough altar's side Abraham's resolution fails him; from his lips
bursts the half-veiled protest, 'The ffadyr to sle the sone! My hert doth
clynge and cleve as clay'. But the lad encourages him, bidding him
strike quickly, yet adding sympathetically that his father should turn his
face away as he smites. The conquest is won. Love and duty conflict no
longer. Only two simple acts remain for love's performance: 'My swete
sone, thi mouth I kys'; and when that last embrace is over, 'With this
kerchere I kure (cover) thi face', so that the priest may not see the
victim's agony. Then duty raises the knife aloft, and as it pauses in the
air before its fearful descent the Angel speaks--and saves.
The moving character of the opening, leading up to the sudden
catastrophe and, by its tragic contrast with what follows, throwing a
vivid ray into the very centre and soul of that wonderful trial of faith;
the natural sequence and diversity of emotions, love, pride,
thankfulness, horror, submission, grief, resolution, and final joy and
gratitude following each other like light and shadow; the little touches,
the suggestion to turn the face aside, the last kiss, the handkerchief to
hide the blue eyes of innocence; these are all, however crude the
technique, of the very essence of the highest art.

As will be seen from the list, only two scenes more refer to Old
Testament history, and then Jesus, whom the author has already
intended to foreshadow in Isaac (whence the lad's submission to his
father's will), begins to loom before us. The writer's religious creed
prompted him to devote considerable space to Mary, the mother of
Jesus; for she is to be the link between her Son and humanity, and
therefore must be shown free from sin from her birth. The same motive
gives us a clue to the character of Joseph. That nothing may be wanting
to give whiteness to the purity of Mary, she is implicitly contrasted
with the crude rusticity and gaffer-like obstinacy of her aged husband.
He is just such an old hobbling wiseacre as may be found supporting
his rheumatic joints with a thick stick in any Dorsetshire village. He is
an old man before he is required to marry her, and his protests against
the proposed union, accompanied with many a shake of the head, recall
to modern readers the humour of Mr. Thomas Hardy. This is how he
receives the announcement when at length his bowed legs have, with
sundry rests by the wayside, covered the distance between his home
and the Temple where Mary and the Priest await him:
What, xuld I wedde? God forbede! I am an old man, so God me spede,
And with a wyff now to levyn in drede, It wore neyther sport nere
game.
He is told that it is God's will. Even the beauty of the bride-elect is
delicately referred to as an inducement. In vain. To all he replies:
A! shuld I have here? ye lese my lyff: Alas! dere God, xuld I now rave?
An old man may nevyr thryff With a yonge wyff, so God me save! Nay,
nay, sere, lett bene, Xuld I now in age begynne to dote, If I here chyde
she wolde clowte my cote, Blere myn ey, and pyke out a mote, And
thus oftyn tymes it is sene.
Eventually, of course, he is won over; but the author promptly packs
him into a far district as soon as the ceremony is over, nor does he
permit him to return to Mary's side until long after the Annunciation.
'The Adoration of the Magi' (Scene 17) introduces us to a very notable
person, no other than Herod, the model of each 'robustious

periwig-pated fellow' who on the stage would 'tear a passion to tatters,
to very rags', and so out-herod Herod. He is of old standing, a veteran
of the Church Epiphany plays, and has already learnt 'to split the ears of
the groundlings' with the stentorian sound of his pompous rhetoric.
Hear him declaim:
As a lord in ryalté in non regyon so ryche, And rulere of alle remys[11],
I ryde in ryal aray; Ther is no lord of lond in lordchep to me lyche, Non
lofflyere, non lofsumere[12],--evyr lestyng is my lay: Of bewté and of
boldnes I bere evermore the belle; Of mayn and of myght I master
every man; I dynge with my dowtynes the devyl down to helle, ffor
bothe of hevyn and of herthe I am kynge sertayn.
In Scene 19 we hear him issuing his cruel order for the killing of the
children. But when the foul deed is done there await the murderer two
kings whom he cannot slay, Death and the Devil. A banquet is in