The Growth of English Drama | Page 9

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 ryalt�� 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 bewt�� 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 full swing, Herod's officers are about him, the customary rant and bombast is on his lips when those two steal in. 'While the trumpets are sounding, Death slays Herod and his two soldiers suddenly, and the Devil receives them'--so runs the terse Latin stage-direction.
Of the Devil we have more than enough in Scene 22, for it opens with an infernal council, Sathanas, Belyalle, and Belsabub debating the best means of testing the divinity of Jesus and of thereby making sure whether or no another lord has been placed