The Old Miracle Plays of England

she answered:

And when the grave covered both of them, Knowledge came near, and bending over it, said:

She paused, listening, and in a joyful voice added:

And indeed, almost before Knowledge had finished speaking, there appeared on the balcony, high above the stage, an angel with long wings of rose-colour; and, while sweet music sounded, the angel spoke:

So, though the play had been very sad, it ended with beautiful sights and sounds, and before the people in the audience moved, the Messenger stood once more alone upon the stage, warning them to bear the moral of Everyman in mind:

But though this simple and beautiful old play is sometimes acted nowadays, and though many people are interested and touched whenever it is performed, yet, at any rate in England, the time for miracle plays has gone by.

If not wiser, the world has at least grown older since the days when crowds of simple and unlearned folk assembled in market-places, or on village-greens, to be taught the Bible history which they can now read for themselves.

A few men and women, it is true, occasionally write religious plays even now. There is one, for instance, called Bethlehem, written by Laurence Housman, which has lately been acted several times, and another by Miss Buckland, with the title of Eager Heart, has for six years been played every Christmas in the big hall at Lincoln’s Inn.

But these modern religious dramas are like late violets blooming when the real violet time is over. It may be delightful to find them still growing here and there, but just as some flowers belong to the spring and cannot live into the summer, so the real miracle plays which flourished in the spring-time of our country’s history have died away now that the country’s life is older.

There is in Europe at the present day only one important religious play to which, as in olden times, thousands of people flock, and that is called the Ober Ammergau Passion Play, and is given once in ten years.

Ober Ammergau is a village in Bavaria, and the play, acted by the villagers, deals with the last days of Christ on earth, and is so wonderful and so beautiful that it has become very celebrated.

In a far-away German village like Ober Ammergau, where the natives are simple folk living apart from the great world, such a performance as this is still possible, and still a beautiful thing. Nevertheless it remains true that for the great mass of people the age of miracle plays is over.

But though as national events they have passed away from our country for ever, we must not forget that quite apart from the work of teaching which they once performed, they are very important in the history of our literature.

Rough and often badly written as they are, these miracle plays prepared the way for the drama which was to follow them in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is not too much to say that without them we might never have had Hamlet, nor As you like it, nor any of the splendid and beautiful plays of such a great dramatist as William Shakespeare.

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Transcriber’s Notes

• Silently corrected a few typos.
• Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
• In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.