[Bibliographical Note.—The English miracle play has been often, fully, and admirably studied from the point of view of dramatic literature; perhaps less so from that of stage history. The best accounts are those of B. Ten Brink, History of English Literature, bk. v, chs. 2-6 (trans. W. C. Robinson, vol. ii, 1893); A. W. Ward, History of English Dramatic Literature (2nd ed., 1899), vol. i, ch. 1; W. Creizenach, Geschichte des neueren Dramas, vol. i (1893); and the introduction to A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes (3rd ed., 1898). These supersede J. P. Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry (2nd ed., 1879), vol. ii, and J. L. Klein, Geschichte des englischen Dramas (1876), vol. i. Other useful books are J. A. Symonds, Shakspere’s Predecessors in the English Drama (1884), ch. 3; K. L. Bates, The English Religious Drama (1893), and J. J. Jusserand, Le Théâtre en Angleterre (1881), ch. 2. The substance of this last is incorporated in the same writer’s Literary History of the English People, vol. i (1895), bk. iii, ch. 6. W. J. Courthope, History of English Poetry, vol. i (1895), ch. 10, should also be consulted, as well as the valuable detailed investigations of A. Hohlfeld, Die altenglischen Kollektivmisterien, in Anglia, vol. xi (1889), and C. Davidson, Studies in the English Mystery Plays (1892). I do not think that S. W. Clarke, The Miracle Play in England (n.d.), and C. Hastings, Le Théâtre français et anglais (1900, trans. 1901), add very much. A. Ebert, Die englischen Mysterien, in Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur, vol. i (1859), is an early manifestation of German interest in the subject, and the still earlier native learning may be found in T. Warton, History of English Poetry (ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1871), §§ 6, 33; E. Malone, Historical Account of the English Stage, in Variorum Shakespeare (1821), vol. iii; W. Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described (1823). The antiquarianism of T. Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at Coventry (1825), is still a mine of material on the Realien of the stage.—The four great cycles have been edited as follows, in most cases with important introductions: the Chester Plays by T. Wright (Shakespeare Society, 1843-7) and by H. Deimling (E. E. T. S., part only issued in 1893); the York Plays by L. T. Smith (1885); the Towneley or Wakefield Plays by an uncertain editor (Surtees Society, 1836), and by G. England and A. W. Pollard (E. E. T. S. 1897); the Ludus Coventriae, by J. O. Halliwell [-Phillipps] (Shakespeare Society, 1841). A miscellaneous collection of late plays from one of the Bodleian Digby MSS. has been printed by T. Sharp (Abbotsford Club, 1835), and F. J. Furnivall (New Shakespeare Society, 1882, E. E. T. S. 1896). The Cornish cycle is in E. Norris, The Ancient Cornish Drama (1859). Good selections of typical plays are in A. W. Pollard’s book, and J. M. Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama (1897), vol. i. Older books of the same kind are J. P. Collier, Five Miracle Plays, or Scriptural Dramas (1836), and W. Marriott, A Collection of English Miracle Plays or Mysteries (Basle, 1838). The bibliographies given by Miss Bates and by F. H. Stoddard, References for Students of Miracle Plays and Mysteries (1887), may be supplemented from my Appendices of Representations and Texts, which I have tried to make as complete as possible.]

There is no reason to doubt that England had its full share in the earlier development of the religious drama. Texts of the liturgical period are, indeed, rare. The tenth-century version of the Quem quaeritis from Winchester and the fourteenth-century version from Dublin stand, at least for the present, alone. But the wholesale destruction of liturgical books at the Reformation is sufficient to account for such a sparseness, and a few stray notices gathered from the wreckage of time bear sufficient witness to the presence in this country of several amongst the more widespread types of liturgical play. The Lichfield statutes (1188-98) provide for repraesentationes of the Pastores, the Resurrectio, the Peregrini; those of York (†1255) for the Pastores and the Tres Reges; a Salisbury inventory of 1222 includes ‘crowns’ or more probably ‘stars’ (coronae) ad repraesentationes faciendas; while Lincoln account books of the early fifteenth century appear to add the Annuntiatio and the Prophetae, a visus called Rubum quem viderat in 1420 perhaps forming a Moses scene in the latter. So late as 1518 the Quem quaeritis was performed in Magdalen College chapel, and plays of the Nativity and the Resurrection by the clerks of the chapel are contemplated at about the same date in the household regulations of the Earl of Northumberland at Leconfield. Nor were dramatic versions of the legends of saints unknown. I do not trace a St. Nicholas cycle in England, although Hilarius, in whose repertory a St. Nicholas play is included, is thought to have been an Englishman by birth. But the memory of a play of St. Catherine prepared by Geoffrey the Norman at Dunstable early in the twelfth century was preserved, owing to the accident which led to Geoffrey ultimately becoming abbot of St. Albans; and towards the close of the same century William Fitzstephen records the representations of the miracles of holy confessors and the passions of martyrs which took the place of minstrelsy in London. For the most part such early plays are found in close connexion with the cathedrals and great monasteries. But a document of about 1220, the interpretation of which must, however, be considered doubtful, would seem to suggest that plays (actiones) were habitually given at no less than five chapelries within the single parish of Shipton in Oxfordshire, and that the profits thereof formed an appreciable part of the income derived from that living by the prebendaries of Salisbury cathedral.

Examples of the transitional forms by which the liturgical drama grew into the popular religious drama of the great cycles can also be found in England. At Beverley a Resurrection play is described as taking place in the graveyard of the minster about 1220. The intrusion of the vernacular is represented by the curious bilingual text of a single actor’s parts in the Pastores, Quem quaeritis and Peregrini, printed by Professor Skeat from a manuscript found at Shrewsbury. These are probably still liturgical in character, and it is to be observed that their subjects are precisely those of the three plays known to have been used in the neighbouring cathedral of Lichfield. It must remain a moot point whether the religious drama passed directly, in this country, from Latin to English, or whether there was a period during which performances were given in Norman-French. Scholars are inclined to find an Anglo-Norman dialect in that very important monument of the transition, the Repraesentatio Adae, as well as in an early example of the expanded Easter play. But even if the authors of these were, like Hilarius, of English birth, it hardly follows that their productions were acted in England. Nor do the probable borrowings of the Chester and other cycles from French texts much affect the question⁠[364]. That the disfavour with which the austerer section of the clergy looked upon the vernacular religious plays had its spokesmen in England, was sufficiently illustrated in the last chapter.

The English miracle-play reaches its full development with the formation of the great processional cycles almost immediately after the establishment of the Corpus Christi festival in 1311. The local tradition of Chester, stripped of a certain confusion between the names of two distinct mayors of that city which has clung about it, is found to fix the foundation of the Chester plays in 1328. The date has the authority of an official municipal document, forms part of a quite consistent story, several points in which can be independently corroborated, and is on a priori grounds extremely plausible. Unfortunately, owing to the comparative scarcity of archives during this period, the first fifty years of the history of municipal drama are practically a blank. A mention, about 1350, of a ludus filiorum Israelis, in connexion with a guild of Corpus Christi at Cambridge, spans a wide gulf. There is no actual record of plays at Chester itself until 1462. Those of Beverley are first mentioned in 1377, those of York in 1378, and those of Coventry in 1392. But it must be added that the Beverley plays were an antiqua consuetudo in 1390, and that those of York were to take place at stations antiquitus assignatis in 1394. It is in 1378 that the earliest notice of plays in London, since the days of William Fitzstephen, comes to light. The fuller records which are from this time onward available reveal, during the next hundred and fifty years, a vigorous and widespread dramatic activity throughout the length and breadth of the land. It manifests itself at such extreme points as the Cinque Ports in the east, Cornwall in the west, and Newcastle in the north. It penetrates to Aberdeen and to Dublin. And though naturally it finds its fullest scope in the annually repeated performances of several amongst the greater cities, yet it is curious to observe in what insignificant villages it was from time to time found possible to organize plays. Performers from thirteen neighbouring places, many of them quite small, made their way to New Romney between 1399 and 1508; whilst the churchwardens of Chelmsford, in the twelve years after their own play in 1562, reaped a profit by hiring out their stock of garments to the men of some seventeen aspiring parishes. On the other hand, there were several important towns in which, so far as we can judge from documents, such as craft ordinances, which would almost certainly have referred to the plays of the crafts, if these had existed, the normal type of municipal drama failed to establish itself. London is one, although here the want was supplied in another way; others are Northampton, Nottingham, Bristol, Oxford, and Reading. And occasionally plays, which had once been annual, were allowed to fall into desuetude and decay. The corporation of Canterbury, for instance, called upon the crafts about 1500 to revive a Corpus Christi play which for some time had been ‘left and laid apart.’ Certainly, by the sixteenth century, if there was still pride and interest taken in many of the municipal plays, signs were not wanting that they were an institution which had almost outlived its day. A reason for this need hardly be sought beyond the Zeitgeist. No doubt the plays were a financial burden upon the poorer crafts and the poorer members of crafts. There was much grumbling at Beverley in 1411 because certain well-to-do persons (generosi), who did not practise any trade or handicraft, had hitherto escaped the payment of contributions to the civic function; and municipal authorities were constantly called upon to adjust and readjust the responsibility for this and that pageant with the fluctuations of prosperity amongst the various occupations. But on the other hand, the plays, were the cause of much and profitable resort to those fortunate towns which possessed them. The mercers’ guild at Shrewsbury found it necessary to impose a special fine upon those of its members whose business avocations required them ‘to ride or goe to Coventrie Faire’ at Corpus Christi tide, and so to miss the procession of guilds at home⁠[365]. And although the mayor of Coventry wrote to Thomas Cromwell, in 1539, that the poor commoners were put to such expense with their plays and pageants that they fared the worse all the year after, yet against this may be set the statement made to Dugdale by ‘some old people who had in their younger days been eye-witnesses of these pageants’ that ‘the confluence of people from farr and neare to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yeilded noe small advantage to this cittye.’ Moreover the levy upon individuals was a trifling one; the whole of the company of smiths at Coventry only paid 3s. 4d. amongst them for ‘pagent pencys’ in 1552. A leitourgia is always an unpopular institution, and these complaints resemble nothing so much as the groans of an opulent London tradesman in the twentieth century over an extra penny on the education rate. In the smaller places it is clear that plays, far from being a source of expense, were a recognized method of raising funds for public purposes. Even in 1220 the emolumentum actionum from the chapelries of Shipton went to swell the purses of the Salisbury prebendaries. In 1505 the churchwardens of Kingston-on-Thames made £4 towards their new steeple by getting up a play for which they secured the patronage of royalty. At Braintree, in Essex, funds were similarly raised by Nicholas Udall and others, between 1523 and 1534, for the repair of the church. I have little doubt that when the mayor of Coventry said economy he meant Protestantism, just as when, under Elizabeth, the corporation of London wished to make a Puritanic attack upon the theatres, they were always smitten with a terrible dread of the infection of the plague⁠[366].

Certainly the spirit of Protestantism, although it came to be willing to use the religious drama for its own purposes⁠[367], was inclined to see both profanity and superstition in the ordinary miracle-plays⁠[368]. Here, as elsewhere, it inherited the hostile tradition which such reforming clerics as Gerhoh of Reichersberg in the twelfth century and Robert Grosseteste in the thirteenth had handed down to Wyclif and his Lollards. At Bungay in 1514 certain ill-disposed persons ‘brake and threw down five pageants’ usually borne about the town on Corpus Christi day. One may fairly suspect, even at this early date, a Lollardist intention in the outrage, and perhaps also in the interposition of the authority of the warden of the Cinque Ports to suppress the play of New Romney in 1518. With the progress of the new ideas the big cycles began to be irregularly performed or to undergo textual modification. The plays of York, for example, were shorn in 1548 of the pageants representing the Death, Assumption, and Coronation of the Virgin. On the other hand, religious plays sometimes became a rallying-point for those who favoured the old order of things. There is extant a letter from Henry VIII to the justices of York, in which he refers to a riot promoted by certain papists at a play of St. Thomas the Apostle, and warns them not to suffer upon such occasions any language likely to tend to a breach of the peace. The brief Marian reaction led to the resumption of the plays in more than one town which had dropped them. The Lincoln corporation ordered ‘St. Anne’s Gild with Corpus Cristi play’ to be brought forward again in 1554 and 1555. In London Henry Machyn records during 1557 a Passion play at the Grey Friars, and another in the church of St. Olave’s, Silver Street, on the festival of the patron. The New Romney play was elaborately revived, after forty-two years’ interval, in 1560. But the process of decay soon set in again. Even where the plays survived, they were Protestantized, and as Corpus Christi day was no longer observed, the performances had to be transferred to some other date. At York the text of the Corpus Christi play was ‘perused and otherwise amended’ in 1568. In 1569 it was acted upon Whit-Tuesday. Then it lay by until 1579, when the book was referred to the archbishop and dean for further revision, and apparently impounded by them. The Creed play was suppressed, by advice of the dean, in 1568, as unsuitable to ‘this happie time of the gospell.’ The Paternoster play was revised and played in 1572. Then this text also fell into the hands of the archbishop, and the corporation seem to have been unable to recover it. So ended the religious drama in York. In Chester the municipal authorities stood out gallantly for their plays. John Hankey and Sir John Savage, mayors in 1572 and 1575 respectively, were called before the privy council for sanctioning performances in spite of inhibitions from the archbishop of York and other persons of authority. They had revised the text, and had a new and Protestant version of the preliminary ‘banns’ prepared. Copies of the text appear to have been got ready for yet another performance in 1600, but the local annalists record that Henry Hardware, then mayor, ‘would not suffer any Playes.’ In one or two cities, new plays, dealing with apocryphal or other merely semi-religious themes, were substituted for the old ones. Thus at Lincoln a ‘standing play’ of the story of Tobit was given in 1564 and 1567; and in Coventry, where the old cycle had been ‘laid down’ in 1580, an Oxford scholar was hired in 1584 to write a semi-religious semi-historical drama of the Destruction of Jerusalem. In 1591, the Conquest of the Danes and the History of King Edward the Confessor were proposed as alternatives for this. By the end of the sixteenth century all the cycles of which most is known had come to an end. The smaller places—Chelmsford in 1574, Braintree in 1579, Bungay in 1591—had sold off their stock of playing-garments. For such dramatic entertainment as the provinces were still to get, they must look to travelling companies taking their summer vacation from the metropolis. Miracle-plays during the seventeenth century were a mere survival. They lingered in distant Cornwall and at Kendal in the hill country of the north; and had been replaced by morals, themselves almost equally obsolete, at Manningtree. The last religious play recorded in England is a quite exceptional one, given at the end of James I’s reign before Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and an audience which numbered thousands at Ely Place in Holborn.

In giving some account of the distribution of the various types of religious play throughout England during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I am dispensed from any obligation to be exhaustive by the fact that the greater municipal dramas at least have already been the subject of more than one fairly adequate discussion. All I shall attempt will be a brief general summary of the main points which emerge from the more or less detailed local notices collected in a lengthy appendix.

The characteristic English type of play was the long cycle given annually under the superintendence of the corporation or governing body of an important city and divided into a number of distinct scenes or ‘pageants,’ each of which was the special charge of one or more of the local ‘crafts,’ ‘arts,’ or ‘occupations.’ Such cycles, organized upon very similar lines, can be studied in the records available from Chester, York, Beverley, Coventry, Newcastle, Lincoln, and Norwich; and the same general model is known or conjectured—sometimes, it is true, on the slightest indication—to have been followed in the plays of Lancaster, Preston, Kendal, Wakefield, Leicester, Worcester, Louth, Bungay, Canterbury, Dublin, and Aberdeen. As in all matters of municipal custom, the relative functions of the corporations and the crafts were nicely adjusted. The direction and control of the plays as a whole were in the hands of the corporations. They decided annually whether the performance should be given, or whether, for war, pestilence, or other reason, it should be withheld. They sent round their officers to read the proclamation or ‘banns’ of the play. They kept an official version of the text, at Chester an ‘original,’ at York a ‘register’ copied from the ‘originals’ belonging to the crafts. Agreements and disputes as to the liability of this or that craft to maintain or contribute to a particular pageant were entered or determined before them. They maintained order at the time of the play and inflicted fines on the turbulent, or upon crafts neglectful or unskilful in carrying out their responsibilities. In particular they required the provision of properly qualified actors. Thus Robert Greene and others were admonished before the leet of Coventry in 1440, that they should play bene et sufficienter so as not to cause a hindrance in any iocus. Similarly, Henry Cowper, ‘webster,’ was fined by the wardens of Beverley in 1452, quod nesciebat ludum suum. An order at York, in 1476, directed the choice of a body of ‘connyng, discrete, and able players’ to test the quality of all those selected as actors. All ‘insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice or personne’ they were to ‘discharge, ammove, and avoide’; and no one was to perform more than twice in the course of the day. Sometimes the actual oversight of the plays was delegated to specially appointed officers. At Beverley the wardens themselves ‘governed’ the Corpus Christi plays, but the Paternoster play was in the hands of ‘aldermen of the pageants.’ At Aberdeen the Haliblude play was undertaken in 1440 by the local lord of misrule, known as the Abbot of Bon Accord; for the Candlemas play ‘bailyes’ represented the corporation. At Lincoln the ‘graceman’ of the guild of St. Anne was responsible, and had the aid of the mayor. At Leicester a number of ‘overseers’ with two ‘bedalls’ were chosen to have the ‘gydyng and rule’ of the play.

The corporations do not appear to have themselves incurred much expenditure over the performances. They provided sitting-room and refreshments for their own members, and for distinguished guests. Richard II was elaborately entertained with a special pagina when he visited York on Corpus Christi day, 1397. Sixty years later a collation, including ‘ij cofyns of counfetys and a pot of grene gynger,’ was made ready for Queen Margaret on her visit to Coventry. At York and Beverley, but not at Coventry, the corporations paid the minstrels, and occasionally made a special contribution to the funds of a particularly poor pageant. At York the corporation could well afford to do this, for they claimed the right to fix certain ‘stations’ at which, as well as at two or three traditional ones, the plays should be given, and they made a considerable annual profit out of payments by well-to-do citizens who aspired to have one of these at their doors. The stations were marked by banners broidered with the arms of the city. At Leicester the ‘playyng germands’ seem to have belonged to the corporation. At Beverley in 1391 they owned all the ‘necessaries,’ pageant garments and properties, of the play of Paradise, and lent the same upon security to the craft charged therewith. The pageants may also have been originally corporation property in York, for it was stipulated in 1422 that one of them, like the banners at the stations, should bear the arms of the city, to the exclusion of those of the craft.

As a rule, the cost of the plays fell almost wholly upon the crafts. The ordinances of the craft-guilds provide for their maintenance as a leitourgia or fraternal duty, in the same way as they often provide for a ‘serge’ or light to be burnt in some chapel or carried in the Corpus Christi procession, or, at Beverley, for the castellum in which the craft sat to do honour to the procession of St. John of Beverley in Rogation week. At Coventry, where the burden upon the crafts was perhaps heaviest, they were responsible for the provision, repairing, ornamenting, cleaning, and strewing with rushes of the pageant, for the ‘ferme’ or rent of the pageant house, for the payment of actors, minstrels, and prompter, for the revision of play-book and songs and the copying of parts, for the ‘drawing’ or ‘horsing’ of the pageant on the day of the performance, for costumes and properties, and above all for copious refreshments before and after the play, at the stations, and during the preliminary rehearsals. The total cost of the smiths’ pageant in 1490 was £3 7s. 5½d. In 1453 they had contracted with one Thomas Colclow to have ‘the rewle of the pajaunt’ for twelve years at an annual payment of £2 6s. 8d., and other examples of ‘play lettine’ can be traced at Newcastle and elsewhere. But it was more usual for the crafts to retain the management of the pageants in their own hands; at York each guild appointed its ‘pageant-masters’ for this purpose. The expense to the craft primarily in charge of a pageant was sometimes lightened by fixed contributions from one or more minor bodies affiliated to it for the purpose. Part of it was probably met from the general funds of the craft; the rest was raised by various expedients. A levy, known as ‘pagent pencys’ at Coventry and as ‘pajaunt silver’ at York, was made upon every member. The amount varied with the numbers of the craft and the status of the craftsman. At York it ranged from 1d. to 8d. At Beverley the journeymen paid 8d. to light, play, and castle, and 6d. only in years when there was no play. At Coventry the ordinary members of more than one craft paid 1s.; others apparently less. To the proceeds of the levy might be added fines for the breach of craft ordinances, payments on the taking out of freedom by strangers and the setting up of shop or indenturing of apprentices by freemen. At York, the mercers are found granting free admission to a candidate for their fraternity on condition of his entering into a favourable contract for the supply of a new pageant. At Coventry, in 1517, one William Pisford left a scarlet and a crimson gown to the tanners for their plays, together with 3s. 4d. to every craft charged with the maintenance of a pageant. Besides the levy, certain personal services were binding upon the craftsmen. They had to attend upon the play, to do it honour; the Coventry cappers expected their journeymen to do the ‘horsing’ of the pageant.

In some cities, the crafts received help from outside. At Coventry, in 1501, the tilers’ pageant got a contribution of 5s. from the neighbouring tilers of Stoke. At Chester, vestments were borrowed from the clergy; at Lincoln from the priory and the local gentry. A ‘gathering’ was also made in the surrounding districts. The only trace of any charge made to the spectators, other than the fees for ‘stations’ at York, is at Leicester, where, in 1477, the players paid over to the ‘pachents’ certain sums they had received for playing.

The majority of the crafts in a big city were, of course, already formed into guilds for ordinary trade purposes, and in their case the necessary organization for the plays was to hand. But no citizen could wholly escape his responsibility in so important a civic matter. At Coventry it was ordered in 1494 that every person exercising any craft must become contributory to some pageant or other. At York the innholders, who do not appear to have been a regular guild, were organized in 1483 for the purposes of a pageant on the basis of a yearly contribution of 4d. from each man. The demand at Beverley in 1411 for the appropriation of a play to the generosi has already been alluded to. In a Beverley list of 1520 the ‘Gentylmen’ are put down for the ‘Castle of Emaut.’ It may be suspected that some of the other crafts named in the same list, such as the ‘Husbandmen’ and the ‘Labourers,’ were not regular guilds; not to speak of the ‘Prestes,’ who played the ‘Coronacion of Our Lady.’ This participation of religious bodies in the craft plays can be paralleled from other towns. At York the hospital of St. Leonard took the Purification in 1415; at Lincoln the cathedral clergy, like the priests at Beverley, were responsible for the Coronation or Assumption of the Virgin, a play which at Chester was given by the ‘worshipfull wyves of this town,’ and at York by the innholders. Both at York and Chester this scene was dropped at the Reformation. Possibly its somewhat exceptional position may be accounted for by its having been a comparatively late addition in all four cycles. Some endeavour after dramatic appropriateness is visible in the apportioning of the other plays amongst the crafts. Thus Noah is given to the shipwrights (York, Newcastle), the watermen (Beverley, Chester), the fishers and mariners (York); the Magi to the goldsmiths (Beverley, Newcastle, York); the Disputation in the Temple to the scriveners (Beverley); the Last Supper to the bakers (Beverley, Chester, York); the Harrowing of Hell to the cooks (Beverley, Chester).

A somewhat anomalous position is occupied amongst towns in which the plays were in the hands of the crafts by Lincoln. Here the task of supervision was shared with the corporation by a special guild, religious and social rather than industrial in character⁠[369], of St. Anne. Perhaps this guild had at one time been solely responsible for the plays, and there had been a crisis such as took place at Norwich in 1527. Before that date the charge of the plays had been borne, fittingly enough, by the guild of St. Luke, composed of painters and metalworkers. But in 1527 this guild was ‘almost fully decayed,’ and upon the representation of its members the corporation agreed that in future the pageants should be distributed amongst the various crafts as was customary elsewhere. The Lincoln plays were on St. Anne’s day, but one does not find a position comparable to that of the St. Anne’s guild held by Corpus Christi guilds in other towns. As a rule such guilds concerned themselves with the Corpus Christi procession, but not with the plays. At Ipswich, indeed, the Corpus Christi guild had the whole conduct of the plays, and the craft-guilds as such were not called upon; but this Ipswich guild arose out of a reorganization of the old merchant-guild, included all the burgesses, and was practically identical with the corporation. Other towns, in which the corporation managed the plays itself, without the intervention of the craft-guilds, are Shrewsbury, New Romney, and Lydd.

On the other hand, where neither the corporation nor the crafts undertook plays, it was no uncommon thing for a guild of the religious or social type to step into the breach. A series of London plays recorded in 1384, 1391, 1409, and 1411 may all be not unreasonably ascribed to a guild of St. Nicholas, composed of the ‘parish clerks’ attached to the many churches of the city. At a later date the performances of this guild seem to have become annual and they are traceable, with no very great certainty, to the beginning of the sixteenth century. They were cyclical in character, but not processional, and took place hard by the well known indifferently as Skinners’ well or Clerkenwell, amongst the orchards to the north of London. Chaucer says of his ‘parish clerk,’ the ‘joly Absolon,’ that

These London plays may have had some original connexion with the great fair of the neighbouring priory of St. Bartholomew upon August 24; but they are recorded at various dates during the summer, and extended over four, five, or even seven days. Whether the guild of St. Nicholas bore any relation to the clerks of St. Paul’s, who petitioned Richard II in 1378 against the rivalry of certain ‘unexpert people’ in the production of an Old Testament play, must be matter for conjecture. The performance contemplated at St. Paul’s was to be at Christmas. The Cambridge guild of Corpus Christi was responsible for a ludus Filiorum Israelis about 1350, and this is more likely to have formed part of a cycle than to have stood alone. An unverified extract of Warton’s from a Michael-House computus suggests that some of the Cambridge colleges may have assisted in dramatic undertakings. At Abingdon the hospital of Christ held their feast on Holy Cross day (May 3), 1445, ‘with pageantes and playes, and May games.’ At Sleaford, in 1480, a play of the Ascension was performed by the guild of the Holy Trinity. At Wymondham a guild seems to have existed in the sixteenth century for the express purpose of holding a ‘watch and play’ at Midsummer. The proceedings were directed by officers designated ‘husbands.’ The one example of an isolated play under the management of a craft-guild is at Hull. Here an annual play of Noah, with a ship or ark which went in procession, was in the hands of the Trinity House, a guild of master mariners and pilots. The records extend from 1421 to 1529. There is no sign of a dramatic cycle at Hull. The Noah play was given on Plough Monday, and it is possible that one may trace here a dramatized version of just such a ship procession as may be found elsewhere upon the coasts in spring⁠[371]. After the performance the ‘ship’ was hung up in the church. The text of the play was perhaps borrowed from that of the watermen of the neighbouring city of Beverley.

Where there were craft-plays, social and religious guilds sometimes gave supplementary performances. The ‘schaft’ or parochial guild of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury, owned a play of Abraham and Isaac in 1491. This may have been merely a contribution towards the craft-cycle on Corpus Christi day. On the other hand, the play of St. George, contemplated by the guild of that saint at New Romney in 1490, was probably an independent undertaking. The town play here was a Passion play. At York there were two rivals to the Corpus Christi plays. One was the Paternoster play, for the production of which a guild of the Lord’s Prayer was in existence at least as early as 1378. By 1488 this guild was absorbed into the Holy Trinity guild of the mercers, and in the year named the play was given, apparently at the charges of the mercers, instead of the ordinary cycle. All the crafts contributed to similar performances in 1558 and 1572. But by this time the supervision, under the corporation, of the play had passed to one of the few religious guilds in York which had escaped suppression, that of St. Anthony. The other extraordinary York play was a Creed play, bequeathed to the guild of Corpus Christi in 1446. This was stationary, and was acted decennially about Lammas-tide (August 1) at the common hall. In 1483, it was ‘apon the cost of the most onest men of every parish,’ who were, it may be supposed, members of the guild. In 1535 the crafts paid for it instead of their usual cycle. Upon the suppression of the guild, the play-book passed into the custody of the hospital of St. Thomas.

In the same way there are instances in which the clergy, who elsewhere lent help to the craft-plays, gave independent exhibitions of their own. At Chester, before the Reformation, they eked out the Whitsun cycle by a supplementary performance on Corpus Christi day. The priors of St. John of Jerusalem, Holy Trinity, and All Saints contributed their share to the somewhat incongruous blend of religious and secular entertainments provided by the traders of Dublin for the earl of Kildare in 1528. The so-called Ludus Coventriae has often been supposed to be the play-book of a cycle acted by the Grey Friars or Franciscans of Coventry. This theory hardly survives critical examination. But in 1557, during the Marian reaction, a Passion play was given at the Grey Friars in London, and the actors were possibly restored brethren. Miracle-plays must often have been performed in choir schools, especially upon their traditional feast-days of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and the Holy Innocents. But there are only two examples, besides that of St. Paul’s in 1378, actually upon record. In 1430 the pueri eleemosynae of Maxstoke acted on Candlemas day in the hall of Lord Clinton’s castle; and in 1486 those of St. Swithin’s and Hyde abbeys combined to entertain Henry VII with the Harrowing of Hell as he sat at dinner in Winchester.

Many minor plays, both in towns and in country villages, were organized by the clergy and other officials of parish churches, and are mentioned in the account books of churchwardens. At London, Kingston, Oxford, Reading, Salisbury, Bath, Tewkesbury, Leicester, Bungay, and Yarmouth, such parochial plays can be traced, sometimes side by side with those provided by craft or other guilds. The parochial organization was the natural one for the smaller places, where the parish church had remained the centre of the popular life⁠[372]. The actiones in the chapelries of Shipton in Oxfordshire during the thirteenth century may have been plays of this type. The municipal records of Lydd and New Romney mention visits of players to the towns between 1399 and 1508 from no less than fourteen neighbouring places in Kent and Sussex, many of which must have been then, as they are now, quite insignificant. They are Hythe, Wittersham, Herne, Ruckinge, Folkestone, Appledore, Chart, Rye, Wye, Brookland, Halden, Bethersden, Ham, and Stone. A few other village plays are to be traced in the fifteenth century. In the sixteenth century they are fairly numerous, especially in the eastern counties. In Essex they are found at Chelmsford, Braintree, Halstead, Heybridge, Malden, Saffron Walden, Billericay, Starford, Baddow (by ‘children’), Little Baddow, Sabsford, Boreham, Lanchire, Witham, Brentwood, Nayland, Burnham, High Easter, Writtle, Woodham Walter, and Hanningfield; in Cambridgeshire at Bassingbourne; in Lincolnshire at Holbeach; in Norfolk at Harling, Lopham, Garboldisham, Shelfhanger, and Kenninghall; in Suffolk at Boxford, Lavenham, and Mildenhall; in Leicestershire at Foston; in Somersetshire at Morebath; and in Kent once more at Bethersden. The latest instance is a ‘Kynge play’ at Hascombe in Surrey in 1579.

Parochial plays, whether in town or country, appear to have been in most cases occasional, rather than annual. Sometimes, as at Kingston and Braintree, they became a means of raising money for the church, and even where this object is not apparent, the expenses were lightened in various ways at the cost of neighbouring villages. ‘Banns’ were sent round to announce the play; or the play itself was carried round on tour. Twenty-seven villages contributed to a play at Bassingbourne in 1511. The Chelmsford play of 1562 and 1563 cost about £50, of which a good proportion was received from the spectators. The play was given at Malden and Braintree as well as at Chelmsford, and for years afterwards the letting out of the stock of garments proved a source of revenue to the parish. This same practice of hiring garments can be traced at Oxford, Leicester, and elsewhere. The parochial plays were always, so far as can be seen, stationary. At Leicester, Braintree, Halstead, and Heybridge they were in the church. That of Harling was ‘at the church gate,’ that of Bassingbourne in a ‘croft’; that of Chelmsford in a ‘pightell.’ At Reading performances in the market-place and in an open piece of ground called (then and now) the ‘Forbury’ are mentioned.

There remain a certain number of plays as to the organization of which nothing definite can be said. Such are the minor plays, on the legends of saints, recorded by the annalists of London, Coventry, and Lincoln; those referred to in the corporation accounts of King’s Lynn, as given by unspecified players between 1385 and 1462; and those which took place, as late as the seventeenth century, in ‘rounds’ or amphitheatres at St. Just, Perranzabulo, and elsewhere in Cornwall.