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Poems," in the Canterbury Poets series. Lowell's essay on Spenser, in "Among My Books," should, if possible, be read.

The "Utopia" and "Roper's Life of More" are printed together in the Camelot Series and in the Temple Classics. Volunteers may be called upon to read and report to the class upon each of these.

For Wyatt, Surrey, and Sidney, the poems given in "The Golden Treasury" or in "Ward's English Poets," Vol. I, should, if possible, be read, either privately by each student or before the class.

Sidney's "Defence of Poesy" is edited by A. S. Cooke (Ginn), and in the Pitt Press Series.

Green's "Short History of the English People," chapter vii, is excellent for supplementing the student's knowledge of the times.

Kingsley's "Westward Ho" gives a vigorous picture of England's struggle with Spain by sea and in America. Tennyson's "Ballad of the Revenge" is excellent to illustrate the patriotic temper of Elizabeth's reign.

CHAPTER VI

THE RENAISSANCE: THE DRAMA BEFORE SHAKE

SPEARE

I. THE ORIGIN OF THE DRAMA: NATIVE SOURCES

Norman Shows and Pageants.-To trace the English drama from the beginning, we must go back as far as the Norman conquest. The Norman people had a great fondness for shows and spectacles. When the Norman kings were once firmly seated on the English throne, they gave full rein to their taste for splendid pageantry. If a royal wedding was to be celebrated, or a victorious monarch welcomed back from war, London was turned into a place of festival. At the entrance gate of the city, or at fixed places on the route to church or palace, elaborate structures were built, representing some mythical or allegorical scene-the gods grouped upon Olympus, an armed St. George giving combat to a golden dragon, or nymphs and satyrs sporting in enchanted gardens. Sometimes music was added, and the personators, by dialogue and action, gave welcome to the royal party. These pageants developed at the Renaissance into a special form of dramatic entertainment, the Masque. Meanwhile, by stimulating in the people a love of dramatic spectacle, they helped to pave the way for regular drama.

The Miracle Play: Its Origin and Growth.-A much more important source of the drama, however, was the massservice of the Catholic church, especially at Christmas-tide and Easter. The ordinary services at these times were enriched with special ceremonies, such as burying the crucifix in a tomb of the church on Good Friday and disinterring it on Easter morning, with monks or choir-boys to take the parts of the three Marys, the angel at the tomb, and the chorus of rejoicing angels in heaven. These little dramatic

ceremonies gradually became detached from the service, and were moved from the church into the church-yard. Later, when the crowds desecrated the graves in their eagerness to see and hear, the plays were transferred to the public green or town square. By Chaucer's time these "miracle plays" or "mysteries" had passed to a large extent out of the hands of the priests, and had come under the control of the tradeguilds, who made use of them to celebrate their annual festival of Corpus Christi. Rivalry among the guilds, and the desire of each to possess a separate play, led to the setting forth of the whole Scripture story from Genesis to Revelations, in a series or cycle forming a great drama, of which the separate plays were, in a sense, only single acts. It was the aim of these great miracle-cycles to give a connected view of God's dealings with man, from the beginning of the world until its destruction.

How Miracle Plays Were Presented. In order to gain some idea of the impression made by the miracle plays upon the people who witnessed them, let us imagine ourselves for a moment in a provincial English town at the beginning of the fifteenth century, on the morning of Corpus Christi day. Shortly after dawn, heralds have made the round of the city to announce the coming spectacle. The places where the cars or "pageants," which form both stage and dressingroom, are to stop, are crowded with the motley population of a medieval city. The spectators of importance occupy seats upon scaffolds erected for the purpose, or look on from the windows of neighboring houses, while the humbler folk jostle each other in the street.

Soon the first pageant appears, a great box mounted .on four wheels and drawn by apprentices of the masons' guild, which guild is charged with presenting the Creation of Eve and the Fall of Man. The curtains at the front and the sides of the great box are drawn, revealing an upper compartment, within which the main action is to take place. On a raised platform sits enthroned a majestic figure in a red robe, with gilt hair and beard, impersonating the Creator. Before him lies Adam, dressed in a closefitting leather garment painted white or flesh-color. The

Creator, after announcing his intention of making for Adam a helpmeet, descends and touches the sleeper's side. Thereupon Eve rises through a trap-door, and Adam wakes rejoicing. Again the Creator ascends to his throne, and Adam withdraws to a corner of the pageant, leaving Eve to be tempted by a great serpent, cunningly contrived of green and gold cloth in which an actor is concealed. This monster, crawling upon the stage from below, harangues Eve with lengthy eloquence. Then follows the eating of the apple, and the coming of God's angels, with gilt hair, scarlet robes, and swords waved and ridged like fire, to drive the pair from the garden into the wilderness, that is, into the lower compartment of the pageant, which is now uncovered to view.

A trumpeter advances before the car, and sounds a long note in token of the conclusion of the play. The 'prentices harness themselves to the car; and it moves off to the next station, to be replaced by others. These represent in turn, Noah's Flood, given by the guild of water-merchants; the Sacrifice of Isaac, given by the butchers' guild; the Nativity, the Crucifixion, and so on in long procession, until the crowning spectacle of the Day of Judgment. The chief feature of spectacular interest in this last is Hell-mouth, a great dragon's jaw belching flame and smoke, into which lost souls, dressed in black and yellow particolor, are tossed by the Devil-a most alarming personage with a bright red beard, a hairy body, a hideous mask, horns, and a long forked tail.

Germs of Regular Drama in the Miracle Plays. The authors of these Miracle plays were free to embellish the biblical story with episodes drawn from the common life of their own day. Even when these added episodes took a broadly comic turn, nobody was shocked, any more than by the imps and monsters which grinned at them from the solemn shadows of their cathedrals. In the play of Noah's Flood, the patriarch causes first the animals to enter the Ark, then his sons and daughters-in-law; but when he comes to his wife, she objects. She does not relish being cooped up without her "gossips," leaving these amiable women to

drown. Remonstrances at last proving fruitless, Noah resorts to the argument of blows, and drives his scolding helpmeet into the Ark, to the great delight of the crowd. In the play of Abraham and Isaac, the yearning love of the old man for his little son, and the sweet, trustful nature of the boy, are brought home to us in such a way as to intensify the pathos of the moment when Abraham makes ready, at the Lord's command, to sacrifice the life which is dearest to him on earth. The pleading of the boy, the gradual overmastering of his fear of death by his pity for his father's anguish and his solicitude for his mother's grief, are rendered with touching truth.

"Therfor do our Lordes bydding,

And wan I am ded, then prey for me;

But, good fader, tell ye my moder no-thyng,
Say that I am in another cunthre dwellyng."

In these episodes, and in many others which might be given, lie the germs of regular drama. Such humorous scenes as the quarrel of Noah and his wife, constitute in reality crude little comedies out of which regular comedy could readily grow. In such tragic scenes as the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the Crucifixion, the elements of noble tragedy were already present.

The Morality Plays. The miracle plays attempted to set forth only a part of the teaching necessary to man's salvation, namely that part contained in the history of Adam's fall, the redemption through Christ, and the final Judgment. This dealt with matters of belief. To complete this teaching there was needed some treatment of the side of religion which deals with matters of conduct; and it was this which the "Morality plays" tried to supply. By means of such personifications or abstractions as the World, the Flesh, Mankind, Mercy, Justice, Peace, the Seven Deadly Sins, Good and Bad Angels, Gluttony, Covetousness, Old Age, and Death, the morality plays represented the conflict between sin and righteousness for the possession of the human soul. The character of Vice played a great part. He was usually dressed in the costume of a court fool, and carried a sword

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