THE CHESTER MYSTERIES. 197 
phecy of Jesus Uhrist. The arrival of Joseph and Mary, and 
the Birth of the Holy Child is next represented, and then (after 
a long discourse by an Expositor) the Sibyl and the Emperor 
reappear, and the Sibyl shows him in a vision ‘‘a maiden 
bright,” with a young child in her arms, in whom Octavian 
recognizes the true divine King. 
‘Honour will I that sweet wight, 
For that reverence is most right. 
Should Ibe God? Nay, witterly, 
Great wrong I wiste it were.” 
And so he turns to the Senators, and wholly refuses the worship 
they offer, and bids them rather ‘‘ worship this child’ with full 
harte allthey can. . . . An Expositor sums up the matter 
by declaring :— 
+ + + ‘Lordings, that this is vrai 
By very sign know ye maie, 
For in Rome, in good faye, 
There, as these things were seene, 
Was built a church in noble array, 
In worship of Mary, that sweet maye, 
That yet lasteth unto this daye, 
As all men know that there hath been.” 
And with this strange mixture of history and fable, the first 
day’s performances seem to have closed. 
Archdeacon Rogers tells us that the nine pageants played on 
the second day opened with the slaying of the children by Herod ; 
but, after that popular, but horrible series of incidents, which 
ends with the death of Herod, who is carried off by a demon, 
no grotesque interlude, no rude by-play. mars the ever-deepening 
solemnity and pathos with which the sacred story of the 
Passion is gradually unfolded. Not, however, that there is no 
intermixture of legend. Thus, for instance, when the Pharisees 
bring the woman taken in adultery to Jesus, and He says, “let 
him that is without sin among you cast the first stone,” and, 
stooping down, writes on the ground, ‘‘ each man believes that 
he sees his own sins written down.” ‘‘No longer dare I here 
be for dread of worldly shame,” says one. ‘‘ Alas! that I were 
away far behind France,” cries another. 
And the pageant that immediately follows the Crucifixion is 
that so-called ‘‘ Harrowing of Hell,” which invariably had its 
place in every collection of mysteries. For no tradition had a 
firmer hold on the mind of medisval Europe, than that which 
taught that none but Enoch and Elias had a place in paradise 
until Christ died upon the cross, and, descending into hell, 
fetched thence our first parents, with ‘‘ Abel, their child, and 
Noah, righteous man,” and ‘‘ Moses, law-giver for faith 
approved,” the patriarch Abraham and King Vavid—“ Israel 
with his sire and with his sons’’—‘‘and others many more.” 
Readers of Dante will remember the passage in the 4th Canto. 
The most exceptional play in the Chester Mysteries is the last 
but one of the entire series—the 6th play on the 3rd day— 
