200 THE CHESTER MYSTERIES. 
If no matter nor show thereof specyall, 
Doe not please, but mislike the most of the trayne, 
Goe back, I say, to that first tyme again ; 
Then you shall find the fyne witt at this day abounding, 
At that day, and that age, had very small being.” 
That they were acted again a few years later is proved by the 
existence of a MS. copy, bearing the date 1607; but after the 
siege of Chester, and the complete predominance of Puritanism 
during the Civil War, we do not hear of them again. There 
was, indeed, some poor attempt made at the Restoration to 
make new giants, and to revive the Midsummer Show ; but the 
broken tradition of the Mysteries was not so easily ‘to be 
repaired, and the very memory of what they had been like was 
soon buried under the dust of many generations. 
If, indeed, the recollection of them could be “nothing pro- 
fitable but to show the ignorance of our forefathers,” it would 
be hardly worth while to try to clear away that dust, and bring 
them once more forth to the light; but, indeed, they are 
interesting in so many ways, and in so many different points 
of view, that I find some difficulty in limiting myself to the few 
concluding remarks, which is all that I shall now do. 
1. In the first place, we cannot but observe that, with all 
their faults, they did keep vividly before the mind of the 
English nation the leading outlines of Christian teaching, and 
that in the historical form suggested by the Apostles’ Creed. 
Much that was legendary, coarse, incongruous, was there also, 
no doubt; but ¢#a/ was there above all. 
2. What a wonderful educative force lay in the fact that they 
were acted by the people of Chester themselves! It was not as 
mere spectators that the Chester public assisted at these 
Mysteries No: the performance was a local work of art, 
in which the entire town had a personal share. They believed, 
with just pride, that, search England throughout, ‘‘ None had 
the like, nor the like dose sett out.” 
This, indeed, was the characteristic of the old English drama. 
There were no professional actors, and no theatres. ‘‘ It hath 
not been used,”’ wrote the Corporation of London, in 1575— 
(in reply to a complaint on the part of the players that their 
refusal to allow them to exercise their art within the city of 
London was taking the bread out of their mouths) —‘‘ nor thought 
meet, heretofore, that players should make their living on the 
art of playing ; but men for their living, using other honest and 
lawful arts, or retained in honest services, have, by companies, 
learnt some interludes, for some encrease to their profitts by 
other men’s pleasures in vacant time of recreation.” oaths 
The first theatre came into being between 1575 and 1580, nor 
can we regret a change that gave us Shakespeare; but the 
audience, for which Shakespeare wrote, was an audience trained 
to true dramatic appreciation by their perfect familiarity with 
