THE CHESTER MYSTERIES. 201 
acting as an amusement, and their instinctive readiness to 
respond to the demand that a good play makes upon the 
imagination. 
8. The old religious drama created in the popular mind a 
high ideal of the true use and purpose of dramatic art ; namely, 
to present to the imagination a living picture of the realities of 
life and feeling. 
Since the Puritans, rooting out both wheat and tares together 
in the eagerness of their zeal, made the theatre over to the 
enemy of mankind, it has seldom, af z/s dest, aimed higher than 
mere entertainment. Not so the old Mysteries; not so the 
Moralities ; not so the Elizabethan drama. Some relief, in the 
shape of farce or comedy, the people, indeed, demanded, but 
the main purpose was often entirely serious, and the spectators, 
that were so ready to laugh, were equally ready to respond to 
the appeal addressed to the higher nature. Shakespeare’s plays 
would hardly have been written now. The audience then 
expected the stage to treat of that which they really cared for, 
and that first and foremost had been religion; and then, a little 
later, came the history and politics of their native country. 
There were farcical interludes, of course, but many examples 
might be given to show that, among a rude people, farcical 
interludes did not produce an impatience of everything that was 
not farce. It was not farce, but controversy, that introduced 
into the religious plays that element of heartless irreverence 
which slays the very soul of faith. 
Yet I, for my part, am inclined to think that it was well that 
the old mystery plays, whether in Chester or elsewhere, did 
come to an end in England in the 17th century. Itis true that 
the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau is, as I have already 
hinted, nothing else but a set of Scriptural Mysteries—just such 
as the Chester Mysteries—purified from legend and coarseness, 
and set forth in an almost ideally perfect manner once in ten 
years. But that such a performance would jar upon many of 
our best instincts almost anywhere but in a remote and secluded 
mountain village is certain. What it might become elsewhere 
may be gathered from the impression left upon an English mind 
by the vulgar spectacles frequently to be seen in Spain or in 
Belgium. As carefully guarded attempts in that direction, I 
may, however, mention the wonderful “ morality,” if I may so 
call it, of the “* Pilgrim's Progress,” carried out with so much 
success by George Macdonald and his family; and the following 
account of a remarkable set of Scriptural pictures, or tableaux- 
vivants, grouped from scenes in the Ober-Ammergau play, and 
given by the inhabitants of a village in Worcestershire, appeared 
in the Daily News on January gth, 1882 :— 
“The unusually quiet village of Rousiench, near Pershore, 
Worcestershire, has, during the past week, been the scene of 
an extraordinary miracle play, which was suggested to the 
