336 Elbert N. S. Thompson 
Lydgate’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man‘; and in actual sermons, 
of which that of Archbishop Thoresby of York may be taken as 
representative.2_ Through all these channels, the points of doctrine 
that ecclesiastical councils declared most essential were conveyed 
to the masses of the people. 
It is not surprising that the citizens of these ancient midland and 
northern cities should have undertaken to spread these doctrines 
through allegorical representation in the sacred plays for which 
they had received a long preparation in liturgical performances. 
The earliest of these moral plays, the Pater Noster play, the Sacra- 
ment play, and the Creed play, originated, significantly, in the 
region where these Constitutions were most ardently proclaimed 
by reformers like Grosseteste.? The Play of the Sacrament is not 
strictly a moral play, for its method is neither allegorical nor ex- 
pository, but it should be mentioned as an indication of the popular 
interest in these subjects. The York Creed play, as far as can be 
told, more nearly resembled the Pater Noster play. Although noth- 
ing definite concerning it is known, save the fact of its performance 
once every ten years by the Corpus Christi Gild, the conjecture 
is not unreasonable that it was acted by twelve men representing 
the Apostles, to whom the twelve separate portions of the Creed 
were traditionally assigned by the theologians of the time.* If so, 
it was then but another dramatic piece devised to supplement the 
efforts of the pulpit. 
These Creed and Pater Noster plays were presented by religious 
gilds under municipal supervision while the allegorical drama was 
as yet in its earliest development. The matter, though, that they 
contain was not soon dropped from the players’ repertoire. The 
sixteenth-century play, The World and the Child, an abbreviated 
“full-scope” morality clearly modeled upon the general lines of 
The Castle of Perseverance, contains a systematic portrayal of the 
deadly sins, the Decalogue, and the Articles of Faith that were pre- 
scribed by the Constitutions of the early thirteenth century. 
The hero appears first as a naked infant, and develops with in- 
credible haste through boyhood and youth to manhood and old age. 
But after the brief account of the pranks of the boy and the temp- 


' 6580—7036. 
2 In Religious Pieces. For similar French sermons see Lecoy de la 
Marche, 276. 
’ The northern versions of the Cursor Mundi contain these same doct- 
rinal points, but the other versions, as far as I know, do not. 
4 Davies, York Records, 272—73, n. 
