96 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 
investigation of the Doomsday literature of the Middle Ages; and that of 
course lies beyond the limits of this study. It seems possible, however, to 
get a notion of some sort as to their development in English. The York 
judgment-play seems to represent the most primitive form of the four 
plays in English. Its structure is fairly simple: an opening speech by 
God recounting the wickedness of mankind, brief praise of God by the 
angels, the cries of the good and bad souls as they awake, Christ’s 
descent to earth and brief talk with his angels, brief speeches of the 
devils, Christ’s Complaint or Testament, his division of the good and bad 
souls, their questions and replies to Christ, Christ’s blessing of the good 
souls and damning of the bad—this is about the plot of the play. One set 
of incidents in this play we find in the judgment-plays of Chester, 
Towneley, and Coventry, with varying degrees of elaboration: the 
cries of the good and bad souls as they awake and arise from their graves, 
Christ’s reproaches to the bad and blessing to the good, the dialogue 
between Christ and the good and bad souls, the attempts of the bad 
souls to justify themselves and the final blessing and damnation. And 
this set of incidents seems to constitute the general framework of the 
plays. Comparison of this portion of the plays with the treatment of 
the same theme in The Pricke of Conscience? makes it seem that even this 
portion was already more or less prepared for by the dialogue treatment 
of the same theme in verse. Chester has departed far from the simple 
scheme of York, the most noticeable difference being that the saved and 
the damned souls become particular persons representing various classes 
and kinds of people, each person having put into his mouth a repentant 
speech revealing the particular vices of his class of society. For this 
development the play is largely indebted to the various satires on the 
classes of the times, and perhaps to The Dance of Death literature.? 
Coventry has departed from the simple York scheme mainly in the matter 
of the devils at the end of the play? becoming the accusers of the bad 
1 LI. 60096 ff.; see further Lamentacio Animarum, in the same volume as Be Domes Daege; Minor Poems 
of V. MS, Vol. II, pp. 658 ff., 765 ff.; An Old Eng. Misc., pp. 72 ff.; Anglia, Vol. III, p. 542. Compare 
the Christ of Cynewulf (ed. Cook), ll. 1470 ff.; here the treatment of the theme is in monologue. Compare 
also the Latin dialogue treatment of the same in Hymni Latini (Mone), Vol. I, pp. 416 ff. See for parallel 
passages, Appendix, pp. 35 ff. 
2 See CHamBers, The Med. Stage, Vol. II, p. 153 (notes); Creizenach, Vol. I, p. 46r. 
3 The play is incomplete at the end. 
