THE MIDDLE ENGLISH RELIGIOUS LYRIC 99 
large body of non-dramatic and dramatic Planctus Mariae, and the still 
larger body of lyrical dialogue covering almost as completely as the 
lyrical plays themselves the field of biblical narrative, to what extent 
the plays are indebted to the antecedent and contemporaneous religious 
lyric of Middle English. It is hardly going too far when we say that 
about one-fourth of the great body of material found in the York and 
Towneley cycles is in the broad sense of the word lyrical. Chester and 
Hegge, though not indebted to the lyric so largely as are York and Towne- 
ley are, when we consider them in their entirety, very considerably 
indebted. Sometimes, as has been suggested, the dramatic lyric con- 
tains merely an echo of the lyric proper; sometimes it follows it in thought 
and phrase more or less closely; sometimes it has been inserted bodily 
from without, retaining the phrase and rhyme of the original; and very 
occasionally the lyric may even have formed perhaps the starting-point 
of certain of the plays. Of course, it is open to anyone to believe that 
the original lyric portions of the liturgical drama came by a gradual 
process of development to their present form in the Corpus Christi 
plays. But it seems highly probable that in the great majority of cases 
as the drama widened its scope, it drew again and again upon the vast 
field of the lyric, which was developing side by side with it using the 
same themes as the drama and treating these themes in a way not essen- 
tially different. 
Whatever may be the specific relation of the particular lyrics to par- 
ticular plays, it is fairly clear that we have here another example of the 
method of development of the drama as stated by Professor Manly in 
his explanation of the relation of the moralities to the Corpus Christi 
plays. “The moralities,” he says, “are not to be regarded as growing 
out of the Corpus Christi plays, but are merely an instance of the theory 
that the dramatic instinct, once set going, tended to dramatize material 
already at hand in other provinces of literature.”? So it is in regard to 
the lyrics. The drama has done with them what it has been doing 
ever since it took its rise in the liturgy. It has simply extended its 
province in such fashion as to include other contemporaneous forms of 
literature already existing side by side with it. 
« For the larger application and fuller development of this theory see MaNty, “Literary Forms and the 
New Theory of the Origin of Species,” Modern Philology, Vol. 1V, pp. 577 ff. 
