270 Charles Davidson — English Mystery Plays, 



There survives a curious proof that there was a Northern play on 

 this theme, and in the characteristic stanza. On the margin of the 

 MS. are written, as following line 44, these lines' — 



And leyd your lyves in good degre, 

 Adam here make I the 

 a man of mykyll myght. 

 Thys same shall thy subget be 

 And Eve her name shall hight. 



These lines form the cauda of a stanza, together with the last verse 

 of the preceding pedes. They are in an Elizabethan hand, and must 

 be a quotation from some play then extant. Can it have been the 

 Beverly play ? In any case it establishes the existence of such a 

 play, and reinforces the hypothesis that the play of the parent cycle 

 had been supplanted by a church play of an early type. The problem 

 must be left for the present unsolved. 



Y XI closes with a song, W adds a tribute of praise. 



In Y XII, the prologue only belongs to the work of our author. 

 Whether the remainder of his play has given place to a later play, 

 or whether he took a popular play, wrote a prologue for it, and put 

 it into his cycle, is a question to be determined with the examination 

 of all the plays that are paraphrases of Luke I. This will be the 

 theme of a later chapter. 



The author of this cycle did not utilize the comic episodes. As 

 the plays departed further from the church play, the dramatic ele- 

 ment became more prominent, and a literary convention called for 

 some humorous remarks about the angels' singing. This episode 

 was then inserted, probably with little excision. 



Y XX will be given a special examination in connection with the 

 plays derived from it. 



Y XXIV has lost a leaf at a very important action. Jesus has 

 evidently written on the ground the sins of the accusers, wherein 

 the play agrees with the theological notions of the day." 



W XX begins with the introduction of Pilate, with verse move- 

 ment after the later fashion. The differences between the earlier 

 and later styles are well exemplified in the stanzas assigned to Pilate 

 and Caiaphas at the beginning of the play. The later part of this 

 play is in a different stj^le, and covers the incidents of the Last 

 Supper, as does Y XXVII. The speech of Jesus is a paraphrase of 

 portions of the Gospel of John. This will be considered in another 

 chapter. 



1 York Plays, p. 15. 2 See the Coventry Mysteries, p. 220. 



