Charles Davidson — English Mystery Plays. 277 



afford toward a restoration of the text is, however, much less in this 

 play than in Y XI. 



There are evidences that the author of W had a slightly illegible 

 copy of Y. Such mistakes as 'fraude ' for ^ frewte,' line 10 ; ' night ' 

 for ' light,' line 85 ; ' bright ' for * sight,' line 90 ; ' shalle the sow ' 

 for 'telle the nowe,' line 218, point to a difficulty of decipherment. 



Dialectal changes similar to those made in Y XP occur. 



'boght' for 'getyn,' 1. 11. 'tokyn' for 'signe,' 1. 19, 41. 



'shedyng' for 'bying,' 1. 12. 'myrth' for * grace,' 1. 20. 



'wille' for 'schall,' 1. 13, 22. 'know' for 'schewe,' 1. 22. 



* helth ' for ' heele,' 1. 38, 106. ' can ' for ' gune,' 1. 47, 286. 



'darknes' for 'mirke,' 1. 53. 'water' for 'floode,' 1. 76. 



'shewid' for 'mustered,' 1. 86. 'thurt' for 'neyd,' 1. 242. 



' 'ment' for 'preched,' 1. 291. 'wille' for 'liste,' 1. 313. 



'trew' for ' soth,' 1. 327. 'sete' for ^selle,' 1. 342. 



*In blys to dwelle' for 'wonne in mirthe,' 1. 228. 



'It shalbe lang' for 'all schall nogt gang,' 1. 303. 



' Rebald,' 1. 99, is understood as a proper name, and, as 'Rybald,' is 

 assigned to one of the devils. ' Glory ' for ' gilery,' 1. 160. Now 

 'gilery' means 'deceit;' consequently," this guess was rather w^ld. 

 'like' for 'obitte,' 1. 269. This attempt to Anglicize the Latin 

 'obit' was not appreciated. The indebtedness of \Y to the York 

 cycle is not confined to these plays of the parent cycle. We shall 

 return again to the discussion in a later chapter. 



XXIII. 



THE WOODKIRK PLAY, 'CONSPIRACIO ET CAPTIO.' 



This play, which has preserved a fragment of the parent cycle, 

 lost to the York cycle, is a pieced play, containing, within the com- 

 pass of a single play, work of the earliest and of the latest period, 

 as well as something by that author whose plays mark the beginnings 

 of English comedy. It is a canto, containing in its eight hundred 

 and eighty-five verses specimens of almost every age and style of 

 mystery play from the date of separation from the church service 

 until the spirit of the Reformation transformed the mystery into the 

 morality, the chronicle history, and the comedy. 



1 See p. 273. 

 Trans. Conn. Aoad., Vol. IX. October, 1892. 



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