INTRODUCTION TO MIRACLE-PLAY S. THE dramatic productions of this country exist in no more ancient form than that of plays founded upon the Old and New Testaments, with additions from the apocryphal gospels. The legends of the lives of saints and martyrs appear also to have afforded subjects for exhibitions of the same kind*. Their proper designation is Miracles, or Plays of Miracles †. * The history of St. George of Cappadocia seems very frequently to have been employed for this purpose. An ancient Chronicler of the events of the reign of Henry V. (see Ann. of the Stage, vol. i. p. 20) gives an account of a representation of St. George before that King and the Emperor Sigismund at Windsor, in 1416. The description, however, is not very intelligible. The play of St. George was performed in 1511 at Basingbourne, in Cambridgeshire, and the particulars of charge, &c., are given by Warton, Hist. Engl. Poet., iv. 151, edit. 8vo. + Warton, Percy, Hawkins, Malone and others have concurred in calling them 'Mysteries,' a term at a very early date adopted in France, but in any similar sense, I apprehend, (until comparatively a recent period) unknown in England. Dodsley, in the preface to the Collection of Old Plays he published in 1744, seems to have been the first to use the word Mystery' to denote one of our most ancient dramatic representations. The Latin word commonly employed for this purpose in the infancy of our stage was ludus:-thus Fitzstephen mentions the ludos sanctiores of London, and Matthew Paris, the ludum de Sancta In their earliest state these pieces were of the simplest construction, merely following the incidents of Scripture or of the Pseudo-evangelium, the dialogue being maintained by the characters there introduced. Katherina at Dunstaple, adding the further explanation that such pieces were vulgarly called Miracula. Robert Grossetete, writing his Manuel de Peché, about the same date, terms them in French Miracles; and Robert de Brunne, translating that poem, employs the same word. The author of Piers Ploughman's Crede also calls them 'Miracles,' and Chaucer denominates them 'Plays of Miracles.' In the Household Book of Henry VII., they are once entered as 'Marvels,' but 'marvel' and 'miracle' may be considered synonymous. 'Plays,' as a generic term, was also very early in use; and, that they might not be confounded with games, they were subsequently distinguished as 'stage-plays.' The word 'interludes' became the most frequent appellation for them in the reign of Henry VII.; but, perhaps, strictly speaking, it had reference to a particular species of dramatic entertainment. The title of a tract, by John Bale, would appear, to those who have not seen it, to contradict this position: it is called The Mysterye of Inyquyte, Iniquity being the name of a personage who figured very prominently in some of our older dramatic representations, called 'Morals,' though not in 'Miracles.' Bale's tract is, however, merely a prose answer to a Roman Catholic poem, The Genealogy of Ponce Pantolabus, attacking seriatim all the principal reformers. Bale's answer was printed at Geneva, in 1545, by Michael Woode. With regard to the employment of the word Mistère by the French, Roquefort, in his Glossaire de la Langue Romane (8vo. Paris, 1808), informs us, that Miracles were par suite called Mistères, and that both meant pièces de notre ancien théâtre; but, under the word Mistère, he says nothing of its application. It was not only well understood in France to mean a dramatic performance, but in time it was used synonymously with Comédie; and according to Gouget (Bibl. Franç. xi., 212), in the reign of Louis XII., Gringoire obtained the title of Compositeur, Historien, et Facteur de Mistères ou Comédies. The compound term of Miracle-play seemed to me best adapted, according to the old authorities, to express briefly the origin and nature of the representation. By degrees, however, more invention was displayed, particularly with reference to the persons concerned in the conduct of the story. Although Miracles or Plays of Miracles are the source and foundation of our national drama, they have hitherto been passed over with little notice; and owing to want of that knowledge, which can only be obtained by due examination, extraordinary mistakes have been committed regarding them. Among these errors may, perhaps, be included the supposition, that as England possesses an earlier record of the performance of a Miracle-play, than has yet been produced by any foreign country, they were here indigenous. Some of the ensuing remarks may warrant an inference, that if we did not derive them from France, they were originally written in the language of that country. Two conjectures have been hazarded respecting the origin of these performances in Europe: the one is that of Voltaire, (in his Essais sur les Mœurs et l'Esprit des Nations,) that Gregory Nazianzen, in the fourth century, wrote his play of Christ's Passion, and others of the same kind, at Constantinople, pour les opposer aux ouvrages dramatiques des anciens Grecs et des anciens Romains*: the other conjecture also, * Stephen Gosson, one of the most zealous enemies of theatrical representations in the middle of the reign of Elizabeth, assigned a reason for the invention by Nazianzen sufficiently absurd. The advocates of the stage had adduced ' Christ's Passion,' by Nazianzen, to shew that he and other fathers approved dramatic performances; to which Gosson replies, that Nazianzen wrote his piece to reform the then existing and established Popish plays, on the feast of Corpus Christi, |