according to Warton, is that of a French writer, who contends that the monks of the middle ages employed this species of dramatic amusement, to supersede the dancing, music, mimicry, and profane mummeries at the ancient fairs *. Both these positions may be well founded, as they are certainly not inconsistent with each other: Gregory Nazianzen may have been the inventor of these religious plays, and ecclesiastics may have used them at a later period to reform the people, and to introduce among them a convenient knowledge of the Scriptures t. If Miracle-plays had their origin

which was not made a festival until eight or nine centuries afterwards : 'For Nazianzen (says he), detesting the corruption of the Corpus Christi 6 plays, that were set out by the papists, and inveighing against them, thought it better to write the Passion of Christ in numbers himself, ' that all such as delight in numerosity of speech might read it,—not 'behold it on the stage, where some base fellow, that played Christ, would bring the person of Christ into contempt.'-Plays confuted in five Actions. No date, but printed in 1581 or 1582. Sign. E. 5. b.

* Hist. Engl. Poet. iii. 195, edit. 8vo. Warton does not name his author, but calls him merely a judicious French writer now living,'. having just before mentioned La Fête de Foux. It is possible that he meant Du Tilliot, who, in 1741, published at Lausanne a small and learned work in 4to. on La Fête de Foux, and who might be living when Warton published the 2nd 4to. volume of his Hist. Engl. Poet. in 1778. Du Tilliot's words are merely these: 'Lorsque les Payens 'embrassèrent le Christianisme, ils eurent peine à perdre l'habitude où 'ils étoient de célébrer certaines fêtes rejouissantes: ils substituèrent 'de nouvelles aux anciennes, d'abord avec moins de licence, ce qui engagea peut-être les Eveques à les tolérer quelque tems, quoique l'on 'puisse dire qu'ils n'épargnèrent rien pour les abolir dans la suite.'

+ Warton (Hist. E. P. iii. 195, edit. 8vo.) referring to both these conjectures, inclines to Voltaire, apparently without perceiving that they might be reconciled.

in Constantinople, they would soon find their way into Italy, and from thence they may have been dispersed over the rest of Europe.

The history of the French stage has not been carried higher than the thirteenth century: au treizieme siècle nous avons déjà de drames, are the words of Le Grand*: in this country we have seen, on the authority of Matthew Paris, that the Miracle-play of Saint Katherine was acted at Dunstaple very early in the twelfth century. Although the French have no records of so remote a date, it is admitted that the piece just named was got up by a Norman monk, who was also a member of the University of Paris‡.

It has been established by Mr. Markland, with as much clearness as after the lapse of so many centuries could be expected, that the Miracle-plays annually performed at Chester, with some interruptions, until 1577 §, were originally produced in 1268, during the

* Fabliaux ou Contes du XII. et du XIII. Siècle. Tom. ii. p. 122. Edit. 1781.

Vide Annals of the Stage, vol. i. p. 3.

The French had a Mistère de Sainte Catherine, which, according to the MS. Histoire de Metz Véritable, as cited in a work attributed to Les Frères Parfait (Hist. du Théât. Franç. ii. 351.) was performed in 1434.

§ At least one of the series of Miracle-plays, annually exhibited at Chester, was performed in 1577: this fact appears from Harl. MS. 1944, which is a copy, with some additions and variations, of the work of Archdeacon Rogers upon Chester: the following extracts refer to about the period of which we are speaking.

'A. D. 1571. In this yeare the Whitson playes weare played in 'Chester.

mayoralty of John Arnway*. The authorship has been assigned to Ralph Higden, the compiler of the Polycronicon; but if they were first acted in 1268, he could have had no connexion with them then : he died, according to some authorities, in 1363, and according to others, in 1377, and, in either case, was not born when they were originally represented.

'A. D. 1574. The Whitson playes weare played in this Cittie this yere.

A. D. 1577. The Earle of Darbie did lye 2 nightes at his [the Mayor's] howse: the Shepheardes play was played at the highe crosse, with other triumphes.'

Had the performances not been interrupted in the intervals, Rogers would hardly have thought it necessary to specify, that the plays were performed in those particular years 1571, 1574 and 1577.

By Harl. MS. 2105, consisting of Short Annals of Chester, from 1348 to 1580, it seems evident, that at an earlier date a temporary stop had been put to the exhibition of the Miracle-plays: under the year 1545 is the following entry: 'William Holcroft, Mayor. In 'this yere M. Holcroft died, and M. John Walley was chosyn mayor, and the plaies went that same yeare. Probably during the controversies of the Reformation, the performance of Popish Miracle-plays, as they were called, was forbidden, and in 1545, they were, for the first time, allowed to be revived. In 1529, a different species of dramatic entertainment had been substituted, by the performance of a play founded upon the romance of Robert of Cicily. See Annals of the Stage, vol. i. p. 113.

*In his learned and comprehensive Dissertation,' prefixed to two of the plays (one founded upon the Old and the other upon the New Testament), which he printed for the use of the Roxburghe Club, and which, with some additional notes by him, has since been incorporated in Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, vol. iii. It is to be regretted that this Essay, displaying much general as well as particular information on the subject, is not there followed by the ancient religious dramas it was written to illustrate.

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It is not, perhaps, to be disputed that Higden was in some way, and at some period, concerned in the performance of the Chester Whitsun plays: the question is, in what way and at what period?

There are two MS. copies of these productions in the British Museum, and in a note to one of them (MS. Harl. No. 2124) it is said (and in our present view the expression is important) that Higden was 'thrice at Rome before he could obtaine leave of the Pope to have them in the English tongue.' Warton thought the inference was, that prior to the date when Higden obtained this leave,' performances of the kind were in Latin, and it never seems to have struck him as possible that they should have been in French*. If before that permission the Chester Whitsun plays were in French, and if in consequence of it Higden translated, or 'made' them into English, and so had them represented about the year 1338, it will reconcile dates, and remove much of the difficulty that has hitherto surrounded the subject. Mayoralty of Arnway in 1268, and the instrumentality of Higden in 1338, 'to have' the plays in the English tongue,' have been sometimes confounded.

The

As the conjecture, that the Miracle-plays at Chester were first performed in French, has not before been started, it will be necessary to advert with a little particularity to the grounds on which it rests.

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The law requiring that all pleas in the Courts of

VOL. II.

*Hist. Engl. Poet., iii. 16, edit. 8vo., note d.

K

the King, or of any other lord, shall be pleaded and 'judged in the English tongue,' was passed in the 36th of Edward III.; and it is the opinion of Tyrwhitt, stated in his introduction to the 'Canterbury Tales,' that at the commencement of that monarch's reign, 'the French and English languages subsisted 'together throughout the kingdom, the higher orders, 'both clergy and laity, speaking almost universally 'French, the lower retaining the use of their native tongue, but also frequently adding to it a knowledge of the other.' Edward III., then, was the first King since the Conquest, who by law discountenanced the farther propagation of the French language in this country; and it will not fail to strike the reader that Higden's endeavour (according to my conjecture) to procure the representation of the Chester Miracleplays in English*, was accomplished in 1338, when Edward III. had been eleven years on the throne.

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After what Tyrwhitt has advanced upon the

*It is a circumstance deserving attention, that Higden himself, in his Polycronicon, b. i. c. lix., laments the manner in which the English language had been impaired, and thus accounts for it :

‹ This apayringe of the birthe tonge is by cause of tweye thinges: " oon is for children in scole, azens the usage and maner of alle other 'nacions, beth compelled for to leve her owne langage, and for to con'strewe her lessouns, and her thingis a Fransche, and haveth siththe 'that the Normans come first into England. Also gentil mennes 'children beth ytauzt for to speke Frenshe from the tyme that thei 'beth rokked in her cradel, and cunneth speke, and playe with a childes 'brooche. And uplondish men wole likne hem self to gentil men, and 'fondeth with grete bisynesse for to speke Frensche for to be the more 'ytold of,'