THE MIRACLE PLAY

THe outburst of English Drama is so pre-eminently the glory of the Elizabethan period of literature proper, that it has seemed on the whole better to take no detailed notice in the preceding Books of the early experiments- not very early, not very numerous, and not of the first importance in literature- which we possess in that literary kind.



The modern drama did arise out of the Miracles. The Miracles did pass into the Moralities. The Moralities did pass into modern dramas. and though the imitation of the ancient classical drama, and its performance in school and universities, coloured, shaped, generally influenced , the modern drama most momentously, this drama no more arose out of them than Spenser arose out of Virgil, or Hooker out of Cicero.

Miracle play or Mystery play, form of medieval drama that came from dramatisation of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. It developed from the 10th to the 16th cent., reaching its height in the 15th cent. The simple lyric character of the early texts, as shown in the Quem Quœritis, was enlarged by the addition of dialogue and dramatic action. Eventually the performance was moved to the churchyard and the marketplace. Rendered in Latin, the play was preceded by a prologue or by a herald who gave a synopsis and was closed by a herald's salute.

It is sufficient to say that we have from France Latin mystery or miracles plays which may be of eleventh century, Latin mixed with a little French nearly as early, and plays wholly in French which are as old as twelfth.The four great collections known by the names of their place of performance, are the York, Wakefield, Coventry, Chester plays. we have one of a Newcastle cycle, one of a Dublin,an East-Anglian version of Abraham and Isaac, one norfolk"Digby Mysteries" and the oldest of all , the Harrowing of the Hell.


Towney Plays ms., opening of The Second Shepherd's Play. HM 1 ff37v-38; courtesy of the Huntington Library.

 A very little examination of these plays will show the astonishing fallacy of the proposition that the modern drama. Instances of indirect connection are to be found especially in the story of The Ark and the Tower of Babel,both of which were fixed on almost from the first as opportunities for comic play and digression. The great instance of the sheer addition is the famous 'Second Shepherds'play , not merely comic , but of absolutely romantic treatment .

THE FOUR GREAT SCOTTISH POETS

IT has constantly been remarked as most curious and partially unaccountable phenomenon, that while Chaucerian poetry, as soon as Chaucer's own hands failed, gave nothing but third rate work or worse in England it produced in Scotland work in some cases of very high quality indeed. Such account as is possible of the reasons for the general lateness of purely Scottish literature has been given in  this  chapter . In this I;ll give an account of the four chiefs of Scottish poetry when it did come-James the first, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gawain or Gavin Douglas.

1-James Stewart 

 Criticism of the strenuously inert kind has played its usual games with the literary work of James Stewart,first king of  the name on England. After by turns attributing to him and taking away from him Christ's Kirk on the Green, Pebbles to the Play, etc., it has recently attacked his claims, which for nearly four centuries had been undisturbed, on the King's quair itself. this James would naturally have been, seeing that he was born in 1394, captured at sea by the English in 1405, kept in honourable captivity in England till 1424. The King's quair may be ranked as the two most graceful, scholarly and elegant poems of the french-Chaucerian tradition to be found in English. The Ballad of good Council, which is also ascribed by good authority to James, and is the only other piece bearing such attribution.




  2- Robert Henryson


Few poets whose personality is certain, and whose work is both eminent in merit and not inconsiderable in bulk, have a more shadowy record than master Robert Henryson, schoolmaster in Dunfermline, as he is entitled in editions of his work printed some sixty or seventy years after his death.About his work, however, there is no reasonable doubt. They consist of two poems of some length, the Testament of Creseide and Orpheus and Eurydice; of a collection, with prologue, of Aesopic fables in Scots;and of rather more than dozen minor poems. There is,however, no doubt that Robene and Makyne Malkin, the best known of Henryson'soem. The remaining members of this small but admirable collection of verse are less interesting, though much above the standard of their time.

3- William Dunbar



It is usual to rank William Dunbar as the chief of all this group, and in fact the greatest scottish poet except Burnes.He was certainly a Lothian man, probably allied not mearly in name to the great family of the Earls of Dunbar and March. The year 1460,with the usual circa, is accepted as his birthdate.The two most considerable are The Twa Maryit Wemen and the wedo and the Friars of Berwick. Both are very strongly Chaucerian. Next to these two may be ranked the Golden Targe, The flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, the famous Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins,and The Thistle and The Rose.

4-Gawain douglas  




The last of the four poets to be mentioned here is also the least, though he has an interest of his own. Gawin or Gawain douglas was the third son of Archibald douglas. it is not known at which of the numerous seats of the Douglasses he was born but the date must have been 1474-75.In 1501 he finished the Palice of Honour.Between this and the year of Flodden, 1513, in the summer of which he finished Virgil, we hear little of him. In order to come to a just estimate of this, though the Virgil itself will give us sufficiant data, it is before all things neceassary to considerhis originals poems, the palice and Honour,and King Hart.