routledge+history+of+literature+in+english

Mediaeval
drama
47
one place, could watch a whole cycle of mystery plays coveting episodes
in the Bible from Genesis to the resurrection, and on to the last judgement.
The best-known cycles of miracle or mystery plays come from York,
Wakefield, and Chester, and a composite manuscript from an
anonymous ‘N-town’. Although these probably date from the fifteenth
century, guild performances were certainly taking place long before
Chaucer’s time. Indeed, Chaucer’s miller tells in his tale of the parish
clerk who, ‘to show his lightness’, played ‘Herod on a scaffold high’.
In the play of The Marshals in the York cycle, Mary and Joseph talk
about the angel’s warning to them to flee Herod:
JOSEPH And for thy dear son’s sake
Will he destroy all here.
May that traitor him take!
MARY Love Joseph, who told you this?
How had you witting of this deed?
JOSEPH An angel bright that came from bliss
This tiding told for sure indeed . . .
All the cycles are anonymous, but some of the episodes in the Wakefield
cycle are of such quality that their putative author has been called
The Wakefield Master.
Where mystery or miracle plays are based on the Bible and religious
stories, morality plays are allegorical representations of human life. However,
they differ from Piers Plowman in that they take their hero to his heavenly
reward, transcending humanity’s limitations and frustrations, to point up
religious values in a way the other literary genres of the time tended to avoid.
Everyman, dating from the early sixteenth century, is one of the
most lasting of this kind of work, and is found in several other countries,
the English version originally having been adapted from the Dutch.
God (seen as the Holy Trinity with the voice of Jovus) is one of the
first ‘characters’ to speak in the play, but most of the characters are
personifications. The hero, Everyman, towards the end of his life,
meets such personifications as Fellowship, Kindred, Cousin, and Good
Deeds. They cannot accompany him on his final journey; so it is
Good Deeds (neglected until late in the drama) who must be his
strongest support. Knowledge offers to ‘go with thee and be thy guide’,