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Updated: May 1, 2025
It was a mighty gain for the language and the people when, in the middle of the fourteenth century, by permission of the Pope, the miracle-plays, most probably hitherto represented in Norman-French, as Mr. Collier supposes, began to be represented in English.
His great object was to procure illuminated MSS. and early editions of romances and miracle-plays; but he was also fond of the classics, and his library at Seville is still possessed of many copies of Latin poets and orators which are full of his marginal notes.
Regarded from the height which the art had reached two hundred and fifty years after, "how dwarfed a growth of cold and night" do these miracle-plays show themselves!
To be sure, during the fourteenth century, the so-called miracle-plays flourished abundantly in England, and were, as there is every reason to believe, already largely performed by the trading-companies of London and the towns. The allusions in Chaucer to these beginnings of our English drama are, however, remarkably scanty.
When the representation of real historical persons in the miracle-plays gave way before the introduction of unreal allegorical personages, and the miracle-play was almost driven from the stage by the "play of morals" as it was called, there was certainly no great advance made in dramatic representation.
In most plays the verses are arranged in rhyming couplets only. To our ears, at least, the older miracle-plays were greatly superior.
Just the dreariest town in Cornwall, and its best friends do not call it lovely; but there is a rather interesting Perpendicular church, with some earlier relics, and there is also a plân-an-guare, like the Planguary of Redruth an old-world amphitheatre, first used for sports and later for miracle-plays. The name means "place of play." It is now used for religious and other meetings.
There were furthermore some attractive novelties. It appears, for example, that the Jesuits used to have miracle-plays performed in their churches for the purpose of attracting popular attention.... But outward attractions of whatever sort, or outward resemblances to Buddhism, could only assist the spread of the new religion; they could not explain the rapid progress of the propaganda.
Very picturesque, too, must have been the miracle-plays at Easter, Christmas, and Epiphany; the great fairs; the solemn processions, especially at Rogation-tide, when the relics of the Saint were borne in state by representatives of the greater tenants of the church, and attended by the sanctuary-men carrying staves with banners.
Visiting his workshop, after ordering of him two carved statuettes I said to him: ``You certainly ought to have a double salary, as the Judas had in the miracle-plays of the middle ages; this was thought due him on account of the injury done to his character by his taking that part. At this the Oberammergau Judas smiled pleasantly, and said: ``No; I am content to share equally with the others; but the same feeling toward the Judas still exists''; and he then told me the following story: A few weeks before, while he was working at his carving-bench, the door of his workshop opened, and a peasant woman from the mountains came in, stood still, and gazed at him intently.
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