Middle English History Board Questions and Answers

1 . What was the effect of the Norman Conquest on Middle English Literature? 

The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is an event in history by which it is possible to mark many changes in the social and cultural history of a country. Politically, it meant the imposition of an aristocratic class of foreign rulers over the native people. As a consequence, the literature produced under courtly or aristocratic patronage was French both in tone and in language, while literature in English was either rough and popular, or simply didactic in tone, written by the lower clergy with the object of instructing the common people. Such a social division did not however mean a total extinction of Anglo-Saxon and there were continuity of the tradition, as is proved by the revival of the alliterative verse in Middle English. The second crop of the alliterative was less technically subtle, more simply accentual than the stricter form of verse of the Anglo-Saxon period. This revival was accompanied by a refinement of tone, which it may reasonably be ascribed to the close contact with the superior literature.

But even if some aspects of the Anglo-Saxon verse tradition lingered on, the same cannot be said of heroic note of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. With the Norman Conquest the heroic age was gone, and new kinds of courtly sophistication replaced the heroic ideal in manners. The old heroic note was dying away throughout Europe for the new Europe of the Middle Ages was not a heroic society in the true sense of the term, but a feudal society with its own conventions of service, honour and obligation, its own kind of literary patronage, and its own social conditions breedings its own view of the relation between the two sexes. The best expression of this ideal is the Metrical Romances.

The story of English literature during the two centuries and a half after the Norman Conquest is the story of what the late seventeenth century critics were to call, with reference to the achievements of their own poets, “the refinement of our numbers.” Forced back to its more popular elements, English literature soon began to rise again slowly in the social scale, gradually, acquiring an ease, a skill, and a polish which would enable it to hold its own with French. The full and triumphant achievement of this new case and polish-in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer-coincides in date with the final re-establishment of English as the universal national language, the speech, both written and spoken, of both Court and the people. It was a very different language now from that of Beourulf or Aelfric, having come under many influences in addition to undergoing those changes in pronunciation and word-structure which any language undergoes with the passing of time.

During this period there grew up a vast Anglo-Latin and Anglo-French literature much of which, however, falls outside the pale of English literature proper. But mention must be made of one work in Latin and its translation in French. It is Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

2. Bring out the main characteristics of the Metrical Romances with special reference to the Arthurian cycle.

The metrical romances are the finest product of the non-religious type of the French and English cultural union during the middle ages. These stories of the courtly love, originally Anglo-Saxon or at best Germanic in origin, found their way into French language during the early tenth century from where they were transmitted through the so-called “gleeman’, that is, courtly and tribal bards into English. In the course of this journey the romances must have undergone considerable changes and the poems, as we have them today, owe as much to the French tradition as to the English. Influenced, especially, by the Provencial love lyric, they acquired the characteristic form of medieval literary entertainment where loyalty to one’s king is no greater than loyalty to one’s lady and where both love and war are ritualized by eleborate techniques of service. They, however, deserve special place in English literature not only because of their intrinsic merit, but also because of the fact that later-day poets like Spenser, Tennyson and Swinburne have found materials for their works in them.

The late twelfth-century poet Jean Bodel, in an oft-quoted couplet, divided the subject-matters of the medieval romances into three categories, the “Matters of France,” the “Matters of Britain”, and the “Matters of Rome”. The first of these groups was the earliest to be developed; it deals with the activities of Charlemagne and his knights, and its tone is nearer to that of heroic poetry. It finds its greatest expression in Chanson de Roland, which tells a desperate story of a courageous fight against hopeless odds, ending with the hero’s death. As the cycle grew, the interest turned inore and more away from the character of Charlemagne to the exploits of the individual members of the group just as the interest of the Arthurian cycles shifted from King Arthur himself to his knights. The driving moral behind the romances of this cycle is the sense of Christendom pushing back the infidel Saracen invaders of Europe.

“The Matters of Rome” represented another great popular kind of subject-matter—the ancient classical world seen through the medieval eyes. It includes not only stories of the siege of Troy, but also the stories of Thebes, of Alexander the Great, and of Julius Caesar among others. The medieval view of the civilizations of Greece and Rome can be clearly seen in the “Matters of Rome” romances. Greece to these people was more remote and Rome was dearer to their conscience, all the more so for being the cradle of early Christianity. So far, moreover, the Trojan war was in question, medieval Europe was on the side of Troy, since it was the popular belief that Rome, and hence the later-day Europe was a foundation of the sons of Troy like Aeneas. Thus, the medieval mind playing with the fragments of a lost or as yet unrescued classical world is a fascinating aspect of the history of culture.

The most important cycle from the point of view of English literature is the “Matters of Britain”. These romances are a varied and an interesting lot and at least three of them-Morte Arthure, Le Morte Arthure and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—have impressive qualities as literature, especially the last one which is one of the lasting monuments of medieval literarure. The romances can be grouped into those that deal with the whole story of Arthur’s life, those concerned with Arthur’s youth and those concerned with Sir Gawain, who is the true hero of the medieval Arthurian romances, eleven in all, with Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight being the central story. Two other romances of this cycle is that dealing with Sir Lancelot and the other dealing with the Holy Grail. Altogether, the cycle is a large a compendium as it is full of anecdotal and poetic interest.

But before detailing the evolution of the Arthurian romance in English literature we must refer to two other cycles which were not specifically spoken of by Jean Bodal. A fourth catagory draws its materials from the more authentic English history. The stories of these historical heroes must have descended orally and at a remote past, went to France from where they were transmited to England. On the other hand, some of the most popular of the “Matters of England” subjects dealt with in the English romances seem to derive from the traditions associated with the viking raids in England. King Horn tells the story of Horn, the son of the king of Sudene while Havelock the Dane is composed partially upon the history of the time of King Athelwold, and partially upon popular stories associating the countries of England and Denmark. Be that as it may, these stories give us reliable knowledge about the Anglo-Saxon rules of England.

The romance gives us an ideal of country love which was one of the most far-reaching and one of the most revolutionary in the history of European sensibility. According to this ideal, love is a service, the knight serving his lady and suffering every kind of indignity for her sake, commending himself to her whenever he goes in an exploit and referring himself to her in a language which is scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from the language used by a votary of the holy virgin. This is not a relation between a husband and wife and indeed throughout there is an implication that the beloved is a man different from the husband. It may therefore be said that the ideal of romance is but an idealization of adultery, a practice not altogether unknown to the artiocratic. As a consequence, the romances made appeal to the upper section of the society when they were given in their French verson. Only when they were translated into English a language fallen decidedly from honour after the Norman conquest, but used, as fervently as ever by the common rut, could such stories make any appeal to the multitudes.

The stories of Arthur have always been a source of imagination for the English people. Even as late as the the Tudor period Arthur was accepted to be a historical person and Tudor kings and queens liked to trace their descent from the King Arthur. The story of Arthur was first told by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historical Regum Britanniae, where the author drew upon old British and Welsh traditions. It is a mine of historical and semi-historical stories and later day poets drew freely upon it. Later, Wace translated Geoffrey of Monmouth into French. But his Roman de Brut is something more than a simple translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth; he also includes other Arthurian stories and is the first to mentain the Round Table. It is with the translation of Wace’s Roman de Brut by Layamon in the early thirteenth century that the Arthurian romances first appeared in English. It may be said that as early as the fourteenth century that the Arthurian romances found a consolidated shape in English capable of being used successively by later-day poets till the Victorian Age.

In medieval English literature we find two different, often contrary trends. After the establishment of the French rule, the Court and the aristocracy round about the Court became fond of French literature. As French language became the official medium and English was pushed to an inferior position, so the literature which was desired by the upper class was French literartureromances and narrative poems. But the native spirit of the country, which it is never too easy to destroy, survived somewhere in the obscure corners of the country, and in course of time it helped the revival of the alliterative and allegorical poems. In no other way can we explain the sudden flowering of alliterative poems in the fourteenth century. Alliteration has always been a favourite stylistic device with the English, but this revived alliteration differed considerably from the old Anglo-Saxon one. The line has become in most cases the unit of thought and the alliteration is not so much structural as decorative. In spite, there appeared between 1350 and 1400 a score of poems of different lengths and achievements, which evolved clearly from the Old English tradition. The most important poems written in the alliterative measures are Pearl, Patience, Purity and Piers Plowman. These poems not only form the more popular aspects of Middle English literature, as opposed to the romance written in rhyme, but also testify to the strength of the native tradition.

These alliterative poems are as widely different from medieval romances in theme and outlook as in technical matters. The Romances told of the courtly ideal of love. It was the idealization of a hedonistic way of life of amour—which a true Christian could not but look upon as either perfidious or ungodly. The alliterative poems, in the guise of allegory, criticized this life. They upheld the Christian virtues of poverty, charity and penance. The alliterative poems are the true expressions of the poor people in medieval England.

The Cotton Collection in the British Museum, which is the source of all these three poems, also contain another poem called Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Although a romance, the poem can be discussed along with the three other poems. It is an exquisite piece of romance in which the central figure is Sir Gawain, one foremost member of the Arthurian cycle. When Author is celebrating the New Year with his courtiers at Camelot, a fantastic Green Knight bursts into the hall and challenges whoever will dare to cut off his head on condition that he will come a year after to return the blow. Sir Gawain graciously accepts the challenge. He beheads the Knight and one year after sets out to meet his challenge. This is the Beheading motive which the anonymous poet dexterously mixes up with another motive, that of Temptation. As Sir Gawain sets out to meet the challenge, he is entertained en route in a grand fashion in a castle belonging to Lord Barsilik. There, when Barsilik is absent, his wife exercises charms over him. Twice Gawain wins over temptation with exemplary courtesy. But suffering, on the third day, a lapse, and receiving from the lady a silk girdle which will save him from the Knight’s attack. Sir Gawain conceals this and because of this lapse in honesty, receives from the Knight a slight wound on the third day. Whatever the implication of such behaviour be, it cannot be denied that the interweaving of these two stories is highly artistic. The Gawain poet is also a skilled painter in words, as is obvious from the description of Arthur’s sumptuous table of fest, or of feast appearance of the Green Knight or his castle where Sir Gawain is entertained. Nor less remarkable is his insight into character, Sir Gawain, in his fearlessness and his love for truth and purity, is almost unique in the whole of medieval literature, and the Green Knight too, in spite of his fantastic appearance, is painted with all the visibility of reality. Altogether, Sir Gawain and the Greenn Knight is a romance which can justly be called the glory of the medieval literature.

The Pearl is an exquisite dream-vision. For this reason, for the pictorial and narrative skill of the poet as well, it occupies an eminent position in the medieval literature. The poet describes how one day a pearl dropped from his hand. In his eagerness to find it out, he comes to a spot to seek it. One August morning, he fell asleep there and in sleep dreamt of a beautiful forest full of green trees and flowers at the foot of a hill. There he sees a girl decked with bright white pearl. He approaches the girl to enquire if she may be his lost pearls, and an argument ensues between the two in the course of which the girl tells him about the equality of divine grace and gives him a glimpse of the heavenly city across the river. As the poet attempts to cross the river to enter the city, his sleep breaks and he loses his vision. He comes home back, full of strength and peace of mind.

The allegorical strength of Pearl has been much debated upon. But viewed as a personal elegy, The Pearl is a poem of deep feeling and spiritual resignation to the will of God. From the artistic standpoint too, the poem is rich in human feeling, sensuous and colourful in its description and full of imaginative wealth which touches us even if we do not care for any symbolical meaning.

Two other poems, associated with the Pearl, and more didactic in nature, are Purity and Patience. Purity is more concerned with an ethical message, showing that without the purity in body and mind one cannot hope to approach the temple of God. The point is imposed with the help of the parable of the man without the wedding garment. The homiletic nature of the poem is obvious, and it lacks a well-knit construction which characterizes the Pearl.

Patience, on the other hand, is built upon the fable of Jonah and the whale. The poet concentrates upon a single theme to show how Jonah suffered for the lack of patience. He has a delight in describing all the elements related to the fable in details, the sail the storm, the whale and, in the end, Jonah’s conversation with God. God rebukes Jonah for the impatience and this leads the poet to a reflection on the necessity of patience and endurance. These poems—Pearl, Patience and Purity—for the similarity of purpose and treatment allow us to suppose that they may be by the same hand. But there is a clear difference in the workmanship. While Patience and Purity draw heavily upon the Scriptures, the Pearl , in spite of depending upon the same source and in particular the description of the New Jerusalem as given in the Apocalypse, makes a good deal of the mixture of the imagination of the poet which makes it remarkably superior to many other poems in Middle English.

Middle English literature has two distinct traits. It was an age when French literature and culture penetrated England. It gave birth to a literature which is more or less aristocratic in nature. Its theme was as a rule classical and medieval romances and its characters the knights and their lady-loves. But there was another tendency in literature which may be called democratic and which depicted the sufferings and joys of common people in realistic terms and—this is more important-set their simple life as contrast to the self-seeking and irreligious practices of the upper classes of the society—the oppressing nobility, the immoral priests and the sycophant officials. Of all the works of the Middle English period dealing, in this way, with the life of the common people, Langland’s Piers Plowman is the best. It has been said that Piers Plowman mirrors Middle English society in such a way as no other work does. Yet Piers Plowman is also a criticism of Life, a scathing commentary on the running vices of the period. Langland’s greatest achievement is that the two purposes of description and criticism are not separate in his poem; they unite on the single pattern of the story. Those parts which are realistic, almost fatal descriptions of the society are, in other words, symbols of what human life should be and what it has become. The type of literature where pictures and descriptions stand for some greater truth beyond is called allegory. The middle age was a time especially favourable to allegory. But of all the allegories of that age in no one has the union of description and signification, poetry and ethics been so complete as in Langland’s Piers Plowman. They are so inextricably connected that it is difficult to separate one element from the other.

The figure of Piers Plowman himself is a perfect example of the way in which such a convergence takes place. Piers is in the first place the English countryman of his time and place and none of his subsequent transformations denies the essential truth about him. But living simply in accordance with the ethics of a true Christian life, Piers ultimately bec mes the symbol of spiritual wealth able to pass judgment on the society around him. Only in the later and more advanced version of the story do we lose sight of the basic realistic constituents of the hero and he becomes something more than a fourteenth century country ploughman—first the Good Samaritan, the symbol of supreme Christian virtue of charity and then Jesus Christ, the Son of God incarnating himself as human being, dying on the Cross, harrowing hall, and rising in triumph against all the odds besetting Christianity. Yet Langland’s poetic skill is such that all these three strands of Piers’s existence ultimately unite with the more realistic one of material existence in the last phase of the poem. It has repeatedly been said—and there is no need to grudge the statement—that as an allegory Piers Plowman is not always consistent. But the development and the ultimate rounding off of the character of the hero is an instance that in Langland’s imagination the two purposes of

realism and moralising were simultaneously present.

This appears to be a correct estimate of the poem when we consider it as a whole. There is a dispute among the critics if all the several versions of the poem—the A-text, the B-text, and the C-text are all written by the same man. Be that whatever it may, the more important truth is that Piers Plowman is a poem where the continuity of tradition has been an important factor in the shaping of the poem. “Piers Plowman”, says a critic, “suggests less the finality of an individual creation than the cumulative expression of a traditional conscience.” In the A-text the allegorical meaning is comparatively simple. It suggests through the twin elements of reality and allegory in the description of “faire field full of folks” surrounded on the cast by the Tower of Truth and on the west by the Dale of Death. The B-text, however, much enlarges the allegory and it brings in the characters of Do-Well, Do-Bet and Do-Best. The three characters may be called central to the design of Langland’s poem inas much as they perform the function of satirising the vices of the contemporary society. The three characters deserve a little analysis.

Do-Well represents the acceptance of the conditions of life living according to the precepts of the church. This is the most elementary level of a true Christian life, yet how many, Langland observes, failed to live up to a that standard! The contrast between precept and reality is given with a wealth of detail which gives life to the abstract thought of the poem.

If priests and clergymen failed to conform to the standard of Do-Well how yawning is their difference from the norm of Do-Best and Do-Bet representing, respectively, the virtue of charity and incarnating in life spiritual authority supremely confided for its spiritual exercise for the rule of church involving the redemption of humanity. The vision of Piers Plowman—which is as much the vision of Langland the poet,—was not confined to the immediate realities of life, but extended to a further vision of truly Christian society of which he found not the slightest reflection in the deplorably selfseeking society of fourteenth century England. That is the cause of his devastating satire expressed in the poem. Langland was a missionary and he could not be good humoured like Geoffrey Chaucer. His satire is bitter and the careful selection of the contemporary details only sharpen the bitterness.

The best example of Langland’s eye for the detail is what has been called the character-portraits of the poem. These character-portraits are also important for another reason. They speak of Langland’s capacity to represent a mental concept as a personified image. One reminds of many such passages of personification from Piers Plowman, but we quote just one, the description of Avarice.

And then came Covetiousness; no words can describe him, he looked so hungry and hollow, such a crafty old codger. He had beetling brows and thick, puffy lips and his eyes were so bleary as a blind old hag’s. His baggy cheeks sagged down below his chin, flapping about like a leather wallet, and trembling with old age. His beard was all bespatter red with grease, like a serf’s with a bacon fat. He wore a hood on his head with a lousy cap on top, and dirty-brown smoke at least dozen years old, torn and filthy and crawling with lice. It was so threadbare that even a louse would have preferred to hop elsewhere.

This is a complete human being, almost caricaturist in its deformity. The height of poetic power is in the making images, and Langland must be recognized as a true poet, a very great poet indeed.

              Geoffrey Chaucer

Medieval literary scene is dominated by the figure of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400). In range of interest, in realistic appeal and in critical spirit always softened by a kind humanism, Geoffrey Chaucer outdoes all his contemporaries as Shakespeare does the writers of his age. If we add to these his sheer poetic skill skill’in narrating, native sense of humour, depth of characterization and all that go by the name of craftsmanship—we can understand why he is acknowledged as the greatest English poet before Shakespeare . Never before had England produced another poet in whom art and material, theme and expression combined to such a perfection. Geoffrey Chaucer is the first poet to find for England a place of eminence in the history of European literature.

The time Chaucer was born was a period of transition in the history of England. The first flickering of modernity in the middle ages was seen through the revolt of the Lollards and the pamphlets of Wycliffe against the malpractices and the irreligious activities of the clergy. French and English cultures confronted each other which resulted in the importation of a great number of French elements in English language and literature. All the various dialects current in the early middle English period now began to become obsolete and the East Midland speech began to be accepted as the proper medium of prose and poetry.

It was in this atmosphere that Geoffrey Chaucer was born in a Burgher’s family. Of his life we know from his own writings and from what other people have told of him by way of tribute. Chaucer was a Londoner all through his life. Belonging, by birth, to the middle-class in a hierarchical society, Chaucer was fortunate enough to enjoy the association of the aristocracy. His patron was John of Gaunt and the King himself favoured him and sent him as emissary to France and Italy. The several experiences thus acquired helped Geoffrey Chaucer to give to his poetry a cosmopolitan colour in thought and form which was unknown so long in English literature.

The three periods in which it is customary to divide the works of Chaucer may be taken as an indirect recognition of this cosmopolitan character of his genius. A poet cannot help being influenced by the trends of the age and usually his novitiating work turns out to be an adaptation. Chaucer’s first book, Romaunt of the Rose is an allegorical poem based upon the French story by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meaung. The imitation of the French writers contributed a great deal towards the stylistic development of Chaucer. He acquired an elegance and a middle tone of speaking which characterized him all through his poetic career. It was here that he first learnt of the devices of dream which was repeated, sometimes tiresomely repeated, in his works. Chaucer’s French period is important not only for his own self, but also for the English language, because of the large amount of French words brought into the English vocabulary.

The dream element recurs in his Italian period, that is, in the period commencing after his visit to the continent where he probably met Petrarch and Boccacio. The Book of Duchess (1369) was written to console his patron, John of Gaunt who was mourning the death of his wife, and it contains some passages of exquisite poetic beauty. The Parliament of Foules (1387) is another allegorical work where different species of birds are given human. connotations and characteristics. The characterizations are lively and dramatic and the variation of mood and tone has the touch of the human in it. Like all people in the middle ages, Chaucer was also doubtful of the permanence  of the earthly fame and in the House of Fame we find the poet borne aloft on the wings of an eagal to heaven where he witnessess the capricious nature of glory. The poet’s journey easily reminds one of Dante’s, but Chaucer politely says that he cannot be compared with the “gret poet of Itali.” Troylus and Criseyde (1372) is based upon Boccacio’s story, but whereas Boccacio’s is a tale of sentiment and voluptuousness Chaucer’s is a study of character. The most important of the characters is Pandarus, Criseyde’s uncle. Garrulous, commonplace and sententious, Pandarus gives us a foretaste of Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet. He has contributed his very name to the English philology; the word ‘pander’ now means a clandestine go-between between two unlawful lovers. But Chaucer was ill at ease in his heart to write on the theme of unfaithful love and to atone for what he declared to be a sin wrote The Legende of Goode Women (1385), a work which tells of virtuous women and their sacrifices for their husbands.

Thus equipped with the best tradition of the continental literature, Chaucer came to look over the length and breadth of his England and to create another work with purely native materials. The work is The Canterbury Tales, a work half-complete, yet revealing the genius of its creator to the full. They are nine and twenty pilgrims, bound for the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, who met at Tabbard Inn at Southwark. They agree to tell each two stories on his way and two back. The pretext is highly artistic, and the scheme completed, would have been an anthology of stories comparable, for its richness and vairety, with the best collection of stories in the East and the West. Instead, what we have got are twenty-four stories and the famous Prologue. Chaucer’s description of the “merry folk” gives representation of all the different professions and estates of the middle age. Chaucer depicts these characters with truth, realism and sympathy which have made the Prologue an object of universal admiration. Some of the portraits have a little of the anger of the poet at the social and religious malpractices, but generally they are remarkable for the kind humour which illuminates them. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales combine all the poetic excellences of Geoffrey Chaucer. It shows him coming down from the realm of romance to the walk of reality.

In medieval England there are other writers of importance than Geoffrey Chaucer. But their importance is more or less of the historical kind; they seldom touch us as living authors. But Geoffrey Chaucer is an author who has his relevance for us. This modernity of Chaucer is primarily due to the fact that he satisfied one eternal desire of man: that of listening to stories. Whereas other medieval writers tell stories as illustrations of some morals, Chaucer delights in the purely human appeal. And the dramatic and the pictorial skill with which the story is narrated so much captivates the readers that all questions of morality become meaningless. This delight in storytelling is matched by a skill of describing natural beauties or human characters. A keen eyesight for the individual as well as the general, the familiar and the uncommon is proved by such pages of character-sketches as the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. All these speak of Chaucer’s love for the world he saw and lived in. He looked at this world with a pleasant, loving eye mixed with a genial humour. Chaucer’s humour is his outstanding virtue as a writer. It is never pungent or crooked, and if it is sometimes tinged with a bit of the satiric at social injustices and religious hypocrisies, it is never aggravated by that prophetic zeal which makes many of his comtemporaries look bitter and rugged. Chaucer of course has his limitations. He cannot, like Dante, roam the three worlds of heaven, hell and purgatory; nor can he, like Milton, transport himself to the distant and the sublime. But it is his supreme virtue that he is humane. We cannot but admire a poet who makes us love this familiar plot of ground. With the exception of Shakespeare, the only poet who does that is Geoffrey Chaucer.

The evolution of English drama is closely associated with the history of the church. Since the establishment of Christianity, the church had played a hostile role to drama or any sort of entertainment. But when it came to feel that man’s natural instinct for mimicry or his behaviourial gestures or postures could be very successfully used for imparting religious lessons, it began to make dramatic versions of scriptural stories. The dramas which dealt with the stories of the life of Christ were called Mysteries, and those giving pictorial representations of the lives of the Apostles or saints were called Miracles. At first these dramas were enacted within the precincts of the church. But more people gathering to listen to the drama, the church could not hold them all within its narrow space. So, drama came out of the church, and out of the hands of those people who lived within and governed the church.

So, the laity came to take up the duty of continuing the development of dramatic art in England. The most important role here was played by the trade-guilds who took up the traditional biblical themes, but took up now instead of one particular episode or a segment of a book, the whole of the book itself. These long dramas have been called cycles, of which we have four extant examples. Long these dramas would be, and would take several days for their full performance. So the trade-guilds enacted these dramas on movable waggon stages from place to place. This practice of carrying a dramatic party, bag and baggage, from one place to another helped Shakespeare and his fellow-players a great deal, especially in time of plague when their London theatres were officially closed and they had to seek bread and butter elsewhere.

The complete cycles of Miracles that survive are from Chester, York and Wakefield, two plays from Conventry and a cycle of fourty-two plays generally known as Ludus Conventrie, though these have nothing to do with the Conventry cycle. However, the Chester cycle contains twenty-five plays, beginning with the Fall of Lucifer and ending with the Doomsday; it includes plays dealing with the creation, the Fall, Noah, Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, Balaam and Balak, and a group on the life of Christ. The development of the action and dialogue is naive enough and the stories are presented in simple outline. The York plays are probably late; forty-eight survive out of an original of fifty-four. Four groups have been distinguished within the cycle. The first group includes plays on Adam and Eve, a Building of the Ark, Abraham and Issac, Exodus, Passion, Assumption and the Last Judgement. The second group which depicts the Fall of Lucifer, the Death of Christ and the Death of the Virgin clearly shows the influence of the Alliterative tradition. The third group, especially in the plays dealing with Noah shows a realistic humour.

The Wakefield Cycle contains thirty-two plays. The literary merit of these plays is higher than that of other plays which have survived. The stanzas are handled with assurance, there is an occasional note of real poetry, and in five of the plays there is lively ironic humour and realistic characterization which reveal a true sense of comedy. The story of Noah, in particular, is treated as broad realistic comedy, with Noah’s wife portrayed as a talkative shrew who refuses to enter the ark. In the shepherd plays there is much talk of the hard life of the poor, their oppression and torture in the hands of the rich. The language throughout is full of verve, and the story is presented against a sharply etched background of fifteenth century rural life. The “Wakefield Master”, as the anonymous author of the five outstanding Wakefield plays has been called, is the first English writer of realistic comedy. His main inspiration was clearly the realistic fabliau and his own observation rather than the Bible or the liturgy.

Mysteries and Miracles developed into Moralities, that is dramas where abstract qualities such as seven deadly sins were given human form. There are references to morality plays in the fourteenth century, but the fifteenth century seems to be the period of its full development. The earliest complete extant morality play is The Castle of Perseverence, written probably about 1425, a relatively elaborate affair with thirty-two characters; the theme is the fight between Good Angel and Bad Angel for the supermacy over a man’s soul. But the best and the most appealing of all morality plays is Everyman. Here the action is developed with simple dignity and personified abstractions play their parts with forceful dramatic logic. Everyman is summoned to a long journey by death from which there is no return. Unprepared and unable to gain a respite, he looks for friends to accompany him, but neither Fellowship, nor Goods nor kindreds will go. Only Good Deeds, being powerful when she gets the help of Mercy, can accompany him. As an angel announces the entry of Everyman into the sphere of the heaven, a ‘Doctor’ concludes by pointing the moral.

Toward the end of the fifteenth century there developed a type of morality play which dealt in the same allegorical way with general problems, but with pronounced realistic and comic elements. The kind of play is known as the Interlude, though the name is given to much earlier secular moralities. It is perhaps safer to use the term Interlude in the simplest sense of transitional plays from Moralities to secular Tudor dramas. The transition it is not possible to document historically, since so many of the texts have not survived. But the continuity is undeniable, for we cannot without the existence of such a intermediate stage explain the obviously secular spirit of Elizabethan drama.

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