(saddlers), verrours (glaziers), fuystours (makers
of saddle-trees), carpenters, wine-drawers, brokers, wool-packers,
scriveners, luminers (illuminators), questors (pardoners), dubbers,
tallianders (tailors), potters, drapers, weavers, hostlers, and mercers.

The subjects of the plays were the story of the Creation, the Fall, the
Deluge, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the incidents preceding the Birth of
Christ, the Nativity, and in pretty regular sequence the chief events of
our Lord's life to the Ascension; and, finally, the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin. As a rule it is hard to discern any connexion between
the nature of a scene and the craft or crafts representing it, but the
assignment of the pageant in which God warns Noah to make an ark to the
shipwrights, and of its successor, in which the patriarch appears in the
Ark, to the "pessoners" and mariners has an obvious propriety, and must
have conduced to the--not historical, but conventional--realism which
was the aim of the miracle artists.

The whole town was made to serve as a huge theatre, and the many
pageants proceeded in due order from station to station. "The place,"
says Archdeacon Rogers--he is speaking of Chester--"the place where they
played was in every streete. They begane first at the abay gates and
when the first pagiant was played, it was wheeled to the highe crosse
before the mayor, and so to every streete; and so every streete had a
pagiant playinge before them at one time, till all the pagiantes for the
daye appoynted weare played; and when one pagiant was neere ended word
was broughte from streete to streete, that soe they might come in place
thereof excedinge orderlye, and all the streetes have their pagiantes
afore them all at one time playeing togeather, to se which playe was
greate resorte, and also scafoldes and stages made in the streetes in
those places where they determined to playe their pagiantes."

Should the supply of pageants be limited, different scenes were acted in
different parts of the same stage; and actors who were awaiting or had
ended their parts stood on the stage unconcealed by a curtain. In more
elaborate performances a scene like the "Trial of Jesus" involved the
employment of two scaffolds, displaying the judgment-halls of Pilate and
Herod respectively; and between them passed messengers on horseback. The
plays contain occasional stage directions--e.g., "Here Herod shall rage
on the pagond." We find also rude attempts at