strong hand of authority for their
suppression--it was distinctly dramatic in itself. Miracle plays
represent a further stage of development, in which a rude and popular
art shook itself free from the trammels of ritual, outgrew the austere
restrictions of sacred surroundings, and yet kept fast hold on the
religious tradition on which it had been nourished, and which remained
to the last its supreme attraction.

The liturgical origin of the miracle play may almost be taken for
granted, and the single question that is likely to arise is whether the
custom evolved itself from observances connected with Easter, or
Christmas, or both festivals in equal or varying measure. Circumstances
rather point to Paschal rites as the matrix of the custom. The Waking of
the Sepulchre anticipates some of the features of the miracle play,
while the dialogue may have been suggested by the antiphonal elements
in the church services, and specifically by the colloquy interpolated
between the Third Lesson and the Te Deum at Matins, and repeated as part
of the sequence "Victimae paschalis laudes," in which two of the choir
took the parts of St. Peter and St. John, and three others in albs those
of the Three Maries. In the York Missal, in which this colloquy appears
at length, its use is prescribed for the Tuesday of Easter Week.

Springing apparently from these germs, the religious drama gradually
enlarged its bounds until it not only broke away from the few Latin
verses of its first lisping, but came to embrace a whole range of
Biblical history in vernacular rhyme. The process is so natural that we
need scarcely look for contributory factors, and the influence of such
experiments as the Terentian plays of the Saxon nun Hroswitha in the
tenth century may be safely dismissed as negligible, or, at most,
advanced as proof of a broad tendency, evidence of which may be traced
in the "infernal pageants" to which Godwin alludes in his "Life of
Chaucer," and which, as regards Italy, are for ever memorable in
connexion with the Bridge of Carrara--a story familiar to all students
of Dante. These "infernal pageants" were concerned with the destiny of
souls after death, and their scope being different from that of the
miracle plays, they are adduced simply as marking affection for
theatrical display in conjunction with religious sentiment.

As far as can be ascertained, the earliest miracle play ever exhibited
in England--and here it may be observed that