miracle-play:--

A ship must thou needs dight,
Myself shall be the master-wright.
I shall thee tell how broad and long,
Of what measure and how strong.
When the timber is fastened well,
Wind the sides ever each and deal.
Bind it first with balk and band,
And wind it then too with good wand.
With pitch, look, it be not thin!
Plaster it well without and in!

The likeness we see is startling: so near to the other indeed as to
suggest almost a common authorship.

As for the pastoral plays in the same towns, we find the shepherds and
countrymen were just as well furnished with rough cuts from the life.
The most real and frankly illustrative, and by no means the least
idyllic of them is perhaps the Chester play of the three shepherds. It
was not played by countrymen but by townsmen, like the other plays in
the town cycles, being in this case the "Paynters and Glasiors" play.
The first shepherd who opens it talks of the "bower" or cote he would
build, his "sheep to shield," his "seemly wethers to save:"--

From comely Conway unto Clyde
Under tyldes[4] them to hide
A better shepherd on no side
No earthly man may have
For with walking weary I have methought
Beside thee such my sheep I sought
My long-tail'd tups are in my thought
Them to save and heal

In the _Death of Abel_, another Chester play, Cain comes in with a
plough, and says:--

A tiller I am, and so will I be,
As my daddy hath taught it me
I will fulfil his lore

In the subsequent incident of the corn that Cain is to offer for his
sacrifice, we hear the plain echo of the English farmer's voice in the
corn-market mixing with the scriptural verse: "This standing corn that
was eaten by beasts," will do:

God, thou gettest no better of me,
Be thou never so grim

So throughout the plays the folk-life of their day, their customs and
customary speech, are for ever emerging from the biblical scene.

In trying to realise how the miracle-plays were mounted and acted, we
shall find the best witness at Chester. This was a rather late one.
Archdeacon Rogers, who saw them in 1594, when they had been going on for
something like three centuries in all. From his account (in the
_Harleian Miscellany_) it appears the Chester plays were given on
Whit-Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

"The manner of these plays were, every company had his pageant or part,
a high scaffold with