ys--Mediaeval
Italian Plays and Pageants--Spanish Nativity Plays--Modern Survivals
in Various Countries--The Star-singers, &c.

[Illustration:

THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS.

From Broadside No. 305 in the Collection of the Society of Antiquaries at
Burlington House (by permission).

(Photo lent by Mr. F. Sidgwick, who has published the print on a modern
Christmas broadside.)]

In this chapter the Christian side only of the Christmas drama will be
treated. Much folk-drama of pagan origin has gathered round the festival,
but this we shall study in our Second Part. Our subject here is the
dramatic representation of the story of the Nativity and the events
immediately connected with it. The Christmas drama has passed through the
same stages as the poetry of the Nativity. There is first a monastic and
hieratic stage, when the drama is but an expansion of the liturgy, a
piece of ceremonial performed by clerics with little attempt at
verisimilitude and with Latin words drawn mainly from the Bible or the
offices of the Church. Then, as the laity come to take a more personal
interest in Christianity, we find fancy beginning to play around the
subject, bringing out its human pathos and charm, until, after a
transitional stage, the drama leaves the sanctuary, passes from Latin to
the vulgar tongue, is played by lay performers in the streets and squares
of the city, and, while its framework remains religious, takes into
itself episodes of a more or less secular character. The Latin liturgical
plays are to the "miracles" and "mysteries" of the later Middle Ages as a
Romanesque church, solemn, oppressive, hieratic, to |122| a Gothic
cathedral, soaring, audacious, reflecting every phase of the popular
life.

The mediaeval religious drama{1} was a natural development from the
Catholic liturgy, not an imitation of classical models. The classical
drama had expired at the break-up of the Roman Empire; its death was due
largely, indeed, to the hostility of Christianity, but also to the rude
indifference of the barbarian invaders. Whatever secular dramatic
impulses remained in the Dark Ages showed themselves not in public and
organized performances, but obscurely in the songs and mimicry of
minstrels and in traditional folk-customs. Both of these classes of
practices were strongly opposed by the Church, because of their
connection with heathenism and the licence towards which they tended. Yet
the dramatic instinct could no