[2] Whispering.

[3] Printed by him in 1894 in a 'Festschrift' in honour of Professor
Hildebrand.

[4] To be carefully distinguished from the so-called Coventry Plays of
Cotton MS., Vespasian, D. viii., whose highly doubtful connection with
Coventry rests solely on a note of Cotton's librarian.

[5] It would be convenient if they could be called the Cotton Plays, as
the Wakefield cycle has been called after the Towneley family.

[6] See p. 316. Stage-plays were acted in the summer, interludes in the
winter, the cost of hiring dresses being apparently from three to five
times as great for a stage-play as for an interlude. My own
interpretation is that the distinction has nothing to do with the plays
acted, but solely to the place of performance, interludes being acted
indoors and stage-plays in the open air, where the dresses were exposed
to greater damage.

[7] Prohemye to _Polychronicon_, _ad fin._

[8] The argument as I understand it runs as follows:--

(i) The author of the Prologue is the author of the Translation of the
Bible (which may be granted, though not without the reservation that the
helpers to whom allusion is made may have written sections of the
Prologue, which would confuse any deductions).

(ii) The Prologue has verbal resemblances to the treatise designated
_Ecclesiae Regimen_ (the instances quoted seem to me resemblances merely
of topics, and these not uncommon ones).

(iii) The _Ecclesiae Regimen_ resembles Purvey's confession at his
recantation in 1400 (the previous criticism applies here much more
strongly).

Therefore the translation of the Bible is by the author of the _Ecclesiae
Regimen_, and the author of this is Purvey. I must repeat that the chain
seems to me lamentably weak, and that the resemblances which may be
found between Section xv. of the Prologue and Trevisa's Dialogue and
Letter to Lord Berkeley are stronger, because not arising out of quite
such common topics. That they are only to a slight extent verbal
resemblances is no drawback. We do not expect a man to repeat his own
words exactly. What is interesting is to find two translators both
interested in their own methods, and these methods similar.

JOHN LYDGATE (?).

_The Siege of Harfleur and the Battle of Agincourt_

1415.

Hereafter followeth the Battle of Agincourt and the great Siege of
Rouen, by King HENRY of Monmouth, the Fifth of the name; that won
Gascony, and Guienne, and Normandy.

[See S