le to do
much more than guess, since plays varied considerably in the number of
their scenes. In one town, as we have said, the whole performance was
crowded into a single day, starting as early as 4.30 a.m. Chester, on
the other hand, devoted three days to its festival, while at Newcastle
acting was confined to the afternoons. Humane consideration for the
actors forbade that they should be required to act more than twice a
day. They were well paid, as much as fourpence being given for a good
cock-crower (in 'The Trial of Christ'), while the part of God was worth
three and fourpence: no contemptible sums at a time when a quart of wine
cost twopence and a goose threepence. A little uncertainty exists as to
the professional character of the actors, but the generally approved
opinion seems to be that they were merely members of the Guilds,
probably selected afresh each year and carefully trained for their
parts. The more professional class, the so-called minstrels or vagrant
performers (descendants of the Norman _jongleurs_), possibly provided
the music, which appears to have filled a large and useful part in the
plays.

* * * * *

The Saint-plays, the original miracle-plays, continued, and doubtless
were staged in the same way as the Bible-plays. But the latter so
completely eclipsed them in popularity that they appear never to have
attained to more than a haphazard existence. Their nature was all
against a dramatic subordination of the different plays to each other.
Their subject was fundamentally the same; placed in a series, they could
unroll no larger theme, as could the individual scenes of a Bible-play.
For ambitious town festivals, therefore, they were too short. Few public
bodies considered it worth their while to adopt them; and as a
consequence only one or two have been preserved for our reading.

Those that remain with us, however, contain qualities which may make us
wonder why they did not receive greater recognition. It may be that we
misjudge the extent of their popularity, though survival is usually a
fairly good guide. Certainly they shared, or borrowed, some of the
'attractive' features of their rivals: there was not lacking a liberal
flavour of the horrible, the satanic, the coarse and the comical.
Moreover, they possessed much greater possibilities for purely dramatic
effect. The cohesion of incidents was firmer, the evolution of the plot
more vigorous, the crisis more