Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/373

Rh way to criticism—a tradition among players from the Elizabethan period. Those who regard Elizabethan plays as literature only, surely forget that they were written for actors already in existence, with their traditions and plays of a cruder form. But the remembrance of that fact is necessary to the criticism of the plays as literary masterpieces. We should not have had the plays but for the conditions. It was the popular drama and quick dramatic sense which begot the higher drama of culture and classical colour.

There are facts antecedent to the Shakespeare drama, facts of folk-lore essentially, to which the attention of students of the drama may be appropriately invited in these pages. When we are told that the origin of the English drama was the miracle and mystery-plays, which were organised by the priests and monks of religious houses, we, who seek for causes, ask: Why did the Church organise these dramatic representations? In most cases we receive no answer. But “a French writer”, quoted by Warton, and others from him, hints that the object was to “supersede the dancing, music, mimicry, and profane mummeries” to which the folk were addicted. Still questioning, we inquire into the nature of these dancing and profane mummeries. But the historians cannot tell us: they paid no heed to tradition; their object is literary criticism. Again we ask: Why it was thought advisable or necessary to provide these dramatic representations of Scripture and Church legends; but we receive no answer. In fact, we cannot get beyond the miracles and mysteries; this was the beginning, a starting-point which has become traditional in dramatic history.

The explanation is the same as in the case of those writers who can see no connection between the sudden perfection of the Elizabethan drama and the crudities that preceded it. The miracle-plays and the mysteries exist. The MSS. have been preserved, have been