Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/72

52 Still later is the Spel van den Heiligen Sacrament vander Nyeuwervaert, performed at Breda about 1500. The relation in which the secular and religious plays stand to each other in time led Mone in 1838 to claim for the drama of the Netherlands a unique secular origin. It was descended, he argued, not from the religious drama but from the dialogues recited by one or more "sprekers," of whose performances we hear in old account-books. The question has been much debated, the descent from the religious plays under French influence being urged by Wybrands and Jonckbloet, the native and independent by Moltzer and J. H. Gallée. It cannot be discussed at length in a chapter whose subject is only in passing the Mediæval drama. It is not possible in any case to get beyond conjecture, as the plays form an isolated group. How far the "twee-spraken" or dialogues (occasionally even "drie-spraken") referred to in account books were dramatic in character and were represented by more than one "zegger," is matter solely of conjecture. Wybrands and Jonckbloet consider that the statements of Maerlant, and other evidence, point to their having been recited by one person representing the different speakers. On the other hand, the descent of the "abele spelen" from the mysteries under French influence is equally conjectural, or more so, for the only French secular serious play which is older than the fifteenth century—the Griseldis—stands, as Creizenach points out, in obviously close relationship to the Virgin Mary Miracle-plays, which the Dutch