Page:Ludus Coventriae (1841).djvu/427



Page 1, line 6. With pleys ful glad.] In the Promptorium Parvulorum is given the following curious analysis of the different kinds of plays and players:—"Pley, ludus; pley, or somyr game, spectaculum; pley that begynnythe with myrthe and endythe with sorowe, tragedia; pley that begynnythe with sorow and endythe with myrthe, comedia; pleyare, lusor; pleyare that alwey wyl pley, ludibundus; pleyar at the bal, pililudius; pleyyng garment, ludix; pleyyng place, diludium."—MS. Harl. 221, fol. 129. Chaucer gives us the same definition of tragedy in the prologue to The Monkes Tale:—

Tragedie is to sayn a certain storie, As olde bookes maken us memorie, Of him that stood in gret prosperitee, And is y-fallen out of high degree Into miserie, and endeth wretchedly.

P. 9, l. 17. Mevelyd.] So in the MS., but probably it ought to be mervelyd.

P. 17, l. 10. Dele the comma after the word dwere.

P. 19. .] Bagford has preserved in MS. Harl. 5931, v. 13, a printed bill of the latter end of the seventeenth century, wherein it is stated that "at Crawley's show at the Golden Lion, near St. George's Church, during the time of Southwark-fair, will be presented the whole story of the old creation of the world, or Paradice Lost, yet newly reviv'd, with the addition of Noah's flood." See Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, ed. Hone, p. 166. The specimen 272 in the same volume is still more curious, and shows that the performances of mysteries, howbeit in a very different state, were