Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/194

 1 82 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH others, that the disappearance of the ' Assumption ' was a result of the Reformation. It is highly pro- bable that the play did cease to be performed, as at York, out of Protestantism. It does not, however, follow that that is the reason why it is not found in the manuscripts. I will leave the question there for the moment. The discrepancy in connexion with the pageant of the Passion reappears in the manuscripts ; H, the youngest of them, agreeing with the later banns in making the play a single whole, while the rest, like the earlier banns, divide it into two. This certainly looks as though H preserved the younger and the group the older tradition. Curi- ously enough the internal evidence points in pre- cisely the opposite direction. Deimling, it will be remembered, preferred H. He was led to this conclusion chiefly by a consideration of the numerous passages which appear in the manu- scripts of the older group, but are absent from H. It is possible that in some instances the divergence may be due to omissions in H, but in a number of others the additional passages disturb the stanzaic arrangement of the text, and it is evident that H preserves the more original version. Now in H the Passion pageant is immensely long, extending to no less than 892 lines. The next longest play is the 'Nativity' with 736 lines; the shortest the 'Ascension' with 192. Assuming H to be the more original text, it is not difficult to conjefture how this came about, for the play bears traces of revision. It contains namely a variety of passages in a different and shorter measure than the rest.