Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/195

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 183 These occasionally appear interwoven with the more normal portions of the play, but certain large sections remain which can easily be detached from their context. They are lines 65 to 120, contain- ing the buffeting, lines 313 to 360 the scourging and crowning, and lines 457 to 600 the crucifixion and casting of lots. There is, indeed, nothing surprising in a different metre being used for these passages, but their subjects might well be repre- sented in dumb show, and the omission of the lines mentioned would reduce the play to the very manageable length of 644 lines. On the other hand, if we assume the group of manuscripts to represent the earlier tradition, it is very difficult indeed to imagine how two originally separate plays should ever have been combined into such an unwieldly whole. The rubrics of the manu- scripts, I think, clinch the matter. Immediately following the Trial and Condemnation all the manu- scripts have eight lines of the shorter measure, after which H inserts the direction, c Tune ibunt versus montem Calvariae,' and proceeds without break. At this point the group insert a short scene of sixteen lines only, containing Peter's denial, at the end of which D has : c Finis paginae decime sextae. This storye is finished in the leaves followinge.' There are variants in the other manuscripts. The group then proceeds : ' Incipit pagina de crucifixione Christi,' &c., but there is no fresh number, and when we come to the end D repeats : ' Finis paginae decimae sextae.' The other manuscripts of the group omit this, but in all the play that follows is numbered seventeen,