Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/27

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 15 Occasionally Old Testament history as such was put on the stage. A ' Prophetae ' at Riga included scenes from the wars of Gideon, David, and Herod. An independent play of the Old Testament was performed at that dramatically anomalous place, London. There is the French c Mystere du Viel Testament.' But on the whole, and more par- ticularly in England, it is true that the Old Testament se6lion remained essentially a prophetic prologue. Certainly the extant English miracle cycles are not theatrical epics of universal history, but stridlly dramas of the Redemption of man, and as such proclaim a legitimate descent from their far-away source in the words of the angel : Quern quaeritis in sepulcro, o Christicolae ? So far, we are to think of the great Nativity and Passion cycles, if not of the whole composite drama, as being performed in church. The next step was from the church to the market-place, and the growth that necessitated or suggested it likewise led to the introduction of lay performers. The effecSt of these two changes was momentous. Roughly it meant that the plays from being ecclesiastical became human, from being Latin became vernacular, from being cosmopolitan became national. The change of place naturally did not occur at any definite date ; it was a gradual shifting. The Dunstable school play was probably as early as 1 1 oo, and plays were afted in the refec- tory at Augsburg about 1123. But the shift into the open air does not appear to have taken place till nearly a century later, and the transitional