Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/29

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 17 its processional character. For the organization of the lay elements of that procession a guild of Corpus Christi was formed in the more important towns, and seems commonly to have included the bulk of the civic population. It would therefore embrace the craft or trade guilds. Between pro- cession and drama the association is clear in the records. It has sometimes been held that the processional drama actually sprang from the pro- cession, taking its origin in members of different guilds appearing in the costumes of biblical char- afters, which is known in some places to have been customary, passing through a stage of pro- cessional afting, and ending in pageants or movable scenes giving performances at fixed stations. This view, however, assumes an evolution of the drama afresh from distinct origins, and independent or largely independent of that which had previously taken place out of the liturgy. Moreover, we know that the stations of the procession belonged originally not to the pageants but the Host. It seems to me more reasonable to suppose that pre- viously existing plays somehow became attached to the procession, or that new ones were written on existing models to suit a new method of repre- sentation. We know that the players sometimes walked in costume in the procession before giving a performance at a different time and place, and the presence of costumes in the procession at places where no performance followed may be explained as deliberate imitation on the part of those town- ships which were either not rich or not energetic enough to support a regular dramatic cycle.