Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/305

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 293 manifestly incomplete, since it contains, for instance, no Nativity play. This has been supposed to point to the collection being an ecleftic one made for a literary, not a dramatic purpose. 1 I think the proper inference is that the manuscript, like that of the York plays, is a ' register ' made from ' originals ' in the hands of the different guilds. If the York scribe could not lay his hand on a pageant when he came to need it, he left a space in his codex, intending to insert it later. In a like case the Wakefield scribe went straight on. Thus the York c Paradise ' was written into its place the better part of a century after its neighbours, while the Wakefield 'Exodus' follows the c Prophetae,' and ' Lazarus ' is added after ' Doomsday ' ; and the York Vintners' play of the ' Marriage at Cana ' remains blank to this day, while the Wakefield manuscript passes direft from the c Annunciation ' to the c Shepherds.' 2 The plays borrowed by the Wakefield from the York cycle belong to the first and second periods of production of the latter, and it seems probable that the borrowing took place before the latest additions were made in either cycle, presumably therefore about the middle of the second half of the fourteenth century. It is just possible that the 1 Bunzen, 'Beitrag,' p. 5. Davidson appears to have held much the same view. 2 Particularly perverse seems to me Cady's suggestion that the extensive development of the Shepherds theme by the distinctive Wakefield author led to the omission of the ' Nativity,' ' Publica- tions of the Modern Language Association of America,' xxiv. 441, 'Modern Philology,' x. 587.