Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/307

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 295 portant variation it is uncertain which text is the more original. In ' Christ and the Doftors ' two important passages have been rewritten in the Wakefield cycle. The ' Harrowing of Hell ' has been recast with considerable freedom. These three plays belong to the first York period. Of the ' Resurrection ' the opening has been entirely rewritten, and subsequent passages too are treated freely. Of ' Doomsday ' portions only have been taken. These two belong to the second York period. It is also practically certain that the ' Conspiracy,' the first part of the twentieth Wakefield pageant, was originally a first-period York play, which has there been displaced by one of the latest additions ; while a subsequent stanza in the same Wakefield pageant may be a relic of an original York play of Gethsemene. Pollard hazards the same conjecture with regard to the Emmaus and Judas plays of the Wakefield cycle, 1 while Hohlfeld finds either structural or verbal parallels to the York plays in the 'Annunciation/ ' Magi/ ' Flight into Egypt/ ' Massacre of the Innocents/ 'Conspiracy and Betrayal/ ' Scourging/ 'Crucifixion/ and 'Ascension/ 2 In the case, how- ever, of several of these, direct connexion between the plays in their present forms is practically out of the question. It is then quite clear that the Wakefield cycle borrowed plays from York. Whether the York cycle exercised any influence over that of Wake- field apart from such direct borrowing is a far 1 ' Towneley Plays,' p. xxvi. 2 ' Anglia,' xi. 307.