Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/310

 298 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH Y, W, and C to indicate the extant texts of the first three of these, and x to indicate the text of the Chester play as it may be restored by a com- parison of the extant manuscripts of that cycle. For purposes of reference I shall also divide the play as follows : Scene i, Mary and Joseph's search for their lost child ; scene 2, the Doctors' disputa- tion in the Temple ; scene 3, Jesus and the Doftors (this includes the passage on the Commandments which, we shall see, requires to be considered apart from the rest) ; scene 4, the finding of Jesus and his departure with his parents. 1 Some general account of the four plays must be given. It is pretty clear that the York text pre- serves the play in its most original form. This appears from the regularity of the metrical struc- ture, that text being written almost throughout 2 will be found in 'York Plays,' ed. L. T. Smith, p. 156, where the parallel portions of the Wakefield play are also printed; 'Towneley Plays,' ed. England and Pollard, p. 186; 'Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays,' ed. Hardin Craig, E.E.T.S., 1902, p. 58; 'Chester Plays,' ed. H. Deimling, p. 21 2. I have, however, based my comparison upon a parallel edition of the four texts which I have prepared and hope some day to print, and in this I have corrected certain errors of numbering in the ' Towneley ' print. Previous comparisons of the four texts have been made by Davidson, 'Studies,' p. 164, and by Craig, as above, p. xxviii, but neither is at all satisfactory. Hohlfeld, 'Anglia,' xi. 260, does not take account of the Coventry play. 1 In Y sc. i = 11. 1-48, sc. 2 = 11. 49-72, sc. 3 = 11. 73-204 (Commandments = 11. 169-192), sc. 4 = 11. 205-88. 2 A quatrain is omitted after each of the following lines, 224, 232, 240. Miss Smith failed to notice this, and her numbering of the stanzas is consequently wrong. The Wakefield text makes no attempt to supply the deficiency.