Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/311

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 299 in twelve-line stanzas riming ababababcdcd, the o6tave consisting of lines of four accents, the quatrain of lines of three. It is true that the simple quatrains of the Chester play are regular enough, but a very casual inspection will show that that version con- tains no more than the fragmentary and sometimes corrupt remains of the others. The Wakefield play is one of those which repro- duce substantially the corresponding ones of the York cycle. It is imperfe<5t at the beginning owing to the mutilation of the manuscript, and two important passages have been wholly rewritten. Otherwise the Wakefield play may be regarded as supplying merely a second manuscript of the same work. The two remaining plays differ far more widely, and in each the Doctors' play constitutes only a portion of the pageant in which it occurs. At Coventry the episode formed part of the Weavers' play, an extensive composition which likewise in- cluded a sort of c Prophetae ' and a ' Purification.' Of this the existing manuscript, still in the pos- session of the original guild, 1 was c newly translate' whatever that may mean by Robert Croo or Crow in 1534. In so far, therefore, as it was an original composition at all, the play may have been a6tually written no earlier than that year. If Crow was no more than a transcriber or reviser, the piece 1 Craig, to whom belongs the credit of having rediscovered this manuscript, stated (1902) that it was to be placed among the Corporation manuscripts, but this had not yet been done when, through the kindness of the gentleman in whose custody it remains, I examined it in the summer of 1912.