Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/312

 3 oo PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH may have been concofted in 1 520, when Coventry rejoiced in ' new playes at Corpus Christi tyde, which were greatly commended/ 1 There is no reason, however, to suppose that the whole cycle was renewed at that date, so that the play may possibly go back, substantially in the form in which we have it, to the fifteenth century. It differs widely from the York version, having been prac- tically rewritten in a different and very irregular metre. Comparatively few lines have escaped more or less profound alteration, but there yet remain considerable sections in which the text is in a general way parallel. At Chester the Doctors' play formed the second half of a pageant which also represented the Puri- fication of the Virgin. But in this case we have the definite amalgamation of two obviously distinct pieces. The Doctors' play is composed in a different stanza from that used in the body of the cycle, to which the 'Purification' conforms. Moreover, at the end of the pageant there appears an epilogue of eight lines in the usual metre, which clearly belongs, not to the Doctors' play, which it ignores, but to the 'Purification.' The text of this ' Purification ' exhibits no parallels with any other version. It is therefore abundantly clear that the episode of the Doftors is a late insertion. How late it would be interesting to know. Now, it is on record that the Smiths of Chester, the guild responsible for the production of the pageant in question, did in 1575 submit alternative plays to 1 Chambers, 'Mediaeval Stage,' ii. 358.