Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/328

 3 14 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH Curiously enough this view has been supported by pointing to a passage near the beginning of the play, where a breakdown in the compiler's memory is alleged to have caused the helpless repetition of one line. 1 Those who have relied on this argument have failed to notice that the repe- tition destroys the stanzaic regularity of the pas- sage, and must therefore be a subsequent corruption of the manuscripts, of which the original compiler was innocent. By no possibility can it throw any light upon the conditions under which the play was composed. For my own part I find some difficulty in believing that the theory of oral trans- mission will account satisfactorily for the elaborate patchwork which characterizes the Chester play. Take, for example, the following stanza : This is nothing to my intent, Such speach to spend I red we spare : As wyde in world as 1 haue went Yet found I neuer so ferly a fare. 265-8 Here the first two lines correspond to one portion ofY: Nay, nay, than wer we wrang, Such speking wille we spare ... 201-2 and the last two are from an earlier passage : As wyde in world als we haue wente Yitt fande we neuere swilke ferly fare. . . 133-4 seems to be an error, for the German critic expresses himself very guardedly concerning ' verwirrung und verderbniss, wie wir sie nur bei sehr ungeschickter oder irgend wie erschwerter herubernahme aus einer anderen fassung erklaren konnen.' 1 Chester, 11. 224, 228.