Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/332

 3 i8 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH Chester should draw material from Yorkshire need not surprise us, nor need it that a Coventry writer should seek it at Chester, the headquarters of the diocese, while on the other hand a plausible con- nexion between Coventry and Yorkshire would be far harder to establish. Whether K was ever actually performed at Coventry we have no means of knowing : it may have been largely rewritten in the direction of C as soon as it arrived. But it is tempting to believe that K was the actual play introduced at Coventry in 1520 or earlier, and that the peculiarities of C are due solely to the literary efforts of that diligent but clumsy literateur, Robert Crow. There is one incidental matter I should like to mention before I close. It may have occurred to some of you that the York, Wakefield, and Coventry plays we have been considering supply us with an independent criterion for judging of the manu- scripts of the Chester text, somewhat similar to the Peniarth manuscript in the case of the Anti- christ play. I cannot, of course, enter into the matter at length, but may as well state the general results. The grouping of the manuscripts appears to be the same as elsewhere, though there is not much evidence regarding the position of B and D. There are several curious correspondences, but nothing to upset the results at which we previously arrived. There are also one or two remarkable instances of an original form having survived in W and K, while it has been independently modernised in the other three manuscripts. But the most substantial result is certainly the vindication of the