Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/379

 365 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND TEXTUAL PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH MIRACLE CYCLES. IV. LUDUS COVENTRIAE. HE cycle of miracle plays preserved in a Cottonian manuscript, and known commonly as the * Ludus Coventriae,' is one of the chief puzzles of our early dramatic literature. 1 The name under which it passes is unfortunate, for one of the few things concerning it of which we can feel tolerably certain is that it has no connexion with Coventry. The person responsible for the error is Cotton's librarian, Richard James, who in the earlier part of the seventeenth century wrote the following description in the beginning of the manuscript : 'Contenta Novi Testamenti scenice expressa et aclitata olim per monachos sive fratres mendicantes: vulgo dicitur hie liber Ludus Coventriae, sive ludus Corporis Christi : scribitur metris Anglicanis.' It has not unnaturally been supposed that James based his note upon some tradition which reached him along with the manuscript itself. 2 There is, how- 1 British Museum, Cottonian MS., Vesp. D. viii. The best account of the problem is that given by E. K. Chambers, 4 Mediaeval Stage,' ii. 419, to which I am much indebted. 2 Presumably from Robert Hegge of Durham, author of ' The Legend of St. Cuthbert,' who has left his name in the manuscript, and who, like James, was a member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The cycle is consequently sometimes known by the not very happy name of the Hegge Plays. V CC