Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/392

 378 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH lines, and have apparently been rewritten. The first stanza is introduftory, the last valedictory. The pageants as described in the Prologue are numbered, but the numbering has been tampered with by the original scribe. The first seven are regular, we then proceed : x, x, xi, xii, xiv, xv, xvi ; then jump back to xv again and proceed regularly to xl. The irregular numbers are all over erasures, the original numeration from i to xl having been perfectly regular. What has hap- pened is that the scribe has endeavoured to bring the numbering of the Prologue into agreement with that of the text. He succeeded in doing this all right as far as play 16, but when he discovered that he had omitted the number 17 altogether from his numeration of the text, he appears to have given up his attempt in disgust. I refer to the pageants of the Prologue throughout by their original, not by their altered numbers. 1 According to the Prologue the first play con- tains the Creation of Heaven and the Fall of Lucifer ; the second, the events from the Second Day to the Expulsion from Paradise. This agrees with the text. But we have already remarked that the text, or rather the rubrication, begins play 2 in the middle of a stanza. Such an arrange- ment is clearly impossible, and we are forced to the conclusion that in this instance at least the Prologue was not written for the text as it stands. 1 Halliwell, of course, prints the altered numbers in his text of the Prologue. I also follow the practice of the manuscript in referring to the plays themselves by arabic numerals, to the descriptions in the Prologue by roman.