Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/393

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 379 This is unfortunate, for these early plays are in thirteeners like the Prologue, and it would be natural to suppose that they belong together. But there are signs of the text having been altered. The first play is very summary, and the account of the Fall of Lucifer abrupt in the extreme. There are fragmentary stanzas near the beginning of the second play, and, whereas the Prologue expressly states that woman was made from a rib of the man, this is ignored in the text. I conclude that in this case drastic compression and rewriting may have brought the division between two original plays into the middle of a stanza. Such revision would, of course, be later than the com- position of the Prologue. The second play includes a passage, namely, the Curse, in a different metre from the rest. It con- sists of eleven romance stanzas, and its insertion must have displaced original thirteeners. There is no aftual proof that it is later than the Prologue, though it is natural to suppose so, and one piece of internal evidence points in that direction. The Prologue in no way identifies the Serpent with the Devil: in the text the thirteener portion simply has ' Serpens,' while that in romance stanzas makes the identification clear and speaks of Diabolus.' ' Cain and Abel ' is a regular play in thirteeners agreeing with the Prologue. The fourth play deals with Noah. The descrip- tion in the Prologue does not give us much detail whereby to identify the adtual piece. In the text the play opens in thirteeners, but with the