Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/402

 388 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH The thirteeners must be fragments of the original play, the opening of which has been bodily cut out as duplicating what went before, while the remainder has been almost wholly rewritten. It should be observed that the half burlesque names of the shepherds in this play serve to connect it with the comic prologue to the 'Purgation' in the same stanza. Looking back for a moment, we shall now perceive that the original cycle described in the Prologue began, so far as the New Testament plays are concerned, with the series : ' Marriage of the Virgin' (two plays), 'Annunciation,' 'Joseph,' ' Nativity and Shepherds,' and that all these were written in thirteeners. Subsequently a different Annunciation play was substituted, and Purgation and Midwives' plays were added from a different source in short oftaves. The original Nativity and Shepherds play was revised presumably at the same time. The Prologue was amended so as to include the two new plays, but no systematic attempt was made to bring it into accordance with the text. The Joseph play was also revised, but at an un- certain date. The make-up of the manuscript shows that the Magi play, Prologue xv, text 18 (should be 17), is a very composite affair, but the details are singularly obscure. There are fragments of a pre- sumably original thirteener play, but most of the piece is in romance stanzas, and five quatrains of long lines have been prefixed by a reviser. The Prologue now immediately proceeds to the 'Massacre of the Innocents.' The text interpolates