Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/406

 392 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH is substantially in thirteeners, which proves that the cycle must have originally contained a play on the real Supper at the House of Simon of which the Prologue has lost all trace. The Passion seclion is introduced by a procession of the Apostles interpreted in quatrains by two Doftors. This is written as an independent Pro- logue, not forming part of any numbered play, and has several blank pages before and after it. But the play immediately following opens with another prologue by Contemplatio which supplies us with the famous clue as to the yearly sections. Through the Trial the correspondence between the text and the Prologue vanishes altogether. But from im- mediately after the Condemnation four Prologue plays, numbers xxx to xxxiii, agree in essentials with four plays, numbers 32 to 35, as marked in the text, 1 and though the correspondence is not perfect it is clear that still less is it fortuitous. Now these four stanzas of the Prologue have longer lines than the rest, and there can be no reasonable doubt that they were written after the text had assumed approximately its present form. They are, therefore, much later than their neigh- bours. A good deal of the latter part of the Passion, particularly the Harrowing of Hell and the Resurrection, is written in romance stanzas, and the frequent changes of scene and the connect- ing directions suggest that it was actually written for a polyscenic stage. The section ends with what is really an independent short o<5lave play on the Appearance to Mary Magdalen, which agrees 1 Halliwell, p. 316, speech of 'Primus mulier'(!), to p. 353 foot.