Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/411

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 397 revisional nature in this stanza points strongly to that conclusion. Moreover, the plays in short octaves are the most sharply defined and indepen- dent of the whole cycle, and are, therefore, in striking contrast to the work of the man respon- sible for their introduction, whose original compo- sition favours continuous representation. This brings us to the conclusion, which I regard as being as certain as anything in so complicated a case can be, that the cycle consisted in the first instance of a homogeneous series of plays in the thirteener stanza. Let me bring this lecture, and with it my course as Sandars Reader, to a close by resuming as briefly as I can what seems to me to have been the history of this remarkable cycle. An original series of plays, the extent of which cannot now be certainly ascertained, but must have been consider- able, composed throughout in a distinctive stanza of thirteen lines, with a Prologue in the same metre, was modified and expanded by the substi- tution and insertion of other plays drawn from another cycle written, so far as we know through- out, in short-lined octaves. The amalgamation was effected by a reviser who himself worked over the whole and made additions in the romance stanza. It was apparently this same reviser who was responsible for working up two sections of the cycle, the Entry and the Passion, into continuous wholes, and in these he would seem to have drawn upon another source, which is, to say the least, not in evidence elsewhere. He also revised the Prologue somewhat perfunftorily, inserting stanzas v EE