Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/412

 398 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH in the original metre (but sometimes imperfect) to correspond with the new plays he had introduced, but, in cases where he had substituted a new play for an old, usually leaving the original stanza, even if it did not accurately describe the new piece, and refraining from touching the description of the two sections he had recast. After he had finished his work one whole play and portions of a second were introduced from yet another source, distinguished by its unusual ten-line stanza as well as by stylistic peculiarities of its own. A different reviser wrote and inserted in the cycle what practically amounts to three whole plays of the Incarnation group, besides considerable passages elsewhere, all in long-lined octaves. Lastly, yet another reviser, it would seem, wrote the distinctive Contemplatio prefaces and links, and worked over various portions of the cycle to no small extent. He imitated various metres, re- wrote four stanzas of the Prologue in the Passion section to agree with the text in its final form, and possibly added the Assumption play as an original contribution. I have spoken of these revisions as successive. That is the natural way to regard them, but it may not be actually true. The work of the last reviser was clearly going on while the extant manuscript was being written. But when the scribe wrote the Purgation play he certainly had not before him the first reviser's introduction to it. Of course, the last reviser may have omitted to hand it to him. But it is also possible that there were several revisers at work upon the cycle about the same time, circa