Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/413

 MIRACLE CYCLES. 399 1465 to 1470, and that they had different oppor- tunities or inclinations for bringing the Prologue into agreement with their own work. They must, however, have worked over one another's contri- butions to some extent. Each of the three original sources consisted of separate and independent plays of the type adapted for processional adting. It was the revisers alone who contemplated continuous performance on a polyscenic stage. When the Prologue was first revised the cycle had already ceased to be pro- cessional, though it continued to be described as though it were a series of independent pageants. Whether the allusion at the end : ' At six of the belle we gynne oure play In N towne,' belongs to the original composition or to the first revision, I see no means of determining, but it clearly still contemplates the performance of the whole cycle at some annual festival, and msut mean six o'clock in the morning. Whether the cycle in anything like its present shape was ever afted seems doubtful. That it was designed for production in a series of annual sections is clear, but how far this repre- sented a serious intention it is impossible to say. One thing, I think, is certain : the extant manu- script was written, not for purposes of afting, but of private reading. Why else has the scribe ornamented the margins of his leaves with elaborate genealogical tables based upon the 'Legenda Aurea,' and notes as to the dimensions of the ark? And it was only in the extant manuscript that the cycle assumed its final form. W. W. GREG.