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On the Relation Between the York and Towneley Plays
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929
References
Note 1 in page 314 The Original Identity of the York and Towneley Cycles, University of Minnesota, 1919, p. 30 f.
Note 2 in page 314 PMLA XLIII, 1928, 153 f.
Note 3 in page 314 She might have added the Resurrection (York XXXVIII), another play common to the two cycles. Miss Lyle was of course aware of the influence of the Gospel on these two plays which, according to her theory, must belong to her parent cycle (cf. op. cit. p. 46). She merely failed to equate this fact with the dates of revision and separation that she posited elsewhere in her study.
Note 4 in page 314 This date has been convincingly questioned by Miss Frances Foster in PMLA XLIII, 1928, p. 131.
Note 5 in page 314 Miss Lyle observes (op. cit., p. 29) that certain similarities between the York and Towneley plays show “a contact between the two cycles which obviously occurred after the influence of the Northern Passion,” and she also notes (p. 81) “a second and more extensive use” of this source later by the York play of the Last Supper (XXVII). Unfortunately, her chart (pp. 5-28) does not always reveal the fact that the York and Towneley plays agree with the Northern Passion in places where they do not agree with each other: e.g., York knows the little child of the Northern Passion, 11. 297-308, in the Last Supper play (XXVII, 73-89) whereas the character is not in the Towneley play; on the other hand, the parallels to the poem in Towneley XX, which are without counterpart at York, are more extensive than the chart reveals. Miss Lyle, however, takes account of most of these independent agreements in her discussions of the individual plays, ascribing them variously to original and later contacts.
Note 6 in page 315 E.E.T.S. 147, p. 86. Cf. also Miss Lyle's recognition of its “second and more extensive use” in York XXVII (p. 81).
Note 7 in page 315 Those who have concerned themselves with the French plays and poems on the Passion are familiar with this proceeding in France. Cf. E. Roy, Le Mystère de la Passion and my studies in MLN XXXV, 1920, p. 257 and PMLA XXXV, 1920, p. 464, and the introduction to my forthcoming edition of La Passion du XIVe siècle. Cf. also Ludus Coventriae (ed. Block, E.E.T.S., Extra 120), p. xlix.
Note 8 in page 315 I have tried to show elsewhere that revisions of the various plays in the cycles were probably made independently of each other and at different times (Modern Philology XV, 1918, p. 565.)
Note 9 in page 315 For York XI (Towneley VIII), Burton does not mention Deus or the Egyptians and speaks of viij Judei who are represented by three in York, two in Towneley. For Y XX (T XVIII), Burton lists iiij or Judei, besides the doctores. York has three doctors and three magistri, T has three magistri, only; who were these iiij or Judei? For Y XXXIV (ll. 107-300 are similar to T XXII, ll. 260-407), Burton's order of events is inexact and Veronica's rôle is now filled—so far as it filled at all—by one of the Maries (cf. ll. 184-90). The incident is lacking entirely in T. (Miss Lyle, pp. 53, 97, lists On the Way to Calvary in the group of practically identical plays; there is evidence in this part of T XXII, however, of much more revision than she seems to assume.) The omissions and discrepancies between Burton's list and Y XXXVII (T XXV) are considered above in the text. For Y XXXVIII (T XXVI), not only is the name of Centurio omitted, but apparently the rôles of Annas and the Juvenis (transformed into Angelus in the extant play) were absent from the list as originally written and added later. The discrepancies between Burton's list and the last pair of identical plays—Y XLVIII, T XXX—can best be represented graphically:
Burton York Towneley (an incomplete play)
Maria missing missing
xij apostoli two apostles missing
iiij spiritus boni two good spirits four good spirits
iiij spiritus mali two evil spirits four evil spirits
vj diaboli three devils two devils and Tutiuillus
viii angeli three angels one angel
Now, my point is that none of these discrepancies between the York identical plays and Burton's list can be positively attributed to revisions at York subsequent to 1415. They may be due, as I have suggested above, to carelessness, a desire for brevity, the inclusion of silent actor's parts, and perhaps, in the case of the numbers of the Judei, spiritus, etc. to redistribution of rôles without change of text. (In comparing Y and T we frequently find the same text assigned to a different number of actors. Cf. e.g., Y XX and T XXVIII where the three magistri of T fill the six rôles of Y.)
Note 10 in page 315 Miss Smith, who in her edition dated the extant MS of the York plays ca. 1430-40 (p. xxviii), put the composition of the originals between 1340 and 1350 (p. xlv). Gayley (Plays of Our Forefathers, p. 133 f.) ascribes the earliest plays to the first third of the fourteenth century, a second stage to 1340-60 and the latest stage to ca. 1400. The Towneley plays, preserved in a unique MS of ca. 1450 (cf. Wann, PMLA, XLIII, 141), are dated by Pollard (E.E.T.S. Ext. Ser. 71, p. xxviii) between ca. 1360 and 1410, the latter date being ascribed by him—and also by Miss Foster (PMLA XLIII, 135)—to the Wakefield master. That the Wakefield master worked over earlier plays borrowed from York (this is, with one exception, the general opinion; cf. Gayley, op. cit. p. 133, Lyle op. cit., p. 108 and my objections to the contrary view of Cady [J.E.G.P. X, 572] in Mod. Phil. XV, 1918, 565) points to a date considerably before 1410 for the inclusion of York plays in the Towneley cycle.
Note 11 in page 317 Cf. M.L.N. XXXV (1920), 45.
Note 12 in page 317 Cf. M.L.N. XXXV (1920), 46-7 and Foster, PMLA, XLIII (1928), 132-4.
Note 13 in page 318 In other words, the plays of Hohlfeld's first six groups (Anglia XI, 307) plus the supplementary plays contained in Miss Lyle's first three groups. The plays in her fourth group, as she says (p. 93), cannot be included with the same degree of assurance.
Note 14 in page 318 As I have pointed out elsewhere (PMLA, XXXV, 464 f. and especially 476-7), an analogous situation exists among the French Passion plays where borrowing and redacting—and the use of the same vernacular source—explain the similarities and dissimilarities observable in the Palatine Passion, the two versions of the Passion d'Autan and the Passion de Semur. The use of vernacular sources by mediaeval playwrights has of course been frequently demonstrated. Besides the instances collected in M.L.N. XXXV (1920), 257, the following may be mentioned: the Stanzaic Life of Christ was used by the Chester Plays (cf. Foster in E.E.T.S. 166, p. xxviii); Le Miroir de Vie et de Mort was used by the Moralité des Sept Péchés Mortel (cf. Långfors, Romania L (1924), 40); Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine of Deguileville gave rise to the Moralité of the same name (cf. G. Cohen, Mystères et Moralités, p. 93). On the vernacular sources of the Ludus Coventriae, see Block's edition, E.E.T.S. Ext. Ser. 120, p. xliv f.; for the influence of vernacular poems on the Miracles de Notre Dame, cf. Petit de Julleville, Les Mystères II, 275, 293, 302; on the use of the Erlösung and Passional by the German plays, see L. Wirth, Die Oster- und Passionsspiele, p. 136, Karl Pearson, The Chances of Death II, 312, Creizenach, Geschichte des Neueren Dramas, I (1911), 224; on the influence of Gautier de Coincy on Rutebeuf's Miracle de Théophile, cf. the ed. in the Classiques fr. du m. a., p. ix. (The “Reminiscences de Fierabras dans le Jeu de saint Nicolas de Jean Bodel,” pointed out by Jeanroy in Romania L, (1924), 435, are not very convincing.)