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The Date of Some Wakefield Borrowings from York
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
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- Comments and Criticism
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938
References
* PMLA, LII (1938), 86–117.
1 1 speak with conviction, having myself attempted to question it (with lack of success) in an exchange which started out to be a controversy and, as a result of the weakness of my position, degenerated into the “correspondence” to which he makes reference.
2 For instance: (1) He feels that Burton's 1415 description of the Nailing and Raising of the Cross play does not fit the registered play xxxv. Nevertheless it seems to do so—exactly. With Burton's “liijor Judei flagellantes et trahentes eum cum funibus” cf. the play 11. 17, 32–36, 113–114. The play of the Register would appear to be Burton's, re-adopted after having for a time given way to two plays (cf. Second List). At least, no change in the first scene can be inferred from the difference in phrasing between the two lists. (2) He feels that the difference between the First and Second Lists in their descriptions of the Veronica incident (1415: “Veronica tergens sanguinem et sudorem de facie Jesu …” and Second List: “ostensio Veronice”) shows that by the date of the second list “the character of the Veronica has disappeared” her function having been assumed, as in the registered play, by the Third Mary. I confess that I do not suspect any disagreement between the two lists. Either the character was lost subsequent to the date of the second list or Burton was reporting the Register play from production and not from a written text. (3) He feels that strophes 4–10 (abab4c2b4c2) in the York Shepherds (xv) were formerly a part of xiv, which is throughout in that strophe form, feeling that Burton's error in the description of xiv, in which he speaks of an “angelus loquens pastoribus, et ludentibus, in pagina sequente” is thus accounted for. But the Shrewsbury play corresponding to xv covers the ground of these strophes in the Northern Septenars in which S is written throughout. The conclusion seems irresistible therefore, that, regardless of whether Shrewsbury derived from York or York from Shrewsbury, the original York play was likewise in Septenars throughout, the seven-line strophes being the result of an editorial recasting. The note at the end of xiv—“Hie caret pastoribus; sequitur postea” means simply “This isn't the end of the book; the next play is that of the Shepherds; you'll find it by turning over a few blank pages.” It is precisely equivalent to “loke ferner” at the bottom of Fo. 96 of Ludus Coventriae. Burton's error in the description of xiv—an error which he corrected at once by the addition of “in pagina sequente”—needs no explanation save that of momentary absentmindedness.
3 Cf. T. stanzas 98 and 102–104 incl. This evidence is also noted by Miss Lyle, “A Rejoinder,” PMLA, xliv (1929), 323.—That the revisions in stanzas 95, 96 plus first two lines of 97, 99, 100 are of Y origin is suggested by their practical identity in metre and rime with the stanzas of T xxii b which are borrowed from York.
4 Professor Frampton is at pains to make the point that two more would be required to produce the play—and so they would if the play were being done on a modern stage. But on the pageant-wagon of the Tilemakers et al., I think it likely that the beadle, although under strict orders by Pilate to get better men than the weakling six, would nevertheless return with two of the identical group. This shift would save on costumes and would, I think, from the audience's point of view, hardly interfere with the dramatic illusion. In short, I take it that the author of the play knew how it would be stage-managed, and that Burton's words are indeed (what Professor Frampton takes them to be) a “description of the mise en scène”: he reported what he saw—and he saw only six soldiers.
5 xxiii (The Crucifixion) st. 76–79.
6 John xiii.2 : cæna facta : “And supper being ended …”
7 Cf. 11. 327–333.
8 Cf. Professor Young's The Drama of the Medieval Church (1933), ii, ch. xviii, xix; Paul Edward Kretzmann, Liturgy in the Medieval Drama, Minnesota University Studies in Language and Literature no. 4 (1916), pp. 54–57 for proof of the popularity of both characters in liturgical drama. In the craft plays, of course, whether they be plays of the Three Kings or Innocents, a Messenger always appears.
9 Miss Lyle would set the date tentatively at before 1390, because the York Plasterers in that year (as she reads the York Mem. Book) were giving a pageant of their own—showing, she thinks, that by then the originally single Creation play at York had been split into the five listed by Burton, so that the T play, which is single, must have been borrowed previously. I am disposed to question the validity of this dating for three reasons: (1) “Before 1390,” in the light of Professor Frampton's Wakefield researches, seems too early; (2) I am inclined to accept the view of Miss Foster (“Was Gilbert Pilkington Author of the Secunda Pastorum?”, PMLA xliii, 133 ff.) that in this case “the Towneley author was combining a series of separate plays such as we find at York,” the correspondences between the two cycles with respect to repeated material which Miss Lyle cites as having been “carried over from the Towneley [i.e., early York] version” appearing to me more likely to have occurred as a result of careless T combination of five plays owned and presented by five different guilds; (3) as nobody appears to have pointed out as yet, the date 1390 itself is uncertain. In the Mem. Book, p. 115, n. 1, Miss Sellers writes that the Plasterers' Ordinances in which their pageant is referred to “are undated, but judging by the time, when the members were enrolled, they were probably enacted about 1390.”—The purely conjectural date 1400 for the establishment of the cycle appears to me to fit better.