Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/26

i 4 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH more dramatic treatment. The chain of evolution appears complete. 1 The Old Testament sections of the miracle cycles are, of course, not confined to the representations of prophets, but they are governed by what may be called the prophetic principle. This is a point upon which I desire to lay stress. They do not appear for their own sake, but for their relation to what follows : they are not themselves dramas, but dramatic prologues. The Fall is there as being implied by the Redemption, the Creation as the counterpart of Doomsday. The necessary data for the plot are given, otherwise it is for their prophetic significance that episodes are introduced. Some of the plays are a<5tual Prophet plays, many more con- cern the so-called types of Christ. This curious principle of type and antitype, most familiar to us perhaps from the ' Biblia Pauperum,' appears in some of the earliest English church-decoration. The Klosterneuburg altar enamels, which exhibit it, date from 1181. It is found in illuminations of the thirteenth century, and it is probable that that century saw the evolution of the c Biblia Pauperum' itself, the earliest manuscripts of which date from soon after 1 300. Of course, the prophetic principle was not invariably applied. 1 This evolution again has been diredtly challenged in a recent article by Hardin Craig in * Modern Philology,' 1912-3, x. 473, not, I think, very successfully. No doubt the development took place under the influence of the ' lecliones ' for Septuagesima to Lent, which deal with Old Testament subjects, particularly types of Christ ; but in the absence of any clear indication of dramatic development of these within the adtual liturgy, they cannot be themselves regarded as a source.