Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/294

282 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH related in this manner to the c Gospel of Nico- demus,' ' while the so-called c Ludus Coventriae ' 1 See W. A. Craigie's article in the Furnivall ' English Miscel- lany,' p. 52. The bearing of this on the history of the cycle has never been fully worked out, but I cannot understand how F. W. Cady comes to state that 'the Passion play in York has been extensively edited by the insertion of episodes from the northern Gospel of Nicodemus,' and moreover, to imply that this is the thesis of Cragie's article ('Modern Philology/ x. 589). It is, indeed, perfectly clear that Craigie imagined the plays to have been originally composed under the influence of the Gospel. He cites parallels to the Gospel from plays xxx, xxxm, xxxvi, xxxvn, xxxvni. Of these xxx and xxxm are plays of the third period (see below, p. 289), xxxvn of the first, and xxxvni possibly, xxxvi certainly, of the second. It would therefore appear as though the writers of each of the three periods of composition borrowed from the ' Gospel.' But Craigie cites but a single parallel from play xxxvi, and here I venture to think he has gone astray. The apparent * parallelism is due to the fact that the play and the ' Gospel ' follow Matt. xxvu. 54 and Mark xv. 39, whereas the Latin * Evangelium Nicodemi ' follows Luke xxn. 47. It is therefore not certain whether the writers of the second period did use the ' Gospel.' In play xxxvn, first period, the parallels are above criticism. They are no less clear in the plays of the third period, xxx and xxxm, but here the inference that the writer used the ' Gospel ' is not legitimate. For he was rewriting plays of an earlier period, and he may have borrowed the passages in question not from the 'Gospel' directly, but from the earlier plays. Indeed, from such a passage as xxxm. 1 13-20, which is hardly in the style of the rest of the play, it rather looks as though this was just what did happen. Anyhow it is difficult to be certain that any borrow- ing from the ' Gospel ' took place subsequent to the original com- position of the first period plays, though there would be nothing improbable in a number of writers using the same source. I have little doubt that Cady's remark is due to C. M. Gayley having assumed, in his 'Plays of our Forefathers,' p. 157, that the borrowings from the ' Gospel ' were all due to the dramatist of the third period, and having therefore inferred that all the plays in which they occur were either written or revised by him. This view seems to be unfounded (see below, p. 291, note). I suppose Gayley was influenced by a desire to throw back the date of the