Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/313

MIRACLE CYCLES. 301 the choice of the aldermen. 1 It seems plausible to suggest that they were the plays of the ' Purifica- tion ' and the c Doctors,' especially when we find the older banns recording only a Purification and the later only a Doctors' play. Yet the inference would apparently be incorrect. In 1575 the Smiths borrowed doctors' gowns for their performance, so that they clearly acted the Doctors' play, but their accounts likewise mention c Seameon ' and ' Dame An/ whence it follows that they also acted the 'Purification/ 2 Indeed, the accounts prove that both plays were performed as early as I55i, 3 so that the Doctors' play cannot possibly have been a novel alternative in 1575. The point is of some importance, since the c Purification ' and the Doctors' play appear together in all the manu- scripts of the cycle that is to say, they belong to the common tradition and we have seen reason to believe that this common tradition split up pro- bably before the end of the fifteenth century. The Chester play preserves less than any other of the original composition. Compared with that of Coventry it contains fewer sections of parallel text, and these less extensive ; it also alone trans- poses matter. On the other hand, what it pre- serves it preserves fairly accurately, at any rate far more accurately than the Coventry play. In 1 MS. Harley 2054, fol. 17: 'Spent at Tyes to heare 2 plays before the Aldermen to take the best, xviii d ' ; see R. H. Morris, 'Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns' (1894), p. 322, note I ; Chambers, ii. 355. 2 Morris, p. 322, note I. 3 Morris, p. 323, note 3, and p. 305, note I (b).