Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/32

20 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH remained the recognized season for the plays, they were once at least adted on Whit Tuesday. The clash of plays and procession was always incon- venient, and would account for any shifting. In 1426 it was proposed at York that the plays should be postponed to the Friday after the feast, but ultimately it was the procession that gave way. The close connexion between the plays and the Corpus Christi festival also appears when we con- sider the dates to which the former can be traced back. The feast was instituted in 1 3 1 1 . A reason- able tradition assigns the origin of the Chester plays to 1328. The guild of Corpus Christi at Cambridge performed plays about 1350.' The Beverley plays are recorded in 1377, and were an ' antiqua consuetude ' in 1390; those of York are recorded in 1378, and were aled in 1394 at stations 'antiquitus assignatis.' The Coventry plays, in their day the most famous of all, cannot be traced back further than 1392. Most of the cycles came to an end in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. It is possible that an abortive attempt was made to aft the Chester plays in 1600, and at Kendal a Corpus Christi play is said to have lingered well on into the seventeenth century. You will ask very properly what all this has to do with bibliography. I propose to spend the rest of my hour in answering that question. Those who have studied the extant plays in detail will know how deeply the peculiar circum- 1 A ' ludus Filiorum Israelis ' is mentioned. The position of the similarly named play in the Beverley list shows that a ' Massacre of the Innocents ' is intended.