Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/37

MIRACLE CYCLES. 25 antiquity. There is no evidence that the manu- scripts represent a compilation of separate texts. In this case likewise we are fortunate enough to possess an independent manuscript of a single play, and this happens to be nearly a hundred years older than the oldest collective manuscript. Like the York Scriveners' book, it has been folded for the pocket, but it has lost its original cover, so that we cannot tell whether it ever bore the name of the guild to which it belonged, presumably the Dyers. But at the head of the text appears both the subject of the play, the Coming of Antichrist, and its number in the complete cycle. It follows that it must have been at some time transcribed from a collective manuscript. With this corrobora- tion we shall, I think, be justified in trusting the records in the matter of ' originals ' and c registers.' l The distinction once grasped, explains certain curious differences between the York and Chester cycles. The former is clearly seen to be in the main a collection of separate plays which have grown and developed individually without restraint and largely independent of one another. 2 Where 1 At Coventry the recorded manuscripts are certainly the original copies of the sixteenth century reviser, Robert Crow, and we know that in the middle of the fifteenth century the ' original' of the Smiths' play was kept by the master of the company and handed over to the pageant contractor when Corpus Christi day approached (T. Sharp, 'Coventry Mysteries,' p. 15). There is no evidence that a collected register was ever compiled at Coventry. 2 There is no reason against postulating a complete manuscript of the cycle in its original form, or even against supposing that