Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/405

MIRACLE CYCLES. 391 mentioned later, breaks down utterly. The two sections are, each within itself, continuous both as regards action and composition, the former taking place in an open space about which are disposed certain located scaffolds. Besides the new source we can trace fragments in thirteeners, short and long odtaves, and romance stanzas. There has also been revision apparently by the writer of the Contemplatio passages. Some isolated points deserve notice. After the long satirical speech by Demon in long o<5taves, which forms the introduction to the Entry sedtion, there is a passage in somewhat shorter odtaves by John the Baptist. This strange insertion prophesies of the coming of Christ, and can only be regarded as a fragment of a Baptism play. 1 Now we have already seen that the * Baptism ' extant in the cycle is the original thirteener play. The inference is that what we have hisre is a fragment of the rejected ' Baptism ' of the short odtave source, worked in as a sort of preface to the events of the Passion. The lines are, it is true, a little long, but this may be due to their having been revised. With the curious insertion of the scene of the Magdalen washing Christ's feet, which occurs in the middle of the Last Supper, we have already been concerned. It ' Halliwell, p. 243. It is quite true that the Baptist sometimes appears in prophet plays, and that there was a time in the develop- ment of the liturgical drama* when the ' Prophetae ' served as a prologue to the Passion. It might, therefore, be possible to regard the position of the present fragment as original if we could bring ourselves to believe that such a late and composite work as the N-town cycle preserved such very primitive and exceptional features. For my own part I am quite unable to believe this.