Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/197

MIRACLE CYCLES. 185 Those who heard my first ledture will be already familiar with the solution I propose for this con- tradidtion. It is that the Assumption play is absent from the manuscripts of both traditions because, in spite of its appearance in the early banns, it never formed an integral portion of the cycle. We know that it was presented by ' the worshipfull wyves of this towne/ whereas the Chester plays proper were in the hands of the crafts. We know that while the play was afted as part of the cycle in 1477, it was performed separately in 1488, 1497, and 1 515.' We have also seen that the subject was a favourite one for unattached bodies to choose when they joined in the dramatic activities of the guilds. But the conclusive proof that the Assumption play was not a regular member of the pageant cycle is supplied by the banns themselves. It does not appear to have been noticed hitherto that the four lines describing the play form but half a stanza, and that the last of them is widowed of its rime ; in other words, they are an insertion made to meet some special occasion, possibly the very perform- ance recorded in 1477.* Having disposed of this objection to the origin- ality of the tradition of H, I may point out that the latter actually finds support in the early banns themselves. For although these clearly state that 1 Morris' * Chester,' pp. 308, 322, 323 ; cf. Chambers, ii. 409. 2 Even had the * Assumption ' ever formed an integral part of the cycle, the contradiction would not be a very serious obstacle to the originality of H. For the same cause, namely Protestant pre- judice, which, it is argued, led to the omission of the play in the later tradition might equally have led to its independent omission in a transcript of the earlier tradition.