Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/306

294 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH plays borrowed from York may have formed part of the Wakefield cycle from its inception. But those assigned to the first Wakefield period seem pretty clearly earlier than the date at which the borrowing from York can have taken place. If, therefore, they did not form part of an already existing Wakefield cycle, they must have been borrowed from elsewhere, say Beverley. This is possible, but not altogether likely. In any case I think that the York plays must have been edited and in part worked over at the time of their in- corporation in the Wakefield cycle, for I fancy it is possible to dete6l a progressive freedom in the treatment of the text of those plays which are more or less bodily lifted, and furthermore we shall presently see that one of them appears to have reached Wakefield in an imperfeft state. Anyhow we seem precluded from postulating an original parent cycle common to Wakefield and York which has been worked over differently at the two places, for that would involve the supposition that at Wakefield plays of this cycle were subsequently dropped in favour of others of a more primitive type borrowed from other places. Presumably, therefore, we are justified in saying that at a given period of its development the Wakefield cycle actually borrowed and incorporated plays from York in the most literal sense of the words. The extent of this borrowing is uncertain, and will probably never be exaftly determined. There are five plays in which large portions of the text are praftically the same in the two cycles. The ' Exodus ' is almost identical, and in the only im-