Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/380

366 PROBLEMS OF THE ENGLISH ever, no sufficient reason to suppose that this was the case. The manuscript already bore, in an Elizabethan hand, the title, 'The* plaie called Corpus Christi,' and the Coventry miracles were by far the most famous Corpus Christi plays in England. It will be noticed how James uses the terms ' Ludus Coventriae ' and c Ludus Corporis Christi ' as though they were synonymous. His value as a witness is not enhanced by his describing the collection as confined to the New Testament, a limitation which applies to the Coventry guild- plays, but not to the collection in question. More- over, the Coventry Greyfriars' plays, which it is clear James had in mind, are almost certainly an invention of seventeenth century antiquaries. Lastly, not only is the manuscript clearly the work of an East-Anglian scribe, but, as Herr Kramer has shown, the dialed! of the plays themselves bears no relation to that of Coventry, being of a much more easterly type. 1 We must, therefore, give up the Coventry legend altogether. The only sug- gestion of a locality in the plays themselves is the tantalising announcement in the prologue that A Sunday next, yf that we may, At six of the belle we gynne cure play In N towne, 1 Max Kramer, * Sprache und Heimat des sogen. Ludus Coventriae,' 1892. His conclusions are on pp. 68-9. He believes in a rather problematical 'urheimat im stidlichsten ostmittellande,' possibly Wiltshire, but agrees that in its present form the cycle 4 dem nflrdlichen ostmittellande angehflre.' He also thinks ' dass die aufzeichnung im norden stattgefunden hat,* which seems questionable.