Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/399

MIRACLE CYCLES. 385 but see no one, while the text makes no mention of them whatever. This connects the piece described in the Prologue with the foregoing Marriage play, and there is no temerity in the conjecture that the original piece, displaced by the present composition in oCtaves, was like the c Marriage/ written in thirteeners. The next play both in Prologue and text is the 'Joseph.' Clearly it was originally a thirteener play, though but few fragments in this metre now survive. For it is connected with the Marriage and Annunciation plays of the Prologue by the reappearance of Susanne and Sephor in thirteener passages. The play as we have it is, however, chiefly written in a ten-line stanza riming aabaabbcbc, which we have not met before. That the mixture of metres is not original is proved by contradiction in the text. As it stands, namely, the appearance of the Angel to Joseph is in response to a prayer by Mary, written in the ten-line stanza, that God would enlighten her husband, since she herself would rather suffer shame than reveal the origin of her condition. So at least I read the passage. l But this she had already repeatedly done in the earlier thirteener portion. This fa<5t points rather to borrowing from a different source than to revision proper. There is no direcT: evidence that the combination took place later than the 1 ' For I have levyr abyde respyt, To kepe thi sone in privite, Grauntyd by the Holy Spyryt, Than that it xulde be opynd by me.' Halliwell, p. 121. But 'respyt' should surely be 'despyt.'