to an Anglo-Norman poet endowed with real dramatic skill and instinct. Religious spectacles with their impressive display could scarcely fail to become popular and were continued in English when French went out of use. The Mystère d'Adam has been preserved in a single MS., likewise the Anglo-Norman Resurrection, and many links connecting the English Miracles with the Norman drama must have been irretrievably lost.[1]
But the Normans did more than endow England with epic literature, legends of saints, and the elements of dramatic art. They brought the country once more into contact with Latin civilization. Many classical themes, the story of Troy, that of Thebes, the Romance of Eneas penetrated into this Island through the medium of French; together with tales from the distant East, of Alexander, of Prester John, of the Sleepers of Ephesus, to mention but a few at random; and when they ceased to be read in French, they retained their popularity in English adaptations.
By imparting to England something of the spirit of the classics and preparing the way for the greater Renaissance, the Normans have done a service which has hardly been adequately appreciated.[2] But from the point of view of literature their greatest merit has been to open to Western Europe the treasure-house of Celtic imagination. For centuries Saxons had lived side by side with Celts, as foes or peaceful neighbours, without even suspecting that any good might come from Wales or Ireland! No sooner had the
- ↑ Miss Foster has recently shown that the Towneley Plays were derived to a considerable extent from the Northern Passion, the ME. adaptation of an A.-N. poem, illustrating incidentally another channel through which A.-N. contributed to the development of the English drama. Cf. Northern Passion, E.E.T.S., original series, 145 and 147 (1913-16).
- ↑ The problem has been ably discussed by J. E. C. de Montmorency in the Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1919.
