only elements that have outlived the stress of centuries. The Miracle of St. Nicholas, written in the middle of the twelfth century, affords still better opportunity of studying the dramatic quality of the kind in question. For the author, Hilarius, wrote also in a like mixture—Latin with French refrains—a scriptural play of Lazarus; and in collaboration with others, but entirely in Latin, a magnificent dramatic history called Daniel. These, like the St. Nicholas, were adapted to performance in church at the appropriate season in the holy year, and no better illustration can be found of the essential difference between the scriptural or so-called 'mystery' play, on the one hand, and the saint's play, on the other, than is offered by them. The two scriptural plays, stately, reverent, adapted to the solemn and regular ritual of which they are an illustration in the concrete betray not a gleam of humour; the play of the other kind, written as it is for the festival of a jovial saint, leaps in medias res with bustle and surprise; and from the speech with which Barbarus entrusts his treasure to the saint even to the last French refrain, after Nicholas has forced the robbers to restitution, we are well over the brink of the comic. By the concluding scene, serious and in Latin of the church, setting forth the conversion of the pagan, the feelings of the congregation are restored to the level of the divine service, momentarily interrupted by the comedy but now resumed.

These, and all saints' plays not, like the St. Anne's play, of a cyclic character, were, from the first, dramatic units; they represented a single general plot, generally of a single hero; the action was focussed on the critical period of his life; and a considerable incitement was consequently offered to invention of incident and development of character. A comparative study of the plays concerning St. Nicholas will justify the statement that the dramatist was by way of taking liberties with, or varying, his selection from legend. The Einsiedeln Nicholas play of the twelfth century deals with a different miracle from that dramatized by Hilarius; and of the four Fleury plays of St. Nicholas, probably composed in the same century, the two that deal with these miracles vary the treatment; the other two are on different themes, but all would appear, from the editions which we have of them, to be promising little comedies. The possibilities of this kind of drama are best displayed in still another play of St. Nicholas, written in the vernacular by a Frenchman of Arras, Jean Bodel, about the year 1205. Throwing the traditional legends entirely overboard, he gives his imagination free course with favouring winds of knightly adventure, but over the waters of everyday life. He produces a play at once comic, fanciful, and realistic, the first of its kind—of so excellent a quality that Creizenach says that it would appear as if dramatic poetry were even then well on the way of development from the ecclesiastical model to a romantic kind of art in the style of the later English and Spanish drama: chivalric, fantastic, and realistic.[6]

Unfortunately, other plays of this kind, like the Theophilus of Rutebeuf, do not always avail themselves of their chances; but we may in general surmise that such plays in English—and we have evidence of many—contributed as much as the biblical miracle to the cultivation of a popular taste for comedy and the encouragement of inventive power in the handling of dramatic fable. I believe that they contributed more than the pre-Reformation morals, and from an earlier period.

I have said that in all probability there was nothing unusual in the presentation of saints' plays by Hilarius and Geoffrey. Latin plays were not a novelty in the twelfth century, at any rate to men of culture and the church. When we consider the history of the Terentian and Plautine manuscripts, how carefully the former were cherished, and with what appreciation a portion at least of the latter, during the Middle Ages, we cannot but apprehend the extent of their influence, even when unapparent, upon taste, style, and thought. Plautus (in whose comedies, with those of Terence, St. Jerome was wont to seek consolation after seasons of strenuous fasting and prayer) was imitated in a Querolus and probably a Geta, as early as the fourth century; and Terence was adapted by Hrosvitha in the tenth. We are, therefore, not at all surprised when we find Latin comedy during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries clothing itself through France and Italy in the verdure of another spring. To be sure the new style of production—a declamation by way of dialogue or conversational narrative, in elegiac verse—was not intended for histrionic presentation; but it was nevertheless of the dramatic genus; little by little the narrative outline dwindled and the mimetic opportunities of the speaker were emphasized. His success was measured by his skill in representing diverse characters merely by changes of voice, countenance, and gesture. He is the impersonator in transition to the actor. These elegiac comedies indicate the continuing influence of Latin comedy upon the literary creativity of the day; they furnish, besides, both the material for the regular drama that was coming, and the taste by which it should be controlled. I am, indeed, of the opinion that from this source the farce interludes of England, France, and Italy drew much of their content during the next three centuries, and that the saint's plays of that period, at least those in Latin, derived therefrom their dramatic technique. The revival of Latin comedy during the twelfth century was partly by way of adaptations, as in the dramatic poems of Vitalis of Blois; partly of independent productions, fashioned upon classical models but dealing with contes, fabliaux or novelle of contemporary quality. Of the latter kind the more interesting examples upon the continent were the Alda of William of Blois, and two elegiac poems, perhaps Italian, of lovers and go-betweens,—a graceful and passionate comedy of Pamphilus and a dramatic version by one Jacobus of the intrigue, so dear to mediæval satirists, between priest and labourer's wife. The subject and treatment of the last of these suggest, at once, a kinship with an Interludium de Clerico et Puella in English of the end of the thirteenth century, and with an earlier English story from which that is derived; also with Heywood's much later play of Johan. That there was a Latin elegiac comedy in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,—comedy of domestic romance with all or some of the characters common to the kind—youth and maid, wife and paramour, enamoured cleric, faithless husband, cuckold, enraged father, parasite, slave, go-between, and double,—is rendered probable by the survival of two such poems, one of which bears internal evidence of its origin in England, while the only manuscripts extant of the other were found in that country. The first lacks a title, but has been called the Baucis after the manipulator of the intrigue, a procuress; the second is named Babio for the unhappy hero who is at one and the same time fooled by his wife whom he doesn't love, and his step-daughter whom he does. Both comedies display the influence of classical Latin, but the latter sparkles with the humour and spontaneity of the comedy of contemporary life.[7]

I agree, therefore, with Dr. Ward that the burden