Representative English Comedies, v. 1. From the beginnings to Shakespeare — A Closer Reading

England had been preceded by others of its kind, and they in turn by miracles of biblical heroes and by liturgical plays and dramatic tropes of the services of the church.

It is not unreasonable to surmise that this legendary kind of miracle, although sometimes used as part of the church service on the saint's day, and originally possessed of serious features, speedily developed characteristics helpful in the progress of the comic drama. All we know of the St. Katharine play is that it was written for secular presentation at a date when no mention is yet made of the public acting of scriptural plays. The dramatist would, however, be more likely to adorn the useful with the amusing in the preparation of a play not necessarily to be performed within the sacred precincts; and while the technique of the legendary miracle was presumably akin from the first to that of the biblical, it is natural to suppose that the plot was handled with larger imaginative freedom.

But our knowledge of these early saints' plays need not be entirely a matter of surmise. We may form a fair idea of their character from contemporary testimony, from the style of the Latin or French saints' plays of the time that have survived, from the nature of the legends dramatized, and from the analogy of contemporary biblical plays. To the _locus classicus_ of contemporary testimony in William Fitzstephen's _Life of Thomas à Becket_ (1170-82) I have already made reference. Speaking of the theatrical shows and spectacular plays of Rome, the biographer says that "London has plays of a more sacred character--representations of the miracles which saintly confessors have wrought, or of the sufferings whereby the fortitude of martyrs has been displayed." According to this, the _ludi sanctiores_, or marvels, as they seem later to be called,[5] are of two classes: the marvel of the faith that removes mountains, the marvel of the fortitude that endures martyrdom. In either case the saint's play is of the stuff that produces comedy; for, whether the miracles are active or passive, the Christian saint and soldier always proceeds victorious, and with increasing merit abides as ensample and intercessor in the church invisible.

This relation of the saint's play to comedy appears the more evident when we read in the _Golden Legend_ and elsewhere the histories of the saints who became favourites in English or foreign drama or pageant,--St. Katharine, St. George, St. Susanna, St. Botulf, and the like. In most cases the triumph of the marvel naturally outweighed the terror; and in the one of the few English plays of the purely legendary kind that survives, the _St. George_--degenerate in form and now merely a folk drama--the self-glorification of the saint and the amusing discomfiture and recovery of himself and his foes are the 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.