Part 52 (2/2)

Soppes in wyne, how love ye?

Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers:

As ye dou, so doth me; I am ryth glad that met be we; My love in yow gynnyt to close.

Then, ”derlyng dere,” let us go, says the ”galaunt.”

_Mary._ Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng!

Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd, I wol never from yow wynd (turn).[810]

Clarissa Harlowe will require more forms and more time; here twenty-five verses have been enough. A century and a half divides ”Mary Magdalene”

from the dramatised story of the ”Weeping b.i.t.c.h”; the interpretation of the movements of the feminine heart has not greatly improved, and we are very far as yet from Richardson and Shakespeare.

But truth was more closely observed when the authors spoke of what they knew by personal experience, and described men of the poorer sort with whom they were familiar. In this lies the main literary merit of the Mysteries; there may be found the earliest scenes of real comedy in the history of the English stage.

This comedy of course is very near farce: in everything people then went to extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. The strife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were among the most popular.

In all the collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamed shrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah being ordered by ”Deus” to build his boat, wonders somewhat at first:

A! worthy lorde, wolde thou take heede, I am full olde and oute of qwarte.

He sets to work, however; rain begins; the time for sailing has arrived: Noah calls his wife; she does not come. Get into the ark and ”leve the harde lande?” This she will not do. She meant to go this very day to town, and she will:

Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne.

She does not fear the flood; Noah remarks that the rain has been terrific of late, and has lasted many days, and that her idea of going just then to town is not very wise. The lady is not a whit pacified; why have made a secret of all this to her? Why had he not consulted her? It turns out that her husband had been working at the ark for a hundred years, and she did not know of it! Life in a boat is not at all pleasant; anyhow she will want time to pack; also she must take her gossips with her, to have some one to talk to during the voyage. Noah, who in building his boat has given some proof of his patience, does not lose courage; he receives a box on the ear; he is content with saying:

I pray the, dame, be stille.

The wife at length gets in, and, as we may believe, stormy days in more senses than one are in store for the patriarch.[811]

St. Joseph is a poor craftsman, described from nature, using the language of craftsmen, having their manners, their ignorances, their aspirations. Few works in the whole range of mediaeval literature contain better descriptions of the workman of that time than the Mysteries in which St. Joseph figures; some of his speeches ought to have a place in the collections of Political Songs. The Emperor Augustus has availed himself of the occasion afforded by the census to establish a new tax: ”A! lorde,” says the poor Joseph,

what doth this man nowe heare!

Poore mens weale is ever in were (doubt), I wotte by this bolsters beare That tribute I muste paye; And for greate age and no power I wan no good this seven yeaire; Nowe comes the kinges messingere, To gette all that he maye.

With this axe that I beare, This perscer and this nagere, A hamer all in feare, I have wonnen my meate.

Castill, tower ne manere Had I never in my power; But as a simple carpentere With these what I mighte gette.

Yf I have store nowe anye thing, That I must paye unto the kinge.[812]

Only an ox is left him; he will go and sell it. It is easy to fancy that, in the century which saw the Statutes of Labourers and the rising of the peasants, such words found a ready echo in the audience.

As soon as men of the people appear on the scene, nearly always the dialogue becomes lively; real men and women stand and talk before us.

Beside the workmen represented by St. Joseph, peasants appear, represented by the shepherds of Christmas night. They are true English shepherds; if they swear, somewhat before due time, by Christ, all surprise disappears when we hear them name the places where they live: Lancas.h.i.+re, the Clyde valley, Boughton near Chester, Norbury near Wakefield. Of all possible ales, Ely's is the one they prefer. They talk together of the weather, the time of the day, the mean salaries they get, the stray sheep they have been seeking; they eat their meals under the hedge, sing merry songs, exchange a few blows, in fact behave as true shepherds of real life. Quite at the end only, when the ”Gloria” is heard, they will a.s.sume the sober att.i.tude befitting Christmas Day.

In the Mysteries performed at Woodkirk, the visit to the new-born Child was preceded by a comedy worthy to be compared with the famous farce of ”Pathelin,” and which has nothing to do with Christmas.[813] It is night; the shepherds talk; the time for sleeping comes. One among them, Mak, has a bad repute, and is suspected of being a thief; they ask him to sleep in the midst of the others: ”Com heder, betwene shalle thou lyg downe.” But Mak rises during the night without being observed. How hard they sleep! he says, and he carries away a ”fatt shepe,” and takes it to his wife.

_Wife._ It were a fowlle blotte to be hanged for the case.

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