Part 26 (2/2)
between them. But while the rehearsing and acting were going on the players received their food, and when it was all over they wound up with a great supper.
Chapter x.x.xIII HOW THE SHEPHERDS WATCHED THEIR FLOCKS
IN this chapter I am going to give you a part of one of the Townley plays to show you what the beginnings of our drama were like,
Although our forefathers tried to make the pageants as real as possible, they had, of course, no scenery, but acted on a little bare platform. They never thought either that the stories they acted had taken place long ago and in lands far away, where dress and manners and even climate were all very different from what they were in England.
For instance, in the Shepherd's play, of which I am going to tell, the first shepherd comes in s.h.i.+vering with cold. For though he is acting in summer he must make believe that it is Christmas-time, for on Christmas Day Christ was born. And Christmas-time in England, he knows, is cold. What it may be in far-off Palestine he neither knows nor cares.
”Lord, what these weathers are cold! and I am ill happed; I am near hand dulled so long have I napped; My legs they fold, my fingers are chapped, It is not as I would, for I am all lapped In sorrow.
In storm and tempest, Now in the east, now in the west, Woe is him has never rest Mid-day or morrow.”
In this strain the shepherd grumbles until the second comes. He, too, complains of the cold.
”The frost so hideous, they water mine een, No lie!
Now is dry, now is wet, Now is snow, now is sleet, When my shoon freeze to my feet, It is not all easy.”
So they talk until the third shepherd comes. He, too, grumbles.
”Was never syne Noah's floods such floods seen; Winds and rains so rude, and storms so keen.”
The first two ask the third shepherd where the sheep are. ”Sir,”
he replies,
”This same day at morn I left them i the corn When they rang lauds.
They had pasture good they cannot go wrong.”
That is all right, say the others, and so they settle to sing a song, when a neighbor named Mak comes along. They greet the newcomer with jests. But the second shepherd is suspicious of him.
”Thus late as thou goes, What will men suppose?
And thou hast no ill nose For stealing of sheep.”
”I am true as steel,” says Mak. ”All men wot it. But a sickness I feel that holds me full hot,” and so, he says, he is obliged to walk about at night for coolness.
The shepherds are all very weary and want to sleep. But just to make things quite safe, they bid Mak lie down between them so that he cannot move without awaking them. Mak lies down as he is bid, but he does not sleep, and as soon as the others are all snoring he softly rises and ”borrows” a sheep.
Quickly he goes home with it and knocks at his cottage door.
”How, Gill, art thou in? Get us a light.”
”Who makes such din this time of night?” answers his wife from within.
When she hears that it is Mak she unbars the door, but when she sees what her husband brings she is afraid.
”By the naked neck thou art like to hang,” she says.
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