Excerpt from The Nativity and Adoration Cycle of the Chester Mysteries, as Performed in New York on Christmas Eve at the Greewich Village Theatre Only within very recent years have workers in the theatre come to realize the dramatic values of the mediaeval religious plays. For many decades they have been available in the publications of learned societies but the tendency has been to regard them as mere curiosities and valuable only as university texts for the study of the so-called pre-Shakespearean drama. With the modern revaluation in the theatre has come a renewed interest in the communal plays of a simpler age and dramatic experiment has justified the research. It is only to be expected that among a people whose community centre was the church, these plays should be religious in their subject matter. It is further to be expected that arising directly out of the community life of non-professional players they should be festival plays keeping step with the rhythm of the seasons. The unexpected thing about them is the dramatic merit which they reveal, when delivered from the archaisms of spelling and diction which make them seem unnatural and stilted. So modernized they are found to possess marvellous playing qualities as well as a beauty of language and thought which is rare in modern pieces. The extant manuscripts of the mediaeval drama may be divided roughly into two classes: those called mysteries, and based upon Biblical stories, and those called moralities, occupying themselves with allegorical figures typifying the human virtues and vices.

It is customary to look upon the moralities as an advance on the mysteries because they mark a movement towards the secular drama. The reverse is nearer to the truth. Dramatic presentation reveals that the morality plays represent a decadence of the more sincere and less artificial mystery drama. Several cycles of the mysteries survive in more or less complete form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work.

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