on the stage, until their natural awe and reverence had become
accustomed to presentations of their favourite saints.

Passing over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, therefore, as
centuries in which the idea of the drama was filtering through the
nation and adapting itself to its new audiences, we take up the story
again in the fourteenth century, before the end of which we know that
there were completed the four great plays still preserved to us--the
_Chester_, _Wakefield_, _York_, and _Coventry Miracles_. Early in that
century the Pope created the festival of Corpus Christi (about the
middle of June). To this festival we must fix most of our attention.

Glancing back a few pages we shall recall the elaboration of the play of
the _Magi_ from one bare incident to what was really a connected series
of episodes from the scene of the 'Shepherds' to the 'Massacre of the
Innocents'. It grew by the addition of scene to scene until the series
was complete. But the 'Massacre of the Innocents' only closed the
Christmas story. For the festival of Easter fresh ground must be broken
in order that the 'Passion' might be fittingly set forth, and, in fact,
we know that both stories in full detail eventually found a place in the
more ambitious churches, any difficulty due to their length being
overcome by extending the duration of the festivals. Then a time came
when, even as St. Matthew was anxious to lay the foundations of his
Gospel firm and sure in the past, so some writer of Bible plays desired
to preface his life of Jesus with a statement of the reason for His
birth, and the 'Fall of Man' was inserted. In writing such an
introductory play he set going another possible series. To explain the
Serpent's part in the 'Fall' there was wanted a prefatory play on
'Satan's Revolt in Heaven', and to demonstrate the swift consequence of
the 'Fall', another play on 'Cain and Abel'; the further story of the