eenth century. The York plays are generally considered
to be the best; but those of Wakefield show more humor and variety, and
better workmanship. The former cycle especially shows a certain unity
resulting from its aim to represent the whole of man's life from birth to
death. The same thing is noticeable in _Cursor Mundi_, which, with the York
and Wakefield cycles, belongs to the fourteenth century.

At first the actors as well as the authors of the Miracles were the priests
and their chosen assistants. Later, when The town guilds took up the plays
and each guild became responsible for one or more of the series, the actors
were carefully selected and trained. By four o'clock on the morning of
Corpus Christi all the players had to be in their places in the movable
theaters, which were scattered throughout the town in the squares and open
places. Each of these theaters consisted of a two-story platform, set on
wheels. The lower story was a dressing room for the actors; the upper story
was the stage proper, and was reached by a trapdoor from below. When the
play was over the platform was dragged away, and the next play in the cycle
took its place. So in a single square several plays would be presented in
rapid sequence to the same audience. Meanwhile the first play moved on to
another square, where another audience was waiting to hear it.

Though the plays were distinctly religious in character, there is hardly
one without its humorous element. In the play of Noah, for instance, Noah's
shrewish wife makes fun for the audience by wrangling with her husband. In
the Crucifixion play Herod is a prankish kind of tyrant who leaves the
stage to rant among the audience; so that to "out-herod Herod" became a
common proverb. In all the plays the devil is a favorite character and the
butt of every joke. He also leaves the stage to play pranks or frighten the
wondering children. On the side of the stage was often seen a huge dragon's
head with gaping red jaws, belching forth fire and smoke, out of which
poured a tumultuous troop of devils with clubs and pitchforks and gridirons
to punish the wicked characters and to drag them away at last, howling and
shrieking, into hell-mouth, as the dragon's head was called. So the fear of
hell was ingrained into an ignorant people for four centuries. Alternating
with these horrors were bits of rough horse-play and domestic scenes of
peace and kindliness, representing the life of the English fields