.

Any one may to-day form some idea of the rise of the religious drama,
by attending the service of the Catholic church on Christmas or Easter
Sunday. In many Catholic churches there may still be seen at Christmas
time a representation of the manger at Bethlehem. Sometimes the
figures of the infant Savior, of Joseph and Mary, of the wise men, of
the sheep and cattle, are very lifelike.

The events clustering about the Crucifixion and the Resurrection
furnished the most striking material for the early religious drama.
Our earliest dramatic writers drew their inspiration from the _New
Testament_.

Miracle and Mystery Plays.--A Miracle play is the dramatic
representation of the life of a saint and of the miracles connected
with him. A Mystery play deals with gospel events which are concerned
with any phase of the life of Christ, or with any Biblical event that
remotely foreshadows Christ or indicates the necessity of a Redeemer.
In England there were few, if any, pure Miracle plays, but the term
"Miracle" is applied indiscriminately to both Miracles and Mysteries.

The first Miracle play in England was acted probably not far from
1100. In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries these
plays had become so popular that they were produced in nearly every
part of England. Shakespeare felt their influence. He must have had
frequent opportunities in his boyhood to witness their production.
They were seldom performed in England after 1600, although visitors to
Germany have, every ten years, the opportunity of seeing a modern
production of a Mystery in the _Passion Play_ at Oberammergau.

The Subjects.--Four great cycles of Miracle plays have been
preserved: the York, Chester, and Coventry plays, so called because
they were performed in those places, and the Towneley plays, which
take their name from Towneley Hall in Lancashire, where the manuscript
was kept for some time. It is probable that almost every town of
importance had its own collection of plays.

[Illustration: MIRACLE PLAY AT COVENTRY. _From an old print_]

The York cycle contains forty-eight plays. A cycle or circle of plays
means a list forming a complete circle from Creation until Doomsday.
The York collection begins with Creation and the fall of Lucifer and
the bad angels from Heaven,--a theme which was later to inspire the
pen of one of England's greatest poets. The tragedies of Eden and the
Flood, scenes from the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Mo