It was a mighty gain for the language and the people when, in the middle
of the fourteenth century, by permission of the Pope, the miracle-plays,
most probably hitherto represented in Norman-French, as Mr. Collier
supposes, began to be represented in English. Most likely there had been
dramatic representations of a sort from the very earliest period of the
nation's history; for, to begin with the lowest form, at what time would
there not, for the delight of listeners, have been the imitation of
animal sounds, such as the drama of the conversation between an
attacking poodle and a fiercely repellent puss? Through innumerable
gradations of childhood would the art grow before it attained the first
formal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of miracles,
consisting just of Scripture stories, both canonical and apocryphal,
dramatized after the rudest fashion. Regarded from the height which the
art had reached two hundred and fifty years after, "how dwarfed a growth
of cold and night" do these miracle-plays show themselves! But at a time
when there was no printing, little preaching, and Latin prayers, we
cannot help thinking that, grotesque and ill-imagined as they are, they
must have been of unspeakable value for the instruction of a people
whose spiritual digestion was not of a sort to be injured by the
presence of a quite abnormal quantity of husk and saw-dust in their
food.
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