"
In connexion with these plays, one of the contemplations most
interesting to us is, the contrast between them and the places in which
they were occasionally represented. For though the scaffolds on which
they were shown were usually erected in market-places or churchyards,
sometimes they rose in the great churches, and the plays were
represented with the aid of ecclesiastics. Here, then, we have the rude
beginnings of the dramatic art, in which the devil is the unfortunate
buffoon, giving occasion to the most exuberant laughter of the
people--here is this rude boyhood, if we may so say, of the one art,
roofed in with the perfection of another, of architecture; a perfection
which now we can only imitate at our best: below, the clumsy contrivance
and the vulgar jest; above, the solemn heaven of uplifted arches, their
mysterious glooms ringing with the delight of the multitude: the play of
children enclosed in the heart of prayer aspiring in stone. But it was
not by any means all laughter; and so much, nearer than architecture is
the drama to the ordinary human heart, that we cannot help thinking
these grotesque representations did far more to arouse the inward life
and conscience of the people than all the glory into which the
out-working spirit of the monks had compelled the stubborn stone to
bourgeon and blossom.
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