SOURCE: "Miracle Plays—Description," in The English Religious Drama, The Macmillan Company, 1913, pp. 35-87.

In the following essay—originally a lecture delivered in July, 1893—Bates describes the nature of dramatic performance in the medieval community, noting the role of the guilds in the production of the miracle plays and interpretive variations in French, English, and German performances of the plays.

The Miracle Play was the training-school of the romantic drama. In England, during the slow lapse of some five centuries, the Miracle, with its tremendous theme and mighty religious passion, was preparing the day of the Elizabethan stage, for despite all crudities, prolixities, and absurdities of detail, these English Miracle Cycles are nobly dramatic both in range and spirit. In verbal expression they are almost invariably weak and bald, but on the mediæval scaffold-stage the actor counted for more than the author, and the religious faith and...