SOURCE: "The Dramatic Development of the English Cycles," in Plays of Our Forefathers, Duffield and Company, 1907, pp. 144-52.

In the following essay, originally published in 1904, Gayley discusses the development of the English mystery cycles, noting the role of the guilds in the secularization of drama, and the affirmation of community bonds as a social function of performances. The critic emphasizes the plays' affinity with comedy rather than tragedy, the latter of which, he comments, derives from secular histories "of the individual in opposition to the social, political, and divine."

When, after the reinstitution of the festival of Corpus Christi in 1311, the miracle plays began in England to be a function of the guilds, their secularisation, even though the clerks still participated in the acting, was but a question of time; and the injection of crude comedy was a natural response to the civic demand. Indeed, if we consider...