Note 356 — Chapter XX · THE SECULARIZATION OF THE PLAYS

Pollard, xix; Ward, i. 41. The first English use of the term ‘mystery’ is in the preface to Dodsley’s Select Collection of Old Plays (1744). The distinction between ‘mysteries’ which ‘deal with Gospel events only’ and ‘miracles,’ which ‘are more especially concerned with incidents derived from the legends of the Saints of the Church’ is a not very happy invention of the literary historians.