Note 410 — Chapter XXII · GUILD PLAYS AND PARISH PLAYS (continued)

Warton, ii. 223 ‘In these Mysteries I have sometimes seen gross and open obscenities. In a play of The Old and New Testament, Adam and Eve are both exhibited on the stage naked, and conversing about their nakedness: this very pertinently introduces the next scene, in which they have coverings of fig-leaves. This extraordinary spectacle was beheld by a numerous assembly of both sexes with great composure: they had the authority of scripture for such a representation, and they gave matters just as they found them in the third chapter of Genesis. It would have been absolute heresy to have departed from the sacred text in personating the primitive appearance of our first parents, whom the spectators so nearly resembled in simplicity.’