Note 467 — Chapter XXIII · MORALITIES, PUPPET-PLAYS, AND PAGEANTS

Printed by Halliwell, Minor Poems of Lydgate (Percy Soc.), 95, from Shirley’s Harl. 2251, f. 293, as a Processioune of Corpus Cristi, with a note at the end that ‘Shirley kowde fynde no more.’ It is also, with the same note, in Shirley’s Trin. Coll. Camb. MS. R. 3. 20, f. 348, with the heading, ‘Ordenaunce of a p’cessyoun of the feste of Corpus Cristi, made in London by Daun John Lydegate’ (E. P. Hammond, in Anglia, xxii. 364), and is copied thence by John Stowe in B. M. Add. MS. 29, 729, f. 166. The piece is nᵒ. 153 in the list of Lydgate’s works given by Ritson, Bibl. Poet. 79. It may be doubted whether Ritson’s nᵒ. 152 ‘A Procession of pageants from the creation’ is really distinct. Lydgate describes to his hearers ‘figures shewed in your presence’ which embody ‘gracious mysteries grounded in Scripture.’ Of course ‘mysteries’ has no technical dramatic sense here. Lydgate’s method of ‘interpreting’ may have been based on the incorrect mediaeval notion of the methods of the classical stage, which he adopts in his Troy Book (cf. p. 208). The ‘figures’ represented twenty-seven persons whose utterances revealed the mystery of the Mass. There were eight patriarchs, the Ecclesiast, four prophets, the Baptist, four evangelists, St. Paul, and seven Christian doctors.