English Miracle Plays and Moralities by E. Hamilton MooreReview by: W. W. GregThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Jul., 1908), p. 396Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3713218 .

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Reviews Reviews

English Miracle Plays and Moralities. By E. HAMILTON MOORE. London and Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes, 1907. 8vo. pp. 199.

'The book is intended mainly for those who have neither time nor inclination for private research, and is thus rather popular than scholastic, in view of which fact, the majority of extracted passages have been modernised in spelling and occasionally in phrase. At the same time, for the benefit of those who wish to fuirther investigate the subject, a short list of the best authorities on English Mysteries and Moralities, will be found appended at the end of the volume.'

These sentences from the 'foreword,' with their doubtful style and punctuation, perhaps sufficiently characterize the work. Something might certainly be said for normalizing the rather erratic language of the early drama, but we wish the author had kept his fingers off Chaucer. The essentially popular nature of the book is seen most clearly from the eccentric 'Students' List' appended, which recommends among other things the inaccurate and modernized reprints of the so-called Early English Drama Society and the exceedingly bad translation of ten Brink's History of English Literature in Bohn's Library. The Early English Text Society, by the way, has only issued the first half of the Chester Plays, so that the Shakespeare Society edition is not yet superseded. We have noticed quite a number of curiosities in the text. There is the obsolete and illegitimate distinction drawn between Miracles and Mysteries (p. 13), and the equally obsolete treatment of the debat called the Harrowing of Hell as 'The first English Mystery Play' (p. 23). The MS. of the Coventry Guild Plays is said to have perished in the fire at Birmingham (p. 40), whereas it is extant and has recently been re-edited. The Vice is said to be a degenerate Devil (p. 58), which suggests that Mr Moore has not consulted the more recent of the 'Authorities' he enumerates, and is further made the father of the Harlequin, who certainly belongs to Italian tradition. Finally, we may point out that the last two lines of p. 95 properly belong to the middle of p. 121, and that a footnote has crept into the middle of p. 101. The author's intention to write a popular account of the religious drama is a laudable one, but we cannot help thinking that its popularity would not have suffered from its being carried out in a some- what more scholarly (we will not say 'scholastic') manner, and printed with a little more ordinary care.

W. W. GREG.

All Fooles and the. Gentleman Usher. By GEORGE CHAPMAN. Edited by T. M. PARROTT (Belles Lettres Series, Sect. In). Boston: Heath and Co.; London: G. G. Harrap, 1907. 8vo. xlviii + 308 pp.

While scholars have spent well-directed labour upon the text of Marlowe, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Ford, the

English Miracle Plays and Moralities. By E. HAMILTON MOORE. London and Manchester: Sherratt and Hughes, 1907. 8vo. pp. 199.

'The book is intended mainly for those who have neither time nor inclination for private research, and is thus rather popular than scholastic, in view of which fact, the majority of extracted passages have been modernised in spelling and occasionally in phrase. At the same time, for the benefit of those who wish to fuirther investigate the subject, a short list of the best authorities on English Mysteries and Moralities, will be found appended at the end of the volume.'

These sentences from the 'foreword,' with their doubtful style and punctuation, perhaps sufficiently characterize the work. Something might certainly be said for normalizing the rather erratic language of the early drama, but we wish the author had kept his fingers off Chaucer. The essentially popular nature of the book is seen most clearly from the eccentric 'Students' List' appended, which recommends among other things the inaccurate and modernized reprints of the so-called Early English Drama Society and the exceedingly bad translation of ten Brink's History of English Literature in Bohn's Library. The Early English Text Society, by the way, has only issued the first half of the Chester Plays, so that the Shakespeare Society edition is not yet superseded. We have noticed quite a number of curiosities in the text. There is the obsolete and illegitimate distinction drawn between Miracles and Mysteries (p. 13), and the equally obsolete treatment of the debat called the Harrowing of Hell as 'The first English Mystery Play' (p. 23). The MS. of the Coventry Guild Plays is said to have perished in the fire at Birmingham (p. 40), whereas it is extant and has recently been re-edited. The Vice is said to be a degenerate Devil (p. 58), which suggests that Mr Moore has not consulted the more recent of the 'Authorities' he enumerates, and is further made the father of the Harlequin, who certainly belongs to Italian tradition. Finally, we may point out that the last two lines of p. 95 properly belong to the middle of p. 121, and that a footnote has crept into the middle of p. 101. The author's intention to write a popular account of the religious drama is a laudable one, but we cannot help thinking that its popularity would not have suffered from its being carried out in a some- what more scholarly (we will not say 'scholastic') manner, and printed with a little more ordinary care.

W. W. GREG.

All Fooles and the. Gentleman Usher. By GEORGE CHAPMAN. Edited by T. M. PARROTT (Belles Lettres Series, Sect. In). Boston: Heath and Co.; London: G. G. Harrap, 1907. 8vo. xlviii + 308 pp.

While scholars have spent well-directed labour upon the text of Marlowe, Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Ford, the

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