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The Processus Talentorum (Towneley XXIV)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Mendel G. Frampton*
Affiliation:
Pomona College

Extract

One of the most interesting of the plays in the Towneley manuscript is the Processus Talentorum, Play XXIV. The central theme of the play, the gambling for Christ's coat, is present in all the gospels, in the Northern Passion, and in all the extant mystery play cycles. In the Towneley manuscript only, however, has a play come down to us devoted wholly to the theme. It is my purpose here to seek the probable steps by which this play arrived at its present state, to resolve so far as I can its stanzaic confusions, to study its possible relations to York, and to arrive at the probable date of its original composition and subsequent editings.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1944 , pp. 646 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1944

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References

1 Alfred W. Pollard and George England, “The Towneley Plays,” Early English Text Society, Extra Series, lxxi (1897), 279–292. I shall use the line and stanza designations of this edition for all references.

2 I have included stanza 60 although it is not in the meter of this portion of the play. We shall find abundant evidence to show that T XXIV came late into its place in the Towneley cycle and it is my belief that this stanza was added at the time the play was acquired. T XXIIb, derived from Y XXXTV, has such an added final stanza and, strangely enough, it is exactly in the meter of our stanza except for the number of accents in the d lines of the cauda. Moreover, both stanzas are different from any others in their respective plays.

3 The deletion of these lines restores three successive quatrain stanzas.

4 Plays III, XII, XIII, XVI, and XXI.

5 Play II, stanzas 35–36; Play XX, stanzas 97–102; Play XXII, stanzas 1–4; Play XXIII, stanzas 2, 49, and 57; Play XXVII, stanza 4; and Play XXIX, stanzas 57–58. Note that he writes some of the stanzas correctly and some incorrectly in Plays XX and XXII. This writing of the scribe does not necessarily, of course, bar all these stanzas, particularly the first four of Play XXII where Pilate speaks.

6 Pollard agrees with my ascription, op. cit., xxii.

7 I suggest that stanzas 21, 22, 23, 27, and 29 represent true pedes. I suggest further that the first half of stanzas 6 and 9 are also true pedes. They have the long anapaestic lines of the play proper and the scribe writes them as independent quatrains. On the other hand he writes the last half of stanza 6 and stanza 7 as a unit, abab4c2dddc3, and I suspect that he wrote correctly. The same stanza would result were stanza 8 attached to the last half of stanza 9 and the transposition would not disturb the continuity of the thought. The scribe also writes stanzas 26–27 as one, thus making a third stanza with this rhyme scheme, although one d line is lost. As these three have the same organization as stanza 60 on which I commented in note 2 above, I suspect that all four were part of the effort at recovery on the part of some poet and that all date from the acquisition of the play at Wakefield. Stanza 32 lacks the final two lines of its cauda and stanza 50 the first three of its pedes.

8 Two others can be improved although not restored. In stanza 51 the first half of line 334 should complete line 333 thus restoring the a rhymes in hud (334), and gud (335). It is line 334 which is imperfect. In stanza 55, although a triplet has replaced the original pedes, the cauda can be restored by combining lines 365–366.

9 The numbering of the first line only in restorations will agree with the numbering in the EETS edition, op. cit.

10 Quoted from Lucy Toulmin Smith, York Mystery Plays (London: Oxford University Press, 1885), p. xxv.

11 Maxwell, Briggs, Johnson and Thompson, editors, Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hardin Craig (Stanford University Press, 1941), pp. 6–12.

12 See my note in PMLA , lviii, 936.

13 Quoted from York Mystery Plays, op. cit., xxiv–xxv, n. 1.

14 Dice are used in the Ludus Coventriae Cycle, in a stage direction (EETS, E.S., cxx, 298), and in the Chester Cycle in Play XVI, stanzas 57–67 (EETS, E.S., cxv). In neither case is Pilate present.

15 There is some anapaestic writing in the Chester Cycle, but it lacks structural alliteration except in Play I, stanzas 2, 3, 4, and 9. There is also anapaestic writing in the Ludus Coventriae and the true Coventry play of the Shearmen. The differentiating mark of the York School is its use of structural alliteration, as in T XXIV.

16 See other evidence in PMLA, l (Sept., 1935), 631–660 and liii (March, 1938), 86–117.