THE WAKEFIELD MYSTERIES.

The place of representation.

Although much has been written in recent years upon the subject of the English Mysteries, and especially upon the four great collections known as the Coventry, Chester, York and Towneley (or Widkirk) Mysteries, little or nothing has been done to elucidate the question as to where the last named plays were represented. The object of this paper will be to show that there are important reasons for believing that they were performed in Wakefield, and should therefore be called "The Wakefield Mysteries'. This conclusion is 'prima facie' a reasonable one, considering the fact that all the other great English Cycles are connected with important towns, and it may also be supported by a variety of evidence, partly external and partly derived from the text of the plays itself. Yet since the first publication of the plays under the auspices of the Surtees Society in the year 1836, 1) no attention has been paid to this question, and in the recent edition of the Early English Text Society 2) nothing has been added to the remarks made by the previous editor of the text.

The only manuscript of these mysteries which is known to exist was discovered in the possession of the Towneley family early in the 19th century, and after passing through the hands of various gentlemen by sale under auction and otherwise, it was acquired by Mr. Bernard Quaritch in 1883,

1) The Towneley Mysteries, London 1836, Nichols and Son.

2) The Towneley Plays, George England and A. W. Pollard, London 1897, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.

and now remains in the possession of his executors. It is unfortunately in an incomplete condition: and it must have contained originally more than the 32 plays which are now to be found in it: for twelve leaves are apparently lost between the first and second plays, two more are missing at the end of the fourth, two more at the end of the seventeenth, and twelve more at the end of the twenty-ninth. These missing leaves would provide room for four or five additional plays of the average length, as well as for the lost portions of the incomplete ones.

The dialect used in the plays is that of the North of England, with some forms belonging to the East Midlands interspersed here and there; and in the thirteenth play a 'Southern tooth' is adopted for a definite purpose for a few lines only.

When we turn to the special subject which is to be discussed in this paper, it will at once be seen from the following quotations what uncertainty has prevailed, and is still prevailing, in the minds of writers upon the question of the place of representation.

Professor Ten Brink 1) says "The country fair, held once a year at Woodkirk, in the neighbourhood of Wakefield, may have been still more important than these towns': (he refers to York, Leeds & Beverley) 'according to a happy hypothesis, Woodkirk fair was the place where the Guilds of Wakefield and other neighbouring districts enacted those Corpus Christi Plays which have become so famous under the name of the Towneley Mysteries'.

Mr. J. A. Symonds 2) likewise adopts the view that the Towneley Plays belong to Woodkirk, which he identifies with Widkirk 'the Widkirk, Chester and Coventry plays abound in local references, and illustrate the dialects of their several districts'.

1) English Literature II, 256. 7, translation by W. C. Robinson 1893. It will be shown later that there were two annual fairs at Woodkirk. 2) Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama p. 108.

Professor A. W. Ward') tells us 'in general, there is no reason to doubt that the composition of the Towneley Plays is due to the friars of Woodkirk or Nostel'. This however seems to be a somewhat bold assumption.

Mr. J. P. Collier 2) speaks throughout his work of the 'Widkirk Miracle Plays', and supposes that they belonged to 'Widkirk Abbey'.

Professor Alexander Hohlfeld, in his masterly essay 3) entitled "Die altenglischen Kollektivmisterien" considers that the Towneley mysteries were acted in "Wakefield oder seine nächste Umgebung (Woodkirk)”.

Dr. Charles Davidson 4) favours the view that the plays belonged to Woodkirk.

Jusserand, in his "Literary History of the English People" (p. 466) says that the Towneley Mysteries are a "collection of plays performed at Woodkirk, formerly Widkirk, near Wakefield".

It will therefore be our purpose to discuss the merits of the rival claims of Woodkirk (or Widkirk) and Wakefield for the honour of having given birth to and fostered the growth of what is probably the most original and characteristic of all the cycles of English Mysteries: but before proceeding to this discussion, a few remarks may be made upon the appropriateness of the title, "Towneley Plays" or "Towneley Mysteries".

It has already been stated that the Surtees Society first published the plays in question under the title of "The Towneley Mysteries", in the year 1836; and the recent edition of the Early English Text Society has been brought out under the name of "The Towneley Plays". The justification for these titles is not far to seek, as it lies in the fact that the unique manuscript volume, from which these works were printed, is supposed to have been for some centuries in the possession of the Towneley family of Towneley Hall in Lancashire, to whom it belonged in the year 1814, when it

1) English Dramatic Literature I p. 36.

2) History of English Dramatic Poetry, London 1831.

3) Anglia Vol. XI, 219-310.

4) Studies in the English Mystery Plays, Yale 1892.

was sold by auction, though it is not known how or when such possession was acquired. But it would have been more in accordance with the analogy of the custom adopted in connexion with the great classical authors, if we were to speak of the Towneley Manuscript of the plays, and to name the plays themselves after the place where they were acted.

The title "Widkirk Plays" seems however to have absolutely no justification. Its origin is as follows. When the Towneley Library was dispersed by auction sale in 1814, Mr. Douce, a well known Shaksperian critic of the day, annotated the catalogue of manuscripts at the request of the owners; and he wrote concerning the volume which contains the Mysteries that it was supposed to have formerly "belonged to the Abbey of Widkirk, near Wakefield, in the County of York". But Mr. Douce himself, as the Surtees Society Editor informs us, appears to have subsequently considered this supposition as not worthy of much regard. For only eight years later, when supplying an introduction to the "Judicium" from this series, published by Mr. Peregrine Edward Towneley, Mr. Douce relinquished this position altogether, and then expressed his opinion that the manuscript had formerly belonged to the Abbey of Whalley in Lancashire (which was quite adjacent to Towneley Hall) and had passed into the hands of the Towneleys at the dissolution of religious houses in the middle of the 16th century. It may therefore be fairly asserted that, in default of evidence to support either of these views, Mr. Douce's opinion is not one that carries conviction: and yet the Surtees Society Editor declares that "the supposition that this book belonged to the Abbey of Widkirk, near Wakefield, has upon it remarkably the characteristics of a genuine tradition". He has accordingly built up an argument which not only rests on no real foundation, but is also in some respects at least in direct contradiction to the plain indications given by the text itself, and to certain facts hereafter to be mentioned: and in consequence of this argument these plays have frequently been called "The Widkirk (or Woodkirk) Plays" a title which seems to be both unjustifiable and misleading.

There is no place of the name of Widkirk in the neighbourhood of Wakefield, nor indeed in any part of the district

to which the dialect of the plays seems to point. But about four or five miles north west of Wakefield there is a village called Woodkirk, or West Ardsley, where a religious establishment was founded by the Earls Warren early in the 12th century, and placed under the control of the Priory of S. Oswald at Nostell, which is some five miles south of Wakefield. This establishment was not however an Abbey, as Mr. Douce and the Surtees Society Editor wrongly asserted, but merely a cell of Augustinian or Black Canons. It was moreover

taken for granted that at the fairs held at Woodkirk') under a charter granted by Henry I, on the feasts of the Assumption and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (Aug. 15 and Sept. 8 respectively) dramatic representations of sacred subjects were provided for the delectation and instruction of the visitors. More than this, one writer has gone so far as to state that the plays were probably written in "Woodkirk Monastery", and acted in the Church which still exists there. 2) Finally, in the "Athenæum" of Dec. 2, 1893, Professor Skeat has shown that there is no philological difficulty in assuming that Widkirk and Woodkirk are simply varieties of the same name. Unfortunately, however, a diligent search has revealed to the writer no trace of the former pronunciation, though the following spellings have been discovered in various documents:

Wudechirche (1202), Wodekirk (1293), Wodkirk (1379), Wodkyrc (1379), Woodkirk (1490 &c), Wodkyrke (1546), Woodkirke (1595), and Woodchurch (1623, 1642, 1716, 1756, 1765, &c.). There is moreover at the present time no knowledge of any pronunciation such as Widkirk in the locality itself, where Woodkirk and Woodchurch are apparently used at pleasure.

It therefore seems altogether unreasonable to persist in speaking of Widkirk Plays on the grounds already mentioned, because:

1) This fair was called "Wodekirk Fair" in the 14th & 15th centuries but more recently "Lee Fair", and in later times was famous, amongst other things, for the disputations of scholars from the Grammar Schools of Wakefield & Leeds.

2) See "Old Yorkshire" by William Smith Vol. I p. 10. The days of play acting in Churches must have gone by long before these mysteries saw the light.

Anglia. N. F. XII.

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