structure. shed upon the progress of intellect, manners, and literature: he will take care to examine only the great operations of the machinery of society, not to count every nail and peg in its rude and original We cannot always choose but smile without offence to Mr. Sharp be it spoken at the solemnity with which he dwells on the uses of iron pins and clamps, tenter-hooks, rings, wire, thread, and small cord.' Neither can we sympathise in his grievous lamentation over the loss of some 'draper's book of accounts,' (p. 68.) which could only have accumulated his sufficient catalogue of such important articles; nor do we exactly comprehend why (p. 82.) hedeeply regrets the want of the items and charges of representation for the Shearmen and Taylors' Pageant,' which could only have resembled fifty other accounts of the kind to be found in his volume. We have, however, every disposition to do full justice to the curious interest and real merits of Mr. Sharp's volume. If he has been able to add no novel facts or fresh conclusions to those already familiar to the dramatic scholar, his researches have certainly considerably augmented the general mass of details relating to the machinery of the pageants, the costume of those rude theatres, and the dramatis persone of the mysteries; and though the particulars which he has brought forward prove only the perfect similarity of these Coventry exhibitions to the performances at Chester, York, and various others of our provincial towns, yet the result of the comparison is satisfactory and interesting. Mr. Sharp, moreover, has introduced many incidental and correlative particulars on some of the manners and customs of our ancestors: several of the plates which adorn his volume are highly curious; and the work, which is handsomely "got up," may altogether be pronounced a very pleasing and acceptable contribution to our archæological literature. As the costliness and rarity of the volume, as well as its elaborate form and the multiplicity of its details, will preclude it from general circulation and perusal, we shall probably be rendering our readers an agreeable service by giving such an account of its contents, and compressing into our pages as many of its most interesting points, as our limits will permit. Mr. Sharp has commenced by directing and separating his enquiries into the Nature of the Vehicles on which the Mysteries were represented, the Characters which figured in the exhibition, and the Dresses of the actors. He informs us, that he was induced to compile the present dissertation from having, in the course of acquiring materials for the history of his native city, examined the ancient books and documents belonging to the corporation, and the remaining account-books and other writings of the trading companies, and thereby been enabled to collect a considerable body of information respecting the pageants, or mysteries, formerly exhibiting at Coventry; tending, more particularly, to elucidate the management, machinery, dresses, character, and internal economy of those performances.' In one respect, he has certainly thus possessed considerable advantages for his undertaking. From whatever cause, Coventry became particularly famous during the middle ages for these exhibitions; and perhaps, next to the Chester mysteries, no English performances of the kind were so celebrated in those times as the Coventry plays. It was, we believe, a passage in Dugdale which first drew the attention of later antiquarians to the dramatic renown of the city of Godiva. "Before ye suppression of the monasteries,” says this best illustrator of old England, "this cittye was very famous for the pageants that were play'd therein upon Corpus-Christi day. These pageants were acted wth mighty state and reverence by the fryers of this house, and conteyned the story of the New Testament, wch was composed into old English rime. The theatres for the severall scenes were very large and high, and being placed upon wheeles, were drawne to all the eminent places of the cittye, for ye better advantage of the spectators. In that incomparable library belonging to Sir Thomas Cotton, there is yet one of the bookes wch apperteyned to this pageant, entitled Ludus Corporis Christi, or Ludas Coventriæ. I my selfe have spoke wth some old people who had in their younger yeares bin eye-witnesses of these pageants soe acted; from whom I have bin told that the confluence of people from farr and neare to see that shew was extraordinary great, and yielded noe small advantage to this cittye." But an old interlude (of the 4 P's by Heywood) bears a yet more decisive testimony to the familiar and proverbial celebrity of the Coventry plays. "For as good hap would have it chaunce, This devil and I were of olde acquaintance; Long, however, before the suppression of the monasteries, it is evident, from the Coventry records which Mr. Sharp has examined, that the exhibition of these performances had passed from the hands of the Grey Friars into the charge of the mayor, corporation, and trading companies of the city. Such was the passion of our forefathers for all kinds of pompous processions and pageants, and for these religious plays in particular, that their arrangement and show became matters of municipal regulation; and the archives, not only of Coventry, but of Chester, York, and many other places, are full of evidence that the celebration of a series of mysteries was assigned, in succession, to the different guilds of trade. Each company, or sometimes two or three minor fraternities, had its subject; and the series, which lasted throughout a whole day, or sometimes, indeed, occupied two or even several entire days, not uncommonly embraced the story of both the Old and New Testament from the creation to the day of judgment, Many royal spectators honoured the Coventry mysteries with their presence. The extant records of the city commence only, it appears, about the opening of the fifteenth century. In 1416, Henry V. and his nobles (say these annals) "took great delight in seeing the pageants." In 1456, Margaret, the amazon-queen of his son, came to Coventry to keep her Corpus Christi - the favourite festival for these performances. In 1484, Richard III., and, two years later, Henry VII., were present at the Corpus-Christi plays of the city; and in 1492, the latter monarch renewed his visit on the same occasion. So also, in later times, when the religious plays were declining in fashion, Prince Arthur his son, Henry VIII., Queen Elizabeth, and other royal personages, were treated with different pageants in their visits to the city. Mr. Sharp has made no attempt to explain the frequency of these royal visits to a provincial town: but the vicinity of the palace of Kenilworth may in a great measure account for them. In accompanying Mr. Sharp through his enquiries, we proceed, in the first place, to his account of the VEHICLE of representation -properly the Pageant; for the term was first applied to the moving stage of exhibition, and afterwards to the exhibition itself. The pageant was little else than the waggon of the rude Grecian stage: "Dicitur et plaustris vexisse poemata Thespis Quæ canerent agerentque perfuncti fæcibus ora:" a vehicle whose modern analogy may be found in the caravan of mountebanks which graces a country fair. The pageant of the Chester and Coventry games, however, was a modern building of two stories on wheels, which was drawn by men from street to street. It was also customary to have scaffolds or stages in the streets for the accommodation of the spectators, probably those of better quality; and these scaffolds were also on wheels and moved with the pageant. In the lower room of the pageant, which contained also the machinery for raising storms, representing the infernal regions, &c., the players" apparelled themselves," says old Archdeacon Rogers, "and in the higher room they played, beinge all open at the tope, that all behoulders might hear and see them. The places where they played them was in every streete. They begane first at the Abay-gates, (at Chester,) and when the first pagiante was played, it was wheeled to the Highe Crosse before the mayor, and so to every streete, and soe every streete had a pagiant playinge before them at one time, till all the pagiantes for the daye appoynted weare played, and when one pagiant was neare ended, worde was broughte from streete to streete, that soe they mighte come in place thereof, excedinge orderlye, and all the streetes have their pagiantes afore them all at one time playeinge togeather; to se w'ch playes was great resorte, and also scafoldes and stages made in the streetes in those places where they determined to playe theire pagiantes." "The higher room seems to have been,' says Mr. Sharp, 'an object of no inconsiderable attention: in the Drapers' Pageant this was embattled and ornamented with carved wood-work and a crest: the Smiths had vanes, burnished and painted, and the use of pensils or streamers, or both, may be discovered in all the remaining account.' But we shall give the passage in his own words, in which he exhibits his conclusions on the exact nature of the building. Here he has evinced considerable ingenuity; and a native young artist of Coventry, a Mr. David Jee, has furnished him with a fancy plate of a pageant-vehicle at the time of representation, which forms the frontispiece of his volume, and is not only admirably de signed, but very respectably engraved. To our eyes, indeed, it forms the great charm of the volume. The scene chosen is a street in Coventry, which the preservation of the antique buildings of that city has enabled the artist to give almost from its present aspect. The architectural part of the drawing is well and boldly thrown out; the costume of the spectators is in perfect keeping with the scene and the age; and the figures are grouped with spirit and ease. The supposed pageant of the Smiths' Company is stationed near the Cross, in the Cross-cheaping, and the armed guard around it are introduced upon the authority of an item in their accounts for 1469. The group partly seated on the ground are intended to represent the persons who drew the vehicle from station to station; three minstrels are seen in the fore-ground, one of whom has bagpipes, and beside them stands a carpenter, the propriety of whose attendance on this occasion is proved by extracts from the accounts of the Cappers' Pageant. The time of action chosen is the period when Pilate, upon the repeated charges of Caiaphas and Annas, is compelled to give up Christ for execution, and a servant bringing water in a basin is partly obscured by the pillar, upon which lies a scourge. Pilate is represented sitting upon a throne or chair of state, a licence that seemed perfectly allowable, although no specific mention of such a seat occurs in the notices gleaned from the pageant-accounts of the Smiths' Company; beside him stands his son, with sceptre and poll-axe, and beyond our Saviour are the two high priests, habited as Christian bishops; the two armed figures behind are the knights. The vanes, crest, streamer, embattlement, and carved boards for the top of the Pageant, previously noticed, are introduced in the design, and the pageant-cloth bears the appropriate symbols of the passion. It has been judged advisable not to introduce any representation of the moveable scaffold, in a situation which afforded such ample room for the numerous spectators, both inhabitants and strangers, who crowded to witness the performances, and the rather, because the accounts of these appendages to the pageant-vehicle are not very clear and explicit. The architectural character of the houses is derived from actual examples in Coventry, and some pains have been taken to give a general air of consistency to the costumes of the figures introduced.' pp. 22, 23. On the CHARACTERS introduced into the Mysteries — which Mr. Sharp professes to treat for the second point of his dissertation it is scarcely necessary to say much; for this part of his subject has been most fully noticed by all previous writers on the history of the stage. As the incidents of these religious plays were not only founded on Holy Writ, but taken in series from the Old and New Testaments, the exhibition endeavoured to copy without scruple or repugnance the most awful scenes and events of our faith. In the Chester Mysteries, and doubtless in many others, the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the events of the sacred Jewish annals, the Nativity of our Saviour, his Temptation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension, were selected for the pageants of the civic trades. But it is a little remarkable that all the scriptural pageants referred to in the accounts of the guilds of Coventry which Mr. Sharp has discovered were taken from the subjects of the New Testament and none from the Old. These were the Birth of Christ and Offering of the Magi; the Flight into Egypt and Murder of the Innocents; the Trial, Condemnation, and Crucifixion of Christ; his Descent into Hell, Resurrection, and Appearance to Mary Magdalen. "Domesday," or the Day of Judgment, a very favourite subject in all the Mysteries, also appears in these Coventry records among the above pageants; and at length, under the date of 1584, there appears a notice in the city annals that this year the new play of The Destruction of Jerusalem was first played. It was the work of a scholar, John Smith or Smythe of St. John's College, Oxford, who had received his first education at the free-school at Coventry; and it is evident from the names of the characters referred to in the city accounts (all that remains of the piece) that the story was copied from Josephus. Mr. Sharp might have remarked upon the natural and gradual transition, evinced in this performance, from the strictly scriptural subjects of the Mysteries to the composition of historical plays. This is a curious link in the history of our stage; and our author might have dwelt also upon the striking fact, that this play had evidently a regular chorus, copied doubtless by the "learned clerk," Master Smythe, after the Grecian model. But to return from this little digression, the nature of the dramatis persona introduced into the Mysteries is thus obvious. Whatever we most reverence, and all that we adore, was debased and travestied in these wretched, and, as they must appear to us, most impious performances. Not only the first parents of mankind, patriarchs, apostles, and angels, were perpetually introduced on the stage, but even the personification of God the Father, of Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, was equally common. Nor were heavenly personages alone introduced. The great one of evil and his attendant demons figured in the pageant of Doomsday; and Satan was indeed usually a particular favourite with the spectators. In the ancient religious plays, says Malone, the Devil was very frequently |