accessible a book as the Legeiida Aurea of Jacobus a Yoragine, a thirteenth century Archbishop of Genoa, besides being alluded to in the Gospel of Nicodemus. In the Passio Domini, the Gospels, again with fanciful embellishments, some of them rather curious, are the chief sources, and a little is added from the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and similar sources. In the Resurrectio Domini, the imprisonment and escape of Joseph and Nicodemus, and the Harrowing of Hell, are taken from the Gospel of Nicodemus or its derivatives, the meeting of Christ and His Mother from the current legend of the Easter Antiphon, Regina Cæli, and the rest of the Resurrection and Ascension part is Bible with amplifications. The interpolated story of St. Veronica, Pilate and Tiberius comes from the Cura Sanitatis Tiberii, which goes back to the eighth century at least.
There is no direct evidence as to the manner in which these dramas were performed, except what can be gathered from the stage directions, until the time of Richard Carew of Antony, who published his Survey of Cornwall in 1602, where he gives a rather amusing account of the plays as they were acted in his day. But by way of a foundation for our conjectures we are able to point to at least two of the theatres in which the dramas are known to have been acted, which are in tolerably good preservation at the present day. Remains of others exist, and there are some other remains now called ‘Rounds’ which are doubtfully amphitheatres or circular forts, and perhaps may have served consecutively for both purposes, while the name ‘Plan-an-Gwary’ (the Stage of the Play) is applied to several hamlets[1] where amphitheatres must once have existed, though all traces of them have disappeared. There are also simple circular diagrams at the ends of each of the Ordinalia and of the St. Meriasek, showing the position of the actors when they made their final bow, and when the principal performer addressed the audience in words which remind one partly of the ‘Ite missa est’ of a mass and partly of the
- ↑ e.g. at Ruan Major, Ruan Minor, Redruth and St. Hilary.
