PREFACE.

THE appearance of this volume has been delayed first by the addition of appendixes not at first contemplated, but on second thought considered advisable owing to the peculiar value which has been given Sharp's Dissertation by the destruction of most of his sources in the burning of the Free Reference Library at Birmingham in 1879; then again by finding, when the work was almost completed, the manuscript of the Weavers' pageant in the possession of its owners the Clothiers and Broad Weavers' Company of Coventry. In issuing this book I wish to thank Prof. John Matthews Manly, to whom I have dedicated the volume without meaning to involve him in any share of its faults, for invaluable instruction when I was beginning the study of these plays, and for his kind permission to print from his text of the Shearmen and Taylors' pageant. I have also to thank Prof. T. W. Hunt and others of my teachers and colleagues at Princeton for kindnesses more or less closely connected with this work. Acknowledgments are due in particular to Miss M. Dormer Harris, who has been good enough to help me with the Coventry manuscripts; Mr. Beard, formerly Town Clerk of Coventry; Mr. Seymour, secretary of the Clothiers and Broad Weavers' Company, and Mr. Brown, at the Free Public Library, have been extremely kind, as has been of course, beautifully and inevitably, Dr. Furnivall.

INTRODUCTION.

MANUSCRIPTS AND EDITIONS.

THOMAS SHARP's first publication of matter relating to the Coventry pageants was in 1817. The thin volume of 28 + 14 pages, large octavo, of which only 12 copies were issued, has the following title-page: The Pageant of the Sheremen and Taylors, in Coventry, as performed by them on the festival of Corpus Christi; together with other pageants, exhibited on occasion of several royal visits to that city; and two specimens of ancient local poetry. Coventry—printed by W. Reader, 1817. The text of the pageant differs but little from that of the better known edition of 1825, which was evidently printed from the same transcript. All variations except in the spelling of insignificant words have been noted in the text of the pageant in the present volume. The remainder of Sharp's book is taken from the Leet Book,1 and is contained in Appendix III., except the two pieces of doggerel which relate to Laurence Saunders.

In 1825 Sharp published his well-known Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries, Anciently performed at Coventry, by the Trading Companies of that City. His book shows that he had before him at that time, besides the Leet Book and the manuscript of the Shearmen and Taylors' pageant, the accounts of the cappers, dyers, smiths, and of Trinity and Corpus Christi Guilds, and other less important manuscripts. Sharp's method was the selection of interesting illustrative details and his object a general presentation of the subject of pageants and "dramatic mysteries." He drew for comparison upon almost everything available which concerned English or continental religious drama, though his chief attention

to "the vehicle, characters, and dresses of the Actors." He published here a second edition of the Shearmen and Taylors' pageant, and added also sections relating to Hox Tuesday Play, the pageants exhibited on the occasion of royal visits to Coventry, the 1 Coventry Corp. MS. A 3.