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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The three scholars, J. M. Hart, F. S. Boas, and L. R. Merrill, who have in recent years done most to call the Christus Redivivus to the attention of general readers and scholars have without exception emphasized especially the element of the Miles Gloriosus utilized in the early drama by Grimald with astonishing elaborateness and effectiveness. The four soldiers stationed by Pilate to guard the sepulchre of Christ are used by Grimald in apparently a more original manner than in any other single situation in the religious drama of the sixteenth century in England. Hart merely calls attention to the presence of the Miles Gloriosus elements in the play. Boas makes a great deal of it, emphasizing Grimald's ability to vary his style to suit the changing speakers and occasions. He gives an elaborate description of the most interesting scenes of the play in which the four bragging soldiers appear. “It would be interesting,” he says, “to know whether Grimald confided to Airy that he had later models than Plautus, and that in his tragi-comic treatment of a Biblical theme he had been influenced by at least one of the continental humanist playwrights, Barptholomaeus Lochiensis, whose Christus Xylonicus, first published at Paris in 1529, had been re-issued at Antwerp in 1537, and by Johan Gymnicus at Cologne in 1541. . . . . The action of Christus Xylonicus ends with the burial in the garden tomb, . . . .” Merrill in his very valuable contribution to the Grimald field of scholarship lays considerable emphasis upon the element of the bragging soldiers around the grave of Christ, and points out convincing evidence of the indebtedness of one of Sebastian Wilde's plays to this portion of the Christus Redivivus.
1 “Nicholas Grimald's Christus Redivivus,” P.M.L.A., XIV, 369.
2 University Drama in the Tudor Age, Oxford, Clarendon, 1914, pp. 25 ff.
3 The Life and Poems of Nicholas Grimald, New Haven, Yale Press, 1925, pp. 59 ff.; reviewed favorably as to the life of Grimald, unfavorably as to the editing of Grimald's plays themselves, by G. C. Moore Smith, M.L.R., XXI, 81 ff.
4 About 1541. See Merrill, op. cit., pp. 9 ff.
5 “Nicholas Grimald, The Judas of the Reformation,” P.M.L.A., XXXVII, 216. Strype in his Memorials of Archbishop Cranmer, (Ecclesiastical History Society, Oxford, 1854, III, 130) leaves the reader to decide whether Grimald or the servant whose duty it was to bring him Latimer's papers played the Judas part.
6 “Grimald's Translations from Beza,” M.L.N., XXXIX, 388 ff.
7 Herrig's Archiv, LXXIX, 441 ff.
8 A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, p. 325. For a collection of the opinions expressed by scholars as to the date of Ashmole 61 see Frances Foster, Northern Passion, E.E.T.S. 147, p. 15, note 1.
9 Die Quellen des sogenannten Ludus Coventriae, Leipzig, Rudentz, 1908. pp. 84 ff.
10 For the earliest beginnings of the Miles Gloriosus theme in Hegge and other English Corpus Christi plays, see Der Miles Gloriosus im Englischen Drama, by Herman Graf, Schwerin i. M., pp. 10 ff.,
11 Op.cit., p. 59.
12 The date of the Hegge plays is generally placed at about 1468.
13 Hardin Craig, “Terentius Christianus and the Stonyhurst Pageants,” Philological Quarterly, II, 56 ff.
14 The Stonyhurst Pageants, ed. Carleton Brown, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins Press, 1920.
15 Mod. Lang. Rev., IX, 79 ff.
16 For the suggestion of a possible relationship between Grimald and Miles Blomefielde I am indebted to Carleton Brown.
17 Karl Schmidt, Die Digby Spiele, Berlin, 1884, p. 6; E. K. Chambers, Mediæval Stage, II, 428.
18 Howard R. Patch, “The Ludus Coventriæ and the Digby Massacre,” P.M.L.A., XXXV, 324 ff.
19 For other manuscripts bearing the name of Miles Blomefielde, see Literary Times Supplement, Sept. 10, 1925, p. 584, and Nov. 5, 1925, p. 739.
20 Dict. Nat. Biog.; Warton, History of English Literature, IV, 49 ff., 78.
21 L. R. Merrill, op. cit., p. 12.
22 Ludus Coventriæ, K. S. Block, E.E.T.S. (1922), Introd., p. xxxvi.
23 The Legend of St. Cuthbert, by Robert Hegge, 1626, Darlington, printed by George Smith, 1777.
24 See John Capgrave, writer of Saint Juliana and other saints' lives. E.E.T.S.
25 The Digby Plays, F. J. Furnivall, E.E.T.S., vol. 70, pp. xxv ff.
26 See J. F. Royster, “Richard III, IV, 4, and the Three Maries of the Mediaeval Drama,” M.L.N., XXV, 173 ff.
