The Stonyhurst Pageants

Old Testament Adaptation in <em>The Stonyhurst Pageants</em>

“…4 While we cannot be sure of the terminus ad quem for the pageants, Carleton Brown provided as clear a terminus a quo as one might wish for when he published his transcription of them in 1920. His 'happy discovery' (as Hardin Craig puts it 5 ) that the plays borrowed heavily from the Douay-Rheims translation of the bible means that the pageants could not have been composed before the publication of the two-volume Old Testament in 1609 and 1610.…”

“…7 W.W. Greg speaks of their debt to the Chester cycle, 8 and Craig suggests that the plays might be a post-Reformation redaction of a now-lost cycle of traditional plays, though no such original has come to light. 9 Poor reviews, it seems, can bury a piece of historic drama as quickly as they close a modern play. Even the most positive reviews of Brown's book fault the playwright for a slavish devotion to the biblical text, a leaden ear for dialogue, and a complete lack of humour, and since this initial reception, the text has remained almost untouched by scholars.…”