From this yawning cave the devils constantly ascended
to delight the spectators and afford comic relief to the more serious
drama. The three stages were not always used. Archdeacon Rogers, who
died in 1595, left an account of the Chester play which he himself saw,
and he wrote that the stage was a high scaffold with two rooms, a higher
and a lower, upon four wheels. In the lower the actors apparelled
themselves, and in the higher they played. But this was a movable stage
on wheels. The clerks' stage would, doubtless, be a fixed structure, and
of a more elaborate construction.
The dresses used by the actors were very gorgeous and splendid, though
little care was bestowed upon the appropriateness of the costumes. The
words of the play of the Creation differ in the various versions which
have come down to us. Strutt thinks that the clerks' play, acted before
"the most part of the nobles and gentles in England," was very similar
to the Coventry play, which cannot compare in grandeur and vigour with
the York play discovered in the library of Lord Ashburnham, and edited
by Miss Toulmin Smith[58]. But as the north-country dialect of the York
version would have been difficult for the learned clerks of London to
pronounce, their version would doubtless resemble more that of Coventry
than that of York.
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