^{Note 1 in page 7} For editions and bibliography see V. Luzarche, Adam, drame anglo-normand du xii^e siècle (1854); M. Sepet, Les Prophètes du Christ (1878); P. Studer, Le Mystère d'Adam, (1918, reprinted 1928); K. Grass, Das Adamsspiel, 3rd ed. (1928); the general works on the theatre of Petit de Julleville, Creizenach, Chambers and G. Cohen; and most recently the studies of H. Breuer, ZRP, li (1931), 625 ff., lii (1932), 1 ff. My citations of the text are from Grass. In an unpublished Bryn Mawr essay on the Procession of Prophets (a study of the Latin, French and English versions), Mother Maria Consolata, S.H.C.J., indicates that whereas the author had access to numerous sources for the prophecies he adopts, he showed his independence in using or leaving them aside; in the case of Jeremiah and David, he seems to have turned directly to the Scriptures, rejecting the prophecies used in the pseudo-Augustinian Sermon; in the case of Moses and in the dispute between a Jew and Isaiah his text resembles a Greek homily, possibly known to the West in a Latin translation (see La Piana, Rapprezentazioni, pp. 283–302); in other cases he evinces a knowledge of some versified liturgical play similar to those that have survived.

^{Note 2 in page 7} Wilhelm Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, pp. 53-56; Hardin Craig, Mod. Phil., x (1913), 473 ff.; Adeline Jenney, Mod. Phil, xiii (1915), 59 ff.; K. Young, Drama of the Med. Church, ii, who concedes the possibility that the Daniel plays may owe something to the Prophetae (pp. 304–306), but considers this hypothesis doubtful for the plays of Isaac and Rebecca and for the Joseph play (p. 258), and states that “it is obvious to all students of the subject that his [Sepet's] proposals cannot be accepted in their entirety” (p. 171). For texts of the sermon and the liturgical Prophets play see Young, op. cit., chapter xxi.

^{Note 3 in page 8} E. Mâle, L'Art religieux du xiii^e siècle en France, 7th ed. (1931), p. 182, asks why it is that certain scenes are repeatedly treated by the arts, while others are not, and answers: “c'est la liturgie . . . qui a déterminé le choix de telle scène de la vie de Jésus-Christ à l'exclusion de telle autre,” and remarks similarly of the legend of Théophile (p. 262) : “la légende ne fut si populaire que parce que l'Église la choisit entre beaucoup d'autres et l'adopta.” Hardin Craig and A. Jenney (see note 2) show the connection between our Old Testament plays and the liturgical lectiones and responsoria, among others, the very liturgical pieces used in the Adam.

^{Note 4 in page 9} For illustrations of these sculptured figures see A. K. Porter, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Routes, vol. vii, plaes 956 ff., and for discussions, op. cit. i, 320 ff. where they are dated ca. 1130, Paul Deschamps, French Sculpture of the Romanesque Period, p. 72, E. Mâle, L'Art religieux du xii^e siècle en France, 3rd éd. (1928), p. 144. Students of art are too prone to assume that the Poitiers church is indebted to the Jeu d'Adam. Mâle drew this conclusion from the fact that Isaiah's prophecy on the façade, unlike the words given him in the pseudo-Augustinian sermon, is the same as that in the Adam. This prophecy, however, is not only in the Adam—and the Bible—but in the liturgical plays of Limoges, Laon and Rouen. For the influence of the sermon on art, which was great see, Porter, op. cit., i, 324 ff.

^{Note 5 in page 9} Meyer, Fragmenta Burana 54, n. 1, and Chambers, Med. Stage, ii, 71, n. 2, both reprint this from Monumenta Germ. Hist., Scriptores, xvii, 590. It would of course indicate a Prophetae connected with the Fall rather than used as a link between Old and New Testament scenes.

^{Note 6 in page 10} The Sainte-Geneviève plays are printed by Jubinal, Mystères inédits du xv^e siècle. References for the English plays are conveniently assembled in Chambers, Med. Stage, Appendix X. It should be added that in the Christmas play from Benediktbeuern (ed. Young, Drama of the Med. Ch., ii, 172) a Prophetae serves as prologue to the Annunciation, even as in the east window of the cathedral of Piacenza Balaam and Isaiah are sculptured beside the Annunciation (Porter, op. cit., i, 326). Similarly in the two true Coventry plays, prophets introduce scenes of the New Testament. All the English cycles have plays showing the fathers in Limbo at the time of Christ's descent (plays derived from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus), and all except Chester present them in their role of prophets of Christ's Coming. The Sainte-Geneviève Résurrection proceeds directly from the Creation and Fall to scenes involving Pilate and Caiaphas, but later Adam, Eve and the fathers are redeemed from hell.

^{Note 7 in page 10} Breuer, ZRP, lii (1932), 8, 44, like Chambers, Med. Stage, ii, 70–71, n. 3, seems to believe that even if the author were an Anglo-Norman, he wrote his play for performance in France, and Creizenach, Gesch. des neueren Dramas, i, 127, remarks that, were the author an Anglo-Norman, it is strange to find him writing his play for the conquerors rather than the folk. Some authorities indeed (among them Littré, Foerster, Gröber, and P. Meyer) would place the author on the continent, in Normandy, but Suchier, G. Paris, Grass and Studer claim his language has insular traits. See Grass, lxxiii ff. and Breuer, loc. cit.

^{Note 8 in page 11} Most of the performances recorded by Petit de Julleville, Mystères, ii, 1 ff. and by Chambers, Med. St., ii, Appendix W (cf. also p. 94) took place in spring or summer, though a few, of the Nativity, occurred at Christmas. Of the latter, the majority, though not all, seemed to have been played indoors. Mother Maria Consolata deduces from her studies (see note 1) that the Adam was equally appropriate for Advent or Lent, Christmas or Easter.

^{Note 9 in page 11} Obviously the stage directions would have served for any performance of the play— verbs are in the subjunctive or future—but the writer must have had in mind a specific performance, presumably the first. According to Grass (xxiv), the text may be defective at the beginning, as well as at the end, and the lost incipit would have explained, among other things, how the stage was related to the church, where Hell and the choir should be placed, etc. There seems no need, however, to posit incompleteness at the beginning, where so much is told us.

^{Note 10 in page 12} Grass, 176. Grass' conclusion that the lector had his place among the singers would be inconsonant with precedent and would hardly fit our text where in choro must refer to the choir as a place, not as a group of singers. The other lectio of the play, that read at the very beginning, apparently was intoned after God, Adam and Eve had taken their places before the audience and immediately before the choir sang the responsory.

^{Note 11 in page 12} Cf. the two transepts, especially the southern ones, of Chartres and Bayeux, and the south transepts of Beauvais, Troyes, Evreux, Rouen, Le Mans, Saint-Pierre de Lisieux, and Notre Dame de Paris. Convenient illustrations will be found in the Encyclopédie alpina illustrée collections, in E. Wilson's Cathedrals of France, Gabriel Fleury's Portails imagés du xii^e siècle and the Propyläen-Kunstgeschichte, vol. vii. If the play were intended for performance in England, the quire transepts of English churches would have been especially suitable. See H. Batsford and C. Fry, The Greater English Church of the Middle Ages, (Scribner's, 1940).

^{Note 12 in page 12} It will be remembered that the prophets of the Adam play were to be made ready in loco secreto. This dressing-room was probably, as in the liturgical plays, the sacristy of the church, where vestments and other properties would be available. Liturgia (p. 142) recommends that the sacristy be placed on the south side of the church, and this position would have been especially convenient if the entrance to the south transept served as stage. Incidentally, Liturgia (p. 134) also recommends that the singers of the choir should not as a rule be visible to the faithful. See René Aigrain, Liturgia (Paris, 1931).

^{Note 13 in page 13} Contrast the stage directions here with those of the Passion de Semur, for example, where God descendat de parodist) et vadat juxta paradisum terrestrem, ed. Roy, p. 11, or ascendat Deus in paradisum, p. 16. So in the directions for the Passion de Mons (see Le Livre de conduite du régisseur, éd. G. Cohen) celestial paradise is raised and characters are directed to go “desoubz la salle de paradis” (see lxxxii, 12). It should be observed, however, that in these later plays, while directions for mounting and descending are explicit, it is celestial and not terrestrial paradise which is on a higher level.

^{Note 14 in page 14} Later plays offer no parallels here, for their serpents have speaking and acting rôles. At Mons a boy evidently played the part (see Cohen, op. cit., pp. 10, 12) while the original Lucifer “ne se bouge d'Enfer,” because there would not be time for his transformation. This serpent leaves paradise “tout trainant sur sa poitrine.” The serpent of Semur “habeat pectus femine, pedes et caudam serpentis, et vadat totus directus, et habeat pellem de quodam penno rubro” (ed. Roy, p. 13), and resembles that of the Viel Testament (ed. SATF, i, 44) where Satan was “vestu d'un habit en manière de serpent et le visage de pucelle.” The latter, like the tempter of Greban's play, twisted himself about the forbidden tree and had a speaking part of some length.

^{Note 16 in page 14} This is also the conclusion of Ebert and Grass (see the latter, xxiv).

^{Note 16 in page 15} Adam is directed to raise his hands toward paradise: ambas mantis suas elevabit contra eum. However, here as elsewhere in the play such phrases do not necessarily imply two levels, but merely the act of raising the hand or pointing. Cf. manum contra Evam levabit; eriget Chaim dextram minacem contra eum; Abacuc . . . eriget manus contra ecclesiam, etc., Grass, pp. 115, 117, 161, 228.

^{Note 17 in page 15} This is apparent from all later directions. It is also apparent from the copyist's vocat and processerit. Modern editors, who read vocentur and processerint for good grammatical reasons, have sometimes been misled by these forms and by the liturgical Prophelae into assuming a procession of prophets.

^{Note 18 in page 15} For a description of the scamnum, see Liturgia, pp. 230–231. In England, according to this authority, the scamnum was fixed, in France movable. This might be an additional reason for believing, as some authorities do, that our play was designed for a French rather than an English church. See note 7, above.

^{Note 19 in page 16} The stage direction has the plural portas, whereas the French text reads porte in the singular. Abacuc later points to the church itself.

^{Note 20 in page 16} Limbo, a prison, is differentiated from hell (entered through a dragon's jaws) in the famous Valenciennes sketch, but the Fathers issue from the steaming mouth of a monstrous beast in an illustration of the Livre de la Passion (PMLA, xlvi [1931], 339, plate ix). Neither limbo nor hell seems to have been assigned any one traditional place in the medieval church plays. In the various liturgical texts of the Harrowing of Bell, the portae inferni were represented by the doors of the choir (at St. Gall), of a chapel (Barking), of the sepulchre (Dublin), and of the church itself (Bemberg; cf. also the ancient ceremony at the dedication of churches). For texts see Young, Drama of the Med. Church, i, chapter v.

^{Note 21 in page 17} No fewer than ten or a dozen demons must have been involved, perhaps more. There were three groups of them: Diabolus with three or four others struck and pushed Adam and Eve toward the infernal regions (veniet diabolus et très vel quatuor diaboli cum eo, etc.); another group (alii diaboli) came out to meet the sinners, making-a great noise, and still others (singuli alii diaboli) received them in hell, caused smoke to rise, and beat upon pots and pans (Grass, 121 ff.).