Welsh Journals

University College, London. He told the tale of the experiment to which his life had been devoted. He said all he had to say, and sat down. Then, as the chairman of the meeting was opening the discussion, the lecturer slipped from his chair to the ground, and in a few minutes died of heart failure. His closing words were:- The Caldey Plays. By Donald Attwater. I. THE PASSION. FOR five years the monks of Caldey Island have presented a Passion Play as a supererogatory act of worship during Lent, every year altering and developing it as occasion seemed to require in order to bring it to a pitch of excellence more worthy of its high theme and object. It has grown in the self-same soil as did the old mystery plays, in the hearts and lives of Catholic Christians, and has been nurtured after the old manner by monks and clerics to whom God's Honour and Glory are the first consideration, and these circum- stances in themselves go very far towards determining a worthy presentation. But the Catholic spirit alone is not enough, else would the achievement be repeated in half the towns of England. The fact that this play is the work of a Benedictine monastery has ensured that the actual production should be worthy of the spirit which prompted it; no consideration of popular taste or conventional notions, no fear of pain or attraction to the gruesome, no sentimental associ- ations or arbitrary customs, no seeming unsur- mountable difficulties in the material order, have been allowed to stand in the way of the realisa- tion of the idea of this Passion Play as it was conceived, as are all true works of art, in the mind of one man. The play takes place in a small hall on the green below the Abbey. The audience, if the term may be allowed, are accommodated on the stage (there is room for about seventy persons only) and the action takes place in the body of the hall. The floor is stained and polished the walls are hung with dark blue curtains, there are four white square columns or pylons, a pointed arch, a flat or two, a few chairs and cushions, a couple of low tables, a great cross-these are all the "properties and scenery." Hidden are two cantors, one to sing the narrative and the other to sing the words of our Lord, with a few other singers for the questioning Apostles and the im- precations of the mob. And, accompanied by the voices of these singers, some score of other monks present in dumb show thirteen episodes, beginning with the anointing by St. Mary Magdalen and taking us to the Upper Room, We must send out workers imbued with the determination to seek and investigate truth-truth that will make them free-and to take great care that in the search for truth they will never take part in or sympathise with those methods by which the edge of truth is blunted." Gethsemani, Pilate's Hall, the Way of Sorrows, to Calvary, thence to the Tomb of Burial and Resurrection and finally to Emmaus. The setting of each scene is different and con- sists only of a re-arrangement of the properties enumerated above, but free use is made of electric light to produce beautiful effects of light and colour. Costumes there are none, the monks wearing their ordinary white habits and choir cowls, our Lady and Magdalen being dis- tinguished by white head-veils and the Christus by a linen alb and the stole, symbol of His Eternal Priesthood. This use of conventional settings and what is, in effect, a conventional dress are the two chief innovations of the play and they are both abundantly justified. By a series of suggestions, e.g., a setting suggesting a street and actions suggesting our Lord's painful progress therein, a reality is produced in the heart and mind of the beholder far exceeding anything that could be obtained by the use of the most elaborate painted scenery and Eastern garments. One who saw the play has given an excellent example-"Here was a monk, spectacled at that, seated with just a yard of purply draping hanging over the arm of his chair; but he was unmistakably Pilate, and that yard of rich cloth was unmistakably the Roman Empire." It is worth noting that in previous years, with the same setting, realistic costumes and "make up" were used and to most of those who had seen the play under these conditions the sudden simplification was at first disappointing. But with repetition this feeling has worn off and pro- bably no one of the monks or Islanders would now wish to see theatrical costumes re-intro- duced. Were the play to take place before big audiences with the idea of a wide appeal it is arguable (though the present writer would argue against it) that such costume would be necessary for a more or less domestic representation the simple monastic habit is most emphatically sufficient. Except for the "Reproaches" from the Good Friday office, the Stabat Mater and a vernacular hymn at the Entombment, the words used by the singers are simply those of the Rheims-Douay Bible, without addition or alteration. At first Bach's Passion Music was used this gave place to the 17th century music of Heinrich Schiitz