Concerning the Corpus Christi plays, which began in the
thirteenth century:
The different scenes, whenever
possible, were distributed in such a way
as to bear some relation to the occuption of the craft that performed
it: e.g. the task of producing
Noah’s ark was entrusted to the
boat-builders, the adoration of the magi
to the goldsmiths.
-- Ward & Waller, eds. The
Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. V: The Drama to 1642, Part
One (1910), p. 45
Such nicety of fitness rests upon a folk notion of
appropriateness, almost common sense, rather than being specially
religious. And indeed, we meet
this meme in a quite plebeian guise, in one boy’s life, back in Eisenhower’s
America:
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