The printed text of the little play is simple enough, but the easy swing of the series of Latin songs and the French refrains offering opportunity for choral participation, the beating of the image, and the impromptu comedy “business” which choir boys might be counted on to supply, would provide as much entertainment at a church festival to-day as they doubtless did in the St. Nicholas’ eve celebration of the twelfth century. In a single manuscript there are preserved four St. Nicholas plays of a century later. The stories presented in these plays are the four mentioned above. The play of the abducted son of Getro may here represent the series. This Latin play,[73] almost entirely in rimed couplets, is more serious in tone and in general a more elaborate production than the little play by Hilarius. It was staged in characteristic medieval fashion, with simultaneous set; that is to say, there were a number of prepared stations, side by side, all visible, and the action shifted from one station to another. A rubric in the manuscript indicates the stage arrangement. In order to represent how St. Nicholas freed the son of Getro from the hands of Marmorinus, King of the Agarenes, King Marmorinus shall appear, surrounded by armed servitors and seated on a high seat as if in his own kingdom. In another place, shall be represented Excoranda, the city of Getro, and in it Getro, with his consolers, his wife Euphrosina and their son Adeodatus. East of the city of Excoranda shall be the church of St. Nicholas in which the boy is taken captive. The action shifts from one of these stations to the other, all the stations and all the characters, however, being constantly visible. In the opening scene the servitors approach King Marmorinus, and, “either all together, or the first one speaking for all,” say: Hail prince, hail greatest king. Do not delay to declare thy will to thy servants; we are ready to do what thou dost wish. These words apparently are sung, since they are in rimed verse and since song alone would be appropriate for speech in unison. The king replies: Go then, do not delay, and subject to my rule whatever people you can; kill any that resist. With this the action shifts to another station. “In the meantime Getro and Euphrosina with a band of schoolboys,” the stage directions tell us, “shall go to the church of St. Nicholas, to celebrate his festival, and shall bring with them their son; and when they shall see the armed servitors of the king coming there, they shall flee to their own city, in their fright forgetting the boy. But the servitors of the king shall seize the boy and bring him into the presence of the king, and either the second of them or all in unison shall say,” apparently in song: We have done, O king, what thou didst order; we have subjected many people to thee and of the things acquired, we are bringing to thee this boy.