But at one point occurs the rubric _Maria planctum faciat quantum melius potest_, and a later hand has inserted out of its place in the text the most famous of all the laments of the Virgin, the _Planctus ante nescia_[155]. CHAPTER XIX LITURGICAL PLAYS (_continued_) The ‘Twelve days’ of the Christmas season are no less important than Easter itself in the evolution of the liturgical drama. I have mentioned in the last chapter a Christmas trope which is evidently based upon the older Easter dialogue. Instead of _Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, o Christicolae?_ it begins _Quem quaeritis in praesepe, pastores, dicite?_ It occurs in eleventh- and twelfth-century tropers from St. Gall, Limoges, St. Magloire, and Nevers. Originally it was an _Introit_ trope for the third or ‘great’ Mass. In a fifteenth-century breviary from Clermont-Ferrand it has been transferred to Matins, where it follows the _Te Deum_; and this is precisely the place in the Christmas services occupied, at Rouen, by a liturgical drama known as the _Officium Pastorum_, which appears to have grown out of the _Quem quaeritis in praesepe?_ by a process analogous to that by which the Easter drama grew out of the _Quem quaeritis in sepulchro[156]?_ A _praesepe_ or ‘crib,’ covered by a curtain, was made ready behind the altar, and in it was placed an image of the Virgin. After the _Te Deum_ five canons or vicars, representing the shepherds, approached the great west door of the choir. A boy _in similitudinem angeli_ perched _in excelso_ sang them the ‘good tidings,’ and a number of others _in voltis ecclesiae_ took up the _Gloria in excelsis_. The shepherds, singing a hymn, advanced to the _praesepe_. Here they were met with the _Quem quaeritis_ by two priests _quasi obstetrices_[157]. The dialogue of the trope, expanded by another hymn during which the shepherds adore, follows, and so the drama ends. But the shepherds ‘rule the choir’ throughout the _Missa in Gallicantu_ immediately afterwards, and at Lauds, the anthem for which much resembles the _Quem quaeritis_ itself[158]. The _misterium pastorum_ was still performed at Rouen in the middle of the fifteenth century, and at this date the shepherds, _cessantibus stultitiis et insolenciis_, so far as this could be ensured by the chapter, took the whole ‘service’ of the day, just as did the deacons, priests, and choir-boys during the _triduum_[159].