The oversight of the actors was, as pointed out in the last chapter, an important element in the civic control of the craft-plays. The mention at York of a commission of ‘connyng, discrete and able players’ must not be taken to imply that these were in any sense professionals. All the actors received fees, on a scale proportionate to the dignity of their parts. Thus at Coventry one Fawston got 4_d._ ‘for hangyng Judas,’ and 4_d._ more ‘for coc croyng.’ The payment to the performer of God was 3_s._ 4_d._ A ‘sowle,’ whether ‘savyd’ or ‘dampnyd,’ got 20_d._, and a ‘worme of conscyence’ only 8_d._ At Hull, Noah was generally paid 1_s._, God and Noah’s wife a trifle less. But there is nothing to show that the performers were drawn from the minstrel class: they were probably, like ‘joly Absolon,’ members of the guilds undertaking the plays. The Chester men describe themselves in their banns as not ‘playeres of price’ but ‘Craftes men and meane men.’ The epilogue to the Conversion of St. Paul in the Digby manuscript similarly deprecates unkindly criticism of folk ‘lackyng lytturall scyens ... that of Retoryk haue non intellygens.’ A characteristic of the acting which greatly impressed the imagination of the audience seems to have been the rant and bombast put from very early times in the mouths of such royal or pseudo-royal personages as Herod and Pilate.[404] In the Chester plays fragments of French, as in a liturgical play fragments of gibberish[405], are used to enhance this effect. In the Cornish plays, as in the modern music hall, each performer at his first appearance displays himself in a preliminary strut about the stage. _Hic pompabit Abraham_, or _Moses_, or _David_, say the stage directions. As is usually the case with amateurs, the function of the prompter became an exceedingly important one. If the Cornish writer Richard Carew may be trusted, the local players did not learn their parts at all, but simply repeated them aloud after the whispers of the ‘ordinary[406].’ Probably this was exceptional; it certainly was not the practice at Beverley, where there is a record of an actor being fined _quod nesciebat ludum suum_. But it may be taken for granted that the ‘beryng of the boke,’ which is so frequently paid for in the accounts, was never a sinecure. Another functionary who occasionally appears is the stage-manager. In the later Cornish plays he is called the ‘conveyour.’ The great Chelmsford performance of 1562 was superintended by one Burles who was paid, with others, for ‘suing’ it, and who probably came from a distance, as he and his boy were boarded for three weeks.