The accounts of the Bassingbourne play in 1511 include a payment to ‘the garnement man for garnements and propyrts and playbooks.’ This was an occasional and not an annual play, and apparently at the beginning of the sixteenth century such plays were sufficiently frequent to render the occupation of theatrical outfitter a possible one. Certainly those lucky parishes, such as Chelmsford or St. Peter’s, Oxford, which possessed a stock of ‘game gear,’ found a profit in letting it out to less favoured places. The guilds responsible for the greater plays naturally preserved their own costumes and properties from year to year, supplementing these where necessary by loans from the neighbouring gentry and clergy. The Middle Ages were not purists about anachronism, and what was good enough for an English bishop was good enough for Annas and Caiaphas. The hands of the craftsmen who acted were discreetly cased in the gloves, without which no ceremonial occasion was complete, and sometimes, at least, vizors or masks were worn. But, as a rule, the stage setting left a good deal to the imagination. The necessaries for the play of Paradise at Beverley in 1391 consisted of the ‘karre’ or pageant, eight hasps, eighteen staples, two vizors, a pair of wings for the angel, a fir-spar (the tree of knowledge), a worm (the serpent), two pairs of linen breeches, two pairs of shifts, and one sword. For a similar play the Norwich grocers possessed in 1565, besides the pageant and its fittings, sufficient ‘cotes and hosen’ for all the characters, that of the serpent being fitted with a tail, a ‘face’ and hair for the Father, hair for Adam and Eve, and—‘a Rybbe colleryd Red.’ A few other interesting details can be gathered from various records. At Canterbury the steeds of the _Magi_ were made of hoops and laths and painted canvas. In the Doomsday scene at Coventry the ‘savyd’ and ‘dampnyd’ souls were distinguished by their white or black colour[408]. The hell mouth was provided with fire, a windlass, and a barrel for the earthquake. There were also three worlds to be set afire, one, it may be supposed, at each station. The stage directions to Jordan’s Cornish Creation of the World are full of curious information. The Father appears in a cloud and when he speaks out of heaven, ‘let ye levys open.’ Lucifer goes down to hell ‘apareled fowle wᵗʰ fyre about hem’ and the plain is filled with ‘every degre of devylls of lether and spirytis on cordis.’ In Paradise a fountain and ‘fyne flowers’ suddenly spring up, and a little later ‘let fyshe of dyuers sortis apeare & serten beastis.’ Lucifer becomes ‘a fyne serpent made wᵗʰ a virgyn face & yolowe heare upon her head.’ Adam and Eve departing from Paradise ‘shewe a spyndell and a dystaff.’ For the murder of Abel, according to old tradition, a ‘chawbone’ is needed[409], and for the ark, timber and tools, including ‘a mallet, a calkyn yren, ropes, masstes, pyche and tarr.’ I have not space to dwell further on