The Origins of Abraham's Preamble in the York Play of 'Abraham and Isaac'

Abstract

When in I923 Herbert Kal6n published the first part of the Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament he pointed out that certain passages in the Paraphrase found direct verbal parallels in parts of the York cycle of Mystery plays.' The most important of these parallel passages occur in Pageants x and xi of the cycle, the plays of Abraham and Isaac and Moses and Pharaoh.2 In addition, Kal6n also drew attention to the fact that these two pageants (together with several others in the York cycle) are written in the same metre as the Paraphrase, the stanza being apparently otherwise unknown in Middle English.3 Kaldn's evidence was certainly sufficient to show that a close relationship existed between these particular York pageants and the Paraphrase, but he went on to assume that, because 'these plays have been dated as far back as I340 or I350', the author of the Paraphrase had borrowed passages from the cycle. This assumption about the direction of influence also led him to take 1350 as the terminus a quo for the composition of the Paraphrase, which he went on to date (on linguistic grounds) at between 1400 and I4I0 (p. clix). Kalen's assumption that the Paraphrase borrows from the plays seems to have gone unchallenged. It is the purpose of this