268 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



The prefigurations, however, are not solely of interest 

 as illustrating the mediaeval notion of history. Much 

 of the Old Testament and even secular matter thus 

 introduced into the passion-play, developed in detail, 

 broke off from the parent stem, and obtained an inde- 

 pendent existence in more wieldy plays, many of which 

 reached the greatest popularity. Thus, for example, in 

 the sixteenth century we find innumerable authors, in- 

 cluding a duke, a schoolmaster, arid a cobbler, 1 treating as 

 playwrights the story of Susanna. Of course it is not 

 possible to consider all independent dramas dealing with 

 scenes which occur in the great passion-plays, as originally 

 offshoots. The passion-plays do not appear in their 

 complete development till about the fifteenth century, 

 and I shall presently trace their growth from small and 

 fragmentary ritual plays. Many of the smaller religious 

 dramas are of much earlier date, 2 and have had an inde- 

 pendent and parallel development, not improbably origin- 

 ating in the dramatic performances of cloister scholars. 

 Nevertheless a great variety of small dramas of the late 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may be safely looked 

 upon as developed offshoots of the passion-plays, and a 

 good deal in the history, even of the secular drama, thus 

 becomes intelligible. The chief dramatic model set before 

 the playwright of those days was the great passion-play, 



1 Heinrich Julius, Herzog von Braunschweig, Paul Rebhun, Schulmeister 

 zu Zwickan, and Hans Sachs, Schuster zu Niirnberg. 



2 For example, in the first half of the eleventh century we hear of certain monks 

 who "neque in refectorio comederent, exceptis rarissimis festis, maxime in 

 quibus Herodem representarent Christi persecutorem, parvulorum interfectorem, 

 seu ludis aliis aut spectaculis quasi theatralibus exhibendis comportaretur sym- 

 bolum ad faciendum convivium in refectorio aliis pene omnibus temporibus vacuo," 

 Gerloh von Reichersberg. 



