276 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



Obstetrices occur also in the Freising play, Her odes 

 sive magorum adoratio (Q, p. 60), and indeed in 

 innumerable mediaeval representations of the births of 

 Christ and the Virgin. 1 The predominance of the 

 grotesque (even allowing for what is only grotesque 

 to modern minds) is characteristic of Christmas plays. 2 

 But the same tendency, as we have already indicated, 

 is to be found to a greater or less degree in most of the 

 religious plays. 3 Thus, in the Ludus de decem Vir- 

 ginibus* we find the strange stage direction Dominica 

 persona habet magnum convivium, while in the Sun- 

 denfall 5 Solomon, at a feast to the prophets, treats 

 them to the much-praised Eimbecker beer. We shall 

 have occasion in the sequel to notice like instances from 

 the greater passion-plays themselves. 



With these instances before him, the reader may 

 find it still more difficult to associate the extravagances 

 of the shorter, and the comic incidents in the longer 

 plays with the existence of a really religious spirit among 

 the people. I can only reiterate that if he fails to grasp 

 this association, he will fail to understand the folk of 

 the Middle Ages, and in particular the state of feeling 

 in the fifteenth century. The century which preceded the 

 Eeformation was distinguished from its immediate prede- 

 cessor and successor by its essentially religious character. 6 

 If we look at the outer formal side of religion, it was 



1 The origin of the midwife is to be. sought in the Protevangelion, ch. xiv. 

 The somewhat unsavoury incident with the midwife Salome is reproduced with 

 amplifications in the Coventry Mysteries, pp. 149 et seq. 



2 Q, pp. 97, 104, 111. 



3 Townley Mysteries, Surtees Society, 1866, pp. 84, 98 ; Jubinal, Mysteres 

 s, Paris, 1837, ii. pp. 71-77. 4 0, p. 22. 



M, p. 76, 6 More religious, but of course far less theological. 



