278 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



dramatically represents and at the same time moulds 

 its religion for itself. 1 



Were we to leave out of account the great mass of 

 vernacular devotional literature, and to put on one side 

 the eighteen editions of the German Bible which pre- 

 ceded Luther's, we should still find the passion-plays 

 impressing the events, the teaching, and largely the 

 very words of the gospel story, with all the vividness 

 of the stage upon the minds of the people. Every 

 town, almost every village had its yearly or bi-y early 

 play ; and then for one, two, or even three days, 2 the 

 people would make holiday, and, with due allowance for 

 meals 3 and sleep, spend their whole time on the market- 

 place watching the great drama, which for them was 

 the story of the world, slowly unroll itself, a drama 

 which in those days was rich in interest and deeply 

 significant in meaning for each one of them. They 

 might see one of their fellow -citizens personify God the 

 Father, 4 they might laugh at the repeated discomfiture 



1 The historic myths so widely held, namely, that before the Reformation 

 (a) the Bible was unknown to the people, (5) there were no church hymns in the 

 vernacular, (c) there were no sermons or devotional books in the vulgar tongue, 

 have been completely destroyed by scholarly research. See, besides the works 

 referred to in the previous footnote, Maitland, The Dark Ages, pp. 188 et seq. ; 

 Karl Meister, Das deutsche Kirchenlied ; The Academy, No. 699, p. 199; No. 

 701, p. 240 ; No. 704, p. 293 ; No. 744, p. 84 ; and No. 1193, p. 238 ; and The 

 Athenaeum, No. 2925, p. 630 ; No. 2930, p. 809 ; and No. 2953, p. 694. 



2 The Frankfurt passion-play lasted four days in 1498, besides a day of feast- 

 ing for the actors and a day later with a procession in costume. In 1409 the great 

 play of the London clerks at the Skinners' Well (Clerkenwell) lasted eight days. 

 The Chester Mysteries took three days. 



3 At the passion-play resuscitated by the Brixlegg peasants in the early eighties 

 the audience sat at tables placed in the open village street, each table being presided 

 over by a peasant woman, who worked vigorously with soup-ladle and carving-knife. 



4 At the play referred to in the previous note it was God the Father who 

 came onto the stage with, and claimed an owner for, an umbrella found after the 

 morning performance ; nor did the element of the grotesque in this incident 

 at all strike the peasant majority in the audience. 



