280 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



century passion-play is the retention amid the vernacular 

 of certain Latin responses, hymns, and stage-directions 

 taken almost verbatim from the Easter or Christmas 

 ritual of the Church. A further investigation shows us 

 that the earliest religious plays, if plays they can be 

 called, were amplifications of a few sentences accom- 

 panied by descriptive action which had been introduced 

 between the last response and the Te Deum into 

 the Christmas or Easter services. We have the words 

 and directions for such dramatic ritual passing im- 

 perceptibly into ritualistic drama in eleventh-century 

 manuscripts from both France and Germany. Herein are 

 undoubtedly to be found the first germs of the great 

 religious plays. We have yet, however, to find a reason 

 for the introduction of such dramatic ritual into the 

 Church service. The ultimate cause is not far to seek. 

 The drama itself tragedy and comedy developed, as 

 I have shown elsewhere, 1 out of the choral and sexual 

 dances in honour of a goddess of fertility. The drama 

 is thus essentially of religious origin. Now although 

 Germanic heathenism had not developed out of its 

 religious festivals at the introduction of Christianity 

 anything like the Greek drama, it still possessed a wide 

 range of choral and symbolic representations, the whole 

 of which the folk endeavoured to associate with their 

 new religion, and this for the simple reason that they 

 were still in the stage of civilisation when religion and 

 semi-dramatic representation are closely allied. It stands 

 beyond question that the first notion of the Germans as to 

 the new churches was that they were convenient meeting- 



1 See Essay XL p. 136 and footnote. 



