THE GROWTH OF THE PASSION-PLAY 313 



and feeling, and their study would serve equally well 

 with that of the passion-plays as an introduction to the 

 mediaeval spirit. Here we can only refer to them as 

 influences working potently on the adapters of the 

 thirteenth-century Church plays. The influence of The 

 Redemption, in particular, is so great that Milchsack 

 has not hesitated to attribute all the German passion- 

 plays to a common original, which was itself a drama- 

 tised version of TJie Redemption. 1 If the liturgical 

 basis of so many scenes in the plays, and the existence 

 at a very early date of incidents common to the French, 

 English, and German plays, seems to exclude this rather 

 extreme theory, we may still admit that the religious 

 epics exercised very great influence on the development 

 of the Church dramas in a folk-direction. 



While the passion-plays in the course of the fifteenth 

 century grew from elements of the Church service into 

 great folk-dramas lasting two or three days, they never 

 entirely freed themselves from their original liturgical 

 character. In most of them Latin Church hymns re- 

 mained, and to the very last we find almost without 

 exception the stage-directions given in Latin. 2 But the 

 Church ritual had another and more indirect influence 

 over the folk-drama ; it gave the passion-plays their 

 operatic character. It is not only the choruses of chil- 

 dren at the triumphal entry 3 who sing, but so does the 

 High Priest, 4 the Magdalen, and the Virgin. Even 

 Christ himself at the Last Supper and upon the Cross 



1 See G, p. 21, and E, p. 295. Compare the sounder views of Kummer in I, 

 Einleitung, p. Hi. 



2 Some relics of this usage have possibly survived even in the drama of to-day. 



3 E.g. F, pp. 120-125. 4 F, pp. H9, 150. 



