THE STAGE OF THE PASSION-PLAY 317 



This was the basis of the elevated passion-play stage. 

 We have three floors, one above the other, connected 

 by stairs. The top floor represented heaven with the 

 Trinity, the angels, and sometimes the Virtues ; the 

 bottom floor, hell, with Lucifer, Satan, Death, the 

 smaller devils, the damned, and the patriarchs ; l the 

 middle floor, earth, and there the main portion of the 

 play took place. By means of the upper flight of 

 stairs God and the angels visited earth, and the souls 

 of the blessed were carried heavenwards. In like 

 manner the lower flight gave Satan and his coadjutors 

 access to earth, and enabled them to carry off the 

 damned ; at the same time, it afforded facilities for the 

 rescue of the patriarchs. Such a form of stage evidently 

 had popularity in Germany as well as France. Thus 

 Kriiger's passion-play of the sixteenth century pre- 

 supposes such an arrangement. 2 In the Ludus de 

 decem Virginibus it would seem, from the stage-direc- 

 tions, that there was a gallery at the back for God and 

 the angels, while the actors were further able to descend 

 from the main body of the stage onto a level with the 

 spectators. The general idea of the elevated stage did 

 not escape the mediaeval artist, and the Trinity in an 

 upper gallery is a favourite topic. 3 Occasionally the 

 three-storied stage was still further developed, and we 



1 The 'hell' seems to have been pretty fully developed even before the 

 drama left the precincts of the church. Thus we read of a permanent hell made 

 of iron and wood in a fifteenth-century church (see Glossary of Architecture, vol. i. 

 p. 422). For the Chelmsford hell, see Appendix II. 



2 H, vol. ii. p. 21. 



3 As suggestive for the passion-plays, see inter alia the 1466 engraving Our 

 Lady of Einsiedeln, by E. S., the cut in Tengler's Leyenspiegel, fol. cxxii b , 

 etc. 



