318 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLAY 



hear of a stage at Metz no less than nine stories 

 high. 1 



The elevated stage erected upon the market-place, 

 or in the cathedral close, must have been a conspicuous 

 object towering above the surrounding booths. At the 

 same time it offered, by its peculiar construction, every 

 opportunity for the interchange of a rough folk-wit a 

 sturdy if sometimes coarse badinage between the devils 

 on the ground-floor and the hawkers, quacks, and cheap- 

 jacks, who then, as now, thronged to popular festivities. 

 To restrain this humour, the play itself had to be made 

 more and more humorous, extended roles had to be 

 given to the devils, and the comic element made a 

 feature of the first importance. 2 Indeed, if it were not 

 that in the twelfth-century Tours Mystery we already 

 find a medicine -man inside the church, we might 

 readily suppose the original of this character to be the 

 market quack, whose flow of wit could only be silenced 

 by drawing him into hell, 3 whence he ultimately mounted 

 to earth, and took his part in selling salves to the three 

 Maries or ointment to the Magdalen. 



For the origin of the second form of stage the flat 

 stage we must seek, we believe, in the transverse 

 division of the church. From the nave to the altar we 

 find in many early German churches two, three, or 



1 See Otto Roquette, Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, p. 157 ; and also 

 Strutt, Manners and Customs, vol. iii. p. 130. 



2 The humorous devil was, however, not confined to the stage, compare the 

 devil trying to hinder Christ from rescuing the patriarchs on the carved altar by 

 Hans Briiggerman in Schleswig Cathedral ; the date is about 1515. 



3 At Alsfeld, we hear, a space was cleared round the passion-play stage, and 

 any one trespassing upon it was handed over to the safe keeping of the devils. It 

 is still more noteworthy that in the Bohemian plays the devils found the damned 

 souls to carry off to hell by raiding the audience itself : see U, pp. 85, 86. 



