THE STAGE OF THE PASSION-PLAY 323 



Both stages existed contemporaneously, and there is 

 no reason to suppose one supplanted the other. 



When the passion-play developed especially in 

 England into a pageant, movable stages on wheels 

 were drawn, often by a dozen men, through the streets. 

 These stages, as at Chester, were sometimes built in two 

 stories, the lower to dress in and the upper for acting. 

 As at Coventry, the sections of the drama were then 

 repeated in all the principal streets. 



Stage- Accessories. If we turn from the stage to 

 its accessories, we find that they are of an extremely 

 primitive character. Neither the flat nor the elevated 

 stage, both open at the sides, admitted of any scenery 

 in the modern sense, while the most crude apparatus 

 readily suggested to an indulgent audience the required 

 effect. A tub or cask answered innumerable purposes. 

 It served for the throne of Lucifer, or perhaps for his 

 own peculiar olla Vulcani, the pot of torment wherein 

 he was bound. 1 In the Alsf elder Spiel we read : 



Omnes diaboli circuent doleum corisando et cantando Lucifer in dem throne . . . 



In a thirteenth-century play we find St. Dorothea "sedens 

 in dolio," and returning thanks to God that the boiling 



disposons les lieux et les demeures, a savoir : Premierement le crucifix, et puis 

 apres le tombeau." There must be a gaol for the prisoners. "L'enfer sera mis 

 d'un cote et les maisons de 1'autre, puis le ciel et les e'toiles." Then follows the 

 places of Caiaphas, Judas, Nicodemus, the Disciples, and the three Maries. The 

 town of Galilee is to be in the middle of the stage, etc. 



1 C, pp. 4, 14, etc.; B, vol. ii. pp. 19, 54, etc. On the boiling pots of hell a 

 common mediaeval notion see B, vol. i. p. 294, vol. ii. pp. 27, 83, 285 ; The 

 Eleven Pains of Hell, etc., in the Old English Miscellany (E.E.T.S.), pp. 148, 

 181 ; Des Teufels russiger Bruder (Grimm's Kindertnarchen, No. 100). The 

 damned are cooked and eaten by the devils in the Egerer Spiel (F, p. 188). 

 Mediaeval art occasionally depicted the hell-pots ; thus, in the Day of Judgment cut 

 in the Schatzbehalter (Fig. 62), a soul is to be seen cooking in a pan ; also in the 

 hell-fresco at the west end of Chal don Church, Surrey, there is a large pot with many 

 souls over a fire. ; A like notion occurs in Siam (see Alabastor, Wheel of the Law}. 



