CHARACTERISE TION IN THE PASS1ON-PLA Y 337 



stage representation of the Day of Judgment ; l nor did 

 he find any anachronism in the Virgin Mother proceed- 

 ing to the Stations. 2 These symbols from his childhood 

 onwards were deeply significant to the Christian of 

 the Middle Ages ; and unless we grasp something of his 

 feeling towards them, we shall miss much of the power of 

 the religious drama, just as we shall fail to appreciate 

 many shades of mediaeval thought even in the sermons 

 of Wyclif and Tauler. 



But to this ecclesiastical symbolism, designed to 

 arouse by association certain deep religious feelings, we 

 find added in the passion-plays a peculiar folk-symbolism 

 intended to work upon other emotions, and often doing- 

 it in a manner which grossly offends the less robust 

 taste of modern times. Both types of symbolism exer- 

 cised a noteworthy influence over pictorial art. One 

 action by which the mediaeval playwright succeeded in 

 expressing symbolically an almost endless variety of 

 moods was the dance. The dance could be rendered 

 symbolical of holy or of fiendish joy, of insult, of 

 horror, or of wantonness. Foremost among such sym- 

 bolic dances we may notice the Dance of Angels and the 

 Dance of Devils both in a certain sense religious dances. 

 Of such corybantic symbols the faith that came from 



1 The recital of the Seven Acts of Mercy by Christ on the Day of Judgment is 

 traditional so far as the religious drama is concerned. Besides the German plays, 

 I may refer to Townley Mysteries, pp. 316-318. See also the Old English Miscel- 

 lany, E.E.T.S., p. 81 ; and the Manuel d'Iconographie chretienne, p. 277. In 

 the Coventry Mysteries (p. 82) the Virgin, when three years old, repeats in the 

 Temple the Fifteen Psalms a miraculous repetition of another mediaeval category, 

 which naturally astonishes the Episcopus. 



- See A, pp. 45 et seq., p. 186. Erasmus satirises a like anachronism by a 

 discussion between the monks as to which book of Hours the Virgin used (see 

 also B, vol. ii. p. 285 ; H, p. 110). 



VOL. II 7 



