CHARACTERISATION IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 341 



The only other souls which Lucifer will not receive 

 into hell are those of the strolling scholars, and this 

 because he fears they might corrupt the morals of his 

 mother. The recurrence of such strolling-scholar inci- 

 dents in the passion-plays is fairly strong evidence of 

 those scholars' handiwork in their construction. 1 



One of the most interesting lists of souls is that 

 which occurs in a fourteenth-century Eesurrection Play, 

 wherein Lucifer sends out Satan to fetch in succession 

 the Pope, the Cardinal, the Patriarch, the Legate, the 

 Emperor, the King, the Prince, the Count, the Knight, 

 the Squire, the Justice, the Counsellor, the Priest, the 

 Monk, the Innkeeper, 2 the Miller, the Shipman, the 

 Fiddler, with many other traders and handicraftsmen. 8 

 The resemblance to the later Dance of Death lists is 

 undeniable, and the relation becomes all the more signi- 

 ficant when we remember that in the mediseval plays 

 Death was placed with the devils in hell or appears as 

 an associate of Lucifer on earth. 4 



1 See I, pp. 102, 103 ; F, p. 288. For the brilliant immorality of these 

 scholars see, besides the references in the footnote on p. 304, S, pp. 203-208. 



2 The innkeeper or 'taverner,' male or female, met with small mercy at 

 the hands of the mediseval playwright. Besides the unfriendly innkeepers of 

 Bethlehem, and of the "soul-lists," we find in the Chester Plays (p. 81) at the 

 harrowing of hell a mulier or ' taverner ' left behind, who, when on earth, had 

 mixed wines and adulterated beer. She remains to burn 



With all mashers, minglers of wyne in the nighte. 



This may be taken as a derivation at least ben trovato of a modern word. 



3 See A, p. 118. In the Townley Mysteries, pp. 312, 314, will be found a long 

 and interesting list of persons whom the devils mean to have in hell. Samples 

 of the highest ecclesiastics are always to be found in hell, e.g. Chester Plays, p. 

 183 ; Herrad von Landsberg's Hortus Deliciarum, 1180 ; Meister Stephan's Last 

 Judgment, circa 1450 (see the frontispiece), and the cuts of Quentel's Kolner 

 Eibel, 1480. 



4 Cf. H, vol. ii. pp. 68 et seq. ; C, pp. 67, 68, with direct reference to the 

 Dance of Death ; K, p. 90 ; B, vol. ii. p. 419 ; T, p. 400. The reader may also 

 compare Diirer's Ritter, Tod and Teufel, and the Gospel of Nicodemus, xvii. 1. 



