342 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



In Schedel's Buck der Croniken, 1493, p. 261, a 

 grimly powerful dance of three deaths with their musician 

 is brought into relation with the Day of Judgment. 

 Thus we have another link connecting the Dance of 

 Devils with the Dance of Death. It seems probable that 

 the pictorial Dances of Death took their origin in the 

 spectacular Dance of Devils which occurred in the hell 

 scenes of the religious dramas. 1 Nor does it appear far- 

 fetched to hold that the wood-cutters took their concep- 

 tion of the Knaveries sets of pictures representing the 

 scamps and sinners of the world from the same source. 

 Indeed the plays here, as elsewhere, presented the richest 

 material ready to the artist's hand. 



Other symbolic dances to which we may briefly 

 refer are those of the Bitter appointed to guard the 

 sepulchre, and of Mary Magdalen in gaudio. The 

 Ritter, or Knights, represent the Eoman soldiers who 

 receive instructions from Pilate to keep watch and ward 



In the earliest Germanic times, Death was undoubtedly thought of as a woman 

 (a Valkyrie like Homer's 6X077 Krjp) : see p. 175. Perhaps the earliest known 

 representation of Death is that in the Leofric Missal (Warren, p. 45), where he is 

 drawn as a devil, not as a skeleton. Death appeared till quite recently among the 

 dramatis personae of a travelling Obersteiern company. In their Spiel vom guten 

 Hirten he dances off with a shepherdess, and thoroughly mediaeval Dance of 

 Death verses are put into the mouths of both. In this case also Death is associated 

 with the Devil : see Q, pp. 329, 331, 355, 359. 



1 Woltmann (Holbein, chap, xi., Todesbilder und Todtentanze, p. 249) 

 holds that the Dances of Death were first acted, and that, as in the case of the 

 passion -incidents, the painter followed the actor. Wackernagel, Geschichte der 

 deutschen Literatur, p. 396, places the Dances of Death under Geistliche Spiele. 

 At the same time it must be noted that while the first ' soul-list ' occurs in a 

 play of which the manuscript dates from the second half of the fourteenth 

 century, the Klingenthaler Todtentanz (see vol. i. Essay I.) dates from 1312. Cf. 

 Massmann, Die Baseler Todtentdnze, p. 36. The typical knaves in the block- 

 book, Die acht Schalkheiten, from the middle of the fifteenth century, nearly all 

 occur in the ' soul-lists ' of the various plays. For the study of the question 

 Pfister's edition of Rechtstreit des Menschen mit dem Tode (circa 1460) contains 

 woodcuts of primary historical importance. 



