CHARACTERISATION IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 349 



Christ, and are therefore worthy of the bitterest 

 hatred. 



With such character sketching in mass, as I have 

 indicated above, it will be evident to the reader that 

 all the finer individualisation which we now understand 

 by the term must perforce be absent. It will not, how- 

 ever, be out of place to describe briefly the mediaeval con- 

 ceptions of the chief personages of the plays ; for, with 

 one exception, the notions then current of these per- 

 sonages differed widely from what are held to-day. This 

 one exception is the central figure of the drama. While 

 the Saxons of the ninth century had a Christ of their 

 own, while the German mystics had a Christ of their 

 own, while even pictorial art after Diirer had an indi- 

 vidual Christ, it is still almost impossible to speak of a 

 Christ of the passion-plays. All the individuality this 

 Christ possessed was that of the not entirely consistent 

 sketch presented by the gospel originals. We lack almost 

 completely the warmth and unity which mediaeval art 

 gave to other personages of its drama. The Christ was 

 possibly too sacred to be touched ; he remained Eastern 

 among the mediaeval versions of his contemporaries, 

 and his character was never thoroughly remodelled, like 

 his features, on Western lines. The utterances of the 

 passion-play Jesus are merely rhymed paraphrases of 

 the words used by the Evangelists, and if they are 

 occasionally effective, it arises from their original beauty 

 and simplicity, which is not wholly incongruous even in 

 its new Western setting. 



It is quite otherwise with the character of the 

 Virgin. Here we find much more originality, even 

 after we have set on one side all that was drawn from 



