358 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



no proud prince of hell, but a thoroughly contemptible 

 craven, who fears even to be left alone ; he is treated 

 with contempt by his subordinates, although at the 

 same time they recognise his authority. Mediaeval 

 legend blessed him with a grand-dam, mother, or wife, to 

 whom reference is occasionally made in the plays. 1 The 

 dramatists seem to have been imbued with Luther's 2 

 idea that the best method of treating the Devil was to 

 pour scorn upon him ; and, accordingly, a more pitiable, 

 ludicrous being than the Lucifer of the plays can hardly 

 be conceived. It is only in the opening scene of the 

 Egerer Play that we reach the least trace of a higher 

 artistic conception. 



Satan is, on the whole, a better worked out character ; 

 he is the most enterprising and ambitious of the devils, 

 although his cunning invariably overreaches itself, and 

 he meets discomfiture at the hands of both God and man. 3 

 It is Satan who organises the hunt for souls ; he pre- 

 pares hell chains for the false prophet Christ (Coventry 

 Mysteries, p. 309) ; he alone offers physical resistance to 

 the triumphant Eedeemer ; and he is the devil who 

 suggests plans for the restocking of hell after the with- 

 drawal of the patriarchs. The passion-play conception of 

 Satan is much like that of the negro revivalists, at once 

 cunning and stupid, the fear and the jest of mankind. He 



1 For the characters of Lucifer and Satan see B, vol. ii. pp. 41-104 ; L, vol. 

 ii. p. 305 ; D, p. 153 ; F, p. 292 ; C, pp. 4 et seq. ; H, vol. ii. p. 70 ; I, pp. 96 et 

 seq., p. 144; Theophilus, Part I. 11. 778 et seq., Part II. 11. 440 et seq., etc. 

 As to the Devil's female relatives see I, pp. 55, 102, 104 ; C, p. 13 ; Grimm, 

 Deutsche Mythologie, 842, Marchen, Nos. 29, 119, 125. All were extremely 

 frequent proverbially and colloquially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 

 (see earlier essays, pp. 27, 202). 



2 See the Tischreden, iv. 73, 75, but often elsewhere. 



3 See, for example, Grimm's Marchen, Nos. 81, 125, 189. 



