364 THE GERMAN PASSION-PLA Y 



VII. On the Performers in the great Folk 

 Passion- Plays 



Of the essence of the modern drama are the profes- 

 sional actor and the professional playwright. In the 

 Middle Ages, so soon as the folk had withdrawn the 

 passion-play from sacerdotal influence, there was not a 

 trace of the professional element. The man of the folk 

 writes, and the people act, to amuse the people. The 

 drama is the central feature of a municipal holiday- 

 making ; there is no rigid line between the amusers and 

 the amused. The actors act for the pleasure of it, and 

 the trained and salaried professional actor is unknown. 

 Thus, whatever opportunities may have existed for the 

 display of dramatic power in the passion-play characters 

 we have just described for individual interpretation 

 as apart from symbolic significance they were almost 

 entirely thrown away by the untrained actors of the 

 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These actors were 

 homely burghers and simple craftsmen, who were prob- 

 ably only called upon to act once or twice in the 

 course of the year, 1 and who had no conception that 

 acting requires either genius or a lengthy education. 



The religious drama, when it passed from the Church 

 to the market-place, fell into the hands of honest but 

 illiterate citizens, who generally took part in it by 



1 It might be imagined that the numerous Fastnachtspiele provided a 

 dramatic school. But apart from the question of whether broad farce can be a 

 training for religious tragedy, it may be doubted whether the great open-air 

 spectacles would draw any dramatic profit from the characterless buffooneries 

 of the wine-shop. It must be remembered, however, that the very street boys 

 played at passion-plays, besides performing religious dramas at school : see 

 Thomas Platter's Autobiographic (ed. Fechter), 1840, pp. 122-124. 



