THE PERFORMERS IN THE PASSION-PLA Y 369 



Such, then, are the history, the characterisation, the 

 stage, and the actors of the fully developed mediaeval 

 passion-play the religious drama written by the 

 mastersingers and acted by the craftsmen of the guilds. 

 The change from the scenic ritual of the early Christian 

 priests to the complex pageant of the market-place, with 

 its hundreds of actors, its colour, its music, its folk- 

 tongue, and its dancing, marks a change in the spirit of 

 mediaeval Christianity its final appropriation by the folk 

 as a folk-religion. Protestantism was again to wrest this 

 religion from the hands of the people, and mark all these 

 symbols, legends, and folk-beliefs as superstitious, where 

 it did not, indeed, brand them as devilish. And with 

 what result ? That folk-symbolism and folk-art, muni- 

 cipal fete and the old religious socialism would be 

 destroyed ; that the withering grasp of a dogmatic 

 religion of the schools without symbolism, without art, 

 without pageantry would again be laid on the Teutonic 

 folk-spirit. But that folk-spirit cannot be permanently 

 shut out from moulding its religion and its art. In a 

 lower or higher form it is sure, sooner or later, to drag 

 them out from the cloister and the museum, and make 

 them a factor of the streets and the market-place. 

 Nor are traces wanting of the beginnings of such a 

 revival of folk -influence in our life to-day. Those 

 who seek will find both the healthy and the diseased 

 germs. 



VOL. II 2B 



