OF SIX MEDIAEVAL WOMEN 



exercise, dispensed as a sort of religious tonic 

 to womankind, calculated to arouse slumbering 

 souls, or to quicken to still further effort those 

 that did not slumber. For us, its chief interest 

 lies in the antiphonic arrangement of the 

 dialogue, in which we may trace the first germs 

 of characterisation, and in the music, the refrains 

 of which contain the first suggestions, as far as 

 we know, of the principle of the leitmotiv, a 

 principle carried to its most complete develop- 

 ment by Wagner. Although the earliest known 

 MS. of it is of the eleventh century, so finished, 

 yet so simple, are its dialogues and refrains, that 

 it seems not unreasonable to infer that the form 

 of the play was well known, either through 

 some earlier MS. or through oral tradition. 

 It is only a slight development of the elegy in 

 dialogue which was performed in A.D. 874, at 

 the funeral of Hathumoda, the first abbess of 

 Gandersheim. This dialogue takes place be- 

 tween the sorrow - stricken nuns, who speak 

 in chorus of their loss, and the monk Wichbert, 

 who acts as consoler. Although its form is 

 liturgical, its subject entitles it to be considered 

 the earliest known mediaeval dramatic work 

 extant. 



Of Roswitha's dramas, three seem to stand 

 out as of special interest Abraham^ Callimachus^ 

 and Paphnutius. All of these are more or less 

 patchwork adaptations from the legendary debris 

 of antiquity. The first appears to have been 

 taken by Roswitha from a Latin translation of a 



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