THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
to imprison Truth until she is freed by a layman versed in the Bible. The English Everyman was Protestantized by having the hero saved by Faith instead of by Good Deeds. The Roman Catholics long lacked, both in the drama and elsewhere, such determined protagonists as their opponents possessed, nor was the situation changed until toward the end of the sixteenth century, when the Jesuits began their dramatic propaganda with the aid of all the refinements of the Barocco style. In Spain, beginning with the middle of the sixteenth century, the Corpus Christi processions assumed the form of moralities rigidly Roman Catholic in spirit, filled with hatred of heresy, and usually exalting the mystery of transubstantiation. In the following century, through the genius of Calderon, they attained their zenith, and by their rich mysticism, allegory, and diction they impressed even the Protestant mind.
While dramas based on the Bible and on legends of the saints maintained their existence in Roman Catholic lands, and even spread to such countries as Poland and Croatia, they gradually retreated from
the cities to the rural districts, where
7. The they may still be witnessed. By far the
Oberammer- most famous of this type is the passion
gau Passion play of Ober-Ammergau (q.v.), which
Play. in its original form, represented by a
manuscript of 1662, was a combination of a fifteenth-century Augsburg passion play with a sixteenth-century passion play of the Augsburg meistersinger Sebastian Wild, who drew from the Cristus redivivus of the Englishman Nicholas Grimald (1519-62). In 1750 the play was entirely revised, at the request of the villagers of Ober-Ammergau, by a Benedictine friar, Ferdinand Rosner, who introduced scenic effects borrowed from the Jesuit stage as well as arias and choruses modeled on Italian opera. The most striking innovation, however, was the representation of prefiguration of New-Testament events in the Old Testament. This motive, apparently found in the Middle Ages only in the Heidelberg passion play (manuscript of 1513), which, for instance, prefigures Jesus and the woman of Samaria by Eliezer and Rebecca at the well, was a favorite device in the Jesuit drama, whence Rosner incorporated it in the Ober-Ammergau play. In the second half of the eighteenth century the mocking spirit of the Enlightenment caused the governments of Bavaria and Austria to assume an unfavorable position toward the religious drama, and the production of passion plays was forbidden. In 1780, however, after " amendment " by the clergy of Ettal, the Ober-Ammergau play was excepted from the prohibition, and though again forbidden in 1801, it was officially sanctioned after 1811. By 1850 the text had again been revised and the verse of the dialogue had been turned into prose, while it now contained clear traces of the influence of the sentimentalism of the eighteenth century and of the religious poetry of Klopstock. The play as now presented is exceedingly impressive and reverent; each actor is chosen in conformity with his character and is schooled both by tradition and practise; but the stage is no longer that of medieval times. The success of the Ober-Ammergau Passion Play has
led to the revival of the religious drama in other parts of southern Germany, as at Brixlegg in the Tyrol and at Horitz in Bohemia.
The Christmas plays, still produced even among Protestants, are less ambitious. As already noted, the late Middle Ages witnessed a tendency to transfer the drama of the birth and child- 8. The hood of Christ from Christmas to the
Christmas summer, but the Christmas play proper Plays. still survived, though in simpler form. Among the German Christmas plays special interest attaches to one of the fifteenth century in the Hessian dialect, presenting many traits which became traditional in the cycle, such as the humorous character of the aged Joseph and the comic shepherd scenes with their allusions to contemporary peasant life. The scenes of the three kings and Herod are often reminiscent of the Entpfengnuss und Geburdt Johannis und Christi of Hans Sachs, and they were often amalgamated with the Christmas play, which was also sometimes combined with the Advent play, in which the Christ-child goes about to see whether the children have been good and industrious. See also Poems, Anonymous, of the Ancient Church, 18; Roswitha.
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Bibliography: Among texts may be noted: Digby Miracle Plays, ed. W. Sharpe for Abbotsford Club, Edinburgh, 1835; Towneley Mysteries, ed. J. Raine for Surtees Society, Durham, 1836; T. Wright, Early Mysteries and other Latin Poems of the 12th and 13th Centuries, London, 1838; Ludus Coventrice, ed. J. O. Halliwell for Shakespeare Society, London, 1841; The Chester Plays, ed. T. Wright for Shakespeare Society, 2 vols., London, 1843-47; W. Marriott, Collection of English Miracle Plays or Mysteries, London, 1843; Migne, Dictionnaire de mysteres, Paris, 1854; Digby Mysteries, ed. J. F. FurnivaH, London, 1882; Miracles de nostre dame par personnages, ed. G. Paris and U. Robert, 7 vols., Paris, 1876-80 (cf. H. Schnell, Untersuchungen uber den Verfasser des Miracles , Marburg, 1885) ; A. Greban, Mystere de la passion, ed. G. Paris and G. Raynaud, Paris, 1878; L. T. Smith, York Plays, Oxford, 1885; Miracles de la bienheureuse Vierge Marie, ed. C. Bouchet, Orleans, 1888; Mistere de S. Bernard de Merthon, ed. Lecoy de la Marche, Paris, 1889; Mistere du Viet Testament, ed. J. de Rothschild, Paris, 1891; C. Davidson, Studies in the English Mystery Plays, New York, 1892; Mystere de la passion, ed. J. M. Richard, Paris, 1894; A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes, 4th ed., Oxford and New York, 1904; Everyman: a morality Play; with an Introduction by A. T. Quiller-Couch, New York, 1908; W. Meyer, Fragmenta burana, Berlin, 1901.
Discussions are: J. L. Klein, Geschichte des Dramas, iii. 599-754, iv. 1-242, viii. 218-296, ix. 412^89, xi. 2, pp. 602-654, xii. 293-362, 711-754, xiii. 1-121, 13 vols., Leipsic, 1856-76 (deals with medieval plays in Italy, Spain, and England); W. Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described, especially the English Lyrical Plays founded on Apocryphal N. T. Story, London, 1823; F. J. Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters, 2 vols., Carlsruhe, 1846; E. L. N. Viollet le Due, Ancien theatre francois, 10 vols., Paris, 1854-57; E. Norris, Ancient Cornish Drama, 2 vols., Oxford, 1859; C. E. H. de Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques de moyen age, Rennes, 1860; C. Wilken, Geschichte der geistlichen Spiele in Deutschland, Gottingen, 1872; M. Sepet, Les Prophetes du Christ, Paris, 1878 (fundamental for this class of play) ; idem, Origines catholiques de theatre moderne, ib. 1901; idem, Le Drame religieux au moyen age, ib. 1903; K. A. Hase, Miracle Plays and Sacred Dramas, London, 1880; W. Blades, Account of the German Morality Play " Depositio cornuti typographic^" London, 1885; L. Gautier, Hist, de la poesie liturgique au moyen Age, vol. i., Paris, 1886; Petit de Julleville, Les My stores, 2 vols., Paris, 1888 (the main work for France); F. M. Stoddard, References for Students of Miracle-Plays