has a loathsome disease, and turns her out of his house. Luther, mortally insulted by this affront, dies, and with him dies the great fool, the Reformation. Never has a national movement been attacked with such venom as in Von dem grossen Lutherischen Narren; if it had lain in the power of any man to make the Reformation ridiculous, that man was Murner.

On the Protestant side, there was no writer whose genius could in any way be compared with Murner's. The Swiss dramatist, Niklaus Manuel (1484-1530), who will be discussed in the following chapter, was, as a satirist, perhaps the most gifted, but he was not in a position to play an effective rôle in the religious conflicts of the time. On the other hand, Erasmus Alberus (ca. 1500-53), who was born at Sprend- Erasmus lingen, near Frankfort, was an intimate friend of Luther and Alberus, Melanchthon and shared in their hottest battles. His most 53. important work, Der Barfüsser Munche Eulenspiegel vnd Alcoran, a satire on the Catholic worship of saints, appeared, with a preface by Luther, in 1542, and the collection of satirical fables, Das Buch von der Tugent vnd Weissheitwhich has been already referred to-in 1550. These were, on the whole, the sharpest literary weapons which the reformers had at their command.

ca. 1500

THROUGHOUT the middle ages, the drama, as we have seen, was merely an adjunct of the Church, an extension of the ritual, in which the imagination had more or less play. But, with every succeeding century, the Mysteries grew in elaboration and importance; secular elements were introduced, and the language of the people gradually took the place of Latin. It was not, however, until nearly the close of the sixteenth century that the German religious dramas of this class reached the highest point of their development in the elaborate "Osterspiele," performed in the Weinmarkt of Lucerne.1 The beginnings of a serious drama of a more secular Theophilus nature are to be seen in the Low German play Theophilus of the fourteenth century, and the Spiel von Fraw Jutten, written in 1480 by Theodor Schernberk, a priest of Mülhausen.2 Both dramas are forerunners of the Reformation Faust; both represent the tragedy of man's temptation by the evil powers, and his fall. Theophilus sells his soul to the devil in order to attain worldly distinction; "Frau Jutta of England" is tempted by the powers of evil to pass herself off as a man. She studies in Paris, and in Rome rises to high ecclesiastical honours, being ultimately chosen Pope under the name of Johannes VIII.; but the devils who have tempted her also bring about her fall; her sex is discovered, and she only escapes perdition by taking upon herself the shame of the world. The

and Fraw Jutten.

1 Cp. F. Leibing, Die Inscenierung des sweitägigen Luzerner Osterspieles vom Jahre 1583 durch Renwart Cysat, Elberfeld, 1869.

2 Theophilus, ed. Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Hannover, 1853-54; Fraw Jutten in A. von Keller's Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15. Jahrh. 2, 900 ff.

earliest stages of a purely secular comedy are to be found in the rough "Fastnachtsspiele" or Shrovetide plays which The "Fasbecame popular in Nürnberg in the latter part of the fifteenth nachtsspiel." century. The "Fastnachtsspiel," like the "Narren" literature of the age, was a natural outcome of the amusements of the carnival. The wearing of a mask was, in itself, the first step towards dramatic representation, and in the "Schembartlauf" (i.e., “Maskenlauf"), organised every year by the butchers and cutlers of Nürnberg, from about the middle of the fourteenth century to the time of Hans Sachs, there were many dramatic elements; amongst other things, the "Schembartläufer" represented symbolically the conflict of spring and winter, a conflict to which the drama in all literatures seems ultimately to lead back. The next step, namely, to accompany these representations by dialogue, or to perform comic scenes of everyday life, was the more easy, for such scenes had already been introduced, as episodes, in the religious drama. In this way arose the Fastnachtsspiel, which, in its earliest stages, as cultivated by Hans Rosenplüt and Hans Folz, was little more than a comic dialogue.1

of the Reformation

Although the drama had thus, at the beginning of the Influence sixteenth century, only begun to emerge as a literary form, no branch of literature responded more quickly to the stimulus on the of the Reformation; under its influence, dramatic literature drama. developed with an extraordinary energy, as if to make up for the centuries in which it had lain dormant. There was at this epoch every promise that Germany would soon produce a national drama not inferior to that of Spain or England; but in the following centuries, the age when this promise might have been realised, the land was devastated by a catastrophe hardly less appalling and demoralising than the migrations of early Germanic times-the Thirty Years' War. The novel, the satire, the lyric-such literary forms were possible amidst the political confusion of the seventeenth century, even if they could not flourish; but the drama cannot exist in an era of social disintegration, and the dramatic beginnings of the sixteenth century, instead of being a prelude to something better, received a check which made further development impossible for a time.

1 A. von Keller, Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15. Jahrh. (Stuttg. Litt. Ver., 28-30, 46), 1853-58.

school comedy.

The Reformation drama1 was not, however, an actual product of the Reformation. The medium from which it sprang was formed, on the one hand, by humanism, and on the other, by the free burgher spirit. In other words, although the drama of this period drew its chief nourishment from the Reformation, in its first stages it was a product of causes similar to those which brought about the Reformation, and not an immediate result of the Reformation itself. The influence which the humanists exerted on the drama was, in the The Latin first instance, due to their revival of Latin comedy. Terence, whose works had been read steadily throughout the middle ages, became still more popular, the performance of his pieces being a favourite method of instruction in Latin. Even public performances were instituted by the schools, on which occasions, prologues in German acquainted the audience with the subject of the plays. And, as has already been noted, a complete translation of Terence was published in 1499. Plautus stood in almost as high favour as Terence, and from Plautus to original plays in imitation of the Latin comedy, the step was a small one. In 1470, Wimpfeling's Stylpho,2 the first School Comedy by a German, was produced at Heidelberg; in 1498, Reuchlin published his Scenica Progymnasmata or Henno, a witty Latin farce, the most effective scene of which is taken from the French farce of Maître Pathelin; and three years later, Konrad Celtes, who had himself written a Ludus Dianæ (1500), brought to light the imitations of Terence by Hrotsuith of Gandersheim. Thus was laid the basis of a Latin School Comedy, which not only afforded the humanistic circles of the sixteenth century an outlet for their purely literary aspirations, but also affected materially the developThe Refor- ment of the national drama.3

mation drama in Switzerland.

Switzerland was the focus of the Reformation drama in the narrower sense of the word; here were produced the

1 Schauspiele aus dem 16. Jahrhundert, ed. J. Tittmann (Deutsche Dichter des 16. Jahrh., 2, 3), Leipzig, 1868; Das Drama der Reformationszeit, ed. R. Froning (D.N.L., 22 [1895]). Cp. J. Minor's bibliographical Einleitung in das Drama des 16. Jahrh., in the Neudrucke, Nos. 79, 80, Halle, 1889, and R. Genée, Lehr- und Wanderjahre des deutschen Schauspiels, Berlin, 1882. 2 Ed. H. Holstein, Berlin, 1892.

3 On the Latin School Comedy in Germany, see C. H. Herford, The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 16th Century, Cambridge, 1886,

earliest Biblical dramas as distinguished from formless mystery plays. In Basle, in the years 1515 and 1516, Pamphilus Gengenbach, a printer and Meistersinger of Nürnberg, P. Gengen. adapted the Fastnachtsspiel, which had been flourishing in bach. Nürnberg for at least a generation, to moral and religious ends. In Die Gouchmat he satirises, as his opponent Murner a year or two after, the "fools of love"; in Der Nollhart (1517), again, he throws into dialogue form the prophecies of a hermit; but both pieces are rather satires in the interests of the Reformation than actual dramas. An important representative of the Swiss Protestant comedy is Niklaus Manuel (1484-1530), a native of Berne, dis- N. Manuel, 1484-1530. tinguished not only as a poet, but as a soldier and a painter. At Shrovetide of the year 1522 a play of Manuel's' was performed "darinn die warheit in schimpffs wyss (ie., scherzweise) vom Pabst vnd siner priesterschafft gemeldet würt"; it is an effective satire on the ambition and worldly splendour of the Pope and his servants, contrasted with the simple life of Christ and His disciples. Manuel here attempts something more ambitious than a Fastnachtsspiel; with the latter he incorporates the more elaborate effects of the later Swiss Mystery. He draws his figures with a rough but sure hand; his language is gross, but it is the forcible and humorous grossness of the peasants' speech, and, when he likes, no anti-Reformation satirist is more bitter or ruthless than he. In 1525 Manuel produced the admirable Fastnachtsspiel, Der Ablasskrämer, and in 1526, Barbali, a protest against nunneries. His best satire, and, after Murner's, the best of the Reformation period, is, however, the Dialogue, Von der Messz kranckheit vnd jrem letsten willen, which appeared in 1528.

The drama of the Reformation was not long restricted to Switzerland. In 1527 a Parabell vam vorlorn Szohn,3 written in a Low German dialect by Burkard Waldis, who has been noticed above as a fable-writer, was performed in Riga, and two years later a Dutch humanist, Guilielmus Gnaphæus (1493-1568), produced a Latin drama, Acolastus, on the

1 Ed. K. Goedeke, Hannover, 1856. Cp. R. Froning, l.c., I ff.

2 Ed. J. Baechtold, Frauenfeld, 1878. Cp. J. Tittmann, .c., I, 1 ff.; R. Froning, .c., 13 ff.

3 Ed. G. Milchsack (Neudrucke, 30), Halle, 1881. Cp. Froning, .c., 31 ff. 4 Ed. J. Bolte, Berlin, 1890.

The Para

bell vam Szohn by B. Waldis,

vorlorn

1527.