controversy with an occasional play. Melancthon too gave the practice encouragement, until not only Wittenberg, but the schools of Saxony in general, and Thuringia, whose hills were in sight, surpassed all the countries of Germany in their attention to plays. In Leipsic, Erfurt, and Magdeburg comedies were regularly represented before the school-masters. But it was at the University of Strassburg, even at the time when the unsmiling Calvin was seeking asylum there, that the dramatic life of the German seminaries found a splendid culmination. Yearly in the academic theatre took place a series of representations, by students, of marvellous pomp and elaboration. The school and college-plays were of various character. Sometimes they were from Terence, Plautus, or Aristophanes; sometimes modifications of the ancient mysteries, meant to enforce the evangelical theology; sometimes comedies full of the contemporary life. There are several men that have earned mention in the history of German literature by writing plays for students. The representations became a principal means for celebrating great occasions. If special honor was to be done to a festival, or a princely visit was expected, the market-place, the Rathhaus, or the church was prepared, and it was the professor's or the school-master's duty to direct the boys in their performance of a play. We get glimpses in the chronicles of the circumstances under which the representations took place. The magistrates-even the courts-lent brilliant dresses. One old writer laments that the ignorant people have so little sense for arts of this kind. "Often tumult and mocking are heard, for it is the greatest joy to the rabble if the spectators fall down through broken benches." The old three-storied stage of the mysteries was often retained, with Heaven above, Earth in the middle space, and Hell below, where, according to the stage direction of the "Golden Legend," "the devils walked about and made a great noise." Lazarus is described as represented in the sixteenth century, before a hotel, before which sat the rich man carousing, while Abraham, in a parson's coat, looked out of an upper window. This rudeness, however, belongs rather to the Volks-comödie" than the "Schul-comödie," whose adjuncts were generally far more rational, and sometimes even brilliant,-as in the Strassburg representations. It was only in the seminaries that art was preserved from utter decay. One may trace the Schul-comödie until far down in the eighteenth century, and in the last mention I find of it appears an interesting figure. In 1780, at the military school in Stuttgard, the birthday of the Duke of Würtemberg was celebrated by a performance of Göthe's Clavigo." The leading part was taken by a youth of twenty-one, with high cheek-bones, a broad, low Greek brow, above straight eye-brows, a prominent nose, and lips nervous with an extraordinary energy. The German narrator says he played the part "abominably, shrieking, roaring, unmannerly to a laughable degree." It was the young Schiller, wild as a Pythoness upon her tripod, with the "Robbers," which became famous in the following year. CHAPTER VII. THE MASTERSINGERS. Let us turn now to the poetry which, if it is not the best of this period of decline, is at any rate the most characteristic, -the work of the Mastersingers. When the race of Minnesingers came to an end, they were not without heirs. Men of knightly station no longer rode from castle to castle prepared to sing, with lute in hand, the praises of ladies. There were, however, wandering minstrels, whose merit had become very inferior, and whose repute was of the worst. At tournaments the rough play of arms was sometimes interrupted by songs sung by the heralds or their assistants. At the festivals of the peasants there were poets who, in a similar way, performed a humbler office. At weddings, baptisms, and other family festivals in the cities, especially Nuremberg, poets, dressed in white cloaks and decorated with badges of silver,3 took part in the celebration. At the end of the thirteenth century, among the last of the Minnesingers, lived Heinrich Frauenlob, a poet already mentioned. He has all the faults of a time of decay,-an overweening opin 1 Wappendichter. ion of himself, hopelessness with respect to the world, complaint of misappreciation, a fantastic, hair-splitting over-refinement, instead of the simple, unconscious nature of poets like Walther von der Vogelweide. From some real or fancied praise of women, from which perhaps came his name, he was held by them in high honor. In the old cathedral of Mainz, where his grave is shown, a bas-relief represents the poet's coffin borne on the shoulders of women. Tradition says he was really so buried, and libations of wine so liberally poured out that the church swam with it. Nothing that Frauenlob has left justifies such especial observances in his honor. He it was who, by establishing some sort of a school in which men of the higher class were taught the rules of singing and poetry, is said to stand at the transition point where the class of noble minstrels pass over into the Mastersingers, although certain unauthenticated statements give an earlier date. The disposition to write and sing developed into a strange passion among the handicraftsmen of the towns, spreading from city to city until there was scarcely one not affected by it; in Southern Germany its manifestations were especially numerous and grotesque. Although the poetry of the Minnesingers shades into that of the Mastersingers by imperceptible gradations, some points of contrast may be noticed the former was cultivated by the nobles, and became a profession; the latter by burghers and their workmen, and was only a curious form of amusement; in the minnelieder the greatest freedom prevailed as to subject and form; the Master " singers, however, worked according to very definite laws. In each school these laws were carefully written down; although there was rarely formal connection between the Mastersingers of different cities, the rules in each case varied but little; the singers went from city to city, engaging in contests without suffering embarrassment. The collection of laws was called the "Tabulatur." Three "Merker," or umpires, were presidents in each school, who at festivals sat upon a stage, with a Bible close at hand. The churches were the most frequent places of assembling; sometimes the festival took place in the town hall, sometimes in the open air. In Wagner's opera of the Mastersingers," in which the old life is closely reproduced, the Mastersingers are represented as marching in procession into the church of Saint Katherine, in Nuremberg, where a contest takes place in which the victor is to receive the hand of the beautiful daughter of a goldsmith. Again, a festival takes place in a broad meadow in the outskirts of the city, the minstrels and the trade-guilds entering to a glorious march. The shoemakers sing a song in honor of Saint Crispin, who stole leather from the rich to make shoes for the poor; the tailors celebrate a hero of their trade who, during a siege, sewing himself up in goat-skins, performed such antics on the city walls that the frightened enemy withdrew. At length the handsome hero of the piece sings his way to victory, and maid and lover are happily united.1 1 The Nation. |