and a racket. By four o'clock it was a din of wheels, cracking whips,
and postilions' cries. Great diligences, loaded down till they
squeaked and groaned on their axles; hay-wagons of all sizes, rigged
with white cloth stretched on poles for a cover, and rough planks
fastened to the sides for seats, came in procession, all packed with
the country people; hundreds of shabby einspanners, bringing two or
three, and sometimes a fourth holding on behind with dangling feet;
fine travelling-carriages of rich people, their postilions decked in
blue and silver, with shining black hats, and brass horns swung over
their shoulders by green and white cords and tassels,--on they came
into the twist and tangle, making it worse, minute by minute.
Most remarkable among all the remarkable costumes to be seen was that
of an old woman from Dachau. She was only a peasant, but she was a
peasant of some estate and degree. She had come as escort and maid for
four young women belonging to a Roman Catholic institution, and
wearing its plain uniform. The contrast between the young ladies'
conventional garb of black and white and the blazing toilet of their
guide and protector was ludicrous. She wore a jacket of brocade stiff
with red, green, and silver embroidery; the sleeves puffed out big at
the shoulder, straight and tight below to the wrist. It came down
behind only a little lower than her shoulder-blades, and it was open
in front from the throat to the waist-belt, showing beneath a solid
mass of gold and silver braid. Nine enormous silver buttons were sewed
on each side the fronts; a scarf of soft black silk was fastened tight
round her throat by a superb silver ornament, all twists and chains
and disks. Her black woollen petticoat was laid in small, close
flutings, straight from belt to hem, edged with scarlet, and
apparently was stiff enough to stand alone. It was held out from her
body, just below the belt, by a stiff rope coil underneath it, making
a tight, hard, round ridge just below her waist, and nearly doubling
her apparent size. All the women in Dachau must be as "thick" as that,
she said; and "lovers must have long arms to reach round them!" The
jacket, petticoat, and scarf, and all her ornaments, had belonged to
her grandmother. What a comment on the quality of the fabrics and the
perpetuity of a fashion! She was as elegant to-day as her ancestor had
been nearly a century before her. On her head she wore a structure of
brocaded black ribbon, built up into high projecting horns or towers,
and floating in streamers behind. As she herself was nearly six feet
tall, this shining brocade fortress on the top of her head moved about
above the heads of the crowd like something carried aloft for show in
a procession.
Another interesting sight was the peasants who had come bringing
edelweiss and blue gentians to sell,--great bunches of the lovely dark
blue chalices, drooping a little, but wonderfully fresh to have come
two days, or even three, from home; the edelweiss blossoms were there
by sheaves, and ten pfennigs a flower seemed none too much to pay to a
man who had climbed among dangerous glaciers to pick it, and had
walked three whole days to bring it to market.
The very poor people, who had walked, were the most interesting. They
came in groups, evidently families, two women to one man; carrying
their provisions in baskets, bundles, or knapsacks; worn and haggard
with dust and fatigue, but wearing a noticeable look of earnestness,
almost of exaltation. Many of them had walked forty or fifty miles;
they had brought only black bread to eat; they would sleep the two
nights on hay in some barn,--those of them who had had the great good
fortune to secure such a luxury; the rest--and that meant
hundreds--would sit on the ground anywhere where they could find a
spot clear and a rest for their heads; and after two nights and a day
of this, they trudged back again their forty miles or fifty,
refreshed, glad, and satisfied for the rest of their lives. This is
what the Passion Play means to the devout, ignorant Catholic peasant
of Bavaria to-day, and this is what it has meant to his race for
hundreds of years.
The antagonism and enlightenment of the Reformation did not reach the
Bavarian peasant,--did not so much as disturb his reverence for the
tangible tokens and presentations of his religion. He did not so much
as know when miracle plays were cast out and forbidden in other
countries. But it was sixty-one years later than this that the
Oberammergau people, stricken with terror at a plague in their
village, knew no better device to stay it than to vow to God the
performance of a Play of the Divine Passion of Christ. It is as holy a
thing to the masses of them now as it was then; and no one can do
justice to the play, even as a dramatic spectacle, who does not look
at it with recognition of this fact.
The early history of the Play itself is not known. The oldest
text-book of it now extant bears the date 1662,--nearly a generation
later than the first performance of it in Oberammergau. This
manuscript is still in possession of the Lang family, and is greatly
amusing in parts. The prologue gives an account of the New Testament
plan of salvation, and exhorts all people to avail themselves of it
with gratitude and devotion. At this juncture in rushes a demon
messenger from the devil, bearing a letter, which he unfolds and
reads. In this letter the devil requests all the people not to yield
to the influence of this play, asks them to make all the discordant
noises they can while it is going on, and promises to reward them well
if they will do so. The letter is signed: "I, Lucifer, Dog of Hell, in
my hellish house, where the fire pours out of the windows." The demon,
having read the letter aloud, folds it up and addresses the audience,
saying: "Now you have heard what my master wishes. He is a very good
master, and will reward you! Hie, Devil! up and away!" with which he
leaps off the stage, and the play at once begins, opening with a scene
laid in Bethany,--a meeting between Christ and his disciples. These
grotesque fancies, quips, and cranks were gradually banished from the
Play. Every year it was more or less altered, priest after priest
revising or rewriting it, down to the time of the now venerable
Daisenberger, who spent his youth in the monastery of Ettal, and first
saw the Passion Play acted at Oberammergau in 1830.
In 1845 the Oberammergau people, in unanimous enthusiasm, demanded to
have Daisenberger appointed as their pastor. He at once identified
himself warmly with the dramatic as well as the spiritual life of the
community; and it is to his learning and skill that the final
admirable form of the Passion Play, and the villagers' wonderful
success in rendering it, are due. He has written many Biblical dramas
and historical plays founded on incidents in the history of Bavaria.
Chief among these are: "The Founding of the Monastery of Ettal,"
"Theolinda," "King Heinrich and Duke Arnold of Bavaria," "Otto Von
Wittelsbach at the Veronese Hermitage," "The Bavarians in the
Peasants' War," "Luitberge, Duchess of Bavaria." He has also
dramatized some of the legends of the saints, and has translated the
"Antigone" of Sophocles and arranged it for the Oberammergau stage. A
half-century's training under the guidance of so learned and dramatic
a writer, who added to his learning and fine dramatic faculty a
profound spirituality and passionate adherence to the faiths and
dogmas of the Church, might well create, in a simple religious
community, a capacity and a fervor even greater than have been shown
by the Oberammergau people. To understand the extent and the method of
their attainment, it is needful to realize all this; but no amount of
study of the details of the long process can fully convey or set forth
the subtle influences which must have pervaded the very air of the
place during these years. The acting of plays has been not only the
one recreation of their life, otherwise hard-worked, sombre, and
stern,--it has been their one channel for the two greatest passions of
the human heart,--love of approbation and the instinct of religious
worship; for the Oberammergau peasant, both these passions have
centred on and in his chance to win fame, please his priest, and honor
God, by playing well some worthy part in the Passion Play. The hope
and the ambition for this have been the earliest emotions roused in
the Oberammergau child's breast. In the tableaux of the Play even very
young children take part, and it is said that it has always been the
reward held up to them as soon as they could know what the words
meant: "If thou art good, thou mayest possibly have the honor of being
selected to play in the Passion Play when the year comes round." Not
to be considered fit to take any part in the Play is held, in
Oberammergau, to be disgrace; while to be regarded as worthy to render
the part of the Christus is the greatest honor which a man can receive
in this world. To take away from an actor a part he has once played is
a shame that can hardly be borne; and it is on record that once a man
to whom this had happened sank into a melancholy which became madness.
When the time approaches for the choice of the actors and the
assignment of the parts, the whole village is in a turmoil. The
selections and assignments are made by a committee of forty-five,
presided over by the priest and by the venerable "Geistlicher Rath"
Daisenberger, who, now in his eightieth year, still takes the keenest
interest in all the dramatic performances of his pupils. The election
day is in the last week of December of the year before the Play; and
the members of the committee, before going to this meeting, attend a
mass in the church. The deciding as to the players for 1880 took
three days' time, and great heart-burnings were experienced in the
community. In regard to the half-dozen prominent parts there is rarely
much disagreement; but as there are some seven hundred actors required
for the Play, there must inevitably be antagonisms and jealousies
among the minor characters. However, when the result of the
discussions and votes of the committee is made public, all dissension
ceases. One of the older actors is appointed to take charge of the
rehearsals, and from his authority there is no appeal. Each player is
required to rehearse his part four times a week; and as early in the
spring as the snow is out of the theatre the final rehearsals begin.
Thus each Passion Play year is a year of very hard work for the
Oberammergauers. Except for their constant familiarity with stage
routine and unbroken habit of stage representation through the
intervening years, they would never be able to endure the strain of
the Passion Play summers; and as it is, they look wan and worn before
the season is ended.
It is a thankless return that they have received at the hands of some
travellers, who have seen in the Passion Play little more than a show
of mountebanks acting for money. The truth is that the individual
performers receive an incredibly small share of the profits of the
Play. There is not another village in the world whose members would
work so hard, and at so great personal sacrifice, for the good of
their community and their Church. Every dollar of the money received
goes into the hands of a committee selected by the people. After all
the costs are paid, the profits are divided into four portions: one
quarter is set aside to be expended for the Church, for the school,
and for the poor; another for the improvement of the village, for
repairs of highways, public buildings, etc.; a third is divided among
the tax-paying citizens of the town who have incurred the expense of
preparing for the Play, buying the costumes, etc. The remaining
quarter is apportioned among the players, according to the importance
of their respective parts; as there are seven hundred of them, it is
easy to see that the individual gains cannot be very great.
The music of the Play, as now performed, was written in 1814, by
Rochus Dedler, an Oberammergau schoolmaster. It has for many years
been made a _sine qua non_ of this position in Oberammergau that the
master must be a musician, and, if possible, a composer; and Dedler is
not the only composer who has been content in the humble position of
schoolmaster in this village of peasants. Every day the children are
drilled in chorus singing and in recitative; with masses and other
church music they are early made familiar. Thus is every avenue of
training made to minister to the development of material for the
perfection of the Passion Play.
Dedler is said to have been a man of almost inspired nature. He wrote
often by night, and with preternatural rapidity. The music of the
Passion Play was begun on the evening of Trinity Sunday; he called his
six children together, made them kneel in a circle around him, and
saying, "Now I begin," ordered them all to devote themselves to
earnest prayer for him that he might write music worthy of the good
themes of the Play. The last notes were written on the following
Christmas Day, and they are indeed worthy of the story for which they
are at once the expression and the setting. The harmonies are
dignified, simple, and tender, with movements at times much resembling
some of Mozart's Masses. Many of the chorals are full of solemn
beauty. A daughter of Dedler's is still living in Munich; and to her
the grateful and honest-minded Oberammergau people have sent, after
each performance of the Passion Play, a sum of money in token of their
sense of indebtedness to her father's work.
The Passion Play cannot be considered solely as a drama; neither is it
to be considered simply as a historical panorama, presenting the
salient points in the earthly career of Jesus called Christ. To
consider it in either of these ways, or to behold it in the spirit
born of either of these two views, is to do only partial justice to
it. Whatever there might have been in the beginning of theatrical show
and diversion and fantastic conceit about it, has been long ago
eliminated. Generation after generation of devout and holy men have
looked upon it more and more as a vehicle for the profoundest truths
of their religion, and have added to it, scene by scene, speech by
speech, everything which in their esteem could enhance its solemnity
and make clear its teaching. However much one may disagree with its
doctrines, reject its assumptions, or question its interpretations,
that is no reason for overlooking its significance as a tangible and
rounded presentation of that scheme of the redemption of the world in
which to-day millions of men and women have full faith. It is by no
means distinctively a Roman Catholic presentation of this scheme; it
is Christian. The Holy Virgin of the Roman Catholic Church is, in this
play, from first to last, only the mother of Jesus,--the mother whom
all lovers and followers of Jesus, wherever they place him or her,
however they define his nature and her relations to him, yet hold
blessed among the women who have given birth to leaders and saviors of
men.
This presentation of the scheme of redemption seeks to portray not
only the scenes of the life of Jesus on earth, but the typical
foreshadowing of it in the Old Testament narratives,--its prophecy as
well as its fulfilment. To this end there are given, before each act
of the Play, tableaux of Old Testament events, supposed to be directly
typical, and intended to be prophetic, of the scenes in Christ's life
which are depicted in the act following. These are selected with
skill, and rendered with marvellous effect. For instance, a tableau of
the plotting of Joseph's brethren to sell him into Egypt, is given
before the act in which the Jewish priests in the full council of the
Sanhedrim plot the death of Jesus; a tableau of the miraculous fall of
manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, before the act in which is
given Christ's Last Supper with his Disciples; the sale of Joseph to
the Midianites before the bargain of Judas with the priests for the
betrayal of Jesus; the death of Abel, and Cain's despair, before the
act in which Judas, driven mad by remorse, throws down at the feet of
the priests the "price of blood," and rushes out to hang himself;
Daniel defending himself to Darius, before the act in which Jesus is
brought into the presence of Pilate for trial; the sacrifice of Isaac,
before the scourging of Jesus and his crowning with the thorns: these
are a few of the best and most relevant ones.
The Play is divided into eighteen acts, and covers the time from
Christ's entry into Jerusalem at the time of his driving the
money-changers out of the temple till his ascension. The salient
points, both historical and graphic, are admirably chosen for a
continuous representation. In the second act is seen the High Council
of the Jewish Sanhedrim plotting measures for the ruin and death of
Jesus. This is followed by his Departure from Bethany, the Last
Journey to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Final Interview between
Judas and the Sanhedrim, the Betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The performance of the Play up to this point consumes four hours; and
as there is here a natural break in the action, an interval of an
hour's rest is taken. It comes none too soon, either to actors or
spectators, after so long a strain of unbroken attention and deep
emotion.
The next act is the bringing of Jesus before the High-Priest Annas;
Annas orders him taken before Caiaphas, and this is the ninth act of
the Play. Then follow: The Despair of Judas and his Bitter Reproaches
to the Sanhedrim, The Interview between Jesus and Pilate, His
Appearance before Herod, His Scourging and Crowning with Thorns, The
Pronouncing of his Death Sentence by Pilate, The Ascent to Golgotha,
The Crucifixion and Burial, The Resurrection and Ascension. The whole
lesson of Christ's life, the whole lesson of Christ's death, are thus
shown, taught, impressed with a vividness which one must be callous
not to feel. The quality or condition of mind which can remain to the
end either unmoved or antagonistic is not to be envied. But, setting
aside all and every consideration of the moral quality of the Play,
looking at it simply as a dramatic spectacle, as a matter of acting,
of pictorial effects, it is impossible to deny to it a place among the
masterly theatrical representations of the world. One's natural
incredulity as to the possibility of true dramatic skill on the part
of comparatively unlettered peasants melts and disappears at sight of
the first act, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.
The stage, open to the sky, with a background so ingeniously arranged
as to give a good representation of several streets of the city, is
crowded in a few moments by five hundred men and women and children,
all waving palm branches, singing hosannas, and crowding around the
central figure of Jesus riding on an ass. The verisimilitude of the
scene is bewildering. The splendor of the colors is dazzling. Watching
this crowd of five hundred actors closely, one finds not a single
man, woman, or little child performing his part mechanically or
absently. The whole five hundred are acting as if each one regarded
his part as the central and prominent one; in fact, they are so acting
that it does not seem acting: this is characteristic of the acting
throughout the play. There is not a moment's slighting or tameness
anywhere. The most insignificant part is rendered as honestly as the
most important, and with the same abandon and fervor. There are
myriads of little by-plays and touches, which one hardly recognizes in
the first seeing of it, the interest is so intense and the movement so
rapid; but, seeing it a second time, one is almost more impressed by
these perfections in minor points than by the rendering of the chief
parts. The scribes who sit quietly writing in the foreground of the
Sanhedrim Court; the disciples who have nothing to do but to appear to
listen while Jesus speaks; the money-changers picking up their coins;
the messengers who come with only a word or two to speak; the soldiers
drawing lots among themselves in a group for Jesus' garments, at a
moment when all attention might be supposed to be concentrated on the
central figures of the Crucifixion,--every one of these acts with an
enthusiasm and absorption only to be explained by the mingling of a
certain element of religious fervor with native and long-trained
dramatic instinct.
This dramatic instinct is shown almost as much in the tableaux as in
the acting. The poses and grouping are wonderful, and the power of
remaining a long time motionless is certainly a trait which the
Oberammergau people possess to a well-nigh superhuman extent. The
curtain remained up, during many of these tableaux, five and seven
minutes; and there was not a trace of unsteadiness to be seen in one
of the characters. Even through a powerful glass I could not detect so
much as the twitching of a muscle. This is especially noticeable in
the tableau of the Fall of Manna in the Wilderness, which is one of
the finest of the Play. There are in it more than four hundred
persons; one hundred and fifty of them are children, some not over
three years of age. These children are conspicuously grouped in the
foreground; many of them are in attitudes which must be difficult to
keep,--bent on one knee or with outstretched hand or with uplifted
face,--but not one of the little creatures stirs head or foot or eye.
Neither is there to be seen, as the curtain begins to fall, any tremor
of preparation to move. Motionless as death they stand till the
curtain shuts even their feet from view. Too much praise cannot be
bestowed on the fidelity, accuracy, and beauty of the costumes. They
are gorgeous in color and fabric, and have been studied carefully from
the best authorities extant, and are not the least among the surprises
which the Play affords to all who go to see it expecting it to be on
the plane of ordinary theatrical representations. The splendor of some
of the more crowded scenes is rarely equalled: such a combination of
severe simplicity of outlines and contours, classic models of drapery,
with brilliancy of coloring, is not to be seen in any other play now
acted.
The high-water mark of the acting in the Play seems to me to be
reached, not in the Christus, but by Judas. This part is played by an
old man, Gregory Lechner. He is over sixty years of age, and his snowy
beard and his hair have to be dyed to the red hue which is desired for
the crafty Judas's face. From the time when, in Simon's house, he
stands by, grumbling at the waste of the precious ointment poured by
Mary Magdalene on the feet of Jesus, to the last moment of his
wretched existence, when he is seen wandering in a desolate
wilderness, about to take his own life in his remorse and despair,
Judas' acting is superb. Face, attitudes, voice, action,--all are
grandly true to the character, and marvellously full of life. It would
be considered splendid acting on any stage in the world. Nothing could
surpass its subtlety and fineness of conception, or the fire of its
rendering. It is a conception quite unlike those ordinarily held of
the character of Judas; ascribes the betrayal neither to a wilful,
malignant treachery, nor, as is sometimes done, to a secret purpose of
forcing Jesus to vindicate his claims to divine nature by working a
miracle of discomfiture to his enemies, but to pure, unrestrained
avarice,--the deadliest passion which can get possession of the human
soul. This theory is tenable at every point of Judas' career as
recorded in the Bible, and affords far broader scope for dramatic
delineation than any other theory of his character and conduct. It is,
in fact, the only theory which seems compatible with the entire
belief in the supernatural nature of Jesus. Expecting up to the last
minute that supernatural agencies would hinder the accomplishment of
the Jews' utmost malice, he thought to realize the full benefit of the
price of the betrayal, and yet not seriously imperil either the
ultimate ends or the personal safety of Jesus. The struggle between
the insatiable demon of avarice in his heart and all the nobler
impulses restraining it is a struggle which is to be seen going on in
his thoughts and repeated in his face in every scene in which he
appears; and his final despair and remorse are but the natural
culmination of the deed which he did only under the temporary control
of a passion against which he was all the time struggling, and which
he himself held in detestation and scorn. The gesture and look with
which he at last flings down the bag of silver in the presence of the
assembled Sanhedrim, exclaiming,--
"Ye have made me a betrayer!
Release again the innocent One! My
Hands shall be clean,"