he wanders distraught in the dark wastes among barren trees, are one
of the finest monologues of the Play. It was written by the priest
Daisenberger.
"Oh, were the Master there! Oh, could I see
His face once more! I'd cast me at his feet,
And cling to him, my only saving hope.
But now he lieth in prison,--is, perhaps,
Already murdered by his raging foe,--
Alas, through my own guilt, through my own guilt!
I am the outcast villain who hath brought
My benefactor to these bonds and death!
The scum of men! There is no help for me!
For me no hope! My crime is much too great!
The tearful crime no penance can make good!
Too late! Too late! For he is dead--and I--
I am his murderer!
Thrice unhappy hour
In which my mother gave me to the world!
How long must I drag on this life of shame,
And bear these tortures in my outcast breast?
As one pest-stricken, flee the haunts of men,
And be despised and shunned by all the world?
Not one step farther! Here, O life accursed,--
Here will I end thee!"
The character of Christ is, of necessity, far the most difficult part
in the Play. Looking at it either as a rendering of the supernatural
or a portraying of the human Christ, there is apparent at once the
well-nigh insurmountable difficulty in the way of actualizing it in
any man's conception. Only the very profoundest religious fervor could
carry any man through the effort of embodying it on the theory of
Christ's divinity; and no amount of atheistic indifference could carry
a man through the ghastly mockery of acting it on any other theory.
Joseph Maier, who played the part in 1870, 1871, and 1880, is one of
the best-skilled carvers in the village, and, it is said, has never
carved anything but figures of Christ. He is a man of gentle and
religious nature, and is, as any devout Oberammergauer would be,
deeply pervaded by a sense of the solemnity of the function he
performs in the Play. In the main, he acts the part with wonderful
dignity and pathos. The only drawback is a certain undercurrent of
self-consciousness which seems ever apparent in him. Perhaps this is
only one of the limitations inevitably resulting from the over-demand
which the part, once being accepted and regarded as a supernatural
one, must perforce make on human powers. The dignity and dramatic
unity of the Play are much heightened by the admirable manner in which
a chorus is introduced, somewhat like the chorus of the old Greek
plays. It consists of eighteen singers, with a leader styled the
_Choragus_. The appearance and functions of these _Schutzgeister_, or
guardian angels, as they are called, has been thus admirably described
by a writer who has given the best detailed account ever written of
the Passion Play:--
"They have dresses of various colors, over which a white tunic
with gold fringe and a colored mantle are worn. Their
appearance on the stage is majestic and solemn. They advance
from the recesses on either side of the proscenium, and take up
their position across the whole extent of the theatre, forming
a slightly concave line. After the chorus has assumed its
position, the choragus gives out in a dramatic manner the
opening address or prologue which introduces each act; the tone
is immediately taken up by the whole chorus, which continues
either in solo, alternately, or in chorus, until the curtain is
raised in order to reveal a _tableau vivant_. At this moment
the choragus retires a few steps backward, and forms with one
half of the band a division on the left of the stage, while
the other half withdraws in like manner to the right. They thus
leave the centre of the stage completely free, and the
spectators have a full view of the tableau thus revealed. A few
seconds having been granted for the contemplation of this
picture, made more solemn by the musical recitation of the
expounders, the curtain falls again, and the two divisions of
the chorus coming forward resume their first position, and
present a front to the audience, observing the same grace in
all their motions as when they parted. The chanting still
continues, and points out the connection between the picture
which has just vanished and the dramatic scene which is
forthwith to succeed. The singers then make their exit. The
task of these Spirit-singers is resumed in the few following
points: They have to prepare the audience for the approaching
scenes. While gratifying the ear by delicious harmonies, they
explain and interpret the relation which shadow bears to
substance,--the connection between the type and its fulfilment.
And as their name implies, they must be ever present as
guardian spirits, as heavenly monitors, during the entire
performance. The addresses of the choragus are all written by
the Geistlicher Rath Daisenberger. They are written in the form
of the ancient strophe and anti-strophe, with the difference
that while in the Greek theatre they were spoken by the
different members of the chorus, they are delivered in the
Passion Play by the choragus alone."
It is impossible for any description, however accurate and minute, to
give a just idea of the effects produced by this chorus. The handling
of it is perhaps the one thing which, more than any other, lifts the
play to its high plane of dignity and beauty. The costumes are
brilliant in color, and strictly classic in contour,--a full white
tunic, edged with gold at hem and at throat, and simply confined at
the waist by a loose girdle. Over these are worn flowing mantles of
either pale blue, crimson, dull red, grayish purple, green, or
scarlet. These mantles or robes are held in place carelessly by a band
of gold across the breast. Crowns or tiaras of gold on the head
complete the dress, which, for simplicity and grace of outline and
beauty of coloring, could not be surpassed. The rhythmic precision
with which the singers enter, take place, open their lines, and fall
back on the right and left, is a marvel, until one learns that a
diagram of their movement is marked out on the floor, and that the
mysterious exactness and uniformity of their positions are simply the
result of following each time the constantly marked lines on the
stage. Their motions are slow and solemn, their expressions exalted
and rapt; they also are actors in the grand scheme of the Play.
On the morning of the Play the whole village is astir before light; in
fact, the village proper can hardly be said to have slept at all, for
seven hundred out of its twelve hundred inhabitants are actors in the
play, and are to be ready to attend a solemn mass at daylight.
Before eight o'clock every seat in the theatre is filled. There is no
confusion, no noise. The proportion of those who have come to the play
with as solemn a feeling as they would have followed the steps of the
living Christ in Judæa is so large that the contagion of their devout
atmosphere spreads even to the most indifferent spectators, commanding
quiet and serious demeanor.
The firing of a cannon announces the moment of beginning. Slow,
swelling strains come from the orchestra; the stately chorus enters on
the stage; the music stops; the leader gives a few words of prologue
or argument, and immediately the chorus breaks into song.
From this moment to the end, eight long hours, with only one hour's
rest at noon, the movement of this play is continuous. It is a
wonderful instance of endurance on the part of the actors; the stage
being entirely uncovered, sun and rain alike beat on their unprotected
heads. The greater part of the auditorium also is uncovered, and there
have been several instances in which the play has been performed in a
violent storm of rain, thousands of spectators sitting drenched from
beginning to end of the performance.
How incomparably the effects are, in sunny weather, heightened by this
background of mountain and sky, fine distances, and vistas of mountain
and meadow, and the canopy of heaven overhead, it is impossible to
express; one only wonders, on seeing it, that outdoor theatres have
not become a common summer pleasure for the whole world.
When birds fly over, they cast fluttering shadows of their wings on
the front of Pilate's and Caiaphas' homes, as naturally as did Judæan
sparrows two thousand years ago. Even butterflies flitting past cast
their tiny shadows on the stage; one bird paused, hovered, as if
pondering what it all could mean, circled two or three times over the
heads of the multitude, and then alighted on one of the wall-posts and
watched for some time. Great banks of white cumulus clouds gathered
and rested, dissolved and floated away, as the morning grew to
noonday, and the noonday wore on toward night. This closeness of
Nature is an accessory of illimitable effect; the visible presence of
the sky seems a witness to invisible presences beyond it, and a direct
bond with them. There must be many a soul, I am sure, who has felt
closer to the world of spiritual existences, while listening to the
music of the Oberammergau Passion Play, than in any other hour of his
life; and who can never, so long as he lives, read without emotion the
closing words of the venerable Daisenberger's little "History of
Oberammergau:"--
"May the strangers who come to this Holy Passion Play become,
by reading this book, more friendly with Ammergau; and may it
sometimes, after they have returned to their homes, renew in
them the memory of this quiet mountain valley."
University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] Betrothed.
_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._
RAMONA: A STORY.
BY HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).
12mo Cloth. Price $1.50
_The Atlantic Monthly_ says of the author that she is "a Murillo in
literature," and that the story "is one of the most artistic creations
of American literature." Says a lady: "To me it is the most
distinctive piece of work we have had in this country since 'Uncle
Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite finish of style is beyond that
classic." "The book is truly an American novel," says the _Boston
Advertiser_. "Ramona is one of the most charming creations of modern
fiction," says Charles D Warner. "The romance of the story is
irresistibly fascinating," says _The Independent_.
"The best novel written by a woman since George Eliot died, as it
seems to me, is Mrs. Jackson's 'Ramona.' What action is there! What
motion! How _entrainant_ it is! It carries us along as if mounted on a
swift horse's back, from beginning to end, and it is only when we
return for a second reading that we can appreciate the fine handling
of the characters, and especially the Spanish mother, drawn with a
stroke as keen and firm as that which portrayed George Eliot's
'Dorothea.'"--_T. W. Higginson._
Unsolicited tribute of a stranger, a lady in Wisconsin:--
"I beg leave to thank you with an intense heartiness for your public
espousal of the cause of the Indian. In your 'Century of Dishonor' you
showed to the country its own disgrace. In 'Ramona' you have dealt
most tenderly with the Indians as men and women. You have shown that
their stoicism is not indifference, that their squalor is not always
of their own choosing. You have shown the tender grandeur of their
love, the endurance of their constancy. While, by 'Ramona,' you have
made your name immortal, you have done something which is far greater.
You are but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot help
themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' both as
regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, most
vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since
Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight
of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such
pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness of
self-abnegating love! How much richer and happier the world is with
'Ramona' in it!"
_Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, by the publishers_,
ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON
End of Project Gutenberg's Glimpses of Three Coasts, by Helen Hunt Jackson