Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/379

Rh drama from the point of decadence. If it were necessary to demonstrate that the early Elizabethan dramatic writers reflected the ancient classic literature, it could be done by enumerating the plays, when it would appear that an overwhelming proportion of them were taken from this source. But the way in which the native elements entered into this reflected drama is equally clear—the combination of the folk-drama with the literary. In Shakespeare himself it is peculiarly evident; and the latter-day German appreciation of Shakespeare is explainable on this ground. He is full of the Teutonic spirit, as well as of the Southern culture; and his power rests upon his extraordinary educational influence. He not only poetised the national history; he interpreted to his nation the higher mental furniture of another branch of the same race. He personifies in himself the union of folk-drama with the literary drama.

As in the case of folk-tales, so with folk-drama, the traditional becomes absorbed by the literary, and the traditional goes on just the same, in obedience to the laws of its existence, splitting up, taking fresh colour, changing and yet retaining identity; and by-and-bye comes the commentator, who, noting the resemblances to the literary form would, if he could, dismiss these poor honest waifs and strays as mere limbs of literary origin. Because all that was artistically possible in folk-drama became absorbed in the literary drama, we will not feel less, but more, interest in these traditionary contributions to a noble art. By way of taking a nearer view of folk-drama, let us examine one of the chief channels by which the traditions flowed.

The Gilds were a thoroughly Saxon institution. Dr. E. W. Wilda, in his Das Gildenwesen in Mittelalter, ascribes their origin to the sacrificial feasts of the Teutonic peoples. Lappenberg adopts the same view, which is supported also by Thorpe in his Diplomatarium Anglicum. Grimm has the following on the origin of the word “Gild”: “Gildan, keltan among its many meanings, has also to do with worship and sacrifice; it was from the old sacrificial V 2