Page:Of Six Mediaeval Women (1913).djvu/62

 what is evil is to continue in it, takes her back with him to begin afresh the simple good life.

The second play recounts an incident taken from the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, supposed to take place in the first century. A young heathen, Callimachus, falls in love with a young married woman, a Christian. She dies, and is buried the same day. That night Callimachus goes to the grave, and with the help of a slave disinters the body. Holding it in his arms, and triumphing in the embrace denied to him in life, he suddenly falls dead. In the morning the husband and St. John, coming to the cemetery to pray for her soul, see the rifled grave and the two dead bodies. St. John, at the command of Christ, who appears for but a moment, restores them both to life, and brings to repentance the young man, who, in further amendment of his ways, becomes a Christian. This mere outline of the play is given to suggest points of resemblance between it—the first sketch of this kind of drama of passion, the frenzy of the soul and senses—and the masterpiece of this type, Romeo and Juliet.

Many passages in the plays of Roswitha remind us of Shakespeare, but it is not possible to deal adequately with them here, nor does it seem material to do so. There is no reason why Shakespeare should not have seen a printed collection of her dramas. He, like Dante, seems to have had the power of attracting material from every possible source, and it should not be forgotten what a sensation was caused by