Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/450

 446 Rudwin Hades. The Sterzing play of May and Autumn (No. XVI) is based on the contest of Summer and Winter. It is related to the Dutch Abel speel van dem winter ende van dem somer. To this ritual act may be traced, as has been noted, 330 the plays which are but dramatized debates or disputations (Nos. 1 and 106). Related to this type are the pieces which have the form of a legal trial (e.g., Nos. 29, 40, 42, 51, 52, 61, 73, 87, 110, 112, 130) or of question and answer (e.g., Nos. 27, 63). The free- for-all rights, which often occur in the Carnival farces, may perhaps also be traced back to the ritual battles. A number of Carnival customs also have left their traces in the Carnival plays. The drawing of a plough furnishes a motive for play No. 30. The race for a bride is employed in the competition by representatives of all trades and professions for the hand of a maiden (Nos. 70, XVIII). The basic theme of the Neidhart plays (Nos. 21, 53, XXVI) is a May game, and the lost Liibeck play of the youth, who kissed a maiden, probably was a dramatization of a spring custom, in which the sleeping bride, symbolical of the dormant earth, was kissed back to life and love by her bridegroom, 331 a motive which also underlies the stories of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood. First among the types of the ritual drama to be ridiculed was the doctor, whose function was to restore the slain to life. He is the oldest comical figure in the German drama, 332 and may be traced back to the Vedic age. 333 The Arzt or Salbenkramer of theGerman Carnival comedies (Nos. 6, 48, 82; 85, 98, 101, 120, IV, VI, XIX, XXI, XXIV) is kinsman of the Dottore of Italian comedy, of Dr. Caius in the Merry Wives of Windsor, and of the Medecin malgre lui. The priest shared with the doc- tor the fate of the medecine-man, a part of whose functions, notably the hocus-pocus, he had taken over. As a comical figure he belongs to the types of a later period, but he, too, is already to be found in the Indian and Greek mime. 334 The 329 Text in Horae Bdgicae, ed. by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, vi. (1838) 12Ssqq. 330 Supra, p. 423. 331 Cf. Mannhardt, W.u.F.K., i. 435. 332 Cf. K. Weinhold, "Ueber das Komische im altdeutschen Schauspiel," (Gosche's) Jahrbuchf. Literartur-Geschichte i. (1865) 27. 333 Cf. Schroeder, op. tit., p. 370; cf. also ibid., pp. M&sqq. 334 Ibid., p. 462.