Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/456

 452 Rudwin could these homines vagantes (clerics without a parish) be miss- ing where a little fun was wanted? However, it is very difficult to trace the participation of professional entertainers in the per- formances of medieval plays. 366 The similarities between the ancient mime and the medieval farce at Carnival may rather be due to their similar origin in the magical rites of the fertility worship, although some amount of foreign influence coming on top of an independent growth in the Germanic Carnival customs need not be altogether denied. In addition to the alien professional spectacula the religious plays were not without influence on the Carnival comedies, although it is very difficult to state with any degree of precision on which side the debt was greater. The interrelations between mystery and mime in the Middle Ages as a fruitful field of investigation have been suggested by Reich in his monumental work on the ancient mime. 367 It certainly cannot be possible that the two types of medieval drama should have existed side by side without influencing each other at all. With the lack of early texts of Carnival plays the question of priority must for the present remain unanswered. It is probable that the secular pieces in their literary form were posterior to the sacred plays. They may even have been modelled after them. But, then, the Church plays indirectly owed their origin to the heathen dramatic ceremonies from which the Carnival plays have sprung. For it was with the hope of withdrawing Chris- tians from the pagan ludi that the Church permitted a sort of Christian drama. Furthermore, that part in the ecclesiastical ritual which ultimately took shape as drama shows a most striking similarity to an incident in the heathen ritual. The Antichoria the half choruses performing antiphonally at the Easter service, in which the roots of the Church drama are found may, indeed, have been adopted from the heathen spring ritual where, in their original function, they represented two opposing groups in the contest of Summer and Winter. The allegorical lawsuit of Satan versus Christ, the altercatio Ecclesiae et Synagogae, and the conflict of Virtue and Vice may also be traced back to this heathen rite. The death and resurrection 366 Cf. Weinhold, op. cit., pp. 31sq. See also A. Clock, Zs. f. vgl. Lit- Gesch. xvi (1906). 367 Op. cit., ii. 859n.