The Chautauquan, Vol. 03, February 1883 / A Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Promotion of True Culture. / Organ of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

by Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle; Chautauqua Institution

The Passion Play.

Ex-Mayor Grace, of New York, deserves much credit and honor for his refusal to grant Mr. Salmi Morse a license to produce his Passion Play. With all the world’s past and present progress, we are not without here and there signs of degeneracy. The Passion Play, which began in motives of religious devotion with the ignorant villagers of Ober Ammergau two hundred and fifty years ago, is now sought to be produced in the metropolis of the foremost Christian nation, for the degraded motive of money-making. Surely some things progress downwards. The superstitious population of Ober Ammergau made a vow that if they were allowed to escape the then prevalent plague they would every ten years perform a play representing the passion and death of the Savior. Accordingly, during twelve consecutive Sundays of the summer season, continuing from 8 a. m. to 4 p. m., with three hundred and fifty actors and an orchestra and chorus of eighty members, the play has been produced. It has attracted the attention of the Christian world because it is the only one of the miracle plays once so common which continues to be performed. But this and all the miracle plays enacted by monks and friars in the middle ages differ radically from the proposed enterprise of Mr. Morse. The passion and events of the life of our Lord were represented by them to make them real to ignorant and illiterate people, but Mr. Morse proposes to cater to the low and morbid class, in order to make money. There is no reason to believe that the effect of such representations, even when performed with a view to religious instruction and impression, has ever been of a salutary character. The only effect to-day is to shock and outrage the refinement, intelligence, and reverence of the average class of American society. The human heart has human loves and affections too sacred to be placarded before the public eye, or even to be given utterance by human lips. It has feelings and sentiments associated with the divine tragedy of Calvary which make it revolt at the scene of coarse and vulgar persons attempting to re-enact the tragedy which revealed the infinite depths of heaven’s love for the race.