Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Dedler is said to have been a man of almost inspired nature. He wrote often by night, and with preternatural rapidity. The music of the Passion Play was begun on the evening of Trinity Sunday; he called his six children together, made them kneel in a circle around him, and saying, "Now I begin," ordered them all to devote themselves to earnest prayer for him that he might write music worthy of the good themes of the Play. The last notes were written on the following Christmas Day, and they are indeed worthy of the story for which they are at once the expression and the setting. The harmonies are dignified, simple, and tender, with movements at times much resembling some of Mozart's Masses. Many of the chorals are full of solemn beauty. A daughter of Dedler's is still living in Munich; and to her the grateful and honest-minded Oberammergau people have sent, after each performance of the Passion Play, a sum of money in token of their sense of indebtedness to her father's work.

The Passion Play cannot be considered solely as a drama; neither is it to be considered simply as a historical panorama, presenting the salient points in the earthly career of Jesus called Christ. To consider it in either of these ways, or to behold it in the spirit born of either of these two views, is to do only partial justice to it. Whatever there might have been in the beginning of theatrical show and diversion and fantastic conceit about it, has been long ago eliminated. Generation after generation of devout and holy men have looked upon it more and more as a vehicle for the profoundest truths of their religion, and have added to it, scene by scene, speech by speech, everything which in their esteem could enhance its solemnity and make clear its teaching. However much one may disagree with its doctrines, reject its assumptions, or question its interpretations, that is no reason for overlooking its significance as a tangible and rounded presentation of that scheme of the redemption of the world in which to-day millions of men and women have full faith. It is by no means distinctively a Roman Catholic presentation of this scheme; it is Christian. The Holy Virgin of the Roman Catholic Church is, in this play, from first to last, only the mother of Jesus,—the mother whom all lovers and followers of Jesus, wherever they place him or her, however they define his nature and her relations to him, yet hold blessed among the women who have given birth to leaders and saviors of men.

This presentation of the scheme of redemption seeks to portray not only the scenes of the life of Jesus on earth, but the typical foreshadowing of it in the Old Testament narratives,—its prophecy as well as its fulfilment. To this end there are given, before each act of the Play, tableaux of Old Testament events, supposed to be directly typical, and intended to be prophetic, of the scenes in Christ's life which are depicted in the act following. These are selected with skill, and rendered with marvellous effect. For instance, a tableau of the plotting of Joseph's brethren to sell him into Egypt, is given before the act in which the Jewish priests in the full council of the Sanhedrim plot the death of Jesus; a tableau of the miraculous fall of manna for the Israelites in the wilderness, before the act in which is given Christ's Last Supper with his Disciples; the sale of Joseph to the Midianites before the bargain of Judas with the priests for the betrayal of Jesus; the death of Abel, and Cain's despair, before the act in which Judas, driven mad by remorse, throws down at the feet of the priests the "price of blood," and rushes out to hang himself; Daniel defending himself to Darius, before the act in which Jesus is brought into the presence of Pilate for trial; the sacrifice of Isaac, before the scourging of Jesus and his crowning with the thorns: these are a few of the best and most relevant ones.

The Play is divided into eighteen acts, and covers the time from Christ's entry into Jerusalem at the time of his driving the money-changers out of the temple till his ascension. The salient points, both historical and graphic, are admirably chosen for a continuous representation. In the second act is seen the High Council of the Jewish Sanhedrim plotting measures for the ruin and death of Jesus. This is followed by his Departure from Bethany, the Last Journey to Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Final Interview between Judas and the Sanhedrim, the Betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane.

The performance of the Play up to this point consumes four hours; and as there is here a natural break in the action, an interval of an hour's rest is taken. It comes none too soon, either to actors or spectators, after so long a strain of unbroken attention and deep emotion.

The next act is the bringing of Jesus before the High-Priest Annas; Annas orders him taken before Caiaphas, and this is the ninth act of the Play. Then follow: The Despair of Judas and his Bitter Reproaches to the Sanhedrim, The Interview between Jesus and Pilate, His Appearance before Herod, His Scourging and Crowning with Thorns, The Pronouncing of his Death Sentence by Pilate, The Ascent to Golgotha, The Crucifixion and Burial, The Resurrection and Ascension. The whole lesson of Christ's life, the whole lesson of Christ's death, are thus shown, taught, impressed with a vividness which one must be callous not to feel. The quality or condition of mind which can remain to the end either unmoved or antagonistic is not to be envied. But, setting aside all and every consideration of the moral quality of the Play, looking at it simply as a dramatic spectacle, as a matter of acting, of pictorial effects, it is impossible to deny to it a place among the masterly theatrical representations of the world. One's natural incredulity as to the possibility of true dramatic skill on the part of comparatively unlettered peasants melts and disappears at sight of the first act, The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.

The stage, open to the sky, with a background so ingeniously arranged as to give a good representation of several streets of the city, is crowded in a few moments by five hundred men and women and children, all waving palm branches, singing hosannas, and crowding around the central figure of Jesus riding on an ass. The verisimilitude of the scene is bewildering. The splendor of the colors is dazzling. Watching this crowd of five hundred actors closely, one finds not a single man, woman, or little child performing his part mechanically or absently. The whole five hundred are acting as if each one regarded his part as the central and prominent one; in fact, they are so acting that it does not seem acting: this is characteristic of the acting throughout the play. There is not a moment's slighting or tameness anywhere. The most insignificant part is rendered as honestly as the most important, and with the same abandon and fervor. There are myriads of little by-plays and touches, which one hardly recognizes in the first seeing of it, the interest is so intense and the movement so rapid; but, seeing it a second time, one is almost more impressed by these perfections in minor points than by the rendering of the chief parts. The scribes who sit quietly writing in the foreground of the Sanhedrim Court; the disciples who have nothing to do but to appear to listen while Jesus speaks; the money-changers picking up their coins; the messengers who come with only a word or two to speak; the soldiers drawing lots among themselves in a group for Jesus' garments, at a moment when all attention might be supposed to be concentrated on the central figures of the Crucifixion,—every one of these acts with an enthusiasm and absorption only to be explained by the mingling of a certain element of religious fervor with native and long-trained dramatic instinct.

This dramatic instinct is shown almost as much in the tableaux as in the acting. The poses and grouping are wonderful, and the power of remaining a long time motionless is certainly a trait which the Oberammergau people possess to a well-nigh superhuman extent. The curtain remained up, during many of these tableaux, five and seven minutes; and there was not a trace of unsteadiness to be seen in one of the characters. Even through a powerful glass I could not detect so much as the twitching of a muscle. This is especially noticeable in the tableau of the Fall of Manna in the Wilderness, which is one of the finest of the Play. There are in it more than four hundred persons; one hundred and fifty of them are children, some not over three years of age. These children are conspicuously grouped in the foreground; many of them are in attitudes which must be difficult to keep,—bent on one knee or with outstretched hand or with uplifted face,—but not one of the little creatures stirs head or foot or eye. Neither is there to be seen, as the curtain begins to fall, any tremor of preparation to move. Motionless as death they stand till the curtain shuts even their feet from view. Too much praise cannot be bestowed on the fidelity, accuracy, and beauty of the costumes. They are gorgeous in color and fabric, and have been studied carefully from the best authorities extant, and are not the least among the surprises which the Play affords to all who go to see it expecting it to be on the plane of ordinary theatrical representations. The splendor of some of the more crowded scenes is rarely equalled: such a combination of severe simplicity of outlines and contours, classic models of drapery, with brilliancy of coloring, is not to be seen in any other play now acted.

The high-water mark of the acting in the Play seems to me to be reached, not in the Christus, but by Judas. This part is played by an old man, Gregory Lechner. He is over sixty years of age, and his snowy beard and his hair have to be dyed to the red hue which is desired for the crafty Judas's face. From the time when, in Simon's house, he stands by, grumbling at the waste of the precious ointment poured by Mary Magdalene on the feet of Jesus, to the last moment of his wretched existence, when he is seen wandering in a desolate wilderness, about to take his own life in his remorse and despair, Judas' acting is superb. Face, attitudes, voice, action,—all are grandly true to the character, and marvellously full of life. It would be considered splendid acting on any stage in the world. Nothing could surpass its subtlety and fineness of conception, or the fire of its rendering. It is a conception quite unlike those ordinarily held of the character of Judas; ascribes the betrayal neither to a wilful, malignant treachery, nor, as is sometimes done, to a secret purpose of forcing Jesus to vindicate his claims to divine nature by working a miracle of discomfiture to his enemies, but to pure, unrestrained avarice,—the deadliest passion which can get possession of the human soul. This theory is tenable at every point of Judas' career as recorded in the Bible, and affords far broader scope for dramatic delineation than any other theory of his character and conduct. It is, in fact, the only theory which seems compatible with the entire belief in the supernatural nature of Jesus. Expecting up to the last minute that supernatural agencies would hinder the accomplishment of the Jews' utmost malice, he thought to realize the full benefit of the price of the betrayal, and yet not seriously imperil either the ultimate ends or the personal safety of Jesus. The struggle between the insatiable demon of avarice in his heart and all the nobler impulses restraining it is a struggle which is to be seen going on in his thoughts and repeated in his face in every scene in which he appears; and his final despair and remorse are but the natural culmination of the deed which he did only under the temporary control of a passion against which he was all the time struggling, and which he himself held in detestation and scorn. The gesture and look with which he at last flings down the bag of silver in the presence of the assembled Sanhedrim, exclaiming,—

"Ye have made me a betrayer!