SOURCE: "Hrotsvitha, a Tenth-Century Nun: The First Woman Playwright," in Enter the Actress: The First Women in the Theatre, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931, pp. 18-45.

[In the following essay, Gilder summarizes Hroswitha's place in early medieval drama and evaluates her plays, noting particularly her masterful characterization in these works.]

Although the early Christian Church welcomed to its bosom certain repentant actresses, it was on the whole the mortal enemy of the theatre. The war between Church and stage has been long and bitter, particularly in the early days when the theatre represented the last entrenched camp of paganism, and as such was the subject of virulent attack and condemnation. The Church desired nothing less than the complete annihilation of its enemy, and in this, by the close of the fourth century, it had largely succeeded. It is therefore not a little diverting to find that the first woman of any importance in the history of the theatre in Europe is a Benedictine nun. From the darkest of the dark ages of the theatre, as well as of Western civilisation, the work of only one playwright has come down to us intact. The six plays of Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim stand alone, bridging the gulf between Seneca and the Representatio Adœ, between the Latin tragedy of A.D. 65, and the French mystery play of the twelfth century of the Christian era. Whatever plays were written and acted, whatever playwrights, actors, and impresarios flourished during these centuries, Hrotsvitha's comedies alone have survived in their complete and original form. Hrotsvitha the Nun, devout daughter of the Church that sought to destroy the theatre, Hrotsvitha, 'German religious and virgin of the Saxon race,' Hrotsvitha, the 'strong voice of Gandersheim,' confined in a remote convent and following the rules of a strict religious order, is yet the first woman of the theatre, the patron saint of the motley followers of Thalia and Melpomene.

The curious anomaly that has placed this devout and dedicated nun of Europe's darkest period in the hierarchy of notable playwrights of all time, grows only more interesting as it is more closely studied. Every circumstance of time and place, of surrounding atmosphere, of education and of outlook would, at first glance, make such a phenomenon seem impossible, so impossible, indeed, that historians of the drama have almost unanimously dismissed Hrotsvitha as, artistically, a 'sport,' without literary or spiritual issue, and therefore of slight importance. Other scholars, more pedantic than accurate, have classed her plays as forgeries, solving the problem presented in her work by denying that she had ever existed. Unfortunately for those who prefer simple classifications and sweeping statements to the vagaries of actual events, this last assumption is untenable.

The manuscript of Hrotsvitha's collected writings, discovered by Conrad Celtes in the Benedictine monastery of Saint Emmeran, Ratisbon, in 1492 or '93, and now reposing in the Munich Library, is authentically of the tenth century. Celtes published his find in 1501, embellishing the book with woodcuts which have been attributed to Dürer. The most interesting of these pictures is the frontispiece, which shows Hrotsvitha presenting her manuscript to Otto II, with the Abbess Gerberga leaning protectingly over the kneeling nun. Not to be overshadowed by his protégée, Celtes included a companion picture of himself, in which he in turn is shown in the act of presenting the first printed edition of Hrotsvitha's works to his own liege lord. The most important modern edition of the plays is that of Charles Magnin, who, in 1845, published the plays in the original Latin with a complete French translation and a biographical and critical study of Hrotsvitha's works. There are several recent English translations of the plays, so that Hrotsvitha has at last come into her own. Her existence has not only been established beyond a doubt, but her curious and delightful contribution to the literature of the theatre has become part of the heritage of the stage. With the venerable scholar Henricus Bodo, first commentator on the writings of the Nun of Gandersheim, we who read her plays for the first time will be tempted to exclaim, 'Rara avis in Saxonia visa est!'

In order to appreciate fully the strength of that impulse for expression in dramatic form which must have impelled Hrotsvitha in her choice of so extraordinary a medium, we must realise what sort of world surrounded her and appreciate some of the handicaps with which she was burdened. She lived at the parting of the ways, a time of stress and strain between the collapse of the old order and the birth of the new. Europe, beaten upon by Northmen, Magyars, and Saracens, had at last repelled these marauders and won a respite from invasion. The crumbling Roman Empire had fallen apart, and a Saxon Emperor ruled a turbulent and disorganised band of feudal barons in the West. With the increasing power of the Christian Church, the last vestiges of the theatre in Italy had disappeared. It had split into its component parts, and bands of mimes, jugglers, dancers, and buffoons earned a precarious livelihood by travelling from place to place entertaining bored women and war-worn, brutish lords in the great halls of their feudal castles. The Roman theatre buildings themselves, scattered throughout Italy and Southern France, had been turned into donjon keeps—fortified castles for the protection of each man against his neighbour. The old order of the Roman world was destroyed and a new order had not yet come to take its place.

The Church itself was distracted with schisms and heresies, and its fight against paganism, in the theatre and elsewhere, was hardly more bitter than its internal conflicts. Wars, famines, and plagues completed the sufferings of the unfortunate lower orders, creating a universal chaos that has made this period seem to historians the most miserable that has afflicted the Western world. In such troubled and violent times, the convents and monasteries, which were growing up throughout Europe, were almost the only centres of culture and education that existed. The Christian Church, while doing its utmost to discredit the iniquitous literature of the pagans, was at the same time beginning to preserve it, and to act as guardians of the precious manuscripts which, in Europe at least, were all that remained as witness of past intellectual glories.

The fate of the women of the Dark Ages was necessarily harsh. A period which depended almost exclusively on its fighting men for survival had little interest in the development of the more peaceful arts and small time for the amenities of living. A woman at the time when Hrotsvitha lived was, in the eyes of men, a weak and foolish creature, useful only for the transmission of property, and the production of offspring. In the eyes of the Church, she was something more sinister than this. The venom with which the Church Fathers attacked the theatre was only surpassed by the vitriolic intensity with which they damned the female of the species and all her natural functions. Only one hope of redemption was held out to the unfortunate creature who through Eve's original weakness had brought sin and sorrow into the world. She must renounce this mundane existence and all its so-called pleasures, and vow herself to an eternal chastity, a virginity in this world mitigated by the hope of a spiritual union with the Beloved Bridegroom in the world to come.

The alternative careers which presented themselves to a woman such as Hrotsvitha in the year of grace 950, were strictly limited. She must either consent to be married off by her nearest male relative to some strong-armed warrior-baron who would acquire her property and her person simultaneously, and who would exercise a complete and unquestioned control over her whole future existence, or she might enter a religious order, where the questionable privilege of serving an earthly lord would be exchanged for the sure joys of a heavenly dedication. More compelling still, the convent gave her an opportunity for immediate intellectual development, the companionship of men and women keenly interested in the things of the mind, and the peaceful security of an ordered existence, nowhere else to be found. Monastic life, though physically restricting, was along certain lines intellectually liberating, and offered many of the inducements that college and a career hold out to the young girl of to-day.

The Abbey of Gandersheim would be particularly attractive to an eager and enterprising mind such as Hrotsvitha's. It was an oasis in a turbulent world, a centre of light and learning, of hope and peace, in the midst of danger and damnation. Founded in 850 by Ludolph, Duke of Saxony, it had already in Hrotsvitha's day acquired a unique literary and aristocratic tradition. Its abbesses were drawn from the imperial family of Saxony and held their fief directly from the King. They provided men-at-arms for their overlord, struck coins bearing their own image, and exercised all the rights and privileges of feudal barons. The close connection between the Imperial Court and the Abbey of Gandersheim brought it into the full current of the intellectual development of the day, and there is little reason to doubt that Hrotsvitha entered it the more eagerly because she knew that there she would be under the guidance of nuns who were as famed for their learning as they were for their piety.

Exactly when Hrotsvitha entered the Abbey of Gandersheim is not known, nor is there any record of her life before she took the veil. The dates of her birth and death, her family name, and all the details of her life are equally obscure, but in the brief forewords with which she enlivens her collected writings, we have a vivid impression of this extraordinary nun whose fate it was to play so unexpected a rôle in the history of the theatre. In thus inaugurating the delightful custom of writing prefaces to her plays, Hrotsvitha has given us what knowledge we have of her personality and her methods of work. She tells us that she was older than the Abbess Gerberga, who was born in 940, and from certain references in the texts of her poems, it is evident that she lived into the first years of the eleventh century, probably entering the convent about 960 when she was in her early twenties. She was undoubtedly of gentle birth, for Gandersheim was an aristocratic institution, welcoming the daughters of barons and lords, and presided over by an imperial princess. Moreover, her plays show familiarity with the amenities of life in the world beyond the cloister, and her education itself in an almost illiterate age attests her social standing. If, as her biographers believe, she was twenty-two or three when she took the veil, she had perhaps already experienced some of the joys and sorrows of that world which she renounced in her vows, but which, as her writings testify, she never entirely forgot.

On entering the convent, Hrotsvitha began her studies under the 'learned and gentle novice-mistress, Rikkarda,' but evidently she soon outstripped her teacher, for it is the Abbess Gerberga herself who introduced her to the classic literature which was to inspire her most famous work. She had other teachers as well, very possibly some learned monks and clerics from neighbouring monasteries; but it was in secret, and in those quiet moments which must have been difficult to secure in the carefully apportioned and supervised routine of a nun's existence, that she began her writing. 'Unknown to all around me,' she explains in the preface [The quotations from Hrotsvitha's prefaces and plays are taken from The Plays of Roswitha, translated by Christopher St. John.] to her first poems, 'I have toiled in secret, often destroying what seemed to me ill written, and rewriting it.… Up to the present I have not submitted the work to any experts, much as I needed their advice, for fear that the roughness of the style would make them discourage me to such an extent that I might give up writing altogether.' Though young 'both in years and learning,' Hrotsvitha showed already a notable self-reliance. Even in this preface, her humility, the proper attitude of a woman and a nun, is mitigated by her very just sense of her own deserts: 'Although [Latin] prosody may seem a hard and difficult art for a woman to master, I, without any assistance but that given by the merciful grace of Heaven, have attempted in this book to sing in dactyls.' The grace of Heaven is, of course, an inestimable blessing, and a nun must under all circumstances give credit to God for what there is of good in her work, but Hrotsvitha lets us see between the lines, and there we find a conscientious and hard-working artist who is justly proud of her efforts and of the products of her pen.

Hrotsvitha's first work was a collection of poems in praise of the Virgin Mary and of a number of saints and martyrs of the Faith. Most of the poems are founded on the tales and legends of the Greek Church, the sources of which were at first accepted wholeheartedly by Hrotsvitha, but which were beginning to fall under the ban of certain elements in the Western Church. Hrotsvitha, however, had a sufficiently good opinion of her own work to preserve these poems even when the authenticity of their sources was questioned, proving once again her independence of judgment and decision of character.

The Martyrdom of Saint Pelagius is the most interesting among these early poems because it illustrates the sort of contact with the outside world which was possible even in a convent. This tale was told to Hrotsvitha herself by an eye-witness of the event, a Spaniard who came from the very town where Pelagius met his death. It is not surprising that martyrdoms and miracles, with all the horrors that attend them, should seem subjects of intense interest and importance to the poetess of Gandersheim, when travelling strangers could regale her with first-hand descriptions of such events. It is illuminating also to note in passing that the artistic necessity of contrasting good with bad was already present to the young nun, who did not hesitate to describe the criminal advances that were made to the beautiful young man Pelagius by his Saracen captor. His unwillingness to submit to such 'abominable practices,' or to accept the life of ease which would have accompanied such submission, makes his death all the more edifying. Young as she was when she wrote these poems, Hrotsvitha showed none of that ignorance which later ages have often mistaken for innocence. She knew the ways and the weaknesses of the flesh as well as the strength of the spirit, and no false prudery interfered with her frank descriptions of scenes and events which to a modern mind might seem somewhat Rabelaisian. The mediaeval point of view, as shown in its legends as well as its art and literature, had a tendency toward realism of detail rarely equalled even to-day.

The only other poem of particular interest in this first effort of the young poetess, is the Fall and Conversion of Theophilus, in which she tells a tale later to become the root legend of Germany's greatest drama. The story of Theophilus is one of the most popular in mediæval literature and concerns the priest who sells his soul to the Devil in order to obtain worldly advancement. Rutebœuf, one of the earliest French dramatists, made use of it in his one extant play, and as the basis of Goethe's Faust, it has become a classic of world literature.

With this collection of poems, Hrotsvitha established herself definitely as the poet laureate of Gandersheim. Her superiors were well pleased with her accomplishments, and from this time forward her fame as a scholar and a poet spread among the learned and accomplished prelates and laymen of the Saxon Court. To her was entrusted the task of writing a panegyric to the Ottos, and her Carmen de gestis Oddonis is important even to-day as an historic document and is quoted in the Encyclopædia Britannica. It was written at the instigation of the Abbess Gerberga and is dedicated to her by Hrotsvitha in a charming preface in which she describes herself as 'one of the last of the least of those fighting under your ladyship's rule.' Singled out for the honour of recording the deeds and accomplishments of the Imperial House, Hrotsvitha had won for herself a position of distinction. Her fame had spread beyond the convent walls and her audience was no longer restricted to her fellow nuns. The panegyric of the Ottos was read by the Court and commented on by Archbishop William, one of the leading prelates of the day, while the plays are definitely submitted to the judgments of 'certain learned and virtuous men, patrons of the book.'

Her prefaces show that Hrotsvitha thoroughly appreciated the recognition she had won, though she never lost sight of what one might term the religious amenities. Her feminine tact was not blunted by her years of conventual life, and she could turn a complimentary phrase with a skill only comparable to that of the preface writers of a later and more sophisticated age. Her own words alone can do justice to the delicate balance she maintained between justifiable pride and graceful humility, between self-assurance and a disarming modesty. The Preface and Epistle which precede the most interesting of her productions, her six plays, is an excellent example of her style:

'To think that you, who have been nurtured in the most profound philosophical studies, and have attained knowledge in perfection, should have deigned to approve the humble work of an obscure woman!' she exlaims in her epistle to her patrons, and then, mindful of an even higher authority, she adds: 'You have, however, not praised me, but the Giver of grace which works in me, by sending your paternal congratulations and admitting that I possess some little knowledge of those arts, the subtleties of which exceed the grasp of my woman's mind. Until I showed my work to you, I had not dared to let any one see it except my intimate companions. I came near abandoning this form of writing altogether, for if there were few to whom I could submit my compositions at all, there were fewer still who could point out what needed correction and encourage me to go on.… I know that it is as wrong to deny a divine gift as to pretend falsely that we have received it. So I will not deny that through the grace of the Creator I have acquired some knowledge of the arts. He has given me the ability to learn—I am a teachable creature—yet of myself I should know nothing. He has given me a perspicacious mind, but one that lies fallow and idle when it is not cultivated.… That my natural gift might not be made void by negligence, I have been at pains, whenever I have been able to pick up some threads and scraps from the old torn mantle of philosophy, to weave them into the stuff of my own book … that the creator of genius may be the more honoured since it is generally believed that a woman's intelligence is slower. In the humbler works of my salad days, I gathered up my poor researches in heroic strophes, but here I have sifted them in a series of dramatic scenes and avoided through omission the pernicious voluptuousness of pagan writers.'

So for the greater glory of God, and with much 'sweat and fatigue,' Hrotsvitha fashioned the six plays which have brought her a kind of immortality she may not have foreseen, but which, judging by the glimpses we have of her personality, she would have been far too human not thoroughly to have enjoyed.

In telling us what she does of herself in her prefaces, Hrotsvitha unfortunately stops short of certain vital details. She attributes her interest in the dramatic form to her readings from Terence, but she fails to say what other influences led her to adopt so un-Christian a vehicle for her highly Christian teachings. She speaks of showing her productions to her companions, but does not tell us in so many words whether they performed the plays in the great hall of the Abbey of Gandersheim or possibly even in the church itself, or whether her comedies were purely literary exercises for her own entertainment. In consequence the learned scholars have disagreed violently on these points, in the end leaving the decision open to the reader who cares to study the plays with sympathy and imagination. One of the most careful students of Hrotsvitha's work, Charles Magnin, whose 1845 edition restored some of the invaluable stage directions, omitted by Conrad Celtes in his first transcription of the manuscript, is convinced that Hrotsvitha's plays were acted. The assumption that they were not performed is based largely on the fact that no other plays, religious or secular, have come down to us from tenth-century Europe.

The earliest dramatic dialogue recorded in the theatrical history of the West is the Easter trope, the Quem Quœritis described in the Concordia Regularis of Saint Ethelwold, and dated about 965 or 975. This is nothing more than an adaptation of the liturgy, the first step toward the dramatic presentation of religious teaching and far indeed from the elaborate plots and characterisations of Hrotsvitha's comedies. The first authentic mystery play, the anonymous Representatio Adœ, did not appear until two hundred years after her day. It has therefore seemed much simpler to many scholars to decide that Hrotsvitha was merely doing an exercise in Latin composition than to believe that she could have been moved to write and probably stage real plays at a time when no one else was doing it. This conclusion overlooks two very important factors, the influence of the Greek Church and the Greek tradition on a remarkably enterprising and independent spirit, and the dramatic viability of the plays themselves.

When Hrotsvitha entered the Abbey of Gandersheim, Otto I was still on the throne, but Otto II was Emperor during most of her lifetime. This Saxon prince was deeply interested in the intellectual development of his country. He turned to the older civilisations and particularly to Constantinople as to the seat of culture and refinement, and the Hellenistic influence was brought to his Court by ambassadors and delegates from the East. In 972, he married Theophano, daughter of the Eastern Emperor Romanus II, and this Greek princess assumed an important position in the social and political life of the Saxon Court. The Abbey of Gandersheim was so intimately connected with the Court that when it was decided that Sophia, eldest daughter of Otto and Theophano, must take the veil, the reluctant princess was sent to Gandersheim. Sophia did not wish to become a nun. She had an eye for more worldly honours and a mind capable of government. When her brother Otto III came to the throne, he summoned her to his side to help him. Later Sophia returned to the fold, became abbess in her turn, and undertook various measures to prove her equality with other princes of the Church.

While Sophia was still a novice and a young nun, the Empress Theophano often visited the Abbey, and Hrotsvitha, accredited bard of the Imperial family, was undoubtedly granted special privileges which brought her into contact with the Greek princesses and their attendant train. From such sources she would have learned at first-hand the fascinating story of the war waged in Constantinople between the Orthodox Church and the theatre. In her remote Saxon convent, where such a thing as a play had never been seen, Hrotsvitha must have listened avidly to the accounts of spectacle-loving Constantinople told by the homesick exiles who had followed their princess into the barbarous North.

The tradition of the Greek Church at this time showed two distinct and contradictory attitudes; that epitomised by Saint Chrysostom, who in the fourth century poured out the vials of his wrath and of his sublime eloquence on all that remotely concerned the stage, and that typified by the writing of Gregory Nazienzen and the Apollinari, who, when Julian the Apostate prohibited the teaching of the Greek classics to the followers of Christ, attempted to preserve the Greek literary forms for their people by rewriting the Old Testament as an Homeric epic, and the New along the lines of the classic drama. Other devout Christians made similar attempts with even less success if we can judge by the fact that, of the large body of these Christianized Greek tragedies, only a few fragments have survived.

In Hrotsvitha's day many must still have been in existence, though it is very doubtful that she ever saw them even in manuscript. We do not even know whether she could read Greek, but her constant use of Greek tales and legends as sources for her plots proves her familiarity with the literature of the Greek Church. Though she could not by any possibility have seen a play acted, the mere existence of these Byzantine dramas was enough to encourage her in her efforts. Her failure to acknowledge in her preface so venerable a precedent as that created by these Christian dramas is easily understood when we glimpse the tangled web of heresies and schisms with which the whole history of the early Church is overlaid. It was safer to recognize the pagan Terence as her prototype than to refer to the Christian sanctions of the theatre, tainted as they were by the black heresy of Arius and the triumphs of the hated Iconoclasts.

Hrotsvitha, however, must in her own mind have found ample justification for looking with tolerance upon the drama. The Empress Theophano could have told her of the astonishing truce that had been called in the age-long battle between Church and stage. One of the most extraordinary incidents in the whole history of the Church is the compromise brought about in the year 990 by Theophylactus, Patriarch of Constantinople, a member of the Empress' own family. This reverend prelate, uncle of Romanus II, Theophano's father, and head of the Orthodox Church, actually introduced the theatre into the bosom of the Church itself, permitting professional actors, actresses, and dancers from the Hippodrome to perform in Saint Sophia, and countenancing all sorts of dramatic amusements, even to the wildest buffooneries. Theophano herself loved the stage. Her father had been a devotee of the Hippodrome, her son Otto III attempted to reëstablish the theatre in Italy, and her influence may in some measure account for the curious turn taken by Hrotsvitha's genius.

It does not require too wild a flight of the imagination, to picture the nuns of Gandersheim eagerly preparing to welcome their royal guest with a form of entertainment particularly dear to her heart and one of which she had been completely deprived since her departure from Constantinople. The Abbess Gerberga would not have been unwilling to show the foreign Empress that Saxony could produce a poet worthy of respect and that the resources of Gandersheim were equal to the task of presenting so sophisticated a form of entertainment as a drama. What more appropriate theme could have been chosen for the diversion of a Greek princess than Hrotsvitha's first play, Gallicanus, which sings the praises of Constance, daughter of Constantine, and reflects, in the story of the conversion of Gallicanus, the more famous conversion of Constantine himself, first of Christian Emperors and founder of the Empire in the East.

Hrotsvitha's avowed purpose of glorifying the 'laudable chastity of Christian virgins' is here clothed in a panoply of royal pomp. The scenes laid in the court of Constantine, the crowded battlefields, the streets of Rome, the audience hall of Julian the Apostate, offered ample opportunities for the display of all the beautiful vestments, the colourful copes and chasubles, the treasures of silk, embroidery, and plate with which the sacristy of a wealthy convent would be supplied. Possibly the armour needed for the contending forces of Romans and Scythians was contributed by the knights-at-arms attached to the Abbey. With what ardour the young nuns and novices would have thrown themselves into the task of making costumes and learning their parts! If we judge the tenth century by later mediæval custom, the scenes presented before the audience gathered in the Hall of the Abbey, or, as Philarète Chasle believes, in the nave of the Church itself, would not have been devoid of dignity, even of a certain splendour. Hrotsvitha's first effort in dramaturgy is not as skilful as her later plays, but no one who has accepted Shakespeare's sketchy battle scenes, nor the detached and episodic structure of his chronicle plays, need scorn Hrotsvitha's naïve introduction of two contending armies on one stage, or her shorthand method of deciding the fate of a tremendous encounter in twenty-five lines of dialogue. Gallicanus, for all its faults, would have been an effective pageant to unroll before a queen.

Hrotsvitha, in all her plays, follows with pious faith the details of the legends which she dramatises, but her originality is evident in the skill with which she succeeds in infusing personality into the lay figures of her tales. Constantine, whom she makes weak and vacillating in order to bring out the strength and even the holy guile of his daughter Constance; Julian the Apostate, who bids his soldiers remind the Christians of their own teachings about renouncing worldly goods while they are stripping them of all they possess; John and Paul, almoners of Constance, who are not above a little judicious prevarication while they go about the Lord's work—all these have a distinct character of their own. In Constance we see the outlines of a real individual, modelled on the lines of those 'royal personages,' Gerberga, Theophano, and Sophia, whom Hrotsvitha had the privilege of knowing intimately. Constance, receiving the daughters of Gallicanus and offering a fervent and thoroughly orthodox prayer for their salvation, might be the Abbess herself receiving a distinguished postulant; just as the arguments between John, Paul, and Julian the Apostate reflect the pious and at the same time scholastic disputations so typical of mediæval theology.

Hrotsvitha's plays must necessarily be approached with sympathy and understanding, for they are expressed in an idiom alien to our modern point of view. They are all short—running from five to six hundred lines of concentrated dialogue broken into scenes of varying length by the transcribers of the original manuscript. At first glance, they seem naïve, crude, two-dimensional. Everything appears on one plane with little attempt at rounding out of contours. Especially is this true of Gallicanus and of the two martyr plays, Dulcitius and Sapientia. In them Hrotsvitha has been absorbed in her didactic mission. They are preachments rather than plays, and yet even here her native dramatic instinct has not been completely subdued; a character, a scene, a bit of dialogue comes out with startling clarity. Dulcitius is particularly interesting in that it contains the one intentionally comic scene in Hrotsvitha's plays.

The legend turns on the strange hallucination that overcame the Roman Governor, Dulcitius, when he attempted to rape three Christian maidens committed to his tender care. Making his way into the Palace kitchen, where he thinks the prisoners are confined, he embraces the pots and pans under the illusion that he is indulging in a night of love, to the immense amusement of the maidens themselves who watch the proceedings through a keyhole. The dramatic effect of having his would-be victims recount to each other the grotesque antics of the demented Governor, while the sound of crashing pans off stage emphasises the excitement, is excellent. Dulcitius' reappearance, covered with soot and his clothes in rags, making futile attempts to convince his own soldiers of his identity, is cleverly worked out. The scene is obviously meant for visual presentation and is a striking example of Hrotsvitha's eye for stage effects.

In the heroic virgins of Dulcitius and the other martyr plays, Hrotsvitha has painted a variety of religious fanatic for whom she had apparently very little sympathy. They have none of the royal dignity of Constance, the wisdom of Sapientia, the charm of Drusiana, Mary, or Thaïs. Whether consciously or not, Hrotsvitha presents the women who have been touched by sin far more sympathetically than she does the immaculate virgins who defy their tormentors and fly straight to heaven in a blaze of unfelt torments and complacent glory. The three martyrs of Dulcitius have all the objectionable characteristics of the type, but they are saved from complete smugness by their amusement over the Roman Governor's absurd misadventure. Dulcitius, it is to be remarked, disappears suddenly from the story, the laughter he has provoked making him unsuitable as an instrument for really impressive martyrdom. His successor in the office of executioner dispatches two of the maidens in short order, but with the third, Irena, he argues at length, and is, of course, worsted in dialectics as he is frustrated in his design of humiliating and defiling her.

Hrotsvitha's preoccupation, in all her plays, with the glories of virginity must be taken as the hall-mark of her profession. In a community of dedicated nuns it was natural, indeed inevitable, that this aspect of their tribute to God should be presented in all its beauty and nobility, and that all its ramifications should be of palpitating interest. Undoubtedly also, Hrotsvitha obtained a certain release for her own emotional suppressions by elaborating these pictures of carnal dangers and the pitfalls of the flesh. These scenes, wherein holy virgins, refusing advantageous offers of marriage, are dragged off to brothels to be 'abominably defiled,' or are attacked by brutal soldiers and escape only by miraculous intervention, are the product of a mind that may have denied, but has not forgotten, the 'sinful lusts of the flesh.' Hrotsvitha's plays illustrate very vividly the process of psychic compensation which is so striking a feature of mediæval monastic literature.

In Dulcitius, as in her last play, Sapientia, Hrotsvitha gives expression to a vein of sadism which is also associated with certain aspects of repression. She positively revels in the lurid and suggestive details of her torture scenes in a way which has led some critics to brand these plays as completely unactable. When we remember the enthusiasm with which such scenes were presented in later mediæval mystery plays, as evidenced by the records, and by such pictures as that of the martyrdom of Saint Apollonia by Jean Fouquet, Hrotsvitha's excursions into the horrific are less surprising. We are to-day more squeamish about physical manifestations of the sort on our stage, but the nuns of Gandersheim were nourished in a sturdier school. They were suckled on tales of torture and martyrdom, and the more boiling oil, fiery furnaces, severed limbs, and bleeding wounds a tale provided, the greater the thrill. Hrotsvitha was not unwilling to write penny-dreadfuls of the sort, nor could a more edifying and intimately comforting spectacle be imagined than that of these pure young girls taunting and defying Emperors and all the strength of embattled masculine paganism while their faith prevented them from feeling the pain and ignominy to which their bodies were subjected. We may turn with repugnance from the scenes in which Sapientia's children are scourged by the centurions, but we should not in our disgust forget that one of the most popular scenes ever presented on the American stage was that of the scourging of Uncle Tom, as well as, curiously enough, the death and ascension of little Eva, a child almost as objectionable in her way as any of Hrotsvitha's smug young heroines.

Again and again, even in these two martyr-plays, which seem to us the least actable of Hrotsvitha's works, little strokes of dialogue vividly suggest the stage picture, as in the opening of the third scene in Sapientia, when Antiochus says to the Christians, 'That is the Emperor you see there, seated on his throne. Be careful what you say to him'; or, in another scene when Sapientia is encouraging her horde of infant martyrs, 'Oh, my dearest little ones, My beloved children! Do not let this narrow prison sadden you.' In a phrase or two, Hrotsvitha sets the stage, and one need only imagine the attending groups of nuns, dressed as courtiers, executioners, Roman matrons, followers, or slaves, rounding out the scenes with the action suggested in the text, to realise that the plays are eminently actable.

Dulcitius is the only play containing obviously comic scenes, yet all of them, even the most terrible, are redeemed from sadness by the faith which animates their author. To understand Hrotsvitha's spirit, it is necessary to remember that Catholicism, even mediaval Catholicism, with all its demonology, its horrors and damnations, was essentially a happy religion. The promise of future blessedness compensated for much present suffering, and the little martyrs could giggle like any other children, though in the presence of an executioner. 'What are you muttering there?' one of the latter exclaims in exasperation. 'Behave yourself and do not laugh!' The constant complaint of their persecutors is that the Christians are laughing at them, making fools of them. Not only do the Christians triumph by their holiness, but they outargue and outwit their tormentors at every turn.

Hrotsvitha makes use of these opportunities to air her own scholarly accomplishments, and we find discourses on mathematics and music interjected into the most unlikely situations. She feels it necessary, however, to make some apology for these excursions into what the Emperor Hadrian in one of her plays brands as 'intricate and unprofitable dissertations.' 'It would be unprofitable,' Hrotsvitha's Sapientia answers, 'if it did not lead us to appreciate the wisdom of our Creator, Who in the beginning created the world out of nothing … and then, in time and the age of man, formulated a science which reveals fresh wonders the more we study it.'

The Sapientia who formulates this apologia for the pursuit of knowledge may well be taken as representing the Nun of Gandersheim in her later years. Hrotsvitha's intellectual hunger is so evident, her eagerness to know and learn so palpable, both in her plays and prefaces, that we cannot fail to see in such sentiments as these her own excuses for enthusiasms which in a woman and a nun of the Dark Ages needed some measure of explanation. The stately, nobly born, and extremely intelligent Sapientia is Hrotsvitha in the full flower of her maturity and success, devoting her life to the service of God, and the creations of her genius to his everlasting glory.

A more tender and humanly touching Hrotsvitha is revealed in her fourth play, Abraham. It is not a martyr play, nor is it overburdened with too many 'threads and scraps from the torn mantle of philosophy.' In a series of swift and straightforward scenes it tells the story of Mary, niece of the hermit Abraham, who at the tender age of eight dedicates herself to Christ. After many years spent in solitary prayer and meditation under the care of Abraham, she is seduced by a passing stranger. In shame and horror she flees from the hermitage and abandons herself to a life of sin. Abraham follows her, and by his love and his exhortations brings her back to God.

The scenes in the brothel where Abraham, disguised as an ordinary traveller, has gone to find his niece, are handled with extraordinary delicacy and charm. At first Abraham is shown talking to the innkeeper, asking for food and lodging and for the company of the beautiful girl with whom he is 'already in love' from the descriptions he has heard of her. Mary comes in, but does not recognise her spiritual father, who with an effort conquers his emotions and continues to play his part. Hrotsvitha's treatment of this scene is particularly sensitive, and though it is almost impossible to capture the quality of her writing in a few lines, this, and the following recognition scene give some idea of the sincerity and directness of her style, as well as her ability to convey profound feeling in a few lines. The innkeeper greets her boisterously—'Luck comes your way, Mary! Not only do young gallants of your own age flock to your arms, but even the wise and venerable come to you.'

MARY: It is all one to me. It is my business to love
    those who love me.
ABRAHAM: Come nearer, Mary, and give me a
    kiss.
MARY: I will give you more than a kiss. I will take
    your head in my arms and stroke your neck.
ABRAHAM: Yes, like that!
MARY: What does this mean? What is this lovely
    fragrance, so clean, so sweet? It reminds me of
    the time when I was good.
ABRAHAM: (aside): On with the mask! Chatter,
    make lewd jests like an idle boy! She must not
    recognise me or for very shame she will fly
    from me.
MARY: Wretch that I am! To what have I fallen! In
    what pit have I sunk!
ABRAHAM: You forget where you are! Do men
    come here to see you cry?
INNKEEPER: What's the matter, Lady Mary? Why
    are you in the dumps? You have lived here two
    years and never before have I seen a tear, never
    heard a sigh or a word of complaint.
MARY: Oh, that I had died three years ago before
    I came to this!
ABRAHAM: I came here to make love to you, not
    to weep with you over your sins.
MARY: A little thing moved me, and I spoke
    foolishly. It is nothing. Come, let us eat and
    drink and be merry, for, as you say, this is not
    the place to think of one's sins.

After eating supper, they go into the bedroom where the scene continues:

MARY: Look! How do you like this room? A
     handsome bed, isn't it? Those trappings cost a
     lot of money. Sit down and I will take off your
     shoes. You seem tired.
ABRAHAM: First bolt the door. Some one may
     come in.
MARY: Have no fear, I have seen to that.
ABRAHAM: The time has come for me to show
    my shaven head and make myself known! Oh,
    my daughter, oh, Mary, you who are part of my
    soul! Look at me. Do you not know me? Do
    you not know the old man who cherished you
    with a father's love, and wedded you to the
    Son of the King of Heaven?
MARY: God, what shall I do! It is my father and
     master Abraham!
ABRAHAM: What has come to you daughter!
MARY: Oh, misery! …
ABRAHAM: Why have you thrown yourself down
     there? Why do you lie on the ground without
     moving or speaking? Get up, Mary, get up, my
     child and listen to me!
MARY: No, no, I am afraid, I cannot bear your
     reproaches.
ABRAHAM: Remember how I love you, and you
     will not be afraid.… The mercy of Heaven
     is greater than you or your sins. Let your sadness
     be dispersed by its glorious beams.…

And so on, until Mary is convinced of God's love and forgiveness and returns to the desert, riding on Abraham's horse, 'that the stony road should not hurt her delicate feet.'

With Paphnutius, the play immediately following Abraham, Hrotsvitha handles the same theme, that of the conversion of a harlot, in an entirely different manner. Paphnutius is the story of Thaïs, the first dramatic presentation of this old and still popular legend. In it Hrotsvitha shows her increasing ability to differentiate character and the art with which she can develop her material. When the hermit Paphnutius goes to Alexandria in the hope of saving a lost soul by converting the famous courtesan Thaïs to the true faith, he, too, like Abraham, dons worldly attire, and, armed with piety and the necessary gold pieces, ventures into a house of sin in pursuit of his worthy purpose. Both plays are surprisingly, if naïvely, realistic, for both hermits boldly demand the most intimate favours of their would-be converts, and Hrotsvitha does not hesitate to introduce her godly men into the bedchambers of these prostitutes. When Paphnutius demands of Thaïs that she take him into a secret room, she shows him her bedroom. 'How would you like a bedchamber fragrant with perfumes, adorned as for marriage? I have such a room. Look!'

The dramatic effect of both conversions is, of course, greatly heightened by the fact that they occur at the very moment when these erring women are engaged in their evil trade—but, though the scene is the same, the whole treatment is radically different. Abraham is throughout the gentle old man, disguising his emotion with difficulty and finally revealing himself in words of kindness and gentle exhortation. Paphnutius, on the other hand, makes a very creditable lover. Young and handsome, he woos Thaïs in words he must have learned elsewhere than in his desert hermitage, but when he begins to admonish her, all gentleness disappears. Fire and brimstone, terror and grief, are the lot of one as confirmed in evil, as hardened and as profligate as Thaïs the Harlot. Hard as Mary's life of penitence, prayer, and fasting may seem to us, it has not the revolting cruelty of the fate to which Paphnutius condemns the unfortunate Thaïs.

Here again Hrotsvitha's eye for realistic detail spares us no aspect of the plight in which Thaïs found herself when she was condemned to pass what remained of her life walled into a narrow cell which had no opening save one tiny window. She shrinks with fastidious disgust from the filth which, to the mediæval ascetic, was far nearer godliness than the perfumed cleanliness of a decadent Roman civilisation. It is no wonder that the unfortunate penitent died shortly after her release. But Thaïs' end is all the more edifying because of her great penitence—and this picture of physical suffering was no doubt considered highly edifying by Hrotsvitha's contemporaries, whatever it may seem to us to-day. Evidently also Hrotsvitha's surprising excursions into houses of ill fame were forgiven by her spiritual pastors and masters in view of the good work she was accomplishing in these unholy places. As her preface proves, she justified her treatment of such subjects by the moral effects of their teachings, but when we read the plays themselves, we cannot help thinking that Hrotsvitha enjoyed these voyages outside the convent walls, and that in her heart of hearts she loved the sinners she painted far more than she hated their sins.

Hrotsvitha must have found some difficulty in justifying all her expeditions into forbidden territory, for this surprising nun was bold enough to write at least one love-story. In the preface of the plays, she shows herself fully conscious of the dangerous ground she was treading. 'One thing has … embarrassed me and often brought a blush to my cheek,' she tells us. 'It is that I have been compelled through the nature of this work to apply my mind and my pen to depicting the dreadful frenzy of those possessed by unlawful love and the insidious sweetness of passion—things which should not even be named among us. Yet if from modesty I had refrained from treating these subjects, I should not have been able to attain my object—to glorify the innocent to the best of my ability. For the more seductive the blandishments of lovers, the more wonderful the divine succour and the greater the merit of those who resist, especially when it is fragile woman who is victorious and strong man who is routed with confusion.'

Safely ensconced behind this laudable and appropriate excuse, Hrotsvitha proceeded to write the first romance of modern literature, her third play, Callimachus. The curious external resemblances between Callimachus and Romeo and Juliet are no less striking than the atmosphere of passionate romanticism which emanates from the whole. The plot concerns the fatal love of Callimachus for Drusiana, wife of Prince Andronicus. Drusiana had dedicated herself to God, renouncing 'even that which is lawful,' her husband's bed, and, rather than break her vows of chastity, she prays for death to deliver her from the tempting importunities of her lover. She dies at once, and is buried, but Callimachus' passion follows her into the grave. The scene at the tomb of Drusiana, when Callimachus, aided by the faithless servant Fortunatus, finds himself in the presence of his dead love, strikingly prefigures the famous climax of Shakespeare's tragedy. The deaths are almost as numerous, too, for both Callimachus and Fortunatus are killed by miraculous intervention. The resurrection of all three, and the repentance and conversion of Callimachus is the religious dénouement needed to justify Hrotsvitha's bold attempt at romantic drama and is of less importance than her obvious preoccupation with her love-story.

Hrotsvitha's characterisations, embryonic as they are, show her originality. Drusiana, unlike the strong-minded saints of the martyr plays, sure of their faith and of their ultimate victory, is conscious of her own weakness in the face of temptation. Touched by the ardour of Callimachus, she is afraid that she will be unable to resist him, and, determined neither to rouse the anger of her husband against him nor fall from the grace she has obtained, she prays for death. In the few lines that are allotted to her, from her first scene with Callimachus, where she attempts, rather pathetically, to put off his advances, to her final act after her resurrection, when she restores to life the villain who betrayed her dead body to her lover, the character of Drusiana is consistently gentle, loving, and tender—as far removed from the colourless heroines of the Latin theatre as it is from the heroic figures of Greek tragedy.

The distracted husband, Andronicus, is also, traditionally speaking, a creation of Hrotsvitha's own imagination. Certainly the husbands and fathers of Latin comedy established no precedent on which to model this forbearing and kindly gentleman. One wonders even more where, among the barons and fighting lords of the Dark Ages, his prototype could have been found. His love for Drusiana never wavers, though she has left his bed, and though he knows that she has died in order to escape the importunities of another man. His devotion and faith are so great that it is he, rather than the Apostle John, who is made the mouthpiece for the moral of the tale. Standing over the dead bodies of Callimachus and the servant, he meditates on the heavenly revelation which he had just received: 'What astonishes me most,' he says, 'is that the Divine Voice should have promised the resurrection of [Callimachus] who planned the crime and not of him who was only an accomplice. Maybe it is because the one, blinded by passion of the flesh, knew not what he did, while the other sinned of deliberate malice.' Hrotsvitha had not forgotten the words of One whose understanding was so great that He could say of a certain sinner, 'Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.'

In the character of Callimachus, Hrotsvitha gives a vivid outline sketch of an experienced worldling, not unlike the dashing Romeo. In the first scenes of the play he talks to his friends, in the tenth-century equivalent of Euphuism, a scholastic splitting of phrases that only half-veils the intensity of his ill-advised passion. His relations with Drusiana show him to be as thoughtless of her happiness and safety as Romeo himself. He pursues her even into the grave, and here we see the Benedictine nun handling with extraordinary delicacy and understanding a situation as bold, one might almost say as lurid, as anything the Elizabethans could have invented. Hrotsvitha was evidently so moved by a strong sympathy for the miseries of frustrated love that she did not hesitate to present it in all its intensity. Callimachus' outburst over the dead body of Drusiana has an authentic ring of passion: 'O Drusiana, Drusiana, I worshipped you with my whole soul! I yearned from my very bowels to embrace you! And you repulsed me, and thwarted my desire. Now you are in my power, now I can wound you with my kisses, and pour out my love upon you.'

Strange words to echo in a convent hall, bringing suddenly to the surface the troubled and violent stream of imprisoned feeling. Hrotsvitha's intense and passionate nature is revealed for a moment only, to be quickly covered by the accustomed mantle of sober piety. But Callimachus' conversion and frenzied repentance is merely another phase of an intense emotional experience.

'I came here for an evil purpose,' he exclaims after his resurrection, 'but the pangs of love consumed me. I was beside myself.' And John answers him: 'What mad folly possessed you, that you should dare think of such a shameful outrage to the chaste dead!' Callimachus can only repeat: 'I was mad! … I am overwhelmed by the thought of my abominable crime. I repent with my whole heart and bewail my sin.… Oh, hasten then to help a man in dire need—give me some comfort! Help me throw off the grief that crushes me! Show me how a pagan may change into a Christian, a fornicator into a chaste man! Oh, set my feet in the way of truth! Teach me to live mindful of the divine promises.'

His plea is not in vain. For all his black sin, Callimachus is forgiven. The note of peace after the storm rings like the quiet tolling of the Angelus, reminding the nuns of Gandersheim that they have found a refuge from the 'dreadful frenzy of passion.' The Judge who could forgive Callimachus because he loved too greatly could be counted upon to 'search the heart and reins and reward or punish fairly.'

The plays of Hrotsvitha, after long years of neglect, have recently been studied with great interest and attention, and have even been acted in English both in London and New York with varying degrees of artistic success. The impossibility of recapturing an atmosphere as alien to us as that of mediæval Christianity will always make their presentation peculiarly-difficult. Few indeed are the playwrights who have actually survived their own day unless, in addition to possessing dramatic gifts, they have been poets of such high order that the hungry generations have listened in awe to their music. Hrotsvitha was not a great poet. She was an acute observer, an avid scholar, an adventurous and enterprising soul. To enjoy her style one must have a taste for the phrase that suggests rather than describes, for a simplicity which is at once naïve and full of wisdom. Like the early painters, her work is stiff, clearcut, often harsh, and occasionally crude, but none the less vital for all its shortcomings. Her plays are all brief, her characterisations often no more than outline sketches, yet in the quick strokes with which she defines an individual she shows a master's hand. Her comedies have a vivacity, a directness of approach, and, in spite of much that is incredible, an essential veracity which gives them permanent value.

If it is true, as the scholars tell us, that Hrotsvitha had no imitators or successors, she nevertheless foreshadowed a new dramatic dispensation, where love, human and divine, were to reign supreme, and where the romantic ideal of individual freedom was finally to replace the Greek conception of inescapable fatality. Working alone in her remote Saxon convent, where plays and players had never been seen, surrounded by a social order barely emerging from barbarism, this Benedictine nun cherished in secret the wavering flame of a great tradition, pouring into it the new oil of the Christian religion and handing it on, sweetened and strengthened by her care, to later generations of those who know and love the theatre.