Glimpses of Three Coasts Part 32

Thrice unhappy hour In which my mother gave me to the world!

How long must I drag on this life of shame, And bear these tortures in my outcast breast?

As one pest-stricken, flee the haunts of men, And be despised and shunned by all the world?

Not one step farther! Here, O life accursed,-- Here will I end thee!"

The character of Christ is, of necessity, far the most difficult part in the Play. Looking at it either as a rendering of the supernatural or a portraying of the human Christ, there is apparent at once the well-nigh insurmountable difficulty in the way of actualizing it in any man's conception. Only the very profoundest religious fervor could carry any man through the effort of embodying it on the theory of Christ's divinity; and no amount of atheistic indifference could carry a man through the ghastly mockery of acting it on any other theory.

Joseph Maier, who played the part in 1870, 1871, and 1880, is one of the best-skilled carvers in the village, and, it is said, has never carved anything but figures of Christ. He is a man of gentle and religious nature, and is, as any devout Oberammergauer would be, deeply pervaded by a sense of the solemnity of the function he performs in the Play. In the main, he acts the part with wonderful dignity and pathos. The only drawback is a certain undercurrent of self-consciousness which seems ever apparent in him. Perhaps this is only one of the limitations inevitably resulting from the over-demand which the part, once being accepted and regarded as a supernatural one, must perforce make on human powers. The dignity and dramatic unity of the Play are much heightened by the admirable manner in which a chorus is introduced, somewhat like the chorus of the old Greek plays. It consists of eighteen singers, with a leader styled the _Choragus_. The appearance and functions of these _Schutzgeister_, or guardian angels, as they are called, has been thus admirably described by a writer who has given the best detailed account ever written of the Pa.s.sion Play:--

"They have dresses of various colors, over which a white tunic with gold fringe and a colored mantle are worn. Their appearance on the stage is majestic and solemn. They advance from the recesses on either side of the proscenium, and take up their position across the whole extent of the theatre, forming a slightly concave line. After the chorus has a.s.sumed its position, the choragus gives out in a dramatic manner the opening address or prologue which introduces each act; the tone is immediately taken up by the whole chorus, which continues either in solo, alternately, or in chorus, until the curtain is raised in order to reveal a _tableau vivant_. At this moment the choragus retires a few steps backward, and forms with one half of the band a division on the left of the stage, while the other half withdraws in like manner to the right. They thus leave the centre of the stage completely free, and the spectators have a full view of the tableau thus revealed. A few seconds having been granted for the contemplation of this picture, made more solemn by the musical recitation of the expounders, the curtain falls again, and the two divisions of the chorus coming forward resume their first position, and present a front to the audience, observing the same grace in all their motions as when they parted. The chanting still continues, and points out the connection between the picture which has just vanished and the dramatic scene which is forthwith to succeed. The singers then make their exit. The task of these Spirit-singers is resumed in the few following points: They have to prepare the audience for the approaching scenes. While gratifying the ear by delicious harmonies, they explain and interpret the relation which shadow bears to substance,--the connection between the type and its fulfilment.

And as their name implies, they must be ever present as guardian spirits, as heavenly monitors, during the entire performance. The addresses of the choragus are all written by the Geistlicher Rath Daisenberger. They are written in the form of the ancient strophe and anti-strophe, with the difference that while in the Greek theatre they were spoken by the different members of the chorus, they are delivered in the Pa.s.sion Play by the choragus alone."

It is impossible for any description, however accurate and minute, to give a just idea of the effects produced by this chorus. The handling of it is perhaps the one thing which, more than any other, lifts the play to its high plane of dignity and beauty. The costumes are brilliant in color, and strictly cla.s.sic in contour,--a full white tunic, edged with gold at hem and at throat, and simply confined at the waist by a loose girdle. Over these are worn flowing mantles of either pale blue, crimson, dull red, grayish purple, green, or scarlet. These mantles or robes are held in place carelessly by a band of gold across the breast. Crowns or tiaras of gold on the head complete the dress, which, for simplicity and grace of outline and beauty of coloring, could not be surpa.s.sed. The rhythmic precision with which the singers enter, take place, open their lines, and fall back on the right and left, is a marvel, until one learns that a diagram of their movement is marked out on the floor, and that the mysterious exactness and uniformity of their positions are simply the result of following each time the constantly marked lines on the stage. Their motions are slow and solemn, their expressions exalted and rapt; they also are actors in the grand scheme of the Play.

On the morning of the Play the whole village is astir before light; in fact, the village proper can hardly be said to have slept at all, for seven hundred out of its twelve hundred inhabitants are actors in the play, and are to be ready to attend a solemn ma.s.s at daylight.

Before eight o'clock every seat in the theatre is filled. There is no confusion, no noise. The proportion of those who have come to the play with as solemn a feeling as they would have followed the steps of the living Christ in Judaea is so large that the contagion of their devout atmosphere spreads even to the most indifferent spectators, commanding quiet and serious demeanor.

The firing of a cannon announces the moment of beginning. Slow, swelling strains come from the orchestra; the stately chorus enters on the stage; the music stops; the leader gives a few words of prologue or argument, and immediately the chorus breaks into song.

From this moment to the end, eight long hours, with only one hour's rest at noon, the movement of this play is continuous. It is a wonderful instance of endurance on the part of the actors; the stage being entirely uncovered, sun and rain alike beat on their unprotected heads. The greater part of the auditorium also is uncovered, and there have been several instances in which the play has been performed in a violent storm of rain, thousands of spectators sitting drenched from beginning to end of the performance.

How incomparably the effects are, in sunny weather, heightened by this background of mountain and sky, fine distances, and vistas of mountain and meadow, and the canopy of heaven overhead, it is impossible to express; one only wonders, on seeing it, that outdoor theatres have not become a common summer pleasure for the whole world.

When birds fly over, they cast fluttering shadows of their wings on the front of Pilate's and Caiaphas' homes, as naturally as did Judaean sparrows two thousand years ago. Even b.u.t.terflies flitting past cast their tiny shadows on the stage; one bird paused, hovered, as if pondering what it all could mean, circled two or three times over the heads of the mult.i.tude, and then alighted on one of the wall-posts and watched for some time. Great banks of white c.u.mulus clouds gathered and rested, dissolved and floated away, as the morning grew to noonday, and the noonday wore on toward night. This closeness of Nature is an accessory of illimitable effect; the visible presence of the sky seems a witness to invisible presences beyond it, and a direct bond with them. There must be many a soul, I am sure, who has felt closer to the world of spiritual existences, while listening to the music of the Oberammergau Pa.s.sion Play, than in any other hour of his life; and who can never, so long as he lives, read without emotion the closing words of the venerable Daisenberger's little "History of Oberammergau:"--

"May the strangers who come to this Holy Pa.s.sion Play become, by reading this book, more friendly with Ammergau; and may it sometimes, after they have returned to their homes, renew in them the memory of this quiet mountain valley."

University Press: John Wilson & Son, Cambridge.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] Betrothed.

_Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications._

RAMONA: A STORY.

BY HELEN JACKSON (H. H.).

12mo Cloth. Price $1.50

_The Atlantic Monthly_ says of the author that she is "a Murillo in literature," and that the story "is one of the most artistic creations of American literature." Says a lady: "To me it is the most distinctive piece of work we have had in this country since 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and its exquisite finish of style is beyond that cla.s.sic." "The book is truly an American novel," says the _Boston Advertiser_. "Ramona is one of the most charming creations of modern fiction," says Charles D Warner. "The romance of the story is irresistibly fascinating," says _The Independent_.

"The best novel written by a woman since George Eliot died, as it seems to me, is Mrs. Jackson's 'Ramona.' What action is there! What motion! How _entrainant_ it is! It carries us along as if mounted on a swift horse's back, from beginning to end, and it is only when we return for a second reading that we can appreciate the fine handling of the characters, and especially the Spanish mother, drawn with a stroke as keen and firm as that which portrayed George Eliot's 'Dorothea.'"--_T. W. Higginson._

Unsolicited tribute of a stranger, a lady in Wisconsin:--

"I beg leave to thank you with an intense heartiness for your public espousal of the cause of the Indian. In your 'Century of Dishonor' you showed to the country its own disgrace. In 'Ramona' you have dealt most tenderly with the Indians as men and women. You have shown that their stoicism is not indifference, that their squalor is not always of their own choosing. You have shown the tender grandeur of their love, the endurance of their constancy. While, by 'Ramona,' you have made your name immortal, you have done something which is far greater.

You are but one: they are many. You have helped those who cannot help themselves. As a novel, 'Ramona' must stand beside 'Romola,' both as regards literary excellence and the portrayal of life's deepest, most vital, most solemn interests. I think nothing in literature since Goldsmith's 'Vicar of Wakefield' equals your description of the flight of Ramona and Alessandro. Such delicate pathos and tender joy, such pure conception of life's realities, and such loftiness of self-abnegating love! How much richer and happier the world is with 'Ramona' in it!"