he monks played
Terence, probably on some fete-day, or before their scholars as a
means of instruction, and doubtless Roswitha's plays were also acted
on special occasions, such as when the Emperor sojourned at
Gandersheim, or the Bishop made a visitation. As they were written in
Latin, the literary language of the time, this in itself, even if
their themes had appealed to the people, would have prevented them
from being performed save before the educated few. So if we would
picture to ourselves a performance of one of them by her companion
nuns in the Chapter House, or it may be in the refectory, it must be
before the Bishop and his clergy, and perhaps also some members of the
Imperial family, and lords and ladies of the Court. How refreshing
must such an entertainment have been to this distinguished company as
it found itself carried away into an atmosphere of poetry and passion,
of movement and colour, in place of the sobriety induced by the stiff
liturgical dramas that probably formed the usual diversion! Such a
drama was that of _The Wise and Foolish Virgins_, a specially
favourite old-world dramatic exercise, dispensed as a sort of
religious tonic to womankind, calculated to arouse slumbering souls,
or to quicken to still further effort those that did not slumber. For
us, its chief interest lies in the antiphonic arrangement of the
dialogue, in which we may trace the first germs of characterisation,
and in the music, the refrains of which contain the first suggestions,
as far as we know, of the principle of the leitmotiv, a principle
carried to its most complete development by Wagner. Although the
earliest known MS. of it is of the eleventh century, so finished, yet
so simple, are its dialogues and refrains, that it seems not
unreasonable to infer that the form of the play was well known, either
through some earlier MS. or through oral tradition. It is only a
slight development of the elegy in dialogue which was performed in
A.D. 874, at the funeral of Hathumoda, the first abbess of
Gandersheim. This dialogue takes place between the sorrow-stricken
nuns, who speak in chorus of their loss, and the monk Wichbert, who
acts as consoler. Although its form is liturgical, its subject
entitles it to be considered the earliest known mediaeval dramatic work
extant.

Of Roswitha's dramas, three seem to stand out as of special
interest--_Abraham_, _Callimachus_, and _Paphnutius_. All of these are
more or less patchwork adap