ce. My own sense of the eternal fitness of things is so highly
developed that I was under the tense strain of nervous excitement which
always wrecks me after reading a strong novel or witnessing a tragic
play. I was afraid to see the Passion Play for two reasons. One that I
could not bear to see the Saviour of mankind personified, and the other
that I was afraid that the audience would misbehave. If I am going to
have my emotions wrenched, I never want any one near me. To my mind the
mad King Ludwig of Bavaria obtained the highest enjoyment possible from
having performances of magnificent merit with himself as the sole
auditor. This world is so mixed anyway, and audiences at any
entertainment so hopelessly beyond my control. Nothing, for example,
makes me feel so murderous as for an audience to go mad and stamp and
kick and howl over a cornet solo with variations, no matter how ribald,
and beg for more of it. And they always _do_!

The Passion Play, up to a comparatively few years ago, had comic
characters and scenes, as for instance, there was once a scene in hell
where the Devil, as chief comedian, ripped open the bowels of Judas and
took therefrom a string of sausages. This vulgar and hideous buffoonery
was in the habit of being received with delight by the peasants from
neighbouring hamlets, which, up to fifty years ago, formed the principal
part of the Passion Play audiences.

And as tradition, the handing down of legends from father to son, forms
such a part of the mountaineer's education, I was not surprised to hear
a party of Tyrolese giggle at moments when the deeper meaning of the
play was holding the rest of us in a spell so tense that it hurt.

I remember in Modjeska's rendition of Frou-frou, when Frou-frou's lover
is breaking her heart, and the strain becomes almost unbearable,
Modjeska's nervous hands tear her valuable lace handkerchief into bits.
It is a piece of inspired acting to make the discriminating weep, but my
friend the audience always giggled irresistibly, as if the sound of
rending lace, when a woman's agony was the most intense, were a bit of
exquisite comedy.

I am constrained to believe, however, that in almost entirely
remodelling the Passion Play, the village priest, Daisenberger, was not
moved by any consideration of what an ignorant audience might do, but
rather by the noble, Oberammergau spirit of a life of devotion,
dedicated to the rewriting, rehearsing, and directing of the
perfo