n earth for the sins of man. Each
strophe is terminated by a refrain, of which the conclusion has the same
melody as the first stanza of each of the strophes. The foolish virgins
confess their sins and beg their sisters for help. They sing in Latin,
and their three strophes have a melody different from that of the
preceding strophes. They terminate, like the others, with a sad and
plaintive refrain, of which the words are Provencal:

"Dolentas! Chaitivas! trop i avem dormit."

In modern French this line reads, "Malheureuses! Chetives! Nous avons
trop dormi!" The wise virgins refuse the oil and bid their foolish
sisters to go and buy it. All the strophes change the melody at each
change of personages. The little drama comes to its end with the
intervention of Christ, who condemns the foolish virgins. The words of
the Savior have no music. Coussemaker wonders whether the musician was
unable to find a melody worthy to be sung by the Savior or intentionally
made Him speak instead of chant. The same author, in his "Histoire de
l'Harmonie au Moyen Age," gives facsimiles of all the pages of the
original manuscript of this play. The notation, that of the eleventh
century, is beautifully clear, and its deciphering is made easier by the
presence of a line ruled across the page to indicate the relative
positions of the notes. The music of these dramas is what we should
naturally expect it to be, if we take into account the character of the
text. The subjects of the dramas were always incidents from the Bible
and the plays were represented in churches by priests or those close to
them.

It is certain that the educational drama of the church continued in the
state of its infancy for several centuries. Even after the birth of the
"Sacra Rappresentazione" in the fourteenth century the old-fashioned
liturgical drama survived in Italy and was preserved in activity in
other parts of Europe. Several interesting manuscripts in great
libraries attest the consideration accorded to it at a period much later
than that of which we have been speaking. Nevertheless the era of the
origin of the plays as a rule will be found to antedate that of the
manuscripts. For example, in the royal library of Berlin there is a
fifteenth century manuscript of a liturgical drama entitled, "Die
Marienklage." Dr. Frommann, of Nuremberg, after careful study, has
decided that the play was of middle German (perhaps Thuringian) origin
in the fourteenth century. T