rom frost. Saint Joseph gets into a
quarrel with two maids; there is a free fight; vulgar reproaches and
blows are exchanged. Darkness begins to spread over Germany. The devil,
stupid or otherwise, introduces his spook; sorceresses and hags
professing magic skill are everywhere. The defamation of the grand
institutions of the Papacy, owing to several unworthy successors of
Saint Peter, promotes contempt and ludicrous treatment. The ridiculous
fiction of the alleged "Papess" Joanna becomes a farcical subject, but
is, nevertheless, jokingly rescued from the claws of the devil. Her
story goes thus: a maiden elopes with a priest, her lover, to Rome, dons
man's dress, becomes a doctor, a cardinal, and at last a Pope. She is
finally ignominiously unmasked, received by the devils in hell, but
saved by the intercession of Saint Mary and Saint Nicholas. Dietrich
Schernberg treated this strange subject at Muhlhausen, in Thuringia, in
his play of _Frau Jutla_. All these morality plays, mysteries, farces,
sottises, sacred or profane, are scarcely ever edifying, and this
whether they treat of court sessions regarding love troubles, marriage
calamities, allegorical figures, fools of love, women, wicked monks, or
quacks. Here, a maiden leads her lovers by the nose; there, lovers
present themselves before Lady Venus. An immoderate coarseness and
indecency in manner and action is part of the game; even in the presence
of women the utmost vulgarity was permitted. Women joined in the most
obscene conversation, and it is astonishing to what depths of immodesty
their speech descended. Nuernberg was the centre of carnival plays. Hans
Rosenblut and Hans Folz, authors of incredibly obscene, though very
clever, farces, were the forerunners of the great and lovable Hans
Sachs,

"Who was a shoe-
maker and a poet, too."

But it is incumbent upon us to return to the beginning of the period of
decadence and consider the decline in its sequence. During the era of
chivalry the follies of the nobles were imitated by the peasants and
burghers. Inter-marriages between poor nobles and rich peasants occurred
now and then, liaisons and amours between them were much more frequent;
the caricature of the _bourgeois gentilhomme_, whom Moliere satirized in
his immortal comedy, was ever present. Neidhart's and Strieker's poems
and Werner's _Meier Helmbrecht_ furnish delightful figures and
caricatures of the upstart class which was so scorned, ri