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Notes
A facsimile of the manuscript has been published by Eugen Thurnher and Walter Neuhauser, Die Neustifter-Innsbrucker Spielhandschrift von 1391: Cod. 960 der Universitätsbibliothek Innsbruck, Litterae, 40 (Göppingen: A. Kümmerle, 1975). The only complete edition of the plays in the manuscript is that of Franz Joseph Mone, Altteutsche Schauspiele (Quedlinburg and Leipzig: G. Basse, 1841). All future references to the playbook are cited from these sources.
The scribe's name appears in his own hand on fol. 59r. Dated explicits at the end of each play (fols. 34v; 50r; 59r) allow us to trace the copyist's progress: "Explicit ludus de assumpcione; est completum anno domini M° CCC° nonogesimo primo sabato die post Bartholomei" [August 26, 1391]; "Explicit ludus de resurreccione domini anno domini M° CCC° nonogesimo primo completus est liber iste sexta feria in die Egidij" [September 1, 1391]; "Explicit lyber de corpore Christi anno domini M° CCC° nonogesimo primo tertia die ante nativitatis Marie virginis" [September 5, 1391]. Two other hands have made marginal notes in the manuscript. Sometime after 1391, Scribe B added a 56-line compendium of Latin incantations and formulas for exorcism (fols. 59v-60r). In 1445, Scribe C added an obituary notice on the death of Oswald von Wolkenstein (fol. 60v) and comments on the performance of the Corpus Christi play (fols. 50v and 51v). See Thurnher and Neuhauser, pp. 11, 14-17.
The only German Assumption play to predate the one in the Innsbruck codex is the so-called Amorbacher Marienhimmelfahrtspiel, a garbled fragment of less than 150 lines dating from the early fourteenth century; see Rudolf Heym, "Bruchstück eines geistlichen Schauspiels von Marien Himmelfahrt," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 52 (1910), 1-56. The only earlier surviving Easter play is a 612-line fragment dating from about 1250; see Friedrich Ranke, Das Osterspiel von Muri: Faksimiledruck der Fragmente und Rekonstruktion der Pergamentrolle (Basel: Alkuin, 1967). The so-called "Innicher Osterspielfragment," a 9-line fragment which may be part of a lost Easter play, dates from 1340; see Wolfgang Michael, "Zum Innicher Osterspielfragment von 1340," Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, 87 (1968), 387-390, and Ursula Hennig, "Zu dem sogenannten Osterspiel-Fragment von Innichen," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 101 (1972), 358-368. No earlier Corpus Christi play or fragment survives in any language.
Thurnher and Neuhauser, pp. 20-28. The overwhelming majority of these studies are devoted to the Easter play.
For the history of the manuscript, see Barbara Thoran, "Das Osterspiel der Innsbrucker Handschrift Cod. 960: Ein Neustifter Osterspiel?" in Tiroler Volksschauspiel: Beiträge zur Theatergeschichte des Alpenraumes, ed. Egon Kühebacher (Bozen: Athesia, 1976), pp. 360-62; Thurnher and Neuhauser, pp. 14-15; and Mone, "Vorrede" and p. 1.
"Obsaldus [sic] wolkenstainer prebendarius Novacellensis obiit Merano die secundo mensis augusti huc magno labore et in calore vectus 1445. Cui iuratum super euangelio fuit per dominum decanum ex parte nostra eodem anno in profesto Witi"; see Thurnher and Neuhauser, pp. 16-17.
"Hic incipit ludus de assumpcione beate Marie virginis" (fol. 1r); "Hic incipit ludus de resurrexione domini" (fol. 35v); "Hic incipit ludus de corpore Christi" (fol. 51r); see also n. 2 above.
Rudolf Höpfner, Untersuchungen zu dem Innsbrucker, Berliner und Wiener Osterspiel, Germanistische Abhandlungen, 45 (Breslau: Marcus, 1913), pp. 40-45; Franz Ebbecke, Untersuchungen zur Innsbrucker Himmelfahrt Mariae, Diss. Marburg 1924 (Marburg: R. Friedrich, 1929), pp. 67-69. See also the review of Höpfner's study by Hans Rueff in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 38 (1919), 70-73.
H. Habicht, "Ein halbes Jahrhundert aus dem Theaterleben Schmalkaldens: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Dramas im Zeitalter der Reformation," Zeitschrift für Hennebergische Geschichte und Landeskunde zu Schmalkalden, 3 (1880), 14; Höpfner, pp. 41-42.
Mone, p. 1, argues for a date between 1335 and 1342; Höpfner, p. 45, suggests 1323-1347. Cf. David Brett-Evans, Von Hrotsvit bis Folz und Gengenbach: Eine Geschichte des mittelalterlichen deutschen Dramas, Grundlagen der Germanistik, 15 (Berlin: E. Schmidt, 1975), I, 114.
Anton Dörrer, "Mariahimmelfahrtsspiel, Neustifter (Innsbrucker)," in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Wolfgang Stammler and Karl Langosch (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1955), V, 650; Anton Dörrer, Bozner Bürgerspiele: Alpendeutsche Prang- und Kranzfeste, Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 291 (Leipzig: K. Hiersemann, 1941), I, 128; Ebbecke, p. 69; Franke, p. 87; Brett-Evans, I, 149-150.
Eduard Hartl, Das Drama des Mittelalters: Osterspiele, Deutsche Literatur in Entwicklungsreihen, Reihe 5, II (Leipzig: P. Reclam, 1937), p. 120; Dörrer, "Osterspiel, Neustifter (Innsbrucker)," in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, V, 802; Rolf Steinbach, Die deutsche Oster- und Passionsspiele des Mittelalters, Kölner germanistische Studien, 4 (Köln: Böhlau, 1970), p. 60. Hartl is incorrect in his assertion that there are two columns of text on each page, and that the pages show signs of having been folded back lengthwise between the columns for the convenience of the director during rehearsals or performances. For a summary of the use of the long, narrow "Heberegisterformat" or "Schmalfolioformat" for medieval German playbooks, see Rolf Bergmann, "Zur Überlieferung der geistlichen Spiele," in Festschrift Mathias Zender: Studien zur Volkskultur, Sprache und Landeskunde, ed. Edith Ennen and Günter Wiegelmann (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1972), II, 902-903.
Eugen Thurnher, Tiroler Drama und Tiroler Theater (Innsbruck: Tirolia, 1968), p. 13; Dörrer, "Mariahimmelfahrtsspiel, Neustifter (Innsbrucker)," p. 651; Thurnher and Neuhauser, p. 5.
See, for example, the exaggerated claims of Thurnher and Neuhauser, pp. 4, 7. For more skeptical evaluations of the primacy of Neustift in the Tirolian dramatic tradition, see Hans Moser, "Die Innsbrucker Spielhandschrift in der geistlichen Spieltradition Tirols," in Tiroler Volksschauspiel, ed. Egon Kühebacher, pp. 178-179, and Thoran, pp. 361-362.
The text is preserved in a fifteenth-century Austrian breviary and has been edited by Karl Young, Drama of the Medieval Church (Clarendon Press, 1933), I, 357-358. For the possible association with Neustift, see Eugen Thurnher, "Möglichkeiten und Aufgaben des Volksschauspieles in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart," in Tiroler Volkschauspiel, ed. Egon Kühebacher, p. 22.
Bernd Neumann, Zeugnisse mittelalterlicher Aufführungen im deutschen Sprachraum: Eine Dokumentation zum volkssprachigen geistlichen Schauspiel, Diss. Koln 1979, I, 37-94; Moser, p. 183; Thoran, p. 361.
For other minor errors and suggested emendations, see Eduard Hartl, "Textkritisches zum Innsbrucker Osterspiel," Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 74 (1937), 213-226. For calculations of the copyist's pace, see Thurnher and Neuhauser, p. 13.
For a survey of the numerous medieval dramatizations of the siege of Jerusalem, see Stephen K. Wright, "The Vengeance of Our Lord: The Destruction of Jerusalem and the Conversion of Rome in Medieval Drama," Diss. Indiana University 1983.
Hartl, pp. 124-125. For cogent refutations of this approach, see Steinbach, pp. 60-64, and Michael, Das deutsche Drama des Mittelalters, p. 70. Joseph A. Dane, "MS, Text, Allusion: The Critical Description of Medieval Drama with Particular Reference to the Innsbruck Easterplay (1391)," Germanic Review, 57 (1982), pp. 159-161, is alone in supporting Hartl's free-handed reordering of the manuscript on the grounds that the medieval playbook does not deserve to be considered a definitive text, but rather must be regarded as "a free variation of certain generic material, and thus less a text than an allusion to what has been or what might be staged within a particular dramatic tradition." Dane's misunderstanding of the erroneous citations from the Assumption play is nowhere more apparent than when he interprets the scribbling on fol. 38r as the scribe's conscious effort to create a legitimate "variation" of his inherited material (p. 161).
Rudolf Meier, ed., Das Innsbrucker Osterspiel; Das Osterspiel von Muri (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1962). Despite their widely acknowledged importance in the history of early German religious drama, there is still no satisfactory modern edition of any of the three plays in the Innsbruck manuscript.
The present transcription, which differs slightly from Hartl's emended version, has been checked against the manuscript for accuracy.
Wolfgang F. Michael, "Das Neustifter-Innsbrucker Osterspiel und die Tiroler Passion," in Tiroler Volksschauspiel, ed. Egon Kühebacher, pp. 169-172; see also Michael, "Fahrendes Volk und mittelalterliches Drama," Kleine Schriften der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte, 17 (1960), 3-8, and Das deutsche Drama des Mittelalters, passim.
Stephan Beissel, Geschichte der Verehrung Marias in Deutschland während des Mittelalters: Ein Beitrag zur Religionswissenschaft und Kunstgeschichte (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1909), p. 268; Wright, pp. 109-111.
Dörrer, Bozner Bürgerspiele, I, 128-129; Dörrer, "Osterspiel, Neustifter (Innsbrucker)," p. 802. Nicholas of Cusa was the titular bishop of Brixen until his death in 1464, but was permanently exiled from his diocese in 1458 owing to a dispute with Duke Sigmund of Austria.
Wright, pp. 96-101, speculates that the Assumption play may have been composed under the auspices of the Teutonic Knights.
Dane, p. 161. For a similar argument in the field of Renaissance drama, see Stephen Orgel, "What Is a Text?" Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, 14 (1981), 3-6.
For a general discussion of the problems inherent in editing medieval dramatic texts, see Johannes Janota, "Auf der Suche nach gattungsadäquaten Editionsformen bei der Herausgabe mittelalterlicher Spiele," in Tiroler Volksschauspiel, ed. Egon Kühebacher, pp. 74-87; Wolfgang F. Michael, "Problems in Editing Medieval Dramas," Germanic Review, 24 (1949), 108-115; and Paul-Gerhard Völker, "Schwierigkeiten bei der Edition geistlicher Spiele des Mittelalters," in Kolloquium über Probleme altgermanistischer Editionen: Referate und Diskussionsbeiträge, ed. Hugo Kuhn, Karl Stackmann, and Dieter Wuttke, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Forschungsbericht 13 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1968), pp. 160-168.
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