The Plays of Roswitha

_THE PLAYS OF ROSWITHA_ TRANSLATED BY CHRISTOPHER ST. JOHN

These transcriptions are also available on a GitHub repository, where they are available as markdown-formatted text files. If you want to remix this text, the GitHub repository would probably be the best place to build off from: https://github.com/cncoulter/Transcription_The-Plays-of-Roswitha

_The Plays of Roswitha_ Translated by Christopher St. John London: Chatto & Windus, 1923

1. Translator’s Note 2. Introduction by His Eminence Cardinal Gasquet 3. Critical Preface by Christopher St. John 4. The Prefaces of Roswitha 5. Gallicanus 6. Dulcitius 7. Callimachus 8. Abraham 9. Paphnutius 10. Sapientia 11. Note on the Acting of the Plays

The works consulted include the following:

- _Hrotsvithae Opera_: Edited by Paul Winterfeld. - _Hrotsvithae Opera_: Edited by H. L. Schurzfleisch. - _Hrotsvithae Opera_: Edited by Conrad Celtes (Nurnberg, 1 501). - _Patrologiae Cursus Completus_: J. P. Migne (vol. 137). - _Abraham_: Translated into French by C. Cuzin, with critical preface. - _Theatre de Roswitha_: Charles Magnin. - _Origines du theatre Moderne_: Charles Magnin. - _Antiquitates Gandersheimensis_: Leuckfeld. - _Six Medieval Women_: Alice Kemp Welch.

I am much indebted to Dame Laurentia McLachlan, O.S.B., Superioress of Stanbrook Abbey, and to the Reverend Paul Bonnet of Lyons University, for assistance in the work of translation.

Whatever may be thought of the precise merits of these six short dramas, now translated into English for the first time,[1] it will be conceded that a collection of plays bearing the date of the 10th century, authenticated as the work of a woman, and a nun, is a remarkable phenomenon, interesting to students of monasticism and of the drama alike.

At one time, it is interesting to note, it was suggested that the author of these dramas was an Englishwoman. In fact, the English scholar, Laurence Humfrey, who first introduced them to notice in this country, endeavoured to prove that Roswitha was no other than St. Hilda of Northumbria. His theory cannot, of course, be maintained; but the very anxiety shown to identify this talented poetess and dramatist as a native of this country is evidence of the high estimation in which her compositions were held in the 16th century, the time when Laurence Humfrey, an exile from England for his religion, learnt to know them in Germany. It is now an established fact that the plays are the work of a Benedictine nun of Gandersheim, in Saxony, and their merits certainly justify her biographer’s exclamation: “Rara avis in Saxonia visa est.”