ignored, the life of the great German free towns being transferred to Hebrew and Christian story, though tragedy and comedy are still combined as in the Mysteries or in a Chinese play, the subdivision of labour in towns is, in the theatre of Hans Sachs, individualising the types of the old spectacle, and Sachs' conception of the burghers and the nobles, as divided by God Himself into castes, marks the union of two spirits—that of the hereditary feudal seigneurs and that of the town corporations.
Sachs' comedy, Eve's Unlike Children, introduced by the usual herald of the Mysteries, illustrates this union of town and castle, feudal lord and trading burgher. The division of labour is attributed to God, who, having come down from heaven to examine Cain and Abel in Dr. Luther's Catechism, is shocked by the contemptuous ignorance of Cain, whose time is spent in running wild about the streets (clearly a reminiscence of the German town rather than the plains of Asia), and who, with his wicked brothers, four in number, ranged before the Lord, expresses "a passionate dislike for the examination." The Lord laments their impiety, which is to bring down an inherited curse in the shape of hard labour.
"Therefore on earth shall be your place
As a poor, rough, and toiling race,
As peasants, woodmen, charcoal-burners,
Herdsmen, hangmen, knackers, turners,
Grooms, broom-makers, beadles, tailors,
Serfs, shoemakers, carters, sailors,
Jacob's brethren, rustics coarse,
Hireling men with one resource—
A labouring life and little gain."
Dr. Hase notices as a remarkable fact that Hans Sachs, not only here but elsewhere, has adopted "the harsh aristocratic theory which would derive the scions of every noble house from a pious and divinely favoured ancestry, and the pith of the nation, which supports the upper
