Purim Plays

Purim Plays, associated with the Jewish Festival of Purim on the 14th Adar (roughly the middle of March), appear to have originated in France and Germany as early as the 14th century, mainly as extemporized entertainments centring on the Old Testament story of Esther and Haman. Under the influence of the masquerades and mumming of the Italian Carnival, they developed into plays featuring racy dialogue, with interposed songs and dances, which widened their scope to include other Old Testament figures such as Joseph and his brethren, David and Goliath, Moses and Aaron. Mostly in one act, they featured comic rabbis, apothecaries, midwives, and devils, the whole ending with a final chorus foretelling Israel's salvation. The religious authorities, who had at first opposed the acting of Purim plays, finally bowed to public demand and tolerated them as long as they did not overstep the bounds of decency. Given mainly in the countryside, they spread rapidly across Europe to the east, and remained popular in some remote districts until the end of the 19th century. They had a considerable influence on the development of Jewish drama, and took on a literary form in the 17th century. Under the influence of the commedia dell'arte Goliath or Haman assumed some of the characteristics of the Capitano, Abraham or Jacob those of Pantalone, the Devil those of Harlequin. The English Comedians had in their repertory a version of Esther and Haman, printed in German in 1640: if there was an original version in English it is lost. The first original German Purim play is an Ahasuerus acted at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1708. The Purim players were constantly in trouble with the authorities for the accretion of vulgar and bawdy ornamentations which gathered round the original plots, and in 1720 the reaction set in. In Germany the Haskala (Enlightenment) groups continued the fight against vulgarity and improved a number of accepted texts by relegating the comic figures to a subplot, and stressing the religious and educational elements. By the early 19th century Purim plays were covering the whole range of drama, but the founding by Goldfaden of a permanent Yiddish theatre which embodied in its productions much of the spirit and method of the Purim plays finally led to their disappearance.