(LE PLAY; MYSTERY ; HOMALITY.) Probably because of the importance of the 1\laceabee brothers and their mother in the earlier represen tations.the French and other Latin peoples call it the ',Make Macabre,' or sonic equivalent name. The play consisted of a dialogue between Death and representatives of the various classes. church men and laymen. from the Pope and the Emperor down. Death invited them to follow him, and each unfortunate representative, after long re monstrances, submitted to the call. invoking God's mercy. At first Death was represented in an earnest and solemn manner, lint soon his attitude took the character of a dance. Such plays were given in all countries where the Latin Church prevailed. and in Italy we find another version of the same subject, rendered popular by Dante and Petrarch. the "Triumph of Death." It was soon found more effieiteions, how over, to have the subject portrayed by painters and sculptors upon the walls of the church or the cemetery. The most famous example of the of Death" is the fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa (fourteenth century). wrongfully ascribed to Andrea Oreagme Among the oldest French examples of the 'Dance of Death' was that in the Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris (14:n). (»hers still exist in France. as well as
in England. Germany. and Spain. The subject is often pictorially represented in the manu scripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth eenturies. and in many woodcuts of the fifteenth and fol lowing centuries. The most famous of the latter are the two designed by Holbein. the smaller engraved by Liitzelhurger (1520). while the larger appeared in book-fo•m in 1538 (at Lyons) and many times since. The subject has also been represented in the nineteenth eentnry, the most faunal.: representation being that of Bethel (13481, directed against the French Republic. It has also been admirably treated in music.. especially by Saint-Sai:ns in his Douse macabre, and in literature, as. for example. in Toiltentan7.
Con,ult: Douce. The Dance of Death ( London, 15331 ; Langlois, Es.sai sac les dunses des worts I Rouen, 18511: hastier. Les (Maws des moils (Park. NVaekernagel, "Der Todtentanz," in Mello-re Sehriften. i. (Leipzig, 1574) ; Seel ma nn, Tailtentiin:ve des Mittebilters (Norden, 1893) : Vigo. Le dame macabre to Italia (Livor no. 1373) ; Merino, La danza macabre (Madrid,