Die hessische Passionsspielgruppe. Edition im Paralleldruck. Band III. Heidelberger Passionsspiel. Herausgegeben von Johannes Janota. Tébingen: Niemeyer, 2004. Pp. XV + 576; 4 plates. <278.

For many decades now, those scholars of the late medieval German Passion plays unable to consult the manuscript sources have been forced to rely on the nineteenth- century editions of Gustav Milchsack and Richard Froning. Though certainly usable, Milchsack and Froning's editions have long been outdated, and the need for new editions has been acute, with Wolfgang Michael, Rolf Bergman, and others having remarked on this lamentable state of affairs in their writings of the 1970s. Beginning in the early 1990s, Johannes Janota undertook, at long last, the mammoth work of preparing new editions of the most important German dramas of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, the Rhine-Frankish and Hessian Passion Plays. The first volume of the series appeared in 1997, the second in 2002, and finally, the third and last volume has now been released. As Dr. Janota remarks in his preface, work on the edition often fell prey to the exigencies of German academic life, delaying its completion until recent years. The first and second volumes of the series presented, respectively, diplomatic editions of the Frankfurter Passionsspiel and the Alsfelder Passionsspiel, with parallel texts of the related manuscripts. The latest volume in the series takes as its guiding text the Heidelberg Passion Play (HP hereafter) and presents the parallel texts of the Alsfeld (AP) and Frankfurt Passion Plays (FP), along with the text of the Frankfurt Dirigierrolle (FD) and the Fritzlar Passion Play fragment (FrPf), thus completing the series at long last.

John D. Martin
Purdue University