Resumen de Baum, Holz, Kreuz: Dingliche Akteure im "Heiligkreuzspiel" des Wilhelm Stapfer (1598)
During the Counter-Reformation, Wilhelm Stapfer wrote his Heiligkreuzspiel in order to propagate the Catholic faith and to defend the cult of relics and the worship of the Holy Cross. Its epic forerunner, the legend of the Holy Cross, is a ‘biography’ of the Cross, tracing the relic from its origins in paradise and following it all the way to the present. Stapfer’s Holy Cross is controlled by divine providence, shaping the action of the story. The result is a string of lively and entertaining episodes, in which the animated object appears as both protagonist and antagonist. It influences the history of dramatic plays in the form of a ‘drama of items’ which, in the twentieth century, acted as a precursor to the straight theatre-an example of dramaturgy in which animated objects are part of the action. The difference between modern plays of this kind and the ones composed in the Middle Ages is that in the latter, it is divine providence rather than the objects themselves that promotes the action.
