When we began rehearsals, I was completely unaware of Hans Sachs’ impact on the cultural history of Germany. It’s one thing to write a lot of bawdy populist works, have your religious and political pamphlets banned, create singing and dramatic arts schools, and be immortalized by Richard Wagner as the leading character in the opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, centuries after your death. It’s quite another to accomplish as much as he did while still having a “day job”: which for Sachs was shoemaking.
His Carnival Plays, which included The Stolen Shrovetide Cock, were ridiculously popular (and I’m sure you will understand why). Though usually performed in taverns, Sachs is also credited for creating the first German theatre building, an expropriated Catholic Church (incidentally named St. Martha), which is where his Shrovetide plays were presented annually, and for several decades afterwards.
Over the course of his life (1494–1576) he has been credited with writing “4,275 master-songs, 208 dramas, and 1,558 comic stories, fables, histories, figures, comparisons, allegories, dreams, visions, lamentations, controversial dialogues, psalms, religious songs, street and tavern songs, and a few prose dialogues.” To say Sachs was “accomplished” is an understatement. I prefer to use the word “inspirational”.
(…now back to our day jobs…)
— Julie Florio
