SOURCE: Remshardt, Ralf Erik. “The Birth of Reason from the Spirit of Carnival: Hans Sachs and Das Narren-Schneyden.” Comparative Drama 23, no. 1 (spring 1989): 70-94.

In the following essay, Remshardt examines Sachs's rational approach to his material in Das Narren-Schneyden, which, the critic claims, puts him closer in spirit to Erasmus than to Luther.

A play called Das Narren-schneyden (c.1536, publ. 1557)¹ stands out as something of an oddity in the rather large canon of about eighty-five Fastnachtsspiele, Carnival plays of the cobbler and sometime poet Hans Sachs (1494-1576). Known mostly as a purveyor of harmless festival fare peopled by dull-witted peasants, Sachs here takes up the sharp thorn of the moralist and satirist. For several reasons, among them its unusual length and its unwonted didactic qualities, Das Narren-schneyden seems in my view to embody a novel tone quite characteristic for a moment in time that is epitomized perhaps most mightily...