The wandering student in Paradise

The farmer’s wife mishears ‘Paris’ as ‘paradise’ and begins questioning the student, asking if he saw her first husband there and if he needed anything. The student seizes the opportunity to con her out of money and clothes, telling her that he could take them to her late husband. The gullible wife eagerly takes him up on his offer and sends him on his way with money for the journey as well, including money she has hidden from her second husband. After the student has left, the farmer returns and his wife tells him what she has done and why. The farmer sees through the student’s trick, laments being burdened with such a foolish wife, and swears to repay student and wife with beatings, one for his duplicity, the other to beat the foolishness out of her:

However, the farmer, too, falls for the student’s tricks: the student sees the farmer coming and has time to disguise himself. He gives the farmer false directions, so that he has to leave his horse behind. This animal then also falls into the hands of the student and the farmer realises his error too late. Now it is his turn to lament his own foolishness, but he is too ashamed to reveal it to his wife:

So the farmer pretends to his wife that he has given his horse to the student so that he may reach paradise all the faster to hand over the clothes and money to the deceased husband. But when he tries to impress upon his wife the necessity of secrecy, he finds it is too late: his wife has already told the whole village about what she has done. The farmer speaks the closing moralising verses:

Although this 323-line play deals principally with gender relations in marriage, as the final lines indicate, its underlying subject matter is a serious Reformation issue: good works and intercession on behalf of the dead, which are Catholic practices. The gullible, clearly unconverted, wife still believes that she can improve the lot of her first husband in ‘paradise’ by sending him things from this world – the items she sends could just as well be prayers or payment for masses to be said. Her husband, evidently more worldly and probably an adherent of the Reformation, quickly sees through the trick, although he then fails to see through a mundane disguise when he pursues the student. Although he has threatened to cure his wife’s foolishness with violence, he is prevented from this by having his own foolishness highlighted. Similarly to Sachs’s dialogue, Ain gesprech eins Evangelischen christen mit einem Lutherischen; The conversation of an Evangelical Christian with a Lutheran, the message is that patience in the relationship is the greater virtue, in this case because although the husband is the wiser of the two, this does not mean that he is totally immune from error.

Source (with kind permission): http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/germanica/Chronologie/16Jh/Sachs/sac_fahr.html