German style of the seventeenth century. The language contains many Germanisms and South Russian locutions, as though the translator had been a Malo-Russian. The piece is certainly tedious and contains much sententious moralising, with a reflection of sentiment which seems to belong peculiarly to the Orthodox Church. The pious tone of the work was indispensable at that period, and it was not until the Tsar’s patronage of the drama became more assured that Pastor Gregory ventured on the production of a secular play founded on a distant echo of Marlowe’s “Tamerlane the Great” (1586), written on the same lines as Judith, and containing also musical numbers.

Besides pieces of the nature of the Singspiel, Patouillet tells us that there were ballets at the Court of Alexis Mikhaïlovich. School dramas were in vogue at the Ecclesiastical Academy (of Zaikonospasskaya), for which Simeon Polotsky, and later on Daniel Touptalo (afterwards canonised as Saint Dimitri of Rostov), wrote sacred plays. Polotsky, educated at the Academy of Kiev, joined the Ecclesiastical School of Moscow, in 1660, as professor of Latin. He adapted, or wrote, St. Alexis, Nebuchadnezzar, The Golden Calf, and the Three Children who were not consumed in the Fiery Furnace, and The Prodigal Son. The last-named play was undoubtedly performed before the Court, and was reprinted in 1685 with a number of plates showing the costumes of the actors and spectators.

Dimitri of Rostov, who was also a student at Kiev, composed a series of Mystery Plays with rhymed verse. The Prodigal Son, by Simeon Polotsky, says Patouillet, “had interludes which have not been preserved, and in Dimitri of Rostov’s Nativity, the scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds was long in favour on account of a certain naïve folk-style of diction” None of these plays can be claimed as literature, but they are interesting as marking the transition from sacred to secular drama, and in some of them there was a faint reflection of contemporary manners. But this was not a spontaneous or popular movement; it was merely a Court ordinance. The clerks and artisans who were trained as actors often took part in these spectacles against the wish of their parents, who were only partly reconciled by the Tsar’s example to seeing their sons adopt what they had long been taught to regard as a disorderly and irreligious career. Because the movement had no roots in the life of the people it could not flourish healthily. When Alexis died in 1670, the “Chamber of Comedians” was closed, Matveiev was exiled, and there was a reaction in favour of asceticism.

But the impetus had been given, and henceforth the drama was never to be entirely banished from Russian life. Some of the westernised Boyards now maintained private theatres—just as their ancestors had maintained the bards and the companies of Skomorokhi—in which were played pieces based upon current events or upon folk legends; while the School Drama long continued to be given within the walls of the Ecclesiastical Academy of Zaikonospasskaya. Thus the foundations of Russian dramatic art, including also the first steps towards the opera and the ballet, were laid before the last decade of the seventeenth century.

The advent of Peter the Great to the throne was not on the whole favourable to music. The fine arts made no special appeal to the utilitarian mind of this monarch. Music had now ceased to be regarded as one of the seven deadly sins, but suffered almost a worse fate, since in the inrush of novel cosmopolitan ideas and customs the national songs seem for a time to have been completely forgotten. With the drama things advanced more quickly. Peter the Great, who conceived his mission in life to be the more or less forcible union of Russia with Western Europe, realised the importance of the theatre as a subordinate means to this end. During his travels abroad he had observed the influence exercised by the drama upon the social life of other countries. In 1697 he was present at a performance of the ballet “Cupidon,” at Amsterdam, and in Vienna and London he heard Italian opera, which was just coming into vogue in this country, and waxed enthusiastic over the singing of our prima donna Cross. During his sojourn in Vienna he took part himself, attired in the costume of a Friesland peasant, in a pastoral pageant (Wirthschaft) given at the Court. Thus the idea of reorganising the “Comedians’ Chamber” founded by his father was suggested to him. As Alexis had formerly sent Von-Staden to find foreign actors for Russia, so Peter now employed a Slovak, named Splavsky, a captain in the Russian army, on a similar mission. The Boyard Golovin was also charged with the erection of a suitable building near to the Kremlin. After two journeys, Splavsky succeeded in bringing back to Russia a German troupe collected by an entrepreneur in Dantzig, Johann Christian Kunst. At first the actors were as unwilling to come as were those of a previous generation, having heard bad accounts of the country from a certain Scottish adventurer, Gordon, who had been connected with a puppet-show, and who seems to have been a bad character and to have been punished with the knout for murder. Finally, in April, 1702, Kunst signed a contract by which his principal comedians undertook for the yearly sum of about 4,200 roubles in the present currency “to make it their duty like faithful servants to entertain and cheer His Majesty the Tsar by all sorts of inventions and diversions, and to this end to keep always sober, vigilant and in readiness.” Kunst’s company consisted of himself, designated “Director of the Comedians of His Majesty the Tsar,” his wife Anna, and seven actors. Hardly had he settled in Moscow before he complained that Splavsky had hastened his departure from Germany before he had had time or opportunity to engage good comedians skilled in “singing-plays.” The actors played in German, but a certain number of clerks in the Chancellery of the Embassies were sent to Kunst to be taught the repertory in Russian. It was not until 1703 that the first public theatre in Russia, a wooden building, was erected near the Kremlin in Moscow. Meanwhile the plays were given at the residence of General Franz Lefort, in the German quarter of the city. Here, on the occasion of the state entry of Peter into Moscow, Kunst performed Alexander and Darius, followed by The Cruelty of Nero, a comedy in seven acts, Le Médecin malgré lui, and Mahomet and Zulima, a comedy interspersed with songs and dances. The new theatre was a genuine attempt on the part of the Tsar Peter to bring this form of entertainment within reach of a larger public than the privileged circle invited to witness the plays given at the Court of Alexis. For the country and period, the installation was on quite a sumptuous scale. There were seats at four prices: ten, six, five and three kopecks. In 1704 there were two performances in the week which usually lasted about five hours, from five to ten p.m. Peter the Great gave orders in 1705 that the pieces should be given alternately in Russian and German, and that at the performance of the plays “the musicians were to play on divers instruments.” Russians of all ranks, and foreigners, were bidden to attend “as they pleased, quite freely, having nothing to fear.” On the days of performance the gates leading into the Kremlin, the Kitaï-gorod and the Bieli-gorod were left open till a later hour in order to facilitate the passage of theatre-goers. From the outset Kunst demanded facilities for the mounting of opera, and also an orchestra. Seven musicians were engaged by special contract in Hamburg and an agent was commissioned “to purchase little