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p The first court theatre appeared in Russia in the last third of the seventeenth century, and its existence served as an impetus for the establishment and development of a new literary genre: drama.

p The initiative for the creation of the court theatre belonged to Artemon Matveyev, head of the Diplomacy Office. This outstanding statesman was one of the best educated men of the times and a fervent propagandist of secular literature and art.

p Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich had a weakness for entertainments. Therefore he approved of Matveyev’s initiative, and in the spring of 1672 active preparations began for the establishment of the first theatre.

p The tsar decided to celebrate the birth of his son (his young wife Natalya Kirillovna gave birth to Peter on May 31, 1672) with a new “entertainment” previously unknown in Russia. The loft of Boyar Miloslavsky’s mansion was adapted for use by the new theatre in May 1672, and Matveyev began to negotiate with Johann Gottfried Gregori, pastor of Moscow’s German suburb, suggesting that the latter select a troupe of actors and begin training them. On June 4 the tsar issued an ukase: “...the foreigner Magister Johann Gottfried is to make a comedy, and the comedy is to be acted on the basis of the Biblical book of Esther, and for this play a chamber is to be built anew.” This “chamber for comedy”, the first theatre, began to be erected immediately in the village of Preobrazhenskoye, a Moscow suburb where the tsar had a residence.

p The first troupe of actors consisting of sixty men, was chosen from among “foreigners of different ranks in the trade and service professions”. All the work of 344 adapting the Biblical plot for the stage, directing and training the actors fell on Gregori, and it was possibly at his behest that Matveyev instructed Lieutenant Nikolai von Staden, who was going on a trip to Courland and Sweden, to “talk” two “learned and goodly trumpeters, two men capable of organising any comedies”, into coming to Moscow to serve the tsar. Staden’s mission was not crowned with success; he managed to bring back only a few musicians. Afterwards Gregori invited two residents of the German suburb, Jacob Hiwner and Johann Paltzer, to work as his assistants.

p Gregori was not only the first director, but also the first playwright. He penned the first play produced in the court theatre: the Comedy of Artaxerxes. This fact has been convincingly demonstrated by I. M. Kudryavtsev, who discovered the play, which was assumed to be lost; in a Vologda archive.  [344•1  Simultaneously a text of the play was discovered in Lyons by the French Slavist Andre Mazon.

p All of the work involved in organising the theatre was carried out under the supervision of Matveyev. Funds were liberally spent on this new “entertainment”. The interior of the “comedy chamber" was lavishly decorated; costly costumes were made for the actors; the best painters worked on the sets.

p The premier of the first production took place on October 17, 1672. The tsar and his closest boyar advisors were present. The tsaritsa and the ladies of the court sat in a special box behind latticed windows. The production lasted ten hours, and the tsar sat through it with satisfaction. At the end, however, the spectators headed for the public baths to “wash away the sin" of their participation in such a shameful event.

p In the winter of 1673 the theatre continues to work at a new location above the Chemist’s Chamber of the Kremlin. Twenty-six young Russians, residents of the Novomeshchansky suburb, joined the troupe.

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After Gregori’s death in 1675 Jacob Hiwner took over the post of director, and then Stepan Chizhinsky. When tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich died the following year, however, the court theatre ceased to exist.

The Repertoire
of the Court Theatre

p The repertoire of the court theatre was fairly extensive. The most frequent productions were adaptions of Biblical stories: The Comedy of Artaxerxes (from Esther), Judith (from the Book of Judith), The Sad Comedy of Adam and Eve (from Genesis), A Small Fresh Comedy About Joseph, The Comedy of Goliath Slain by David, The Comedy of Tobias the Younger. One of the more popular historical plays was the TemirAksak Play about Tamburlaine and Biaset. The theatre’s repertoire also included a play with a mythological plot: The Comedy of Bacchus and Venus.

The “comedies” (at the time the term “comedy” was used to designate any play) were divided up into genres; there were “mournful” or “sad” comedies (with a tragic denouement), “fresh” comedies (affording satisfaction, with a happy denouement) and “amusing” or “happy” comedies.

Features
of Seventeenth Century Drama

p In borrowing plots from the Bible or from history, playwright-directors tried to make them as entertaining as possible. To this end they made use of lavish sets and costumes, melodramatic acting, and naturalistic stage effects (for example, a murder scene with “rivers of blood" was acted by supplying a balloon filled with cow’s blood for the actor to pierce).

p Another feature of the first experiments in drama was the close interweaving of the tragic and the comic. Tragic heroes and comic fools played side by side, as were highly melodramatic and comical farcical scenes.

p The action developed slowly since the plays were 346 more inclined to epic narration than to scenic, dramatic works. They invariably ended with the triumph of religious and moral good over evil.

p The heroes were in general tsars, commanders and Biblical characters, which corresponded to the aristocratic spirit of the court theatre.

p In certain “comedies” the spectator clearly felt some connection between what was being depicted on stage and the contemporary life of the court. For example, the Comedy of Artaxerxes praises the wise, just and sensitive King Artaxerxes and his second wife, the beautiful Esther. This flattered tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich’s pride, and Artaxerxes’ selection of a new wife reminded him of his marriage to Natalya Naryshkina.

p The play was provided with a preface which contained outright panegyrics to the tsar and revealed the basic idea of the play: “how pride is crushed and humility receives her crown".

p All these features may be traced in the Comedy of Judith, based on a Biblical story. It glorifies the heroic, selfless exploits of the beautiful Judith, who captivates the Assyrian commander Holofernes, cuts off his head and thereby saves her native city of Bethulia from the enemy.

p The play consists of seven acts and 29 scenes. 63 dramatic personae are required. Judith appears only in the fourth act. The lofty pathos of the archaic literary language characterises the heroic figures of Judith and Holofernes.

p But accompanying the lofty pathos of these tragic personae are the “fools”: Judith’s servant-girl Abra and the Assyrian soldier Susakim. They are overwhelmed by base feelings: cowardice and fear for their lives. In the play the comic quality of their position is revealed by means of farcical devices and the deliberately lowbrow, colloquial character of their speech.

p The Comedy of Judith is provided with a preface which underscores the political overtones of the play. The triumph of Judith and the children of Israel over the Assyrians and their commander Holofernes symbolises the future triumph of the Russian tsar over his enemies, the “godless Turks".

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The court theatre of the seventeenth century played an important role in the development of Russian theatre and drama. Its achievements and discoveries were put to good use in the court theatre of Peter the Great at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The appearance of the court theatre facilitated the rise and development of “school” theatre and drama (shkolny teatr) whose founder was Simeon Polotsky.

The Development of School Theatre

The genre of school drama was well known to pupils of the Kiev-Mogilyansky Academy, where it was put to pedagogical use. Simeon Polotsky also wrote school plays for educational purposes. His King Nebuchadnezzar and Comedy of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (1673-1675) were designed to edify pupils of the graduating classes.  [347•1 

The Comedy of the Parable
of the Prodigal Son

p Based on Christ’s parable in the Gospels, the Comedy of the Parable of the Prodigal Son consists of a prologue, six acts and an epilogue. The prologue represents a sort of theoretical declaration demonstrating that the visual perception of material is superior to verbal perception:

p The word is not so well retained in the memory
As that-which appears in actuality.

p Polotsky argues that gay interludes must be introduced “for the delight" of the spectator so he will not tire of the serious content of the play. He also insists on 348 the lofty moral value of theatrical productions:

p The parable can be of great benefit
If only you are pleased to listen attentively.

p The basic conflict of the play reflects a situation well known to us from the secular tales: the clash between two world views, two differing attitudes to life. On the one hand there is the father and the elder son, who is prepared to “carefully heed his father’s will" and live “to the end of his life in obedience”, and there is the prodigal son, who wants to leave his father’s house and be free of his father’s tutelage in order to “see the wide world" and live freely, as he pleases.

p The conflict is resolved in favour of the father’s morality. After squandering his wealth in distant lands, the prodigal son is forced to work as a swineherd, and in order to forestall utter ruin he returns to his father’s house and acknowledges his guilt. Vice is punished and virtue triumphs. The didactic purpose of the play is revealed in the epilogue:

p The young should follow the example of their elders, They should not place their hope in their young minds; Elders should rightly admonish the young And leave nothing to the will of the young.

p The play vividly reflected the desire of the younger generation to assimilate European forms of culture; at the same time it demonstrated that part of this younger generation was assimilating these new forms of culture in a purely external fashion.

p Simeon Polotsky tried to raise drama to a vivid, didactic, abstract level. The personae do not possess concrete individual traits or even names: the father, the elder brother who is obedient and the willful young prodigal all represent abstract collective images. The play is written in syllabic verse, which permits the author to formulate clear didactic sentences, which he places in the mouths of his positive heroes. All this lends the play an abstract, moralistic tone.

p In school plays the number of dramatic personae is limited, the action develops in strict logical sequence, the characters are either wholly positive or negative and 349 there are no allegorical figures. Each act ends with singing by a choir and a theatrical interlude, which, as we have noted, was designed to divert the audience and introduce some comic relief into the generally serious tone of the play.

p None of the interludes written by Polotsky himself have been preserved, but we can judge what they were like by examining those that have come down to us. They are generally funny, comical scenes dealing with aspects of everyday life. They depict ordinary people and ridicule stupidity, dullness, ignorance, drunkenness and so on. In reflecting the more comical sides of everyday life these interludes served as the foundation for the further development of comedy as such.

p School drama stands at the threshold of classical drama. The logical sequence of events, the strictly positive and negative heroes, the didacticism, the logically abstracted depiction of real events—all these “classical” elements can be traced back to the tradition of school theatre.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Feofan Prokopovich continued to work with school theatre, transforming it into an instrument of political satire.

Sources

p 1. P. N. Berkov (ed), Virshi. Sillabicheskaya poeziya XVII-XVIII vekov (Virshi; Syllabic Poetry of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries), M., 1935.

p 2. A. N. Panchenko, Russkaya stikhotvornaya kultura XVII veka (Russian Verse Culture of the Seventeenth Century),I,., 1973.

p 3. A. N. Robinson, Borba idei v russkoi literature XVII veka (The Battle of Ideas in Seventeenth Century Russian Literature), M., 1974.

p 4. Rannyaya russkaya dramaturgiya (XVII—pervaya polovina XVIII v.). Pervye pyesy russkogo teatra (Early Russian Drama. The Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Century: the First Plays of the Russian Theatre), M., 1972.

p 5.Rannyaya russkaya dramaturgiya (XVII—pervaya polovina XVIII v.). Russkaya dramaturgiya poslednei chetverti XVII i nachala XVIII veka (Early Russian Drama. The Seventeenth and First Half of the Eighteenth Century: Russian Drama of the Last Quarter of the Seventeenth Century and the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century), M., 1972.

6. Simeon Polotsky, Izbrannye sochineniya (Selected Works), ed., with introduction and commentary, by I. P. Eremin, M.-L., 1953.

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