Background information

The Drama in Russia, as everywhere else, had a double origin. It developed out of the religious "mysteries" on the one hand and the popular comedy on the other, witty interludes being introduced into the grave, moral representations, the subjects of which were borrowed from the Old or the New Testament. Several such mysteries were adapted in the seventeenth century by the teachers of the Graeco-Latin Theological Academy at Kiev for representation in Little Russian by the students of the Academy, and later on these adaptations found their way to Moscow.

The death of Alexis the theatre was closed; and so it remained a quarter of a century, i.e., until 1702, when Peter I, who was very fond of the drama, opened a theatre in the old capital. He had a company of actors brought for the purpose from Dantsig, and a special house was built for them within the holy precints of the Kremlin.

During the first thirty years of the nineteenth century the Russian theatre developed remarkably. The stage produced, at St. Petersburg and at Moscow, a number of gifted and original actors and actresses, both in tragedy and in comedy. The number of writers for the stage became so considerable that all the forms of dramatic art were able to develop at the same time.