CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION
NEO-LATIN DRAMA: CONTEXTS, CONTENTS AND CURRENTS

Jan Bloemendal and Howard B. Norland

Early Modern Europe—Historical Context

When Petrarch (1304–1374), the ‘Father of Humanism’, became the first

Poet Laureate since Antiquity in 1341, the Renaissance can be said to have
begun.1 The times were turbulent. Europe had suffered from the Black
Death (1340), which according to some estimates reduced its population
by as much as half or at least killed a third of the people. In conjunction
with this depopulation social unrest and warfare afflicted society. In the
following years, France and England experienced peasant uprisings: the
peasants’ rising called Jacquerie (1358) during the Hundred Years’ War, a
series of wars in France from 1337 to 1453, and in England the Peasants’
Revolt of 1381. The unity of the Catholic Church was broken by the Western
Schism (1378–1417), which was ended by the Council of Constance (1414–
1418). These events as a whole came to be called the Crisis of the Late
Middle Ages.
At the same time, the century experienced progress within the arts and
sciences. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 when the city was conquered
by the Ottomans contributed to a renewed interest in ancient Greek and
Roman texts. Byzantine scholars fled to the West through the Empire’s
western bulwark Venice, which entailed a renewed knowledge of Greek.
At the same time, the fall cut off trading possibilities with the East.
Europeans were forced to discover new trading routes. Columbus sailed to
the Americas in 1492 and Vasco da Gama navigated around India and
Africa in 1498. The world was rapidly changing towards a new world
view, a new economy and a newly discarded Church. The conquest of
the New World with its gold caused a rapid upheaval of the economy; the

1 For this introduction, we used among other works Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern
Europe, 1450–1789; Bloemendal, Spiegel van het dagelijks leven; Bot, Humanisme en onder-
wijs; Grund, Humanist Comedies and id., Humanist Tragedies; IJsewijn and Sacré, Companion
to Neo-Latin Studies, vol. 2; Kindermann, Das Theaterpublikum der Renaissance; Parker, The
Thirty Years’ War, and Worp, Drama en tooneel.

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sky seemed to be the limit, until inflation brought people back down
to earth.
Whereas Italy was one of the leading cultural countries, the Baltic Sea
became one of the most important trade routes in the fourteenth century.
The Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading cities, connected vast areas
of Baltic countries to Europe’s economy. Powerful states in Eastern Europe
could grow, such as Poland, Muscovy, Lithuania, Bohemia and Hungary.
This age of crisis and change was a fertile soil for cultural and religious
development.
The Early Modern period, which spans the centuries from the discovery
of the New World in 1492 to the French Revolution in 1789, is characterized
by the rise of science and technological progress. One of the major inven-
tions was that of printing with movable type in the 1450s, which made it
possible to spread ideas in a kind of ‘mass production’, even though oral
culture remained important. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), for
instance, had his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions
of the Celestial Spheres) printed just before his death. Most of the plays
we are discussing in this volume were also printed and published in
(­relatively) large numbers. Capitalist economies developed, beginning in
some northern Italian republics, but also in the southern part of the Low
Countries and then in other regions. This entailed demand for more
schooling and a flowering of the arts and literature that was later called
the Renaissance, i.e. a rebirth of classical Antiquity. For Petrarch, this
rebirth was so real that he wrote letters to men from Antiquity. For this
reason, he is considered to be the first humanist.
Humanism was a literary, scholarly and educational movement that
aimed to spread knowledge in order to improve people morally and reli-
giously on the basis of the classics. To this end, Latin and—although to a
lesser extent—Greek texts were read and studied; Greco-Roman culture
was admired as a Golden Age. Of course, the medieval monks had also
read and studied ancient texts, but they focussed more on Christian views
and the Kingdom of God, whereas the humanists studied these texts both
for their own beauty and for their philosophical content, although these
texts remained a means to internalize and deepen Christian faith. This
change in scope is associated with the changing place of higher education
that was dominated by the Church in the Middle Ages, whereas from the
second half of the fifteenth century municipal authorities founded more
secular schools. Nonetheless, these schools continued to be training cen-
tres for pastors. Jesuit colleges offered free education in Latin, theology,
philosophy, history and other branches of knowledge.

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In education, the humanists strove to lead their pupils to read ancient

texts as soon as possible. Therefore, they abandoned the medieval induc-
tive didactics—starting with many rules of grammar, and eventually
studying ancient texts—for a new, more deductive method, giving a few
rules and then starting to read.2 The pupils read texts aloud. These texts
comprised ancient works of literature such as the comedies of Terence, as
well as colloquies written for this specific purpose: the teaching of Latin
conversation. The most famous collection of these dialogues was written
by the ‘arch-humanist’ Desiderius Erasmus (1466?–1536), but even the col-
loquies by the reformer Mathurin Cordier (1479/1480–1564) or those by
Ravisius Textor (1493–1522), as well as the Linguae Latinae exercitatio by
Juan-Luis Vives (1492/1493–1540), were used in the schools. The human-
ists, especially those at the Protestant gymnasia in Germany and the Latin
schools in the Low Countries, considered the acting of dramas another
effective way of mastering the Latin language. Another difference between
the medieval scholars and the humanists is a shift in the use of Latin
from a pragmatic one (if necessary, new words could be coined, even ‘un-
classical’ ones, and syntactic means could be used as seemed fit), to a prin-
cipled one, which should aim at writing ‘classical’ Latin morphologically
and syntactically.
One of the adages of humanism was the demand to go ad fontes, i.e. to
read the original texts. The same climate of ad fontes was characteristic of
the Protestant Reformation, and as such humanism is one of its roots.
A popular saying of the time was ‘Erasmus laid the egg that Luther
hatched.’ There had been other pre-reformative movements, such as the
Devotio moderna in the Hanseatic area of the Low Countries and Northern
Germany, the movement of Jan Hus (c. 1360–1415) in Bohemia and the
reform of John Wycliffe (c. 1328–1384) in England, but the full Reformation
started in 1517, when Martin Luther (1493–1546) nailed his 95 theses at the
doors of the Chapel at Wittenberg. The Reformation dealt with dogmatic
and ecclesiastical reforms—about the Eucharist and the role of the
Church in the Christians’ salvation—but gained ground because of peo-
ple’s dissatisfaction with corruption in the Catholic Church.
It also gained followers among princes and kings who sought a stronger
state by diminishing the influence of the Church. In England King Henry
VIII challenged the Catholic hierarchy and established the Church of
England. The religious divisions were the causes of many wars inspired

2 See for example Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy; Bloemendal, Spiegel van het
dagelijks leven.

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and driven by faith, but also by the ambition of western European rulers in
states that became more centralized and powerful. The most destructive
one was the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648). It was fought primarily in what
is now Germany, but what was then a conglomerate of small principalities
brought together in a kind of theoretical frame that was called the Holy
Roman Empire. Gradually the war developed into a more general conflict
involving most of the European states. It led to further wars between the
French Bourbons and the Habsburg powers. It started with a Bohemian
Revolt (1618–1621), in France Huguenot rebellions were involved (1620–
1628), and both Denmark (1625–1629) and Sweden (1630–1635) intervened.
For the Low Countries this was the last phase of a period of eighty years
of rebellion and warfare against the Spanish Habsburgs. The Peace of
Westphalia (1648), involving the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand III, the
Kingdoms of Spain, France, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and the Princes
of the Holy Roman Empire, marked the end of this period.
The Protestant Reformations also prompted a strong reform movement
within the Catholic Church, the so-called Counter-Reformation. The
movement aimed to reduce corruption and to improve and strengthen
Catholic dogmas and faith. It used education and literature, as well as the
(baroque) visual arts. One of the most important groups in the Church
involved in this movement was the Societas Jesu, the Society, or Company,
of Jesus. The Jesuits were strongly engaged in education, especially in the
Latin schools, thus influencing or even indoctrinating new Catholics.3
One of the means they took over from the Protestant gymnasia for this
task was the staging of Latin plays, which in their hands became multime-
dia shows. By having martyr and saints’ plays staged, they tried to imbue
their pupils’ minds with zeal for the Catholic faith and the spread of
Catholicism. Thus they also wanted to create new missionaries, since the
mission was also a part of their ‘core business.’ Furthermore, they had
political influence. For instance, they helped keep Central and Eastern
Europe within the Catholic fold, partly by way of their Neo-Latin plays
with Catholic overtones.
However, the countries of Central Europe, i.e. the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth and Hungary, were more tolerant. Although they sought
to maintain the predominance of Catholicism under the influence of the
Jesuits, they continued to allow religious minorities to maintain their
faiths. But Central Europe too became divided, between Roman Catholics,

3 See the contributions to this volume by Rädle, Chevalier and Norland on German,
French and English Jesuit theatre respectively.

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Protestants, Orthodox Catholics and Jews. These regions also experienced

several wars, among which the Livonian War (1558–1583) between the
Tsardom of Russia and a coalition of Denmark and Norway, Sweden,
Lithuania and Poland. Parts of Central Europe were invaded by the
Ottomans. The Ottoman Empire, which would last until 1929, was at the
centre of interaction between the Eastern and the Western worlds for six
centuries. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in particular it was
highly influential. It reached its apogee during the reign of Suleiman
the Magnificent (reigned 1520–1566), who in 1529 even besieged Vienna.
A dramatic moment in the struggle for power between Christendom
under the command of Spain and the Ottoman Empire was the naval
battle of Lepanto (1571) in the Gulf of Patras (Greece). This stopped the
Ottoman expansion—at least temporarily.
In Christendom itself, several religious wars occurred. Some countries
remained relatively unaffected by these religious quarrels. Italy was one of
them. Consisting as it did of many city-states, however, it came to be domi-
nated by several foreign powers. It was the subject of the so-called Italian
Wars or the Habsburg-Valois Wars (1494–1559), which became a struggle
for power and territory between France, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire,
England, Scotland and the Ottoman Empire. In the early modern period,
parts of Italy were annexed to the Spanish empire. For Italy, this was a
period of relative peace. This enabled it to remain an important centre of
Western culture.
In this changing world, Latin drama was written and read, rehearsed
and performed, all over Europe. It was a ‘coat of many colours’, comprising
tragedy, comedy, farce and tragicomedy, varying in length, outspokenly
confessional, Protestant or Catholic, or demolishing the walls between the
religions, taking its subjects from the Bible, the saints’ lives, fairy tales,
­history, daily life and school life, and finally offering moral, religious
or intellectual lessons of various kinds, or just entertainment, or a defence
of the humanist cause. The economic growth required for schooling also
advanced the production of Latin and vernacular drama. This was
advanced by a renewed interest in the classics and in late-medieval eccle-
siastical plays and by a tradition of staging plays in the vernacular.

The International Scope of Neo-Latin Drama

The diversity in the history of Europe involved differences between

humanists from the individual countries and between their Latin dramas.

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Yet there were also constants: the use of Latin at the schools facilitated a
European context for education. For the Latin schools and the universi-
ties, comedies by Plautus and Terence, tragedies by Seneca, or translations
of Greek tragedies were read and performed in many European countries.
Furthermore, new comedies and tragedies were written and staged, which
through the international language reached super-regional acclaim. The
Ioseph (1535) by Cornelius Crocus was read in Poland, as was George
Buchanan’s Jephthes, which was known all over Europe. Borders could be
crossed, both between countries and between convictions. A Protestant
martyr play by Daniel Heinsius (Auriacus, 1602) was imitated in a Catholic
play by Jacobus Zevecotius (Maria Stuarta, 1623). A very successful play on
the theme of the Prodigal Son by the Dutch humanist Guilielmus
Gnapheus, Acolastus (1529), was read, studied and staged all over Europe.
The international scope of this play is also demonstrated by the Paris edi-
tion of 1554 with commentary notes by Gabriel Prateolus Marcossius (or
Dupréau, 1511–1588). Other international publications were the two collec-
tions of Latin plays from German lands and the Low Countries that were
published in Basle in 1541 and 1547 and the collection of Jesuit plays
Selectae P.P. Soc. Iesu tragoediae that was printed in Antwerp in 1634.
A play by the Dutch headmaster Georgius Macropedius (1487–1558) was
performed at Trinity College in Cambridge in 1565–1566 and another
one in Munich in 1609.4 Jesuit plays also experienced international circu-
lation. Father Joseph Simons (1594–1671) is one of the famous Jesuit
dramatists whose plays enjoyed pan-European renown. His life had an
international scope too: a native of England, he studied and taught at
several English colleges on the Continent.
This provides evidence that humanists and their texts travelled through-
out Europe. This is known in the case of Erasmus, who travelled to Italy,
Germany, Switzerland and England. Gnapheus fled from his native
Netherlands to Poland, where a Dutch Protestant community lived and
was tolerated. There he wrote and staged other plays. The Polish humanist
Simon Simonides (1558–1629) visited Holland, where he would have seen
or read Crocus’s Joseph play. International compilations of Latin plays
were printed, such as the collections by Brylinger and Oporinus in Basel,
and the Selectae PP. Soc. Iesu tragoediae which we just mentioned. These
plays and collections fulfilled the need for texts in the schools—not every
teacher or headmaster was talented at writing such plays. In conclusion,
there were many factors that contributed to the international scope of

4 Giebels and Slits, Georgius Macropedius, pp. 229 and 260.

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Neo-Latin drama: the Latin language as a lingua franca, the travelling of

merchants, priests and scholars throughout Europe, the demand for Latin
plays to be staged as a part of the curriculum and the possibilities offered
by the printing press.

Classical Receptions of Neo-Latin Drama

The international scope of Neo-Latin drama was enhanced by its classical

orientation. Yet, as Philip Ford and Andrew Taylor rightly observe in their
introduction to The Early Modern Cultures of Neo-Latin Drama, this orien-
tation was ‘relatively complicated and at times problematic.’5 They explain
this through the aims of drama, which are more complex than, for instance,
those of poetry: ‘In drama, especially drama designed for performance, the
relationship with the audience is far more direct and immediate, and the
rich tradition of the medieval theatre, in both Latin and the vernacular,
offered popular alternative models which influenced the themes and their
treatment by neo-Latin authors.’ Thus the classical orientation of drama-
tists towards Roman comedy and tragedy in particular—the plays by
Terence and Plautus, read through the lens of the fourth-century Roman
critic and grammarian Donatus, and the tragedies of Seneca, read through
a rhetorical looking glass—gradually grew. The early Neo-Latin dramas
are often ‘hybrid forms, with no clear classical models.’6
The theoretical framework was also far from systematic, as Ford and
Taylor also show. The playwrights drew on scattered and diverse sources,
such as the introduction to drama by Donatus (or Evanthius) in his afore-
mentioned commentary (which was printed in almost every edition of
Terence, and to a lesser extent of Plautus), and the few remarks that
Horace made in his Ars poetica; later on in the period they read Aristotle’s
Poetics with its distinctions between ‘history’ and ‘poetry’ and ‘truth’ and
‘verisimilitude’, as well as its concept of the tragic hero, and adjusted them
to their own ideas and interpretations.7
But the playwrights could and did easily apply ‘the formal structure and
rules of classical drama: the five-act play, the use of choruses and the
restriction to three speaking actors on stage at any one time’, for instance.8

5 For this part of the introduction, we are indebted to Ford's and Taylor’s ‘Intro­
duction’ to their The Early Modern Cultures of Neo-Latin Drama. The quotation is from p. 7.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 8. Ford and Taylor speak in terms of imperfect understanding. We would
rather speak in terms of ‘their own understanding’, and ‘adaptation.’
8 Ibid. See for instance Horace, Ars poetica, 190–95.

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Fig. 1. Terentius cum quinque commentis (Paris, 1552), p. 204.

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They found these rules in the theoretical framework that the Ars poetica
offered, as well as in the editions of Terence that they used in the class-
room, so in the praxis of classical drama as they conceived it. The come-
dies of Plautus and Terence had no choral songs, in contrast to Senecan
tragedies, but the humanists also introduced such choruses into comedy,
under the influence of either Seneca’s plays or Horace’s advice.
Greek tragedy and comedy were less known and therefore had a lesser
reception, although the Latin translations of Greek plays by such figures
as Erasmus and George Buchanan (1506–1582) circulated and were staged.
Buchanan himself wrote classical dramas based on Greek models, espe-
cially the tragedies by Euripides, with episodes divided up by choruses.
However, his example did not find many followers, since the clear five-act
form of Seneca’s dramas was easier to follow and to adapt. Another famous
example of a playwright drawing on Greek models is Hugo Grotius (1583–
1645). His growing insight into Greek tragedy is reflected in his dramas,
as well as in his Excerpta ex tragoediis et comoediis Graecis (1626). However,
his Greek orientation did not prevent him from writing tragedies in the
Roman vein, with emphasis on a Stoic attitude towards emotions.9
The classical models allowed significant variation. For instance,
Cornelius Schonaeus (1541–1611) tends towards a more serious treatment
of biblical stories and more thorough moralization than, for instance, his
Dutch predecessors Guilielmus Gnapheus (1493–1568) and Georgius
Macropedius. Thus the Senecan and Terentian models are adapted to the
increasingly sober religious concerns of the later sixteenth century.’10

Neo-Latin Drama—Latin and the Vernacular

Although part of the international Latin Republic of Letters, Neo-Latin

drama also has a local, regional or ‘national’ aspect (though nation states
did not yet exist). These were related to local culture. In the Low Coun­
tries, for instance, humanists who were part of the respublica literaria
were also related to members of literary clubs called ‘Rederijkerskamers’
or Rhetoricians’ Chambers. Their language was Dutch. When in 1618 the
Haarlem Chamber ‘Trou moet blijcken’ (‘Loyalty must be shown’) wished

9 See Eijffinger, ‘“The Unacknowledged Legislators of Mankind”’ and ‘“The Fourth

Man”.’
10 Ford and Taylor, ‘Introduction’, pp. 11–12; Verweij, ‘The Terentius Christianus at work.’

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to raise money for an old men’s home, the headmaster of the Latin School
and author of several Neo-Latin biblical plays, contributed with a Latin
play on charity. For the non-latinized audience, ‘interludes’ (poems in
Dutch) were added, summarizing each act. The same technique was
employed by the Jesuits in German lands, who added comic interludes in
German.
Another way of linking Latin and the vernaculars was the periochae,
programme leaflets containing summaries of the play in the vernacular or
in the vernacular and Latin, and with the names of the actors. The Jesuits
especially employed this means of helping the audience to understand the
plays.
The ties between Latin and vernacular cultures were also tightened by
mutual translations. The Dutch headmaster Georgius Macropedius
reworked a Dutch morality play (written by a rhetorician) Elckerlijc into a
Latin play Hecastus (1539). He translated parts of it, but added a prologue
and choruses, to fit the theme into the genre of Neo-Latin comedy (or
fabula). The same Elckerlijc was also translated into English as Everyman,
and it had previously been imitated in Latin by Christianus Ischyrius in a
play called Homulus (1536). Many dramas written in Germany, especially
Protestant, but also Catholic ones, exist in German and in Latin. As Dietl
states in her contribution: ‘The translation from Latin into German
was often done by relatives and friends of the authors, as well as by
other authors, while the reverse translation from an original German text
into Latin is usually the author’s own work.’11 A special case is John
Christopherson’s tragedy Jephthah, which was composed in Greek, and
translated into Latin by the author.12
Several Latin dramas were translated into the vernacular languages.
Plays by Macropedius were published in Dutch, French, German and
Swedish.13 A Swedish translation of Stymmelius’s comedy Studentes was
also published. Betuleius translated his German Judith and Suzanna into
Latin, partly adjusting them to classical forms. Jacob Schöpper’s five Latin
dramas were translated into German soon after they were published.
A French translation by Jean Bienvenu of John Foxe’s Christus triumphans
(1556) was published five years after the original. By means of these many
translations into the vernacular different audiences could be reached in
the same city or in other countries.

11 Dietl, ‘Germany’, p. 148.

12 Norland, ‘England’, p. 476.
13 Dietl, ‘Germany’, passim.

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The other way around, plays in the vernacular were translated or

i­mitated in Latin. For instance, tragedies by French playwrights, such as
Jean Racine (1639–1699) and Pierre Corneille (1606–1684), were known in
Germany in Latin translations.14 In his Ludus podagrae (1534), for instance,
Eobanus Hessus also translated a German play into Latin. Borders were
crossed in another way too. The Jesuit author on poetics Andreas Friz
(1711–1790) discusses the tragedies of Racine in his manuscript Epistola
de tragoediis (c. 1741/1744),15 whereas the Dutch theoretician Gerardus
Johannes Vossius also treats the vernacular tragedies of his friend Joost
van den Vondel (1587–1679) in his Latin Poeticae institutiones (1647).16

Performances and Audiences

Neo-Latin dramas were written to be read, but most of them were also
meant to be staged.17 In this introduction, we will leave the ‘from page to
stage’ and ‘from stage to page’ discussions, confining ourselves to stating
that a performance added to the impact of a play by means of the spoken
word as well as decor and props. However, the performance records of
early Latin humanist dramas of the Quattrocento are scanty.18 In any case
they circulated privately and widely. If they were staged—either in ‘full’
performance or in declamation, such performances often took place in
the open air or in the halls of the nobility and in the palaces of the Pope
and his cardinals. In ecclesiastical and political spheres there were oppor-
tunities for scenic display, which were also employed for ancient Latin
plays by Plautus and Terence, once they were available in print after
the 1470s, and for new humanists’ plays. For instance, at the wedding
of Alfonso I d’Este and Anna Maria Sforza at Ferrara in 1491 Plautus’
Amphitruo was staged—it presented Jupiter and twin sons, one of whom
was Hercules. As was the case in several instances, the play was adapted to
the situation, concluding with a prediction of the birth of a new Hercules:
Duke Ercole II. But Latin plays were also staged in pedagogic and scholarly
spheres, such as the Roman Academy under the leadership of Giulio
Pomponio Leto (1425–1498), the German colleges, and the great halls of

14 Information given by Nienke Tjoelker.

15 See Tjoelker, Andreas Friz’s Letter on Tragedies.
16 See the modern ed. by Bloemendal.
17 See also Bloemendal and Ford, ‘Introduction’.
18 On performances of Latin dramas in Italy, see Grund, Humanist Comedies,
pp. xii–xv.

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the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.19 In matters of performances, there

was much interaction between signorial courts, the academies and the
papacy: academies were utilized in the entertainment of royal guests and
prelates.
In Northern humanism, the situation differed slightly. There, Latin
drama was more connected to the schools and the universities. The mas-
ters and headmasters wrote plays that were not intended purely to be
read; they also had their students perform them.20 In municipal archives
there are many entries that offer evidence of this. For example, because
the players were offered refreshments, a grant was given for staging, or
because the rector, hypodidascali and pupils received some money for
their efforts or for the costs in staging the plays. Remarks in dedicatory let-
ters also provide information. Schonaeus noted in the dedication added to
his Nehemias that the administration of Haarlem had been so content
with his Tobaeus that they wanted the play to be performed on the market-
place.21 We know that performances were put on in cities by the Latin
schools. Students even went on to other cities to act. For instance, the stu-
dents of the St Jerome’s school in Utrecht went to Gouda with their rector
Macropedius in 1552. There are indications that the performances were
real productions, and not mere declamations.22
In order to perform a play, it had to be rehearsed. This happened mostly
during school time. A play could also be discussed in the lessons without
explicitly aiming at a performance. In this way we can understand a
remark by Schonaeus that the City Council stimulated him to consider
his Tobaeus in the classroom: ‘in gymnasio nostro pueris enarrari’, where
enarrari implies interpretation.23

19 This was no harmless venture; because of Leto’s fanatical dedication to things Roman,
Pope Paul II disbanded the Academy and had Leto and his followers imprisoned and tor-
tured. The academy was re-established in 1471 by Pope Sixtus IV. See Grund, Humanist
Comedies, p. xiv.
20 For this section, see for instance Bloemendal, Spiegel van het dagelijks leven,
pp. 68–74; Kindermann, Theaterpublikum der Renaissance. Professional theatre, at least in
the Netherlands, was of a later date. However, there were English professional players
active in the Netherlands, see Hoenselaars, ‘Engelse toneelspelers’ and Bordewijk, ‘Strolling
players.’
21 See Van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, p. 113. One could also
consider phrases in prologues, used again and again, on what the spectators are going
to see.
22 For instance, a distinction is made between pupils who are ‘more active’ and should
play, and those who are ‘more passive’ and would be better off listening. This is an indica-
tion of an actual performance.
23 See Van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, p. 113.

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Since only boys attended the Latin schools, all roles—including the
female ones—were played by males. It was the students of the highest
classes who studied and performed the plays. They had sufficient knowl-
edge of Latin grammar and rhetoric; in addition, they could meet the
requirements of voice and movement. In some cases, there were not
enough players and an appeal was made to pupils in the lower classes to
take the smaller roles or participate in the chorus. The number of pupils
required could vary. For farces usually eight to twenty players were
required, while for biblical plays the number could be as many as
twenty-five.
When a piece was rehearsed, it was often not yet printed, but circulated
in manuscript form. A rector could copy the manuscript, or even read for
the pupils the verses that belonged to the part they played.24
Often performances were accompanied by (vocal and instrumental)
music. Many plays included choruses that were sung, which was a human-
ists’ addition to ancient comedy. Macropedius even made melodies for the
choral songs of his plays himself. Certainly these choruses were sung.25
Theatrical music was also made in other ways. For instance, in 1540 the
Haarlem rector Cornelius Claesz received two pounds from the City
Council to cover the costs of setting up a stage and an organist’s fee.26
Instrumental music could be a means of filling silences. In biblical plays
choruses or characters could sing a kind of psalms, hymns or other reli-
gious songs.27
Plays were performed before an audience, which could vary. At the
­performance of Plautus’ Aulularia in Louvain by students under the guid-
ance of Martinus Dorpius, professors and students came flocking in.
The performance was, moreover, so successful that it was repeated for
years to come ‘in the most famous towns’ even though it was also criti-
cized by ‘jealous people and grumblers.’28 In Elbing, whence he had fled,
Gnapheus saw a successful performance of his Acolastus before pupils,
parents, the city council and the clergy in 1531. The play made its way

24 Ibid., p. 112.
25 On the reasons why the humanists may have re-introduced the chorus, see p. 7.
On the chorus songs of Macropedius, see Grijp, ‘Macropedius and Music’; a modern ed.
of Macropedius’ choral odes can be found in Macropedius, Verzameld toneel: Koren en
liederen, ed. Dekker.
26 See Kindermann, Das Theaterpublikum der Renaissance, 2, pp. 73–74; Von Liliencron,
‘Die Chorgesänge’, pp. 346–48.
27 Schmidt, Die Bühnenverhältnisse, p. 175.
28 See Kindermann, Das Theaterpublikum der Renaissance, 2, p. 67.

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throughout Europe with countless performances in Latin and translations

into German, French and English, thereby increasing its audience.29 In
Middelburg in September 1595, the members of the States of Zeeland were
at a performance of three pieces. A smaller audience will have attended
the performance for which the Alkmaar preacher Adolphus Venator
opened his house.30 A select public saw the production by Leiden stu-
dents of Seneca’s Trojan Women in 1617: English and Swedish envoys were
present.31 Often the number of spectators was not particularly limited,
because of the performance locations, which included markets.32 In the
Jesuit gymnasia and colleges in Germany, the audience could extend to
thousands of people. It was predominantly an urban audience who
attended the productions.33 It is likely that the onlookers demonstrated a
certain snobbery in showing off their mastery of Latin. Not only did spec-
tators attend performances in their own city, as is rather obvious in the
case of performances at kermises as well as those put on in collaboration
with rhetoricians (as sometimes happened in the Low Countries); in the
case of several performances, parents of students who came from out of
town may also have been present. A lottery play by Schonaeus (1606) will
have been intended for a large audience; poems in Dutch were added to
the play for the spectators who did not speak Latin.34 When no explana-
tion in the vernacular was available, such spectators would still have been
able to follow the play through the costumes and the intonation and by
virtue of the fact that the student-actors in many pieces played true-to-life
characters: themselves, their parents and neighbours.35 In other ways as
well the audience was met with prologues, epilogues and short tables of
contents presented in the vernacular. Sometimes translations of the plays

29 For instance, it served as a model for one of the most famous comedies of German
humanistic theatre, Christophorus Stymmelius’s Studentes (1545).
30 He was disciplined by the classis and synod for this performance of Terentius’ Andria.
See Wille, ‘De Gereformeerden en het tooneel’, p. 108; Schotel, Tilburgsche avondstonden,
pp. 307–08.
31 Worp, Drama en tooneel, 1, p. 201.
32 In this respect this theatre resembled rhetoricians’ drama, which was also performed
at celebrations either in private meetings or in public performances. The audience of Jesuit
plays could extend to thousands of people.
33 Cf. Ramakers, Spelen en figuren, pp. 12–18: ‘Toneel als stadsliteratuur’.
34 The same is true of Crocus’ Ioseph, where in the Antwerp print from 1548 a guard-
ian’s song in English has been inserted. See Sterck, ‘Onder Amsterdamse humanisten’,
p. 291.
35 Kindermann, Das Theaterpublikum der Renaissance, 2, pp. 69–70 (about the success
of Acolastus). The audience had a more visual mindset, as witnessed by the processions
and tableaux vivants. See also Ramakers, Spelen en figuren.

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were sold, or a piece was first played in Latin and then in the vernacular.36
One option was very common in Jesuit theatre: leaflets were sold with the
title and a synopsis of the play in Latin and the vernacular, the periochae.37
There were also literati without knowledge of Latin who attended per-
formances. For instance, the prolific Dutch tragic poet Joost van den
Vondel (1587–1679), who initially could not read Latin, wrote in 1657 of his
young years: ‘I also remember that I saw a stage built in Utrecht, before the
town hall, by order of the burghomasters, for the use of the pupils of
the Latin school.’38 In 1657 he published a ‘Tooneelkrans’ for the Amster­
dam burgomaster’s son Nikolaes Vlooswyk, who had played the title
role in Philedonius (1657), written by Spinoza’s teacher Francis van den
Enden (1602–1674).39 Vondel may have attended a performance of his
friend’s son.
The location could vary. The performance could take place in the school
itself. Often the Town Hall was the place of performance, or it was played
before the Town Hall. Some of the audience were probably sitting on
wooden benches, most will have been standing. Farces were about an hour
long, other plays took about two hours. It cannot always have been easy for
the players to have been heard above the noise that sometimes arose.
Although it is a topos, it is not unlikely that when time and again silence is
requested in prologues, this correlates with a request required in reality.
As far as we know, admission was free, although the pupils could have
asked for money. This was not necessary, however. The fact that entries are
found in municipal records for rector and students to cover the costs of a
performance points to free entrance.
Because there were no fixed stages, the theatre stage was very simple.
It may have resembled the ‘scaffold’ on which rhetoricians presented their
plays or may even have been the same scaffold, for instance in 1529.40
Actors played on a stage with no scenery except doors and some props,

36 Fleurkens, ‘Meer dan vrije expressie’, p. 81.

37 An edition of such periochae has been compiled by Elida Szarota.
38 Vondel, Salmoneus, ‘Berecht’, in WB, 5, p. 712: ‘My heught oock that ick t’Uitrecht voor
het Stadthuis, door last der Heeren Burgemeesteren, ten dienst der Latijnsche schoolieren,
een tooneel gebouwt zagh [..]..’ This concerned a play containing David and Goliath; per-
haps it was Macropedius’s Adamus, which featured these two biblical characters, or a piece
from the rector of the school in Alost, Gabriel Jansen (Monomachia Davidis cum Goliath).
See also Van de Graft, ‘Vondel bij het spel van David en Goliath te Utrecht’.
39 Vondel, ‘Tooneelkrans’, WB, 8, pp. 570–71.
40 Koster, Van schavot tot schouwburg, pp. 21–22; on the staging of rhetoricians drama,
see also Hummelen, ‘De eerste bundel met rederijkersspelen’ and id., ‘Typen van toneelin-
richting bij de rederijkers’.

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such as seats or shrubs.41 The rest of the mise en scène was undoubtedly
fairly primitive too: the different places of the action were probably only
indicated by a sign with the name of the town or by spoken words, espe-
cially in the early phase of the Latin school stage.42 Often the stage con-
sisted of a ‘scena’ resembling a house, and a proscenium: a ‘flat floor.’ This
staging must have been problematic: it was the model for the ancient the-
atre, and its design must have been not entirely apt to the staging of bibli-
cal plays which, for example, presented the nomadic Patriarchs. Such
difficulties were overcome by ‘spoken stage settings’: with words, anything
could be suggested.43 The costumes were most likely more contemporary
than historically justified. All in all, the humanists’ stage likely resembled
that of the vernacular stage.
At first, the repertoire consisted mainly of plays by Plautus and, above
all, Terence. In addition to comedies, tragedies ascribed to the Roman
playwright Seneca were regularly programmed. The popularity of these
plays by Terence and Seneca is witnessed by the fact that editions of them
became schoolbooks. The Jesuit Martinus Delrio, a well-known Seneca
scholar and editor from Antwerp, wrote to Justus Lipsius that Moretus
could safely publish Seneca’s plays because they were read every year in
the Jesuit colleges and consequently would become bestsellers.44
Occasionally plays by the Greek comedian Aristophanes and the three
Greek tragic poets, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, were staged as
well. Sometimes the plays were staged in Greek—for example, Euripides’
Hecuba in 1526 put on by Haarlem pupils under the guidance of rector
Jacob Meyster.45 Greek theatre, however, was usually performed in a Latin
translation, such as Erasmus’s translations of Hecuba and Iphigenia at
Aulis.46
Soon the humanists added other plays. Of course, some rectors wrote
their own pieces, but they did not choose their own works alone. Not every

41 As, for example in Frischlins Hildegardis magna., see Schmidt, Die Bühnenverhältnisse,
pp. 164–65.
42 Koster, Van schavot tot schouwburg, p. 41; Schmidt, Die Bühnenverhältnisse,
pp. 135–57.
43 This is the view of Schmidt, Die Bühnenverhältnisse, e.g., p. 149, but is refuted by
Giovanoli, Form und Funktion, p. 80.
44 Letter from Liège, 28.06.1593 (ILE 93 06 28): ‘Editionem [sc. Senecae] … confido … illi
[Moreto] futuram frustuosam …’iacturae … timori mederi debebat, quod tragoediae illae
quotannis ferme in Societate nostra ubique praelegendae, et sic emptores non defuturi.’
Quoted after IJsewijn and Sacré, Companion to Neo-Latin Studies, 2, p. 142.
45 Bot, Humanisme en onderwijs, p. 131.
46 Modern ed. in ASD I, 1.

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rector was kissed by the Muses, so they were ready to pick up pieces from
a standard repertoire. Some pieces were very popular, such as Gnapheus’s
Acolastus, which saw many performances all over Europe, as did the plays
by Macropedius, especially his Hecastus, and Stymmelius’s Studentes.47
There were two reasons for this writing of new plays: the ancient plays
were too immoral for the humanists, or the repertoire was too small.48
It is not always clear which piece was played. Often we find in accounts
the indication that a ‘Latin play’ or even just a ‘play’ or ‘comedies’ were
performed, so that it even remains enigmatic as to whether the pupils of
the Latin school did a piece in Latin or in the vernacular.49
Most public performances took place in the afternoon, usually on
a number of occasions. For example, in the case of religious celebra­
tions such as the feast of St Magdalena in Utrecht, the Sint-Jansmis or
‘ommegancx-dag’ (24 or 25 June, named after the feast of St John the
Baptist on 24 June) in Haarlem and Corpus Christi in Oudenaarde.50 This
time of year presented several benefits: many people were present for
the kermis and the risk was small that bad weather at an open-air show
would be a hindrance. The situation was different at Shrove Tuesday
(Carnival) in February, another time at which plays were regularly per-
formed. There were performances on the occasion of St Martin’s day
(11 November), annual fairs, Christmas and New Year.
The number of times at which there were performances is not always
clear. The frequency seems to have been a couple of times a year—more
performances may have been too much of a burden on the schoolmasters.
Pupils in Haarlem presented a play in the spring and in the autumn of
1578.51 It is also apparent from a comment by Macropedius in the prologue
of his Bassarus that a production was enacted more than once a year.52

47 See below, pp. 203, 309 and 155–56. Although a playwright himself, Schonaeus
brought, in the autumn of 1578, Gnapheus’s Acolastus, see Van de Venne, Cornelius
Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, p. 65.
48 The first reason is the communis opinio, the second is advocated by Michiel Verweij
in his ed. of Vladeraccus’s Tobias, pp. 17–18.
49 Although the combination of facts and astute reasoning can have their results, see
for example Van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, pp. 112–13.
50 The rhetoricians chamber also played on this day. See Van de Venne, Cornelius
Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, p. 113 n. 88, and references listed there. On the situation in
Oudenaarde, see Ramakers, Spelen en figuren, in particular p. 23.
51 Van de Venne, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1 Leven en werk, p. 165.
52 Macropedius, Bassarus 4–5: ‘It is now 12 months since the last time that we, in our
habit, produced a play which was so expected.’ This is followed by an explanation for the
long period of time, suggesting that a higher frequency was common. See Engelberts in
Macropedius, Bassarus, p. 69; see also ibid., n. 4.

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More often in the context of education itself pupils played during school
time, or on a free afternoon.53 The German teacher Jakob Sturm (1489–
1553) even argued the case for a play each week.54 At Oxford and Cambridge
too a fixed number of Latin and Greek plays were mandated.
Usually there was a prologue, spoken by one of the young actors, just
like the periocha, a brief summary in verse. The other roles were divided
among the pupils, with major roles sometimes being performed by more
than one student. The pieces almost always ended up with an epilogue in
which the lessons to be learnt from the play were explicitly explained. This
role was assigned to a single actor. Following in the footsteps of Plautus
and Terence, the Neo-Latin authors typically requested applause at the
end of the play.
Performances of Latin plays not only received acclaim. Occasionally,
there was some criticism. The Dordrecht teacher Walricus Lithodomus or
Steenhuyse was angry about colleagues who, in order to get many pupils:
… suos in Comoediis agendis exercitent, et quidem non intellectis: eiusmodi
tamen gestibus, ut etiam doctos spectatores fallunt, ut qui ipsos actores quae
agunt intelligere putent, cum vix nomen aliquod aut verbum inflectere
norint. Alliciunt tamen ipsi fraudulenti magistelli has arte ne dicam impos-
tura, miseros et illiteratos homines, quorum oculos ita effascinant, ut nul-
lam vituperationem apud eos subire possint: nam quicquid dicunt, Sibyllae
habetur folium.55
(… had their children perform comedies again and again, whereas they do
not understand anything of them. The actors, however, look and gesture in
such a way that even learned visitors come under the delusion that they do
understand what they play, even though they can’t inflect a substantive or
conjugate a verb. Yet these treacherous little schoolmasters know how to
allure poor illiterate persons with their tricks—or even lies. They do allure
their pupils’ eyes to such an extent, that they do not want to hear an evil
word about the master, for what he says, is considered to be a page from the
Sybilline oracles.)

Neo-Latin Drama: Contexts and Contents

Neo-Latin drama evolved in disturbing times. Not only was war a fre-
quent disruption, but it was also an age of intellectual turmoil. Religious

53 Fleurkens, ‘Meer dan vrije expressie’, p. 77.

54 Bot, Humanisme en onderwijs, p. 130.
55 Walricus Lithodomus, Progymnasmatum Latinae linguae pars altera (Dordrecht,
1558), fol. Aiiiijv, a preface to Bonifacius Pistorius, rector, and Cornelius Fabius, teacher in
Rotterdam. Quoted after Giebels and Slits, Georgius Macropedius, p. 107.

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watersheds between Protestants and Roman-Catholics caused a division

between Protestant and Roman-Catholic drama, too, but some of the
plays, such as Levinus Brechtus’ Euripus (1549) built bridges over this trou-
bled water between the confessions. This was facilitated by the interna-
tional scope of Neo-Latin drama. Plays were printed and performed in
regions other than the cities in which they were first written and per-
formed, and collections of plays from several countries were bound
together. Moreover, popular Latin plays were translated into other lan-
guages. On the other hand, however, vernacular plays such as the trage-
dies of Corneille and Racine were translated into Latin. These phenomena
built bridges between Latin and vernacular languages.
Latin drama also spread in other ways. It was meant to be read in
the classroom, but also to be performed at school, on the market square or
in the town hall. Plays by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence
were staged as well as Latin translations of Greek plays. Soon the school-
masters and university men began to write dramas themselves, which
were performed and printed, either to replace the ancient plays, or to
expand the repertoire. The plays were staged before an audience of school-
masters, fellow pupils, parents and other persons. If they had insufficient
mastery of Latin, they were helped by summaries in the vernacular, either
spoken or given in print as periochae, and by the props and acting. For
Protestant reformers, the purpose of drama was to teach reading the Bible,
as well as writing, and for Roman Catholic teachers it was to produce
preachers and missionaries; and for both groups it was to instil religious
values and Christian doctrine, even though they had different views
thereon.
The subjects of the plays could vary, and included school life and (late)
medieval stories, as well as biblical stories and saints’ lives, and events
from early or modern history. The plays could vary from farces and come-
dies and tragicomedies to tragedies. Thus the genre allowed a large variety
of themes and forms. The contributions in this present volume give evi-
dence of this variety, with regard to geographical entities too. However,
they also give evidence of a kind of continuum in time and place. Latin
plays were written and staged all over Europe, from the fifteenth to the
seventeenth century and even beyond. Most of them were meant for the
Latin schools or the universities. This practice of writing and staging Latin
plays was an exercise in speaking (and writing) Latin, a way of instilling
moral lessons and religious notions in both the pupil-actors and the audi-
ence, as well as in entertainment, offering a pleasant escape in troubled
times.

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Neo-Latin Drama in Early Modern Europe—General Assessment

Now the chapters of this volume have been brought together, we can
draw some lines. As we can see, Neo-Latin drama was a truly European
phenomenon. First sighted in Renaissance Italy in the early fourteenth cen­
tury, the rejuvenation of classical Roman genres—and their adaptation!—
flourished in the fifteenth century as humanist poets imitated Plautus and
Terence’s comedies and Seneca became the model for tragedy. This pat-
tern of imitation as a means of instructing pupils at schools and university
students in the learning of Latin and rhetorical principles as well as pro-
viding them practice in elocution appears to have become the standard
mode of instruction in the schools in Italy, and as the new learning spread
it appears to have been generally adopted throughout Europe. As a result,
Neo-Latin drama was written and performed in schools, colleges and
universities in virtually every major region on the Continent, including
France, Germany, the Low Countries, Great Britain, the Iberian peninsula,
Eastern and Central Europe (including Poland), and the Nordic countries.
It even was extended to the New World, as Pascual Barea shows us, where
the tradition continued in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. This
expansion and development of Neo-Latin drama in early modern Europe
is something that we can call the ‘common ground’ of all dramatic activity
discussed in this volume.
However, as will be demonstrated in the following chapters, the under-
lying design of Latin as the language of instruction was interpreted in a
variety of ways. Not only could language and style vary—from ‘truly
Terentian’ to ‘seriously Senecan’, sometimes according the demands of the
genres, in some cases mixing them up—but also general form and struc-
ture. For instance, Jacobus Cornelius Lummenaeus a Marca, a Benedictine
playwright from the Low Countries, developed Senecan tragedy into a
model in which the choral odes were ‘overarching’ the drama, whereas
other tragedies did not have any choral odes at all.56 These deviations or
adaptations of classical models were applied under the guidance of stylis-
tic or ideological insights, but it was vernacular traditions as well that
offered other patterns of development in themes, structure, characteriza-
tion, style and spectacle.
All this implies that dramas created drew upon the local cultural con-
text with the learned tradition incorporating a multiplicity of complex

56 On this see Janning, Der Chor im neulateinischen Drama.

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combinations. ‘Local’ should be interpreted here as belonging to a town or

city, a region, or a country. Regional cultures, then, were important factors
in determining the forms and subjects of the dramas written and per-
formed. Johannes Reuchlin’s Henno treats a folk story about cheats and
lies, whereas Georgius Macropedius’s Aluta, for instance, has as its subject
a Dutch medieval story. Of course some of the plays were written on the
occasion of the opening of a school or a school year, or upon the royal
entry of a king, such as Jan-Baptist Gramaye’s Andromeda Belgica dicta,
written for the entry of the royal couple Albrecht and Isabella in Louvain.
Jacob Kerckmeister created a series of dialogues, entitled Philippica,
recited in the Heidelberg Castle. The six prose dialogues between a teacher
and a student all end in a panegyric praising Prince Philip, who attended
this recital, as the ideal humanist prince.
Geographically—or historically—determined is also the fact that on
the Continent most dramas were written for the gymnasia and Latin
schools whereas extant British drama was mainly connected to the univer-
sities at Oxford and Cambridge.
Related to regional cultures, the history of countries was a factor in con-
ceiving dramas. Daniel Heinsius, for instance, wrote a tragedy on the
assassination of William of Orange by Balthasar Geeraerdts and had it per-
formed, to create a kind of ‘national’ drama about the ‘Father of his
Country’, whereas the Roman Catholic author Panagius Salius took the
same event as the subject for his tragedy to show the Prince’s wickedness.
This was, of course, not always the case: Marcus Antonius Muretus’s Julius
Caesar is more likely to be a drama that has to be interpreted as a means
to introduce young boys to the classical tradition and the Latin language
in general and to the figure of Julius Caesar in particular, rather than as a
vehicle for moral lessons.
However, if moral issues were depicted, they could vary; differing values
could be instilled in the students’ minds, varying from courage to modesty,
from stoic calm to zealous faith. Those moral issues could be displayed,
could be exemplified like positive and negative patterns of conduct, as
well as also spoken in sententiae by actors or in choral songs. The differ-
ences were related to the choice of subjects, the intellectual, moral and
religious backgrounds of the authors, and the intended audiences: pupils
or university students and their respective parents, or teachers and profes-
sors at those institutions.
The latter category brings us to another determinant factor in the
conception of Neo-Latin drama: the author, or rather his ideological or
educational origins. At first, comedies and tragedies were written by

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humanists, who mainly—but certainly not exclusively!—focused on edu-

cational drama that often took for its subject school life and education
itself, as evidenced by Jakob Wimpfeling’s Stylpho, Johann Kerckmeister’s
Codrus and Georgius Macropedius’s Rebelles.
Time is also an important factor. In the 1430s people were obsessed with
punishment and reward after death and the question of man’s consolation
in the hour of his passing. This is the theme of Macropedius’s Hecastus,
Jakob Bidermann’s Cenodoxus and Naogeorg’s Mercator, to name but a few
examples from different traditions.
There were also regional differences. In the Nordic Countries, hardly
any Neo-Latin drama existed, whereas in Hungary, educational drama (in
Latin and the vernacular) was the only type of theatre that was allowed.
Through this circumstance it had a far more important status than in
other countries, where school drama existed in the context of other types
of more or less professional theatre. In Italy, ecclesiastical authorities such
as Archbishop Carlo Boromeo (1538–1584) tried to ban drama, even saints’
plays, while Spain saw the production of religious farces.57 In the Low
Countries Neo-Latin drama developed alongside vernacular drama, and
both were in some instances linked to each other, partly due to the devel-
opment of the Reformation.
Within these considerations, Jesuit drama takes pride of place. After
the foundation of the Societas Jesu in 1540, the Order adopted Latin drama
as an educational means from the humanist Latin schools and gymnasia.
One could even say that they re-invented it and turned it into a multi-
media spectacle fully intent on influencing the actors’ and the audience’s
minds. In the Societas the authors as a rule had to remain anonymous,
although many of them did not keep that general rule of the Order. The
rules for dramas were rather strict, but even that situation allowed for
individual differences, as Rädle clearly demonstrates in his chapter.
Let us return from Jesuit Latin drama to Latin drama on a more general
level. The individual plays may be designed to instruct their audience or to
entertain them, though if it manages to do both, following Horace’s famous
dictum ‘omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci’ (he who mixes what
is useful with what it pleasing wins all favour, Ars poetica 343), it may be
regarded as most successful.
Neo-Latin drama was essentially oriented towards the youth, since they
were the principal actors and their masters (teachers) the authors and

57 See Shore, ‘Counter-Reformation Drama’, pp. 355–56.

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directors, and schoolboys made up the greatest share of the audience. The
‘message’ or ‘messages’ of a play may therefore have been directed towards
them, though in fact a large percentage of the plays that survive appear to
have been intended for a more general community. Oddly, in fact, the
community, even the religious elements among them, probably could not
follow the Latin, which led the producers to prepare summaries of the
dialogue in the vernacular or offer songs or comic action in their mother
tongue.
Women probably made up a minor part of the audience for many pro-
ductions, though they were barred by directive from attending (Jesuit)
theatre, where women’s roles were forbidden even when performed by
boys. The latter characterization is true for (almost) all Neo-Latin drama,
which is by and large a man’s affair. However, humanist drama did indeed
contain female roles—that were staged by boys.
One important remark has to be made. Roughly this survey ends in
1650. This does not mean that this is the end of Neo-Latin drama in Europe.
Jesuit drama, for instance, continued for a long time, and it remained
of major interest, evolving into a kind of drama that incorporated
the ideas of the Enlightenment. For Italy, we could mention Giuseppe
Car­pani (1683–1762), for Germany Anton Claus, Franz Lang (1654–1725),
Johann Baptist Adolph (1657–1708), Andreas Friz (1711–1790) and Ignatius
Weitenauer (1709–1783), to name a few.58 Valentin in his Répertoire of
Jesuit theatre in the German countries even lists more dramas for the eigh-
teenth century than for the seventeenth. It was not possible to discuss
this later drama here because the required research still has to be com-
pleted. Stefan Tilg and his research group in Innsbruck are working on
this project, and in a volume of Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia
that appeared on the occasion of the second millennium of the Battle
of the Teutoburg Forest or the Varian disaster, three Neo-Latin dramas on
Arminius (from 1678, 1701 and 1758) are discussed.59 We also leave aside
Latin operas such as Oedipus Rex (1927) written by Igor Stravinsky (1882–
1971) and Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) that can be considered as a late rem-
nant of Neo-Latin drama. Moreover, not only the Jesuits, also members of
other orders, in particular the Augustinians (OSA) and the Benedictines
(OSB) were active in the field.

58 See also the contribution by Rädle, p. 191.

59 Beck, Ad fines imperii Romani. The dramas were written by Johannes Ludovicus
Prasch (Arminius, 1678), Johann Baptist Adolph (1657–1708) (Arminius Germaniae defen-
sor, 1701) and Ignatius Weitenauer (Arminii corona, 1758), treated by Paula Marongiu, Fidel
Rädle and Jan-Wilhelm Beck.

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The contributions in this volume make clear that dramas within the
period under consideration have much in common and many individual
traits that differ according to the various countries and each author as
well. This is certainly not the final word on Neo-Latin drama, but it may
provide Neo-Latinists and other interested scholars with some insight into
that multifarious genre, and it may (we hope) stimulate further research in
the field. Many things are already happening. We will confine ourselves to
mentioning the Münster project on ‘Theatrical and Social Communication:
Functions of Urban and Courtly Theatre in the Late Middle Ages and Early
Modern Times’, which is part of the Sonderforschungsbereich ‘Symbolic
Communication and Systems of Social Values’, conducted by Christel
Meier-Staubach,60 and the project ‘Latin and Vernacular Cultures: Theatre
and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1510–1625’ conducted by Jan
Bloemendal. Nonetheless, as the annual bibliographical data in Huma-
n­istica Lovaniensia testify, as well as the work done in Cambridge by Ford
and Taylor, there is more work to do. Consider in this regard research on
individual authors and plays; on the functions of plays; on the social strati-
fication of the players and the audience; on the relationships or non-
relationships between Latin and the vernacular; on the possible functions
of drama in the self-fashioning of teachers, players and audiences; on the
role of dramas in the career-building of their authors, to name but a few.
May this volume contribute to these future studies.

60 See [Link] and http://

[Link]/SFB496/.

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