Theatre
The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim
Dramata
Opening lines
Constantinus
Taedet me, Gallicane, morarum, quia gentem, quam scis Scytharum Romanae solam resistere paci nostrisque temere praeceptis reluctari, bello protrahis lacessere, cum pro tui strenuitate id tibimet exercitii ad defensionem non ignores patriae servari.
I am weary of your delays, Gallicanus, for you are slow to make war upon the Scythians, the one nation, as you know, that resists the Roman peace and rashly defies our commands, though you are well aware that, by reason of your valour, this task has been reserved for you for the defence of the fatherland.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from la.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Six plays in Latin. A pagan general of Constantine will march against the Scythians only if he obtains the hand of Constantia, the emperor's daughter, who has vowed herself to God. A governor has three Christian sisters locked in a kitchen and slips in there in the evening. A young pagan falls in love with Drusiana, a married Christian woman who rejects him. A hermit disguises himself as a client to find his niece in a brothel; another goes to see the courtesan Thaïs. A mother and her three daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity, appear before the emperor Hadrian for having refused the gods of Rome.
Context
The six plays form the second of the three books in which the author herself arranged her work, between the legends and the historical writings. Written in prose, partly rhymed, they invoke in their preface Terence, an author widely read at the time: the aim is to glorify the chastity of Christian virgins in the very form that served for the love affairs of comedies. The French editor holds them to be meant for reading; more recent work does not rule out that they were performed or read aloud at Gandersheim. The manuscript, copied there around the year 1000 and kept in Munich, was found in the 1490s by the humanist Conrad Celtes at Saint-Emmeram in Regensburg; in 1501 he produced from it, in Nuremberg, an edition illustrated by Albrecht Dürer.
Who it is for
Six short plays in Latin, each running to a few scenes; they gain from being read alongside the comedies of Terence, whose situations they turn around.
Prizes and reception
The first dramatic works of the West since the fall of Rome, and the first known theatre written by a woman.
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