In the 16th century in Europe there was a period of prosperity of School theatre. Religious educational system included the strengthening of the true faith and one of its facilities was also a Latin school drama. Pedagogical goals here predominated and its purpose was to exercise students in the language of Latin authors. Due to the exercise of speech, school drama had to be written in Latin. The School dramatic plays have a lot of roles because they were submitted by students and it was necessary to employ students as much as possible. They must also have a moralistic or religious undertone to train other people. Consequently they utilized Ideas mostly from the Bible, especially from the Old Testament. From Slovakia actually we have not any texts of Latin school drama passed on this period. We have only reports of the theatre, which has been played in larger cities with the German bourgeoisie; e.g. in Bardejov, Prešov, Kremnica, Banská Štiavnica, Banská Bystrica, and also about the tradition of playing Latin theatre continued by evangelical schools in the 17th century. Ondrej Rochotský – Rochotius (1583 – after 1623) - Slovak native permanently operating in the Bohemia and Moravia, treated in his Latin verse school dramas the Old Testament biblical themes. School drama Gedeon (Gideon) dramatizes the story of Gideon, which ousted Midian and liberated Jerusalem. Content of drama Josephiados is an Old Testament story from the book of Genesis of Joseph in Egypt. The file is dated from the year 1608 or 1609, when O. Rochotský managed school in Czech Prostějov. Both religious school dramas of Rochotius (play Gideon allegorize the current military-political events in the Bohemia) aimed also to firm up current ideological and religious-political striving of Protestants - to persevere in faith, not to give in and not lose hope in the final victory.
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