SOURCE: "Hrotsvitha, a Tenth-Century Nun: The First Woman Playwright," in Enter the Actress: The First Women in the Theatre, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1931, pp. 18-45.

In the following essay, Gilder summarizes Hroswitha's place in early medieval drama and evaluates her plays, noting particularly her masterful characterization in these works.

Although the early Christian Church welcomed to its bosom certain repentant actresses, it was on the whole the mortal enemy of the theatre. The war between Church and stage has been long and bitter, particularly in the early days when the theatre represented the last entrenched camp of paganism, and as such was the subject of virulent attack and condemnation. The Church desired nothing less than the complete annihilation of its enemy, and in this, by the close of the fourth century, it had largely succeeded. It is therefore not a little diverting to find that the first woman of...