(Ger.: ‘school drama’).
From the early 16th century, in Catholic schools and universities and later in Protestant ones as well, the performance of Latin plays formed an important part of the educational programme. At first comedies by Terence and other Roman playwrights were used, but at many schools members of the faculty wrote new Latin plays in imitation of classical models but without their erotic allusions. Important contributors after the mid-century include the Augsburg Meistersinger Sebastian Wild.
Typically, the plays used no decorations and only amateur actors. The plays show little if any literary finesse, with the main action normally drawn from the Bible but freely embellished in order to provide a forceful sense of realism. Elements were incorporated to fix the attention of an audience often little acquainted with Latin – spectacle, dances, live animals and scenes of physical violence as well as of excessive eating and drinking. Music’s role was ordinarily confined to choruses, intermedi of various sorts and occasional hymns and songs.
Under the music-loving Prince-Archbishop von Schrattenbach, students at the University of Salzburg performed five-act Latin tragedies interspersed with musical pantomimes and comic intermezzos at Shrovetide, for important visitors and at the end of each term. Michael Haydn contributed both pantomimes and German Singspiele for these occasions between 1767 and 1771, as did the young Mozart with his three-act Latin intermezzo Apollo et Hyacinthus (13 May 1767).
J.B. Trenkle: Über süddeutsche geistliche Schulkomödien (Freiburg, 1866)
E. Riedel: Schuldrama und Theater (Hamburg, 1885)
P.E. Schmidt: Die Bühnenverhältnisse des deutschen Schuldramas und seiner volkstümlichen Ableger im 16. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1903)
H. Levinger: Augsburger Schultheater (Berlin, 1931)
G. Skopnik: Das Strassburger Schultheater: sein Spielplan und seine Bühne (Frankfurt, 1935)
THOMAS BAUMAN