The possibility is not excluded that in addition to this semi-religious form of the drama, there may also have been given performances of profane plays at an early date in Russia. It is not known whether any of the dramas written by Aksenfeld, Gottlober, or Ettinger have been played by amateur actors, but we have at least one well-attested case of a performance of that kind in 1855,--twenty years before the establishment of the Judeo-German theatre by Goldfaden. In that year the students of the Zhitomir Rabbinical school celebrated the coronation of Emperor Alexander II. by a play in which the life of the Jewish soldier and the kahal were depicted. This drama is said to have been written by one Kamrasch, but never to have been printed. It is also asserted that it served as the first impulse to Goldfaden to create a Jewish theatre, which, however, he realized only much later.
There existed a dramatic literature long before Goldfaden. We have had occasion to mention the works of Ettinger, Aksenfeld, Gottlober, Abramowitsch, Falkowitsch, Levinsohn, Epstein. After the popular poetry a semi-dramatic style was better calculated to impress the people with the new culture than simple prose, which at that time had not been well worked out. Nearly all of the prose style of the early days is more or less affected by the drama, and even Abramowitsch has not entirely got away from it. Nearly all of his stories are introduced by the stereotyped words: "Says Mendele Mōcher Sforim," and there are other similar dramatic effects scattered through them. This, which is an imitation of Hebrew originals, has also been the usual way of introduction with other Judeo-German writers of the early days. The drama of Ettinger is entirely constructed after the manner of a German play, has five acts, and the laws of dramaturgy are carefully carried out. It really looks as though he had intended it for the stage. In Aksenfeld the adaptation to the stage is less apparent, while the others do not seem to have had the performance of their plays in mind at all. What is surprising is that Aksenfeld and Gottlober should have introduced in their dramas a number of couplets and songs which have no meaning unless they were meant to be sung by the actors. Possibly they followed the precedent of familiar German plays even in this particular, without any other purpose before them; or it may be that they foresaw the possibility of their future representation and thought it best to imitate the Purim plays, which had always some songs intermingled with the spoken dialogue of the actors.