It's the Intermission
A Creative Coffee Break

Of over 200 playwrights’ birthdays posted on Intermission in 2009 only seven contained the birthdays of women playwrights. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? The list I have been using clearly skews in one direction and so I’m committing 2010 to balancing out that list. It’s not as easy as it sounds because playwrights, especially those who are women, are not always wiki’d along with their birthdays. Hmmm….

We start off with the first known woman dramatist:

Hrotsvith von Gandersheim
Germany
c935 – 973 (precise dates unknown)

According to the Bloomsbury Guide to Women’s Literature she was “best-known for her six plays: Gallicanus; Dulcititius; Callimachus; Abrahm; Paphnutius; and Sapientia (translated as The Plays, 1923, and The Plays of Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, 1970).

Also known as Hrotsvitah, Hroswitha, Hrosvit, Roswitha. She wrote in Latin.

I did not dare lay bare my impulse and intention to any of the wise by asking for advice, lest I be forbidden to write because of my clownishness. So in complete secrecy, as it were furtively…I tried as best I might to produce a text of even the slightest use.

Hrosvitha
as translated and quoted in
Pythagoras’s Trousers