CHAPTER V.
FOURTH PERIOD, FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE EPOCH OF REFORM UNDER PETER THE GREAT.
Even in far-away, northeastern Russia a break is apparent in the middle of the sixteenth century; and during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, a new sort of historical composition came into vogue--the so-called "Stepennaya Kniga," or "Book of Degrees" (or steps), wherein the national history was set forth in order, according to the Degrees of the Princely Houses in the lines of descent from Rurik to Ivan the Terrible in twenty degrees.

This method found favor, and another degree was added in the seventeenth century, bringing the history down to the death of the Tzar Alexei Mikhailovitch.

During the seventeenth century many attempts were made at collections and chronicles, the only one approaching fullness being the "Chronicle of Nikon," so-called, probably, because it was compiled by order of the Patriarch Nikon.
During the seventeenth century a fad also sprang up of writing everything, even school-books, petitions, and calendars in versified form, which was known as _virshi_, and imported from Poland to Moscow by Simeon Polotzky.

At that time, also, it was the fashion for school-boys to act plays as a part of their regular course of study in the schools in southwest Russia; and in particular, in Peter Moghila's Academy in Kieff.

Plays of a religious character had, naturally, been imported from western Europe, through Poland, in the seventeenth century, but as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century certain church ceremonies in Russia were celebrated in a purely dramatic form, suggestive of the mystery plays in western Europe.