The third, and simplest, of these religious dramas, the "Act of the Last Judgment," generally took place on the Sunday preceding the Carnival.
In 1672 Tzar Alexei Mikhailovitch ordered Johann Gregory, the Lutheran pastor in Moscow, to arrange "comedy acts," and the first pieces acted before the Tzar on a private court stage were translations from the German--the "Act of Artaxerxes," the comedy "Judith," and so forth.

But under the influence of southwestern Russia, as already mentioned, it was not long before a Russian mystery play, "St.Alexei, the Man of God," founded on a Polish original, thoroughly imbued with Polish influence, was written in honor of Tzar Alexei, and acted in public by students of Peter Moghila's College in Kieff.

A whole series of mystery plays followed from the fruitful pen of Simeon Polotzky.

Especially curious was his "Comedy of King Nebuchadnezzar, the Golden Calf, and the Three Youths Who Were Not Consumed in the Fiery Furnace." He wrote many other "comedies," two huge volumes of them.
Theatrical representations won instant favor with the Tzar and his court, and a theatrical school was promptly established in Moscow, even before the famous and very necessary Slavonic-Greco-Latin Academy, for "higher education," as it was then understood.
None of the school dramas--several of which Peter Moghila himself is said to have written--have come down to us; neither are there any specimens now in existence of the spiritual dramas and dramatic dialogues from the early years of the seventeenth century.

In addition to the dramas of Simeon Polotzky, of the last part of that century, we have the dramatic works of another ecclesiastical writer, St.Dmitry of Rostoff (1651-1709), six in all, including "The Birth of Christ," "The Penitent Sinner," "Esther and Ahashuerus," and so forth.