The actual performance of _The Acts of Artaxerxes_ took place on October 17th, 1672 (O.S.), and is said to have lasted ten hours, making demands upon the endurance of the audience which puts Wagnerian enthusiasts completely to shame. The Tsar watched the spectacle with unflagging attention and afterwards generously rewarded those who had taken part in the performance. The attitude of the clergy had so far changed that the Tsar's chaplain, the Protopope Savinov, undertook to set at rest his master's last scruples of conscience by pointing to the example of the Greek emperors and other potentates. Gaining courage, and also a growing taste for this somewhat severe form of recreation, Alexis went on to establish a more permanent theatrical company. In the following year (1673) Pastor Gregory was commanded to instruct twenty-six young men, some drawn from the clerks of the Chancellery of State, others from the lower orders of the merchants or tradespeople, who were henceforth to be known as "the Comedians of His Majesty the Tsar." At first the audience consisted only of the favoured intimate circle of the Tsar, and apparently no ladies were present; but after a time the Tsaritsa and the Tsarevnas were permitted to witness the performance from the seclusion of a Royal Box protected by a substantial _grille_. The theatre was soon transferred from Preobrajensky to the Poteshny Dvorets in the Kremlin. _The Acts of Artaxerxes_ was followed by a series of pieces, nearly all of a highly edifying nature, written or arranged by Gregory and others: _Tobias_, _The Chaste Joseph_, _Adam and Eve_, _Orpheus and Eurydice_ (with couplets and choruses) and _How Judith cut off the head of Holofernes_. The libretto of the last-named play is still in existence, and gives us some idea of the patient endurance of primitive theatre-goers in Russia. It is in seven acts, subdivided into twenty-nine scenes, with a prologue and an interlude between the third and fourth acts; the characters number sixty-three; all the female parts were acted by youths. The libretto is constructed more or less on the plan of the German comedies of the period, but what gives the piece a special importance in the history of Russian opera is the fact that it contains arias and choruses linked with the action of the piece, such as the Song of the Kings, in which they bewail their sad fate when taken captive by Holofernes, a soldier's Drinking Song, a Love-Song sung by Vagav at Judith's feast, and a Jewish Song of Victory, the words of which are paraphrased from Biblical sources. The author is supposed, without much foundation in fact, to have been Simeon Polotsky, of whom we shall hear later. The piece was probably translated from German sources. A custom was then started, which prevailed for a considerable time in Russia, of confiding the translation of plays to the clerks in the Chancellery of the Ambassadors, which department answered in some measure to our Foreign Office.