On ancient Roman plays, German nun and poet Roswitha (Hrotsvitha) (circa 935-circa 1000) modeled dialogs that represent an early stage in the revival of European drama.

With a name also spelled Hroswitha, Hrotsvit, or Hrosvit, this a 10th-century German secular canoness and dramatist, born into nobility, lived and worked in a community, the abbey of Bad Gandersheim in modern-day Lower Saxony, Germany. She attests her name as Saxon for "strong voice."

After antiquity, some critics consider her, who wrote in Latin, as the first person to compose drama in Latin-influenced western Europe.

Hrotsvit studied under Rikkardis and Gerberg, daughter of Henry the Fowler, king. Otto I the Great, emperor and brother of Gerberg, penned a history, one of poetical subjects of Hrotsvit in her Carmen de Gestis Oddonis Imperatoris , which encompasses the period to the coronation of Otto I in 962.

Gerberg introduced her, noted for her great learning, to Roman writers. Work of Hrotsvit shows familiarity with the Church Fathers and classical poetry, including that of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Plautus, and she modellded her own verse on that of Terence. Several of her plays draw on the "Apocryphal gospels." Her works form part of the renaissance of Otto.