Pardes Shoshanim…Asirei Hatikvah [Garden of Roses…Prisoners of Hope]

First dramatic poem written in Hebrew, calling for the victory of ones will over ones passions. This allegorical drama was written by Penso at the young age of seventeen. A poet of considerable talent, he was a member of the Academia de los Floridos, where the Sephardic poets of Amsterdam would meet to recite Spanish and Hebrew verses and stage plays. Penso’s drama “was more reminiscent of a medieval Christian mystery play than of a fashionable French drama, but nonetheless, it was the first Hebrew play to portray true drama.” See: M. H. Gans, Memorbook (1977), p. 117.