The First Nederduytsche Academy was an institution set up by Samuel Coster

Samuel Coster

Samuel Coster was a Dutch playwright.Coster was the fifth child of Adriaen Lennaertz, sexton and carpenter, and Aeltgen Jansd. By around 1605, he was a member of the Amsterdam rederijkerskamer "De Eglantier". Presumably he was helped into the society by rich friends, but then got himself to...

 (with the important support of Bredero

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero

Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero was a Dutch poet and playwright in the period known as the Dutch Golden Age.-Life:...

 and Hooft

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age.-Life:...

) in Amsterdam. The institution was set up to offer better theatre than the old rederijkerskamers

Chamber of rhetoric

Chambers of rhetoric were dramatic societies in the Low Countries. Their members are called Rederijkers , from the french word 'rhétoricien', and during the 15th and 16th centuries were mainly interested in dramas and lyrics...

 could then manage. Another (perhaps more important) aim was to offer higher education to common people.

The academy was inaugurated on 23 September 1617 with 'Apollo' by Suffridus Sixtinus, and the tragedy ' 'Vande moordt begaen aen Wilhelm van Orangien' (the murder of William of Orange

William the Silent

William I, Prince of Orange , also widely known as William the Silent , or simply William of Orange , was the main leader of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish that set off the Eighty Years' War and resulted in the formal independence of the United Provinces in 1648. He was born in the House of...

) by Gijsbert van Hoghendorp. This all occurred in a wooden building. The coat-of-arms of the academy consisted of a beehive

Beehive (beekeeping)

A beehive is an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species of the subgenus Apis live and raise their young. Natural beehives are naturally occurring structures occupied by honeybee colonies, while domesticated honeybees live in man-made beehives, often in an apiary. These man-made...

 under an eglantine with the word "IJver" ("zeal") as a motto.

Calvinistic preachers of that time put pressure on the new institution to close. The theatre did not give in, particularly since its first two professors were Mennonite

Mennonite

The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after the Frisian Menno Simons , who, through his writings, articulated and thereby formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders...

s (Sibrant Hanses Cardinael in Arithmetic and Jan Thonis in Hebrew).

In 1631, Vondel

Joost van den Vondel

Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant , on the life of John the Baptist, has...

 wrote his "Vraghe van d'Amsterdamsche Academi aan alle poëten en dichters" (Questions of the Amsterdam Academics to all poets), provoking further vehement Calvinist reactions. Finally the 'Oeffenschool', that was meant to go with the Academy, was founded. The Athenaeum Illustre was later set up in the city, but here no teaching was presented in the native language.

The main figures of the academy wrote comedy and farce:

• Coster: Teeuwis de boer en Tysken vanden Schilde
• Bredero: Lucelle, De Koe, Symen, De Meulenaer, Het Moortje, Spaansche Brabander
• Hooft: Warenar