Yiddish was establishing itself as a literary language, and some Jews with secular interests were familiar with the dominant theatrical traditions of their respective countries; given this burgeoning literary intellectual culture, within a year or two of Goldfaden's founding the first professional Yiddish theatre troupe, there were multiple troupes, multiple playwrights, and more than a few serious Yiddish theatre critics and theoreticians. Goldfaden and the birth of Yiddish theatre in Romania Abraham Goldfaden is generally considered the founder of the first professional Yiddish theatre troupe, which he founded in Iaşi, Romania in 1876, and later moved to Bucharest. His own career also took him to Imperial Russia, Lemberg in Habsburg Galicia (today Lviv in Ukraine), and New York City. Within two years of Goldfaden's founding of his troupe, there were several rival troupes in Bucharest, mostly founded by former members of Goldfaden's troupe. Most of these troupes followed Goldfaden's original formula of musical vaudeville and light comedy, while Goldfaden himself turned more toward relatively serious operettas about biblical and historical subjects, especially after his own company left Bucharest for an extended tour of the cities of Imperial Russia. Goldfaden's troupe began as all-male; while they soon acquired actresses, as well, it remained relatively common in Yiddish theatre for female roles, especially comic roles, to be played by men. (Women also sometimes played men's roles: Molly Picon was a famous Shmendrick.) Many early Yiddish theatre pieces were constructed around a very standard set of roles: "a prima donna, a soubrette, a comic, a lover, a villain, a villainess (or "intriguer"), an older man and woman for character roles, and one or two more for spares as the plot might require," and a musical component that might range from a single fiddler to an orchestra. This was very convenient for a repertory company, especially a traveling one. Both at the start and well into the great years of Yiddish theatre, the troupes were often in one or another degree family affairs, with a husband, wife, and often their offspring playing in the same troupe. At its high end, early Yiddish theatre was noted for its pageantry. A pageant about the coronation of Solomon, presented on the occasion of the 1881 coronation of Carol I of Romania was described by Ion Ghica as "among the most imposing things that paraded the coronation"; he acquired the costumes for the Romanian National Theatre, which he