Written by leading Serbian realist, Testament is the first Serbian social drama, and also the only literary work that thematizes the movement of Serb Catholics in Dubrovnik at the end of the 19th century. Trying to break up the stereotypes on nation and religion, it is created under the pressure of two non-harmonic forces: the first is its own ideology, which is also the ideology of the Serb Catholics, and the second – stereotype of the melodramatic genre itself. The work is an attempt to shed light on it from the perspective of New historicism and Lacanian discourse analysis, to detect the reasons of its marginalization and, in spite of its aesthetic decline under the weight of politics, to point out its authentic values.