The Project Gutenberg EBook of Plays, by Alexander Ostrovsky

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Title: Plays A Protégée of the Mistress; Poverty Is No Crime; Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All; It's a Family Affair—We'll Settle It Ourselves

Author: Alexander Ostrovsky

Release Date: January 15, 2004 [EBook #10722]

Language: English

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Produced by Keren Vergon, Lazar Liveanu and PG Distributed Proofreaders

PLAYS

BY

ALEXANDER OSTROVSKY

A PROTÉGÉE OF THE MISTRESS POVERTY IS NO CRIME SIN AND SORROW ARE COMMON TO ALL IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR—WE'LL SETTLE IT OURSELVES

A TRANSLATION FROM THE RUSSIAN, EDITED BY

GEORGE RAPALL NOYES

1917

PREFATORY NOTE

The following persons have co-operated in preparing the present volume: Leonard Bacon (verses in "Poverty Is No Crime"), Florence Noyes (suggestions on the style of all the plays), George Rapall Noyes (introduction, revision of the translation, and suggestions on the style of all the plays), Jane W. Robertson ("Poverty Is No Crime"), Minnie Eline Sadicoff ("Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All"), John Laurence Seymour ("It's a Family Affair—We'll Settle It Ourselves" and "A Protégée of the Mistress"). The system of transliteration for Russian names used in the book is with very small variations that recommended for "popular" use by the School of Russian Studies in the University of Liverpool.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A PROTÉGÉE OF THE MISTRESS

POVERTY IS NO CRIME

SIN AND SORROW ARE COMMON TO ALL

IT'S A FAMILY AFFAIR—WE'LL SETTLE IT OURSELVES

INTRODUCTION

ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH Ostróvsky (1823-86) is the great Russian dramatist of the central decades of the nineteenth century, of the years when the realistic school was all-powerful in Russian literature, of the period when Turgénev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy created a literature of prose fiction that has had no superior in the world's history. His work in the drama takes its place beside theirs in the novel. Obviously inferior as it is in certain ways, it yet sheds light on an important side of Russian life that they left practically untouched. Turgénev and Tolstoy were gentlemen by birth, and wrote of the fortunes of the Russian nobility or of the peasants whose villages bordered on the nobles' estates. Dostoyevsky, though not of this landed-proprietor school, still dealt with the nobility, albeit with its waifs and strays. None of these masters more than touched the Russian merchants, that homespun moneyed class, crude and coarse, grasping and mean, without the idealism of their educated neighbors in the cities or the homely charm of the peasants from whom they themselves sprang, yet gifted with a rough force and determination not often found among the cultivated aristocracy. This was the field that Ostróvsky made peculiarly his own.

With this merchant class Ostróvsky was familiar from his childhood. Born in 1823, he was the son of a lawyer doing business among the Moscow tradesmen. After finishing his course at the gymnasium and spending three years at the University of Moscow, he entered the civil service in 1843 as an employee of the Court of Conscience in Moscow, from which he transferred two years later to the Court of Commerce, where he continued until he was discharged from the service in 1851. Hence both by his home life and by his professional training he was brought into contact with types such as Bolshóv and Rizpolozhensky in "It's a Family Affair—We'll Settle It Ourselves."

As a boy of seventeen Ostróvsky had already developed a passion for the theatre. His literary career began in the year 1847, when he read to a group of Moscow men of letters his first experiments in dramatic composition. In this same year he printed one scene of "A Family Affair," which appeared in complete form three years later, in 1850, and established its author's reputation as a dramatist of undoubted talent. Unfortunately, by its mordant but true picture of commercial morals, it aroused against him the most bitter feelings among the Moscow merchants. Discussion of the play in the press was prohibited, and representation of it on the stage was out of the question. It was reprinted only in 1859, and then, at the instance of the censorship, in an altered form, in which a police officer appears at the end of the play as a deus ex machina, arrests Podkhalyúzin, and announces that he will be sent to Siberia. In this mangled version the play was acted in 1861; in its original text it did not appear on the stage until 1881. Besides all this, the drama was the cause of the dismissal of Ostróvsky from the civil service, in 1851. The whole episode illustrates the difficulties under which the great writers of Russia have constantly labored under a despotic government.

Beginning with 1852 Ostróvsky gave his whole strength to literary work. He is exceptional among Russian authors in devoting himself almost exclusively to the theatre. The latest edition of his works contains forty-eight pieces written entirely by him, and six produced in collaboration with other authors. It omits his translations from foreign dramatists, which were of considerable importance, including, for example, a version of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."

The plays of Ostróvsky are of varied character, including dramatic chronicles based on early Russian history, and a fairy drama, "Little Snowdrop." His real strength lay, however, in the drama of manners, giving realistic pictures of Russian life among the Russian city classes and the minor nobility. Here he was recognized, from the time of the appearance on the stage of his first pieces, in 1853 and the following years, as without a rival among Russian authors for the theatre. Of this realistic drama the present volume gives four characteristic examples.

The tone of "Poverty Is No Crime" (1854), written only four years after "A Family Affair," is in sharp contrast with that of its predecessor. In the earlier play Ostróvsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gógol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness. No ray of light penetrates the "realm of darkness"—to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic—conjured up before us by the young dramatist. In "Poverty Is No Crime" we see the other side of the medal. Ostróvsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostróvsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth. The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is