the hero of "Poverty Is No Crime," and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostróvsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubím Tortsóv, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth.

Just as "Poverty Is No Crime" shows the influence of the Slavophile movement, "A Protégée of the Mistress" (1859) was inspired by the great liberal movement that bore fruit in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Ostróvsky here departed from town to a typical country manor, and produced a work kindred in spirit to Turgénev's "Sportsman's Sketches," or "Mumu." In a short play, instinct with simple poetry, he shows the suffering brought about by serfdom: the petty tyranny of the landed proprietor, which is the more galling because it is practised with a full conviction of virtue on the part of the tyrant; and the crushed natures of the human cattle under his charge.

     The master grim, the lowly serf that tills his lands;
     With lordly pride the first sends forth commands,
     The second cringes like a slave.
                                        —Nekrasov.

Despite the unvarying success of his dramas on the stage, Ostróvsky for a long time derived little financial benefit from them. Discouragement and overwork wrecked his health, and were undoubtedly responsible for the gloomy tone of a series of plays written in the years following 1860, of which "Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All" (1863) is a typical example. Here the dramatist sketches a tragic incident arising from the conflict of two social classes, the petty tradesmen and the nobility. From the coarse environment of the first emerge honest, upright natures like Krasnóv; from the superficial, dawdling culture of the second come weak-willed triflers like Babáyev. The sordid plot sweeps on to its inevitable conclusion with true tragic force.

Towards the end of his life Ostróvsky gained the material prosperity that was his due. "There was no theatre in Russia in which his plays were not acted" (Skabichévsky). From 1874 to his death he was the president of the Society of Russian Dramatic Authors. In 1885 he received the important post of artistic director of the Moscow government theatres; the harassing duties of the position proved too severe for his weak constitution, and he passed away in the next year.

As a dramatist, Ostróvsky is above all else a realist; no more thoroughly natural dramas than his were ever composed. Yet as a master of realistic technique he must not be compared with Ibsen, or even with many less noted men among modern dramatists. His plays have not the neat, concise construction that we prize to-day. Pages of dialogue sometimes serve no purpose except to make a trifle clearer the character of the actors, or perhaps slightly to heighten the impression of commonplace reality. Even in "Sin and Sorrow" and "A Protégée" whole passages merely illustrate the background against which the plot is set rather than help forward the action itself. Many plays, such as "A Family Affair," end with relatively unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the conclusion of the main action: will Nádya in "A Protégée" submit to her degrading fate, or will she seek refuge in the pond?

Ostróvsky rarely uses the drama to treat of great moral or social problems. He is not a revolutionary thinker or an opponent of existing society; his ideal, like that of his predecessor Gógol, is of honesty, kindliness, generosity, and loyalty in a broad, general way to the traditions of the past. He attacks serfdom not as an isolated leader of a forlorn hope, but as an adherent of a great party of moderate reformers.

Thus Ostróvsky's strength lies in a sedate, rather commonplace realism. One of the most national of authors, he loses much in translation.[1] His style is racy, smacking of the street or the counting-house; he is one of the greatest masters of the Russian vernacular. To translate his Moscow slang into the equivalent dialect of New York would be merely to transfer Broadway associations to the Ilyínka. A translator can only strive to be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying atmosphere of the different plays. And Ostróvsky's characters are as natural as his language. Pig-headed merchants; apprentices, knavish or honest as the case may be; young girls with a touch of poetry in their natures, who sober down into kindly housewives; tyrannical serf-owners and weak-willed sons of noble families: such is the material of which he builds his entertaining, wholesome, mildly thoughtful dramas. Men and women live and love, trade and cheat in Ostróvsky as they do in the world around us. Now and then a murder or a suicide appears in his pages as it does in those of the daily papers, but hardly more frequently. In him we can study the life of Russia as he knew it, crude and coarse and at times cruel, yet full of homely virtue and aspiration. Of his complex panorama the present volume gives a brief glimpse.

[Footnote 1: Ostróvsky, it may be remarked, has been singularly neglected by translators from the Russian. The only previous versions of complete plays in English known to the present writer are "The Storm." by Constance Garnett (London and Chicago, 1899, and since reprinted), and "Incompatibility of Temper" and "A Domestic Picture" (in "The Humour of Russia," by E.L. Voynich, London and New York, 1895).]

A PROTÉGÉE OF THE MISTRESS

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE IN FOUR PICTURES

CHARACTERS

MADAM ULANBÉKOV,[1] an old woman of nearly sixty, tall, thin, with a large nose, and thick, black eyebrows; of an Eastern type of face, with a small mustache. She is powdered and rouged, and dressed richly in black. She is owner of two thousand serfs.

[Footnote 1: The name hints at a Circassian origin and a tyrannical disposition. Ostróvsky frequently gives to the persons in his plays names that suggest their characteristics.]

LEONÍD, her son, eighteen years old, very handsome, resembling his mother slightly. Wears summer dress. Is studying in Petersburg.

VASILÍSA PEREGRÍNOVNA, a toady of MADAM ULANBÉKOV'S, an old maid of forty. Scanty hair, parted slantingly, combed high, and held by a large comb. She is continually smiling with a wily expression, and she suffers from toothache; about her throat is a yellow shawl fastened by a brooch.

POTÁPYCH, the old steward. Tie and vest, white; coat black. Has an air of importance.

NADÉZHDA[2] (called NÁDYA), seventeen years old, favorite protégée of
MADAM ULANBÉKOV; dressed like a young lady.

[Footnote 2: Hope.]

GAVRÍLOVNA, the housekeeper; an elderly woman, plump, with an open countenance.

GRÍSHA, a boy of nineteen, a favorite of the mistress, dandified in dress, wearing a watch with a gold chain. He is handsome, curly-headed, with a foolish expression.

NEGLIGÉNTOV, a clerk in a government office; a very disreputable young man.

LÍZA, a housemaid, not bad-looking, but very stout and snub-nosed; in a white dress, of which the bodice is short and ill-fitting. About her neck is a little red kerchief; her hair is very much pomaded.

A peasant girl, a footman, and a housemaid: mute personages.

The action takes place in