Plays

Front matter

QJotttEll HmnctHitg Stibrstg

3 1924 026 383 335

The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library.

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 EKne Sadicoff ("Sin and Sorrow Are Common to AH"), John Laurence Seymour ("It's a Family Affair — We'll Settle It Ourselves" and "A Protegee 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

PAGE

A PBOTfeGfeE OF THE MiSTEESS 11

Poverty Is No Crime 67

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Alexander Nikoi^yevich Ostrovskt (1823-86) is the great Russian dramatist of the central decades of the nineteenth century, of the years when the realistic school was allpowerful in Russian literature, of the period when Turgenev, 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. Turgenev 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 Ostrovsky made peculiarly his own.

With this merchant class Ostrovsky 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 Bolshov and Rizpolozhensky in "It's a Family Affair —We'll Settle It Ourselves."

As a boy of seventeen Ostrovsky 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 Podkhalyuzin, 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 Ostrovsky 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 Ostr6vsky 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 Ostr6vsky 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 Ostrovsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gogol, 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 youn^ dramatist. In "Poverty Is No Crime" we see the other side of the medal. Ostrovsky 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 civihzation. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostr6vsky 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 the hero of "Poverty Is No Crime," and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, 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 Protegee of the Mistress" (1859) was inspired by the great liberal movement that bore fruit in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. Ostrovsky here departed from town to a tjrpical country manor, and produced a work kindred in spirit to Turgenev'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 hum^n 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, Ostrovsky 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 Krasnov; from the superficial, dawdling culture of the second come ■weak-willed triflers like Babayev. The sordid plot sweeps on to its inevitable conclusion with true tragic force.

Towards the end of his life Ostrovsky gained the material prosperity that was his due. "There was no theatre in Russia in which his plays were not acted" (Skabichevsky) . 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, Ostrovsky 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 Protegee" 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 AflFair," end with relatively unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the conclusion of the main action: will N4dya in "A Protegee" submit to her degrading fate, or will she seek refuge in the pond ?

Ostrovsky 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 Gogol, 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 Ostrovsky's strength lies in a sedate, rather commonplace realism. One of the most national of authors, he loses much in translation.* 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 Ilyinka. A translator can only strive to be colloquial and familiar, giving up the effort to render the varying atmosphere of the different plays. And Ostrovsky'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 famihes : such is the material of which he builds his entertaining, wholesome, mildly thoughtful dramas. Men and women live and love, trade and cheat in Ostrovsky 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 hfe 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 ghmpse.

1 03tr6vsky it may be remarked, has been singularly neglected by translators from the Russian. The only previous versions of complete plays in Enghsh 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." oy E. L. Voynich, London and New York 189S).

A PROTEGEE OF THE MISTRESS

SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE IN FOUR PICTURES

CHARACTERS

Madam Ulanbekov.^ an old woman of nearly sixty, tall, thin, with a large nose, and thicJe, 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.

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

Vasilisa PEKEGBfNOVNA, a toody of Madam Ulanbekov'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.

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

Nad^hda ^ {called Nadya), seventeen years old, favorite protSgSe of Madam Ulanbekov; dressed like a young lady.

GavbIlovna, the houseJceeper ; an elderly woman, plump, with an open countenance.

GnisHA, 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.

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

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

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

The action takes place in the springtime, at the suburban estate of Madam Ulanbekov

iThe name hints at a Circaasian origin and a tyrannical disposition. 03tr6vsky frequently gives to the person's in his plays names that suggest their characteristics. 2 Hope.

A PROTEGEE OF THE MISTRESS

Part of a densely grown garden; on the right benches; at the back a rail fence, separating the garden from a field

Enter Nadya and Liza

Nadya. No, Liza, don't say that: what comparison could there be between country and city life !

Liza. What is there so specially fine about city life ?

Nadya. Well, everything is different there; the people themselves, and even the whole social order are entirely different. [She sits down on a bench] When I was in Petersburg with the mistress, one had only to take a look at the sort of people who came to see us, and at the way our rooms were decorated; besides, the mistress took me with her everywhere; we even went on the steamer to Peterhof, and to Tsarskoe Selo.

Liza. That was pretty fine, I suppose.

Nadya. Yes indeed, it was so splendid that words can't describe it ! Because, no matter how much I may tell you about it, if you haven't seen it yourself, you'll never understand. And when a young lady, the mistress's niece, was visiting us, I used to chat with her the whole evening, and sometimes we even sat through the night.

Liza. What in the world did you talk about with her ? 11

12 A PROTfiGfiE ACT I

Nadya. Well, naturally, for the most part about the ways of high society, about her dancing partners, and about the officers of the guard. And as she was often at balls, she told me what they talked about there, and whom she had liked best. Only how fine those young ladies are !

Liza. What do you mean ?

Nadya. They're very gay. And where did they learn all that.? Afterwards we lived a whole winter in Moscow. Seeing all this, my dear, you try to act like a born lady yourself. Your very manners change, and you try to have a way of talking of your own.

Liza. But why should we try to be fine ladies? Much good it does !

Nadya. Much good, you say.? Well, you see the ladies promised to marry me off, so I am trying to educate myself, so that no one'll be ashamed to take me. You know what sort of wives our officials have; well, what a lot they are ! And I understand life and society ten times better than they do. Now I have just one hope: to marry a good man, so I may be the mistress of my own household. You just watch then how I'll manage the hoi! e; it will be no worse at my house than at any fine lady's.

Liza. God grant your wish ! But do you notice how the young master is running after you.?

Nadya. Much good it'll do him ! Of course, he's a pretty fellow, you might even say, a beauty; only he has nothing to expect from me; because I am decidedly not of that sort; and on the other hand, I'm trying now in every way that there may be no scandal of any sort about me. I have but one thing in mind: to get married.

Liza. Even married life is sometimes no joy ! You may get such a husband that. . . . God help you !

Nadya. What a joy it would be to me to marry a really

SCENE II A PROTfiG^E IS

fine man ! I, thank God, am able to distinguish between people: who> is good, who bad. That's easy to see at once from their mannefs and conversation. But the mistress is so uHreasonable' irt holding u's ifl so strictly, and in keeping evertasting wateb over us^ !' Indeed, it'S' insulting to me !■ I'm a girl that knows how to take care of herself without aay watching.

Liza. It looks as if the master were coming.

Nadya. Then let's go. [They rise and go out.

Leonid comes in with a gun.

SCENE II Leonid and then Potaptch

Leonid. Wait a bit! Hey, you, where are you going.' Why are they always running away from me? You can't catch them anyhow ! [He stands musing. Silence.

A Girl sings behind the rail fence :

"No man may hope to flee the sting Of cruel affliction's pain; New" love within the heart may sing — Regret stfll in its train."

Leonid. [Running up to the fence] What a pretty girl you are!

GiBL. Pretty, but not yours !

Leonid. Come here !

GiHL. Where?

Leonid. To me in the garden.

GiHL. Why go to you ?

Leonid. I'll go to town and buy you earrings.

GiBL. You're only a kid !

She laughs loudly and goes out. Leonid stands with

14 A PROTEGEE act I

bowed head musing. Potaptch enters in huntingdress, with a gun.

PoTAPYCH. One can't keep up with you, sir; you have young legs.

Leonid. [All the while lost in thought] All this, Potapych, will be mine.

Potapych. All yours, sir, and we shall all be yours .... Just as we served the old master, so we must serve you. . . . Because you're of the same blood. . . . That's the right way. Of course, may God prolong your dear mamma's days ....

Leonid. Then I shan't enter the service, Potapych; I shall come directly to the country, and here I shall live.

Potapych. You must enter the service, sir.

Leonid. What's that you say.? Much I must! They'll make me a copying clerk ! [He sits down upon a bench.

Potapych. No, sir, why should you work yourself.? That's not the way to do things ! They'll find a position for you — of the most gentlemanly, delicate sort; your clerks will work, but you'll be their chief, over all of them. And promotions will come to you of themselves.

Leonid. Perhaps they will make me vice-governor, or elect • me marshal of the nobility.

Potapych. It's not improbable.

Leonid. Well, and when I'm vice-governor, shall you be afraid of me?

Potapych. Why should I be afraid? Let others cringe, but for us it's all the same. You are our master: that's honor enough for us.

Leonid. [Not hearing] Tell me, Potapych, have we many pretty girls here ?

Potapych. Why, really, sir, if you think it over, why shouldn't there be girls.? There are some on the estate.

SCENE II A PROTfiGfiE 15

and among the house servants; only it must be said that in these matters the household is very strictly run. Our mistress, owing to her strict lite and her piety, looks after that very carefully. Now just take this: she herself marries off the protegees and housemaids whom she likes. If a man pleases her, she marries the girl off to him, and even gives her a dowry, not a big one — needless to say. There are always two or three protegees on the place. The mistress takes a little girl from some one or other and brings her up; and when she is seventeen or eighteen years old, then, without any talk, she marries her off to some clerk or townsman, just as she takes a notion, and sometimes even to a nobleman. Ah, yes, sir ! Only what an existence for these protegees, sir ! Misery !

Leonid. But why ?

PoTAPYCH. They have a hard time. The lady says: "I have found you a prospective husband, and now," she says, "the wedding will be on such and such a day, and that's an end to it; and don't one of you dare to argue about it !" It's a case of get along with you to the man you're told to. Because, sir, I reason this way: who wants to see disobedience in a person he's brought up? And sometimes it happens that the bride doesn't like the groom, nor the groom the bride: then the lady falls into a great rage. She even goes out of her head. She took a notion to marry one protegee to a petty shopkeeper in town; but he, an unpolished individual, was going to resist. "The bride doesn't please me," he said, "and, besides, I don't want to get married yet." So the mistress complained at once to the town bailiS and to the priest: well, they brought the blockhead round.

Leonid. You don't say.

PoTAPYCH. Yes, sir. And even if the mistress sees a girl at one of her acquaintances', she immediately looks up a hus-

16 A PROTEGEE ACT I

band for her. Our mistress reasons this way: that they are stupid; that if she doesn't look after them closely now, they'll just waste their life and never amount to anything. That's the way, sir. Some people, because of their stupidity, hide girls from the mistress, so that she may never set eyes on them; because if she does, it's all up with the girls.

Leonid. And so she treats other people's girls the same way?

PoTAPYCH. Other people's, too. She extends her care to everybody. She has such a kind heart that she worries about everybody. She even gets angry if they do anything without her permission. And the way she looks after her protegees is just a wonder. She dresses them as if they were her own daughters. Sometimes she has them eat with her; and she doesn't make them do any work. "Let everybody look," says the mistress, "and see how my protegees live; I want every one to envy them," she says.

Leonid. Well, now, that's fine, Potapych.

PoTAPYCH. And what a touching little sermon she reads them when they're married! "You," she says, "have lived with me in wealth and luxury, and have had nothing to do; now you are marrying a poor man, and will live your life in poverty, and will work, and will do your duty. And now forget," she says, "how you lived here, because not for you I did aU this; I was merely diverting myself, but you must never even think of such a life; always remember your in- ^ignjficaijice, and of what station you are." And all this so jfeehngly th^t there are tears i^ her pwn eyes.

LsoNip. Well, npw, that's fine,

Potapych. I d9Di't know how to describe it, sir. Some,- ihow they all get tired of married life later; they mostly piqe .away.

Leonid. Why do they pine away, Potapy^ih?

PoTAPYCH. Must be they don't like it, if they pine away.

Leonid. That's queer.

PoTAPYCH. The husbands mostly turn out ruffians.

Leonid. Is that so ?

PoTAPYCH. Everybody hopes to get one of our protegees, because the mistress right away becomes his patroness. Now in the case of these she marries to government clerks, there's a good living for the husband; because if they want to drive him out of the court, or have done so, he goes at once to our mistress with a complaint, and she's a regular bulwark for him; she'll bother the governor himself. And then the government clerk can get drunk or anything else, and not be afraid of anybody, unless he is insubordinate or steals a lot

Leonid. But, say, Potapych, why is it that the girls run away from me?

Potapych. How can they help running.'' They must run, sir !

Leonid. Why must they ?

Potapych. Hm ! Why ? Why, because, as you are still under age, the mistress wants to watch over you as she ought to; well, and she watches over them, too.

Leonid. She watches us, ha, ha, ha !

Potapych. Yes, sir. That's the truth ! She was talking about that. You're a child, just like a dove, but, well — the girls are foolish. [Silence] What next, sir? It's your mamma's business to be strict, because she is a lady. But why should you mind her ! You ought to act for yourself, as all young gentlemen do. You don't have to suffer because she's strict. Why should you let others get ahead of you.? That'd disgrace you.

18 A PROTfiGfiE ACT I

PoTAPYCH. But what's the use of talking to them a long time? What about? What kind of sciences would you talk about with them ? Much they understand such stuff ! You're just the master, and that's all.

Leonid. [Glances to one side] Who's this coming ? That's Nadya, evidently. Ah, Potapych, how pretty she is !

PoTApycH. She is related to me, sir, my niece. Her father was set free by the late master; he was employed in a confectioner's in Moscow. When her mother died, her mistress took and brought her up, and is awful fond of her. And because her father is dead, why, now, she's an orphan. She's a good girl.

Leonid. Looks as if they were coming this way.

PoTAPTOH. Well, let 'em.

Gavbilovna and Nadya enter.

The same, Gavbilovna and Nadya

Gavbilovna. How do you do, good master?

Leonid. [Bows] How do you do?

Gavbilovna. Well, master, I suppose you're bored in the country ?

Leonid. No, not at all.

Gavbilovna. What, not bored yet! Why, you see it's hke a monastery here; they look after you with a hundred eyes. Well, as for you, it goes without saying, you're a young gentleman, you ought to have some amusement; but you can't. It's no great joy to shoot ducks !

[She laughs.

Leonid. [Going up to Gavbilovna] Yes, yes, Gavrilovna.

Nadya. [To Gavbilovna] Let's go.

SCENE IV A PROTEgEE 19

Gavbilovna. Where do you want to go? Now, seeing that the mistress isn't at home, you ought to have a little fun with the young master. That's what young folks need. And what a clever girl she is, master ! In talking, and in everything.

Nadya. Come, what's the use !

Gavbilovna. Well, there's no harm in it ! I was young once. I didn't run away from the gentlemen, and you see they didn't eat me. Perhaps even he won't bite you. Quit playing the prude, and stay here ! But I'm going to get the tea ready ! Good-by, good master ! [She goes out.

Leonid. Why did you not wish to remain with me?

PoTAPYCH. What's this, sir ! You talk to her as if she were a young lady ! Call her Nadya !

Leonid. What are you afraid of, Nadya? Nadya is silent.

PoTAPYCH. Talk ! What are you keeping still for ? And I'm going, sir; I must get dressed for tea, too. [He goes out.

Leonid, Nadya, and then,' Jaza.

Nadya. Of course I'm a girl of humble position, but, indeed, even we do not want anybody to speak evil of us. Pray consider yourself, after such talk, who would marry me?

Leonid. Are you going to get married ?

Nadya. Yes, sir. Every girl hopes to get married some time.

Leonid. But have you a suitor ?

Nadya. Not yet, sir.

20 A PROTfiGfiE act r

Leonid. [Timidly] If you have no suitor, then, maybe you're in love with somebody?

Nadya. You want to know a lot ! Well, no, I needn't fib about it, I'm not in love with anybody, sir.

Leonid. [With great joy] Then love me !

Nadta. It's impossible to force the heart, sir.

Leonid. Why ? Don't you like me ?

Nadya. Well, how could I help liking you ? But I'm not

your equal ! What sort of love is that ? Clean ruin ! Here

comes Liza running after me, I suppose. Good-by. Good

luck to you ! [She goes away.

Liza coTnes in.

Liza. Master, if you please ! Your mamma has come.

Leonid. Liza!

Liza. [Approaching] What is it, please ?

Leonid. [He embraces Liza; she trembles with pleasure] Why won't Nadya love me.'

Liza. [Affectedly] What are you talking about, master ! Girls of our sort must look out for themselves !

Leonid. Look out for yourselves how.''

Liza. [Looks him in the face and smiles] Why, everybody knows. What are you talking like a child for.'

Leonid. [Sadly] What shall I do now ? Indeed, I don't know. They all run away from me.

Liza. But don't lose courage; just make love a little bit. Heavens, our hearts aren't of stone !

Leonid. But see here! I asked her: she said she didn't love me.

Liza. Well, if you aren't a queer one ! Whoever asked girls right out whether they were in love or not ! Even if one of us girls was in love, she wouldn't say so.