Plays - Alexander Ostrovsky
PLAYS
BY
ALEXANDER OSTROVSKY
A PROTEGEE 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 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
INTRODUCTION
A PROTEGEE 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 Ostrovsky (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
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 Ostrovsky 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 Ostrovsky 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 young
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 civilization. Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostrovsky
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 typical 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 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, 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 Affair," end with relatively
unimportant pieces of dialogue. Of others we are left to guess even the
conclusion of the main action: will Nadya 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.[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 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 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 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
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: Ostrovsky, 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 PROTEGEE OF THE MISTRESS
SCENES FROM VILLAGE LIFE IN FOUR PICTURES
CHARACTERS
MADAM ULANBEKOV,[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. Ostrovsky frequently gives to the persons in his plays names
that suggest their characteristics.]
LEONID, _her son, eighteen years old, very handsome, resembling his mother
slightly. Wears summer dress. Is studying in Petersburg._
VASILISA PEREGRINOVNA, _a toady 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._
NADEZHDA[2] (_called_ NADYA), _seventeen years old, favorite protegee of_
MADAM ULANBEKOV; _dressed like a young lady._
[Footnote 2: Hope.]
GAVRILOVNA, _the housekeeper; an elderly woman, plump, with an open
countenance._
GRISHA, _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._
NEGLIGENTOV, _a clerk in a government office; a very disreputable young
man._
LIZA, _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 the springtime, at the suburban estate of_ MADAM
ULANBEKOV
A PROTEGEE OF THE MISTRESS
I
_Part of a densely grown garden; on the right benches; at the back a rail
fence, separating the garden from a field._
SCENE I
_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?
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 house; 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 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 manners and conversation. But the mistress
is so unreasonable in holding us in so strictly, and in keeping everlasting
watch over us! Indeed, it's insulting to me! I'm a girl that knows how to
take care of herself without any 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_ POTAPYCH
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 still in its train."
LEONID. [_Running up to the fence_] What a pretty girl you are!
GIRL. Pretty, but not yours!
LEONID. Come here!
GIRL. Where?
LEONID. To me in the garden.
GIRL. Why go to you?
LEONID. I'll go to town and buy you earrings.
GIRL. You're only a kid!
_She laughs loudly and goes out._ LEONID _stands with bowed head musing._
POTAPYCH _enters in hunting-dress, 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, 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 life 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 bailiff
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 husband 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 all this; I was merely
diverting myself, but you must never even think of such a life; always
remember your insignificance, and of what station you are." And all this so
feelingly that there are tears in her own eyes.
LEONID. Well, now, that's fine.
POTAPYCH. I don't know how to describe it, sir. Somehow they all get tired
of married life later; they mostly pine away.
LEONID. Why do they pine away, Potapych?
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.
LEONID. Well, well, but I don't know how to talk to the girls.
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.