Tchátskiy behaves just as an enamoured young man would do. He sees nothing but Sophie, whom he pursues with his adoration, making in her presence stinging remarks about Moltchálin, and bringing her father to despair by his free criticism of Moscow manners—the cruelty of the old serf-owners, the platitudes of the old courtiers, and so on; and as a climax, at a ball, which Fámusoff gives that night, he indulges in long monologues against the adoration of the Moscow ladies for everything French. Sophie, in the meantime, offended by his remarks about Moltchálin, retaliates by setting afloat the rumour that Tchátskiy is not quite right in his mind, a rumour which is taken up with delight by Society at the ball, and spreads like wildfire.
It has often been said in Russia that the satirical remarks of Tchátskiy at the ball, being directed against such a trifling matter as the adoration of foreigners, are rather superficial and irrelevant. But it is more than probable that Griboyédoff limited himself to such innocent remarks because he knew that no others would be tolerated by the censorship; he must have hoped that these, at least, would not be wiped out by the censor’s red ink. From what Tchátskiy says during his morning call in Fámusoff’s study, and from what is dropped by other personages, it is evident that Griboyédoff had far more serious criticisms to put into his hero’s mouth.
Altogether, a Russian satirical writer is necessarily placed under a serious disadvantage with foreigners. When Molière gives a satirical description of Parisian society this satire is not strange to the readers of other nations: we all know something about life in Paris; but when Griboyédoff describes Moscow society in the same satirical vein, and reproduces in such an admirable way purely Moscow types—not even typical Russians, but Moscow types (“On all the Moscow people,” he says, “there is a special stamp”)—they are so strange to the Western mind that the translator ought to be half-Russian himself, and a poet, in order to render Griboyédoff’s comedy in another language. If such a translation were made, I am sure that this comedy would become a favourite on the stages of Western Europe. In Russia it has been played over and over again up to the present time, and although it is now seventy years old, it has lost nothing of its interest and attractiveness.
THE MOSCOW STAGE.
In the forties of the nineteenth century the theatre was treated everywhere with great respect—and more than anywhere else was this the case in Russia. Italian opera had not yet reached the development it attained at St. Petersburg some twenty years later, and Russian opera, represented by poor singers, and treated as a step-daughter by the directors of the Imperial Theatres, offered but little attraction. It was the drama and occasionally the ballet, when some star like Fanny Elsler appeared on the horizon, which brought together the best elements of educated society and aroused the youth of all classes, including the university students. The dramatic stage was looked upon—to speak in the style of those years—as “a temple of Art,” a centre of far-reaching educational influence. As to the actors and actresses, they endeavoured, in their turn, not merely to render on the stage the characters created by the dramatist; they did their best to contribute themselves, like Cruickshank in his illustrations of Dickens’s novels, to the final creation of the character, by finding its true personification.
Especially at Moscow did this intellectual intercourse between the stage and society go on, and a superior conception of dramatic art was there developed. The intercourse which Gógol established with the actors who played his Inspector-General, and especially with Schépkin; the influence of the literary and philosophical circles which had then their seat at Moscow; and the intelligent appreciation and criticism of their work which the actors found in the Press—all this concurred in making of the Moscow Mályi Teátr (Small Theatre) the cradle of a superior dramatic art. While St. Petersburg patronised the so-called “French” school of acting—declamatory and unnaturally refined—the Moscow stage attained a high degree of perfection in the development of the naturalistic school. I mean the school of which Duse is now such a great representative, and to which Lena Ashwell owed her great success in Resurrection; that is, the school in which the actor parts with the routine of conventional stage tradition, and provokes the deepest emotions in his audience by the depth of his own real feeling and by the natural truth and simplicity of its expression—the school which occupies the same position on the stage that the realism of Turguéneff and Tolstóy occupies in literature.
In the forties and the early fifties this school had attained its highest perfection at Moscow, and had in its ranks such first-class actors and actresses as Schépkin—the real soul of this stage—Motcháloff, Sadóskiy, S. Vasílieff, and Mme. Nikúlina-Kossítskaya, supported by quite a pleiad of good secondary aids. Their répertoire was not very rich; but the two comedies of Gógol (Inspector-General and Marriage), occasionally Griboyédoff’s great satire; a comedy, The Marriage of Kretchínsky, by Sukhovó-Kobýlin, which gave excellent opportunities for displaying the best qualities of the artists just named; now and then a drama of Shakespeare,[22] plenty of melodramas adapted from the French, and vaudevilles which came nearer to light comedy than to farce—this was the ever varied programme of the Small Theatre. Some plays were played to perfection—combining the ensemble and the “go” which characterise the Odéon with the simplicity and naturalness already mentioned.
The mutual influence which the stage and dramatic authors necessarily exercise upon each other was admirably illustrated at Moscow. Several dramatists wrote specially for this stage—not in order that this or that actress might eclipse all others, as happens nowadays in those theatres where one play is played scores of nights in succession, but for this given stage and its actors as a whole. Ostróvskiy (1823-1886) was the one who best realised this mutual relation between the dramatic author and the stage, and thus he came to hold with regard to the Russian drama the same position that Turguéneff and Tolstóy hold with regard to the Russian novel.
OSTRÓVSKIY: “POVERTY—NO VICE”
Ostróvskiy was born at Moscow in the family of a poor clergyman, and, like the best of the younger generation of his time, he was from the age of seventeen an enthusiastic visitor of the Moscow theatre. At that age, we are told, his favourite talk with his comrades was the stage. He went to the University, but two years later he was compelled to leave, in consequence of a quarrel with a professor, and he became an under clerk in one of the old Commercial tribunals. There he had the very best opportunities for making acquaintance with the world of Moscow merchants—a quite separate class which remained in its isolation the keeper of the traditions of old Russia. It was from this class that Ostróvskiy took nearly all the types of his first and best dramas. Only later on did he begin to widen the circle of his observations, taking in various classes of educated society.