KRASNUSHKINA (dismayed). Love . . . embrace . . . But when do we get married? . . .
BORIS. Married . . . why not right now! . . .
KRASNUSHKINA. Right now . . . is impossible! What about tomorrow morning . . .
BORIS. Till tomorrow is much too long! This evening is better!
KRASNUSHKINA. I really don’t know . . . I have to make some arrangements . . .
BORIS. No you don’t. The simpler the better. Wouldn’t a wedding party create delays? . . .
KRASNUSHKINA. I don’t think so! . . . I have tamed two best men . . . with that very aim in mind . . .
BORIS (jealously). Who are they?
KRASNUSHKINA. One is a colonel, and the other . . . Well, speak of the devil . . . (Far upstage SHIPUNOV and LEDENTSOV appear: the former has shaved off his moustache, and the latter has his head shorn; both look rather crestfallen.—KRASNUSHKINA cannot keep from laughing.)
BORIS. What’s so funny?
KRASNUSHKINA. Ah, they’re hilarious! I’ll tell you all about it later . . . For now hide behind the tree! . . . (Boris shrugs and hides behind the garden bench, back of the linden tree.)
VI
The same, SHIPUNOV, and LEDENTSOV.
SHIPUNOV (stepping forward ). Here I am!
LEDENTSOV (appearing behind Shipunov). Here we are!! . . .
SHIPUNOV. You promised me something . . . if I fufilled your wish . . . Alas! (Points to his shaven upper lip.)
LEDENTSOV. And you also promised me, if I . . . (Points to his smooth-shaven pate.) Alack and alas!!
SHIPUNOV. Hm . . . I’d be curious to know: where exactly is this mysterious something?
LEDENTSOV. That’s just it: — where is it?? . . .
KRASNUSHKINA (mixed up). He . . . I mean it . . . it is here! (Waves to Boris.) Mister something . . . please come over here! . . . (BORIS comes out of hiding.) May I introduce you to: Baron Frank . . . Boris Nikolaevich . . . my husband-to-be! (To him.) And these . . . are the best men-to-be . . . Shipunov and Ledentsov! (Shipunov and Ledentsov are dumbfounded.) I hope, gentlemen, you will not refuse us the kindness of being our best men?? . . . (Affectionately embraces Boris.—LEDENTSOV, unable to support the sight, falls with a groan on to the chest of Shipunov.)
NOTES
1 Ivan Leontyevich Leontyev (1856–1911), an army captain, who in the early 1880s embarked on a promising career as a playwright and novelist under the name Ivan Shcheglov. He was an expert at depicting the rising bourgeoisie, and his novel Suburban Husband (Dachny muzh) added a phrase to the language. His career petered out in the mid-1890s. This translation is based on the text in Shcheglov’s Zhizn vverkh nogami. Iumoristicheskie ocherki i parodii (A Topsy-turvy Life. Humorous sketches and parodies) (St. Petersburg, 1911).
2 All the names are jokes and might be rendered into Dickensian English as Julia Blushington, Col. Fizzgig, and Mr. Coffdrop.
As a medical student in Moscow, Chekhov was drawn into the world of journalism through his brothers, Aleksandr, a writer, and Nikolay, an artist. Through their agency, he began to compose cartoon captions for the humor journal The Alarm Clock in 1879, and gradually started writing comic squibs that were not dependent on illustration. Between 1880 and 1887 he contributed jokes, monologues, dialogues, anecdotes, parodies, and short stories to magazines in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, using a host of pen names, among them Antosha Chekhonte, The Doctor Who’s Lost His Patients, The Man without a Spleen, The Spleen without a Man, and My Brother’s Brother.
These first steps in writing dialogue are heavily derivative of the Russian comic traditions. Significantly, his earliest playlet, The Fool, or The Retired Captain, resembles matchmaker scenes in Gogol and Ostrovsky, even though its conclusion is more scabrous than anything to be found in them. The two-part Honorable Townsfolk recalls Saltykov-Shchedrin’s satires of provincial life. Others are simply extended gags.
Chekhov’s journalism entailed much theater attendance, for in the early 1880s he wrote what amounted to a behind-the-scenes gossip column with occasional reviews. This activity led in turn to an acquaintance with actors and managers. Growing familiarity bred contempt but could not efface his fascination with the stage.
One of the prime butts of Chekhov’s ridicule was Mikhail Valentinovich Lentovsky, who enjoyed considerable success running the Hermitage Pleasure Garden and an operetta theater, the Bouffe, although his New Theatre, devoted to legitimate drama, foundered. After he was declared bankrupt, the merchant class, to whose taste he catered, enabled him to make a fresh start, and in 1886 he founded the Skomorokh (Minstrel) Theatre. Plays of Gogol and Ostrovsky and even Hamlet could be found there, but the bulk of the repertory was made up of farces, melodramas, and fairy extravaganzas. His productions abounded in pyrotechnical displays, explosions, fires, collapsing bridges, and all the impedimenta of sensationalism.
Nikolay Chekhov worked for Lentovsky as a scene painter, allowing the brothers entry to green rooms and dressing-rooms, and although Anton himself kept up good relations with the manager, he fired hilarious sallies at the mixtures of fustian and lycopodium powder that reigned at Lentovsky’s theater. Chekhov pooh-poohed the stage’s claim to be an educational force, a means of uplifting the people. For him, the chasm between the theater’s aspirations and the tawdriness of its personnel was too patent to assume society would be edified by playgoing. He was also bemused by the pretensions of dramatists. His “dramatic sketch” The Sudden Death of a Steed, which mocks playwriting dilettantes, offers such a rich piece of nonsense that it was later staged by Moscow’s rollicking cabaret The Bat (known in the West as the Chauve-Souris) before the First World War.
THE FOOL, OR THE RETIRED CAPTAIN1
Дypa, или Kaпитaн ‚ oтcтa‚ke
(A Scenelet from an Unproduced Vaudeville)
The marrying season. RETIRED CAPTAIN SOUSOV2 (sits on an oilcloth-covered divan, both hands clasped, pressing one leg against his body. He rocks back and forth while he talks.) THE MATCHMAKER LUKINISHNA3 (an obese old woman with a stupid but kindly face) is placed to one side on a stool. Her face bears an expression of aversion, mingled with wonder. In profile she looks like a snail, full face like a black spider. She speaks obsequiously and hiccups after every word.
CAPTAIN. Still, if you look at this from a point of view, then Ivan Nikolaevich acted very practically. He did the right thing in getting married. You may be a professor or a genius, but if you’re not married, you aren’t worth a red cent. You’ve got no civil rights or social standing . . . Anyone who isn’t married can have no real weight in society . . . Just take me for example . . . I’m a man of the educated classes, a home-owner, with money . . . There’s my rank as well . . . and a medal, but what good am I? Who am I, if you look at me from a point of view? A loner . . . A kind of synonym and nothing more (thinks about it). Everyone’s married, everyone’s got kids, only I . . . like in that ballad . . . (sings a sorrowful ballad in a tenor voice). That’s what my life is like . . . If only I had even some shop-soiled bride!