Stay in Your Own Sled
| Stay in Your Own Sled | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Aleksander Ostrovsky |
| Date premiered | 14 January 1853 |
| Place premiered | Maly Theatre in Moscow |
| Original language | Russian |
| Genre | Comedy |
Stay in Your Own Sled (Russian: Не в свои сани не садись, an idiom meaning "Don't bite off more than you can chew,") is a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, written in 1852 and first published in the No.5 (March, book 1), 1853, issue of Moskvityanin. It was premiered in the Maly Theatre on January 14, 1853.
By 1852 all of Ostrovsky's work, including a translation, has been banned from being produced on stage. Years later he wrote: "The author, especially the one who is just starting, who's got one or two plays banned without an explanation, becomes a slave to his own fear… Once he comes across a long idea, he tends to shorten it; once he creates a strong character, he weakens it, once he hits upon a fiery, powerful phrase, he dulls it for in all of this he now starts to see the possible reasons for future prohibitions." His new play was the result of such a compromise: it was a melodrama, less daring than the Family Affair and not as ambitious as The Poor Bride, with many sharp edges dulled. The main character, Rusakov, was the portrayal of a real person, merchant Kosheverov, actor Prov Sadovsky's relative who delighted Ostrovsky with his openness and easy ways with money.
The play, originally called One's Got to Guess When Good Thing's Good (Ot dobra dobra ne ishchut), has been in the works all through 1852. On October 6 that year Mikhail Pogodin mentioned in his diary that he'd heard the play as read by its author. On November 19 Ostrovsky informed Pogodin that the text had been sent to the censors.
Ostrovsky staged the play for the first time himself in the house of his friend Nikolai Panov (the one who first started to collect Ostrovsky's manuscripts, the work which later Nikolai Shapovalo took upon himself). Podkhalyuzin was played by the author himself and, reportedly, with this performance he made even Prov Sadovsky laugh. Another amateur performance of such kind has been staged in Pavlovsky Posad, at the factory owned by Prince Yakov Gruzinsky, a man whose son, actor Ivan Nikulin, was a husband of actress Lyubov Nikulina-Kositskaya.
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