The Poor Bride
| The Poor Bride | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Aleksander Ostrovsky |
| Date premiered | 12 October 1853 |
| Place premiered | Maly Theatre in Moscow |
| Original language | Russian |
| Genre | Romantic comedy |
The Poor Bride (Russian: Бедная невеста, Romanized as Bednaya nevesta) is a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, written in 1851 and first published in the No.4, 1852 issue of Moskvityanin magazine. It was his first play to be staged at the Maly Theatre, where it premiered on 12 October 1853.
The Poor Bride, his second large play, caused Ostrovsky much trouble. Later he wrote: "I've had an iron-like creative prowess when I was learning how to write, but still, after having worked for a year and a half on The Poor Bride (my second one) I came to detest it so much I didn't want to see it on stage. I agreed to stage it only responding to the continuous actors' requests, two years after it was finished." The plot has been changed thrice.
The target of Ostrovsky's satire was Saint Petersburg's 'romantic poseurs'. Merich (Zorich in the rough version) was "a parody on Lermontov's heroes, Grushnitsky, trying to act Pechorin," according to the scholar Vladimir Lakshin. His name came from Lermontov's Meri (with a typically Lermontov-like surname ending, like in Vulich, Zvezdich or Kazbich). In one of the play's versions Marya Andreyevna was holding Lermontov's book in hand. "The charisma of a disappointed romantic hero which became a cliché in the Russian literature of the 1840s was waiting for a literary backlash," Lakshin wrote.
Another biographer, S.V. Maksimov, insisted the play's characters were portraits of the real people who surrounded the author, rather than mere schemes. The Nezabudkins had similarities with the Korsh family (three brothers and five sisters were all known in the artistic circles), Benevolensky's prototype was professor Krylov, one of the Korsh sisters' husband and the main reason for Ostrovsky's leaving the university (who failed the latter at the exam, allegedly waiting for a bribe). The liaison between Khorkov and Marya Andreyevna served as a parallel to the unhappy relations between one of the Korsh sisters, Antonina, and Apollon Grigoryev, according to Lakshin. For V.A. Grigoriev (Apollon's grandson), though, Marya Andreyevna looked more like Zinaida Korsh whom the author himself fancied. The singer, folklorist and later senior state official Terty Filippov was a prototype for the Milashin character. "Benevolensky, Dobrotvorsky and Merich were all the real people Ostrovsky was meeting in the Korsh's house, or elsewhere. But in reality there was no such marriage as the one described in the play," V.A.Grigoryev argued.
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