animal
Guesser
also: Угадай, Ugadai
Lomov's pure-bred hunting dog, bought from Mironov for 125 rubles, said to have gone lame just before the play's action; the second dispute of "The Proposal" (1888) turns on whether Guesser or Chubukov's dog Snapper is the better animal, Chubukov faulting Guesser as old and undershot in the jaw.
Reading notes
- The Proposal §190 My Guesser, whom you are good enough to know, has gone lame
Lomov's attempt at ordinary hunting small talk with Natalya -- meant to smooth over the earlier Meadows quarrel and finally get to the proposal -- instead seeds the second dispute of the play, once Natalya volunteers that her father's dog Snapper is better than Lomov's Guesser.
- The Proposal §303 admit it, even now: Guesser is worse than Snapper
The play's closing lines have the freshly betrothed couple immediately resume the dog argument mid-embrace, with Chubukov calling for champagne over their bickering -- the farce's structural joke stated explicitly at last: nothing about the couple's temperament has changed or resolved, only the label "engaged" has been added on top of the same quarrel that has run continuously since Lomov's arrival.