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The Government Inspector (Gogol)
The Government Inspector
also: Ревизор, Khlestakov, Хлестаков
Gogol's classic satirical comedy; its trouser-wearing con man protagonist Khlestakov is invoked in a mock tableau-vivant description ("a Hindu in Khlestakov's trousers") at the Bogimovo amateur theatricals.
Reading notes
- To N. A. Khlopov, 13 February 1888. Moscow. §10 buttons on the uniform of Gogol's police chief
A comic image drawn from Nikolai Gogol's play "The Government Inspector" (Revizor), whose Town Governor (gorodnichy) is a stock figure of blustering provincial officialdom; Chekhov likens Khlopov's excessive, indiscriminately scattered punctuation to the crowded rows of buttons on the Governor's uniform.
- To A. S. Suvorin, May 1889. Sumy. §5 In "The Government Inspector" the first act is the best done
Gogol's play "Revizor" ("The Government Inspector"); Chekhov offers a brisk, specific act-by-act judgment, praising Act One.
- Murder Will Out (You Can't Hide an Awl in a Sack) §3 Tyapkin-Lyapkin
Tyapkin-Lyapkin is the blustering judge in Gogol's The Government Inspector (Ревизор). Posudin, fantasizing about his own dramatic unmasking of provincial wrongdoing, imagines himself echoing that play's famous climax -- not realizing that in Chekhov's version of the story, he himself is closer to Khlestakov, the impostor everyone sees through, than to any effective inspector.