Fyodor Yakovlevich Revunov-Karaulov

Reading notes

• The Wedding §149 captain of the second rank...major-general...actual state councillor

  Nyunin's rank equivalencies are self-serving exaggeration: under the Imperial Table of Ranks a naval captain of the second rank (капитан 2-го ранга) corresponded to an army lieutenant colonel (подполковник), not a major-general -- a discrepancy the honest Revunov-Karaulov himself corrects twice later (locs. 174, 242), undercutting Nyunin's inflated sales pitch even before the money is discovered.

• The Wedding §168 Quite so!

  "Весьма!" (literally "Very much so!" / "Quite!") is Revunov-Karaulov's verbal tic, a clipped, noncommittal affirmative he repeats throughout the scene (locs. 168, 172, 179) regardless of context -- part of his characterization as an old man on autopilot in unfamiliar company, well before his naval monologues take over.

• The Wedding §174 A captain of the second rank is even lower than a colonel

  Revunov-Karaulov's own scrupulous, almost pedantic correction of his inflated title -- volunteered unprompted, before anyone has challenged him -- establishes from his first private exchange with Nyunin that he has no intention of actually deceiving anyone; the humiliation that follows later in the scene falls on a man who was honest about the imposture from the start, which is part of what gives the ending its uncomfortable edge.

• The Wedding §186 The herring is bitter…and the bread is bitter

  Revunov-Karaulov, hard of hearing, mistakes the wedding-guest chant "Bitter! Bitter!" ("Горько!" -- the traditional Russian call for the newlyweds to kiss, literally "bitter," the folk logic being that a kiss sweetens the bitterness) as a literal complaint about the food, one of several comic mishearings (see also locs. 197-201, 224-230) that mark him as increasingly out of step with the company even before the plot turns against him.

• The Wedding §189 seventy-two years old

  Revunov-Karaulov gives his actual age (seventy-two, retired in 1865) directly to the table, deflating Nyunin's earlier sales-pitch exaggeration ("eighty...or even ninety," loc. 147) and reinforcing that the old man has been straightforward about himself throughout, in contrast to the deception being practiced around him.

• The Wedding §193 topmen aloft to the fore and main shrouds

  The first of Revunov-Karaulov's extended naval-jargon set pieces (continuing through locs. 204-234): authentic period sailing-ship commands (topgallants, royals, braces, halyards, sheets, wearing ship, coming about through the wind) delivered with genuine technical precision and mounting enthusiasm, increasingly oblivious to his audience's boredom (loc. 228, "Tiresome! Tiresome!") -- the comic engine of the play's back half, built entirely on real period naval terminology rather than invented gibberish.

• The Wedding §197 What does that mean, then?

  Yat's fork-tapping demonstration of telegraph Morse code (loc. 196) and Revunov-Karaulov's puzzled response set up a competing-monologue joke: two men each convinced their own specialized professional jargon (naval commands vs. telegraphy) is the truly demanding one, talking past each other rather than to each other.

• The Wedding §242 captain of the second rank, which by the military table of ranks corresponds to a lieutenant colonel

  Revunov-Karaulov's second, now public, correction of his own rank (see loc. 174) -- offered as a simple factual defense, not evasion -- makes clear he has never claimed the false title himself; the accusation that follows (loc. 243, "what did you take the money for?") therefore lands on a man whose only actual fault was accepting Nyunin's payment to go along with a lie he did not invent.

• The Wedding §254 So that's it! Now I understand everything…What vileness!

  Chekhov gives him, alone among the guests, a moment of real wounded dignity ("What vileness! What baseness! To insult an old man like this, a sailor, a veteran officer," loc. 258) -- an old man who was honest about his rank from the start (locs. 174, 242) being punished anyway for other people's fraud. The scene is staged with no authorial comment or correction from the other characters, who simply move on to the next toast (locs. 264-267) as though nothing happened; the text itself, through Revunov-Karaulov's dignity and the company's indifference, appears to register the cruelty rather than simply endorse it as comedy.

• The Wedding §258 Were this decent society, I could call a man out to a duel

  Revunov-Karaulov's invocation of dueling -- a real if increasingly archaic recourse for defending one's honor among the officer class -- underscores both his old-fashioned code of honor and his helplessness in a milieu (a pawnbroker's family wedding) where that code simply does not apply; he has no actual recourse against the insult, only the wounded exit that follows.