figure
The Big Take and the Little Take
The Take siblings
also: Большой Сбор, Маленький Сбор
The Box Office's two children, personifying a large and a small night's box-office receipts (sbor); the Little Take is nearly killed in the prologue and both reappear in the epilogue, sustaining the play's box-office-as-melodrama conceit throughout.
Reading notes
- Chaos in Rome §15 The Big Take and the Little Take
"Большой Сбор" and "Маленький Сбор" (literally "Big Take/Collection" and "Little Take/Collection") are theatrical box-office jargon for a large or small night's receipts, personified here as the Box Office's starving children -- the play's running pun that box-office revenue, not romance, is the real melodrama at stake.