Mitrofan Ivanov-Kozelsky

Mitrofan Trofimovich Ivanov-Kozelsky (1850-1898), a real and highly popular Russian tragic actor famous above all for his passionate portrayals of Hamlet on provincial and Moscow stages. The noble father dismisses him alongside Lensky as merely "hyped," the drunken narrator's bluster rather than a real critical judgment; Ivanov-Kozelsky's Hamlet was in fact a celebrated sensation of the era. Distinct from the unrelated invented character (a fictional performer billed on a mock program in a different, earlier Chekhov squib).