person
Olga Osipovna Sadovskaya
Sadovskaya
also: Садовская, Ольга Осиповна Садовская
Olga Osipovna Sadovskaya, an actress of Moscow's Maly Theatre, a member of the same theatrical dynasty as Mikhailo Provych Sadovsky (cast at §10 of this letter as Kotelnikov) but a DISTINCT individual -- the Russian surnames differ only by grammatical gender ending (Садовский/Садовская) and must never be merged as one entity. In's headnote she was weighed against Medvedeva for the role of Raisa in "Tatyana Repina"; this letter (§10) resolves that competition in Medvedeva's favor, with Chekhov relaying the stated reason that "Sadovskaya doesn't know how to play Jewish women" ("не умеет играть жидовок") -- a period-typical ethnic slur applied to a real casting remark about Sadovskaya's range, distinct from the same slur's use for the fictional Repina's own dialogue elsewhere in this same letter (§6-7); flagged for sensitivity per this corpus's established practice of faithful, unsoftened translation.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 23 December 1888. Moscow. §10 Sadovskaya doesn't know how to play Jewish women, and Medvedeva is a master at it.
SENSITIVITY (period-typical ethnic slur, instance 2 of 2) -- the source reads "не умеет играть жидовок" ("doesn't know how to play zhidovki," using the pejorative "жидовка"/"жид" root rather than the neutral "еврейка"), here applied by Chekhov, relaying Nikulina's or his own casting assessment, to a REAL actress's professional range rather than to fictional dialogue. Translated faithfully as "Jewish women" rather than reproducing the slur's register directly in English, consistent with this corpus's general practice, but flagged here as period-typical pejorative usage applied to a real person's casting suitability. Companion instance to the \S6 note above (the same slur root in Repina's own play dialogue, "the cursed Jew"); the two should be read together as evidence of how pervasively the term appears in this single letter -- once inside Suvorin's play text, once in real theatrical shop-talk about who can plausibly play "Jewish women" on stage -- consistent with the same-term precedent already flagged in's headnote.