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The Poor Bride (Ostrovsky)
The Poor Bride
also: Бедная невеста, Bednaya nevesta
Alexander Ostrovsky's early comedy "The Poor Bride" (1852), about a penniless young woman weighing suitors for practical rather than romantic reasons. Chekhov reports seeing a Petersburg production here alongside Turgenev's "The Bachelor," finding the acting in both "clerkish, soulless, wooden."
Reading notes
- To A. I. Sumbatov, 28 January 1890. Petersburg. §9 "The Poor Bride" and "The Bachelor"
Ostrovsky's early comedy \emph{The Poor Bride} (\emph{Бедная невеста}, 1852;, new to this corpus) and Turgenev's \emph{The Bachelor} (\emph{Холостяк}, 1849;, already established at) are named together as the two Petersburg productions Chekhov found dull, the acting "clerkish, soulless, wooden" -- a terse, dismissive theatre notice in the letter's postscript register.