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Boris Godunov
also: Борис Годунов
Alexander Pushkin's 1825 historical drama in blank verse, dramatizing the reign of Tsar Boris Godunov and the rise of the pretender who claims to be the murdered Tsarevich Dmitry; Svetlovidov recites the Pretender's monologue from the play as a display of his still-vital gift for tragic verse.
Reading notes
- Swan Song (Calchas) §40 from "Godunov"
Svetlovidov recites lines spoken by the Pretender (the false Dmitry) from Pushkin's verse drama "Boris Godunov" (1825), in which an impostor claims the throne by pretending to be the murdered Tsarevich Dmitry, son of Ivan the Terrible. Chekhov -- and Svetlovidov -- deploy the Pretender's proud, self-justifying rhetoric ("I am the Tsarevich") purely as a display of dramatic voice; the play-within-the-play device recurs three more times in the monologue (Lear, Hamlet, Othello), each fragment chosen for a hero facing ruin, exile, or old age, mirroring Svetlovidov's own condition even as he insists the recitation proves he still has no old age in him.
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 17 March 1890. Moscow. §8 He must not have read Pushkin, who writes: "Heavy is thou, cap of Monomakh!"
Quotes "Тяжела ты, шапка Мономаха!" from Pushkin's "Boris Godunov" (1825) -- the Tsar's own lament on the crushing burden of supreme power. Chekhov applies the line satirically to his landlord Korneev's minor promotion to university inspector, deflating both the line's original gravity and Korneev's inflated sense of his own new importance; see the allusions apparatus for the passage in full context.