work
Struensee
"Struensee"
also: Струэнзе, Struensee
A historical drama about Johann Friedrich Struensee, the eighteenth-century Danish royal physician and reforming minister executed after a court coup -- a stock nineteenth-century European history-play subject (dramatized by, among others, Michael Beer). Pleshcheyev sent Chekhov a copy (evidently his own translation, or a text associated with him); Chekhov reports reading it in, \S5, giving a mixed review -- likable overall, some scenes overly picturesque ("German tray painting"), the ending unsatisfying -- and extends its character types (Struensee, Speransky, Rantzau, Keller) into a wry comparison with Russian provincial and court life.
Reading notes
- To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 25 December 1889. Moscow. §5 Struensee
The play Pleshcheyev sent Chekhov, dramatizing the career of the historical Johann Friedrich Struensee; Chekhov's review folds the title character and two of its secondary types (Rantzau, Keller) into a comparison with contemporary Russian political and court life, alongside the historical statesman Speransky as the closest real-world Russian analogue to Struensee's reforming type.