A Bitter Fate
A Bitter Fate | |
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Ilya Repin's portrait of Polina Strepetova (a famed actress) as Lizaveta, the protagonist of A Bitter Fate. | |
Written by | Aleksey Pisemsky |
Original language | Russian |
Subject | Serfdom in Russia |
Genre | Realistic tragedy |
A Bitter Fate (Russian: Горькая судьбина, Gorkaya sudbina), also translated as A Bitter Lot, is an 1859 realistic play by Aleksey Pisemsky.[1] The play tackles serfdom in Russia and the social and moral divisions that it creates by means of a story that focuses on a provincial ménage à trois.[1] With the exception of Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness (1886), it is the only major play to dramatise the experiences of peasants in the history of Russian realistic drama.[2] It has been described as a masterpiece of the Russian theatre and the first Russian realistic tragedy.[3] The play is available in English translation in Masterpieces of the Russian Drama, Volume 1, edited by George Rapall Noyes, Dover Publications, 1961.
References
Sources
- Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-43437-8.
- Eriksen, Gordon, Garrard MacLeod, and Martin Wisneski, ed. 1960. Encyclopædia Britannica 15th Edition. Volume 9.
- Moser, Charles A., ed. 1992. The Cambridge History of Russian Literature. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0-521-42567-0.
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