The Complete Plays

A STATEMENT MADE ON COMPULSION¹

Bынyж‰eннoe зaя‚лeниe

In 1876, July 7, at 8:30 p.m., I wrote a play. If my adversaries wish to know its contents, here it is. I submit it to the verdict of society and the press.

THE SUDDEN DEATH OF A STEED,

OR

THE MAGNANIMITY OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE!

Cкopoпocтижнaя koнckaя cмepть, или Beлиko‰yшиe

pyccko„o нapo‰a!

A Dramatic Sketch in One Act

CHARACTERS

LYUBVIN,² a young man

COUNTESS FINIKOVA, his mistress

COUNT FINIKOV, her husband

NIL YEGOROV, cabman no. 13326

The action takes place in broad daylight on Nevsky Prospect.

ACT ONE

The COUNTESS and LYUBVIN are riding in NIL YEGOROV’s cab.

LYUBVIN (embracing her). Oh, how I love you! And yet I won’t feel easy, until we reach the station and are sitting in the railway carriage. I have a feeling that your blackguard of a husband is in hot pursuit of us at this very moment. I’m shaking in my shoes. (To Nil.) Drive faster, you devil!

COUNTESS. Faster, driver! Give her a taste of the whip! You don’t know how to drive, you son of a barnyard fowl!

NIL (lashing the horse). Gee-up! Gee-up, you plague! The lady and gent’ll give us a tip.

COUNTESS (shouts). Give it to her! Give it to her! Make it hot for this piece of trash or we’ll miss the train!

LYUBVIN (embracing her and aroused by her unearthly beauty). Oh, my dearest! Soon, soon the hour will come when you shall belong wholly to me, and no longer to your husband! (Looking around, in horror.) Your husband is following us! I can see him! Driver, drive on! Faster, you blackguard, with a hundred devils on your collar.

COUNTESS. Give it to him in the neck! Hold on, I’ll do it myself with my parasol . . . (Thwacks Nil.)

NIL (whipping with all his might). Giddyap! Giddyap! Stir your stumps, you pain-in-the-neck!

The exhausted horse drops and expires.

LYUBVIN. The horse has dropped dead! Oh, horrors! He’s catching up to us!

NIL. Oh my aching head, how am I going to make a living now? (Falls on the corpse of his beloved horse and sobs.)

ACT TWO

The same and the COUNT.

COUNT. You’d run away from me?! Stop! (Seizes his wife by her hand.) Treacherous woman! Didn’t I love you? Didn’t I provide for you?

LYUBVIN (faintheartedly). I’m going to make tracks! (Runs away to the noise of a gathering crowd.)

COUNT (to Nil). Driver! The death of your horse has saved my hearth and home from desecration. Had it not suddenly expired, I should not have caught up with the fugitives. Here’s a hundred rubles for you!

NIL (magnanimously). Noble count! I do not need your money! For me a sufficient reward is the awareness that the death of my beloved horse has served to protect hearths and homes! (The delighted crowd lifts him up.)

Curtain

On February 30, 1886, this play of mine was performed on the shores of Lake Baikal by amateur actors. At that time I was inscribed as a member of the Society of Dramatic Writers³ and received from the treasurer A. A. Maikov an appropriate fee.

Therefore, being a member of the aforementioned Society and having the rights appertaining to this vocation, on behalf of our faction I urgently demand that, first, the chairman, treasurer, secretary, and committee publicly ask my forgiveness; 2, that all the aforementioned officials be blackballed and replaced by members of our faction; 3, that twenty-five thousand of the annual budget of the Society be annually assigned to purchasing tickets to the Hamburg lottery and that every win be divided amongst all the members equally; 4, that at general and extraordinary meetings of the Society military music be played and decent refreshments be served; 5, because all the income of the Society goes to the benefit of the only thirty members whose plays are running in the provinces, and because the remaining three hundred members don’t get a penny, because their plays are running nowhere, then with a view to fairness and equality the higher authorities are to be petitioned to forbid those thirty members from putting on their plays and thereby destroying the balance, so necessary for the normal course of events.

In conclusion I consider it necessary to warn that if a negative answer is given to any one of the aforesaid points, I shall be compelled to resign as a member of the Society.

Member of the Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers

Akaky Tarantulov

From the editors. By inserting this statement by the respected member of the Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers, we flatter ourselves with the hope that it will evoke the fullest sympathy at least from the half of the worthy members of this Society, whose merits are as great as those of Mr. Akaky Tarantulov. Russian drama is precisely that important type of poetry, in which the Akaky Tarantulovs can acquire everlasting fame from the chilly Finnish crags to the flaming backstage, from the awe-inspiring Kremlin to the blather of the general sessions of the Society of Dramatic Writers and Opera Composers . . .

NOTES

1 First published in New Times (Novoe vremya) 4721 (April 22, 1888). “In those far-distant years Chekhov’s joke produced a terrific uproar among the minor dramatists” (N. M. Yezhov, Historical Messenger [Istorichesky vestnik] 139, 2 [1915]).

2 Joke names: Lyubvin suggests “lover-boy,” and Finikov “date palms.”

3 The Society for Russian Dramatic Authors and Opera Composers had been founded in 1874 to protect their rights in a theater world that played fast and loose with scripts and scores. Chekhov was a member of the Society from November 16, 1887; he regarded it primarily as a “commercial institution,” whose collection of royalties for writers superseded all its other functions.