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Plays Complete Edition, Including the Posthumous Plays By: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) |
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"Better translators, both for knowledge of the
two languages and for penetration into the very
meaning of the matter translated, could not be
invented." LEO TOLSTOY PLAYS Translated by LOUISE AND AYLMER MAUDE COMPLETE EDITION
INCLUDING THE POSTHUMOUS
PLAYS FOURTH IMPRESSION NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
1919
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LEO TOLSTOY (Photogravure Portrait) Frontispiece MATRYÓNA GIVES ANÍSYA THE POWDERS Facing page 12 I'M NOT ASHAMED OF MY PARENT " " 51 HER BOX IS FULL AS IT IS " " 53 YOU TELL ME NOT TO FEAR MEN? " " 91 WELL, DEAR, AND WHAT PROGRESSION IS OUR BUSINESS MAKING? " " 174 THERE, YOU SEE! YOU ARE BEING MADE A FOOL OF " " 223
CONTENTS
PAGE PREFACE ix
Plays published during Tolstoy's life THE POWER OF DARKNESS (1886) 3 THE FIRST DISTILLER (1886) 97 FRUITS OF CULTURE (1889) 125
Posthumous Plays THE LIVE CORPSE 229 THE CAUSE OF IT ALL 303 THE LIGHT SHINES IN DARKNESS 321
PREFACE
The Power of Darkness , Tolstoy's first and greatest play, was not
written until he was fifty eight years of age, and it was not allowed to
be performed in Russia till some years later. Both there and elsewhere
abroad it was highly successful on the stage, as was also the comedy,
Fruits of Culture , which he wrote three years later, to be performed
by his own family and their friends. The only other play published during his lifetime, The First Distiller ,
is a very slight piece of no particular dramatic importance. It was
written in the cause of temperance. Besides these, he left three other plays finished, or nearly finished,
when he died. The Live Corpse (which in English has also been called The Man who
was Dead ) is the one best adapted for the stage. The Cause of it All
is, like The First Distiller , a short and unimportant piece dealing
with the effects of drink. The most interesting, not dramatically but
psychologically, of the three is The Light Shines in Darkness , which
was left in an unfinished state. In it Tolstoy presents his own case,
and deals with the contradiction that existed and has so often been
commented on, between practice and theory in his own life and teaching. For the purpose of the play he greatly simplified his own highly complex
personality, and, though many of the details and characters are drawn
from life with extraordinary exactitude, the picture presented is not
one which all the people concerned are disposed to regard as quite fair
to themselves. The play presents the terrible clash which resulted from the calls
Tolstoy made on himself and on others to abandon all customary ways of
life and to start afresh in a new direction. In his own case he was
never allowed to test the effects of a life of extreme poverty and
manual labour, such as he advocated; nor did those of his followers who
adopted such a life achieve much success therein... Continue reading book >>
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