Beginning with 1852 Ostrovsky gave his whole strength to literary work.  He is exceptional among Russian authors in devoting himself almost exclusively to the theatre.  The latest edition of his works contains forty-eight pieces written entirely by him, and six produced in collaboration with other authors.  It omits his translations from foreign dramatists, which were of considerable importance, including, for example, a version of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.”

The plays of Ostrovsky are of varied character, including dramatic chronicles based on early Russian history, and a fairy drama, “Little Snowdrop.”  His real strength lay, however, in the drama of manners, giving realistic pictures of Russian life among the Russian city classes and the minor nobility.  Here he was recognized, from the time of the appearance on the stage of his first pieces, in 1853 and the following years, as without a rival among Russian authors for the theatre.  Of this realistic drama the present volume gives four characteristic examples.

The tone of “Poverty Is No Crime” (1854), written only four years after “A Family Affair,” is in sharp contrast with that of its predecessor.  In the earlier play Ostrovsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gogol, the great founder of Russian realism.  Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness.  No ray of light penetrates the “realm of darkness”—­to borrow a famous phrase from a Russian critic—­conjured up before us by the young dramatist.  In “Poverty Is No Crime” we see the other side of the medal.  Ostrovsky had now been affected by the Slavophile school of writers and thinkers, who found in the traditions of Russian society treasures of kindliness and love that they contrasted with the superficial glitter of Western civilization.  Life in Russia is varied as elsewhere, and Ostrovsky could change his tone without doing violence to realistic truth.  The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers.  A poor apprentice is the hero of “Poverty Is No Crime,” and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece.  Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior.  The scapegrace, Lyubim Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth.

Just as “Poverty Is No Crime” shows the influence of the Slavophile movement, “A Protegee of the Mistress” (1859) was inspired by the great liberal movement that bore fruit in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.  Ostrovsky here departed from town to a typical country manor, and produced a work kindred in spirit to Turgenev’s “Sportsman’s Sketches,” or “Mumu.”  In a short play, instinct with simple poetry, he shows the suffering brought about by serfdom:  the petty tyranny of the landed proprietor, which is the more galling because it is practised with a full conviction of virtue on the part of the tyrant; and the crushed natures of the human cattle under his charge.