The Living Corpse
Encyclopedia
The Living Corpse is a Russian play by Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
. Although written around 1900, it was only published shortly after his death—Tolstoy had never considered the work finished. An immediate success, it is still performed.
Plot
The central character of the play, Fedor Protasov, is tormented by the belief that his wife Liza has never really chosen between him and the more conventional Victor Karenin, a rival for her hand. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't have the nerve. Running away from his life, he first falls in with Gypsies, and into a sexual relationship with a Gypsy singer, Masha. However, facing Masha's parents' disapproval, he runs away from this life as well. Again he wants to kill himself, but lacks the nerve; again, his descent continues.Meanwhile, his wife, presuming him dead, has married the other man. When Protasov is discovered, she is charged with bigamy
Bigamy
In cultures that practice marital monogamy, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. Bigamy is a crime in most western countries, and when it occurs in this context often neither the first nor second spouse is aware of the other...
, accused of arranging her husband's disappearance. He shows up in court to testify that she had no way of knowing that he was alive; when the judge rules that his wife must either give up her new husband or be exiled to Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, Protasov shoots himself. Hysterically, his wife declares that it is Protasov whom she always loved.
Production history
The play premièred at the Moscow Art TheatreMoscow Art Theatre
The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...
, in a production that opened on . It was principally directed by Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko was a Georgian-born Russian theatre director, writer, pedagogue, playwright, producer and theatre organizer, who founded the Moscow Art Theatre with his colleague, Konstantin Stanislavsky, in 1898.-Biography:Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko was born...
, with Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavski
Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski , was a Russian actor and theatre director. Building on the directorially-unified aesthetic and ensemble playing of the Meiningen company and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement, Stanislavski organized his realistic...
acting as a co-director. A production in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
followed shortly after. Soon translated into many languages, it played in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
The play received its English-language première in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
on 6 December 1912, under the title The Man Who Was Dead (a translation by Z. Vengerova and John Pollock), in a production by the Literary Theatre Society. It was directed by A. Andreev, who came from the Theatre Royal in Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
. Edmond Breon played Fedor, Violet Lewis played Lisa, Laurence Anderson played Victor, Lydia Yavorska played Masha, and Anthony Ward played Prince Abreskov.
Its first performance in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
was a Yiddish-language production in New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, produced by and starring Jacob Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
, in a translation by Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less...
. It opened on 3 November 1911. Several days beforehand, the New York Times ran an extensive piece on the play by Herman Bernstein, with a synopsis so thorough as almost to amount to an English translation. Typical of the Timess somewhat disdainful attitude toward Yiddish theater at that time, the article never explicitly mentions Adler's impending production, despite being written by one of their few Jewish correspondents at that time. The production, which ran for four months, has been credited with reviving the fortunes of serious Yiddish-language theater in New York, after a period of about six years in which lighter fare had dominated.
After also playing in New York in a German-language production in 1916, the play was finally performed on Broadway in English in 1918, under the title Redemption and produced by Arthur Hopkins
Arthur Hopkins
Arthur Hopkins was a Broadway theater director and producer in the early twentieth century.Hopkins was born in Cleveland. He was the youngest of ten children born to a Welsh couple, David and Mary Jane Hopkins...
. John Barrymore
John Barrymore
John Sidney Blyth , better known as John Barrymore, was an acclaimed American actor. He first gained fame as a handsome stage actor in light comedy, then high drama and culminating in groundbreaking portrayals in Shakespearean plays Hamlet and Richard III...
played the lead role in 1919.
Films
The play has been filmed numerous times: (1911, silent) (1918, silent) (1929, silent) (1930) (1937) (1952) (1968)External links
Sources
- Adler, Jacob. 1999. A Life on the Stage: A Memoir. Trans. Lulla Rosenfeld. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0679413510.
- Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
- Bernstein, Herman. 1911. "Tolstoy's Play, "The Living Corpse," Stirs Russia; Strong Melodrama Produced in Russia Will Soon be Seen in Berlin and Elsewhere--;The Story of a Worthless Husband's Failure and Final Sacrifice." New York Times Oct 29: SM5.
- Carson, L, ed. 1913. The StageThe StageThe Stage is a weekly British newspaper founded in 1880, available nationally and published on Thursdays. Covering all areas of the entertainment industry but focused primarily on theatre, it contains news, reviews, opinion, features and other items of interest, mainly to those who work within the...
Year Book 1913. London: The Stage. Available online. - Jones, W. Gareth. 2002. "Tolstoy Staged in Paris, Berlin, and London." In Orwin (2002, 142-161).
- Gilien, Leo. 1916. "Irving Place Production of Tolstoy Play Not Its First in America." New York Times Oct 22: X7.
- Orwin, Donna Tussing, ed. 2002. The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge Companions to Literature ser. Cambridge: Cambrige UP. ISBN 0521520002.
- Rosenfeld, Lulla. 1999. Commentary. In Adler (1999, 367-370).
- Redemption, 1918, Redemption, 1928, The Living Corpse, 1929 on the Internet Broadway DatabaseInternet Broadway DatabaseThe Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
. - —, "Gilbert Miller Stages Tolstoy Play", New York Times, Sep 27, 1919. p. 13
- —, "Leo Tolstoy's Play Makes a Triumph...", New York Times, Oct 19, 1916, 7.