A Bitter Fate | |
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Original title | Russian: Горькая судьбина |
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]
Started in early 1859 in St. Petersburg, finished on 19 August and first published by Biblioteka Dlya Chteniya in November that year, [2] the four-act 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. [3] It has been described as a masterpiece of the Russian theatre and the first Russian realistic tragedy. [4] The play is available in English translation in Masterpieces of the Russian Drama, Volume 1, edited by George Rapall Noyes, Dover Publications, 1961.