Dramatic works are organized by the characters' statements. According to Gorky, “the play requires that each acting unit be characterized in word and deed independently, without prompting from the author” (50, 596). There is no detailed narrative-descriptive image here. The actual author's speech, with the help of which what is depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in drama. These are the name of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes

accompanied by their brief summative characteristics, preceding acts and episodes, descriptions of the stage situation, as well as stage directions given in the form of a commentary on individual remarks of the characters. All this constitutes the secondary text of a dramatic work. Basically, his text is a chain of dialogical remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.

Hence the certain limitations of the artistic possibilities of drama. A writer-playwright uses only part of the visual means that are available to the creator of a novel or epic, short story or story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in drama with less freedom and completeness than in epic. “I...perceive drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of silhouette and I feel only the person being told as a three-dimensional, integral, real and plastic image.” (69, 386). At the same time, playwrights, unlike authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the volume of verbal text that meets the needs of theatrical art. Plot time in a drama must fit within the strict framework of stage time. And the performance in forms familiar to European theater lasts, as is known, no more than three to four hours. And this requires an appropriate size of the dramatic text.

At the same time, the author of the play also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama is closely adjacent to another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode (see Chapter X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a solid, uninterrupted line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something in the past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. Life here speaks as if on its own behalf: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary - the narrator. The action of the drama takes place as if before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “transfer the present into the past; everything dramatic makes the past present.” (106, 58).

The dramatic genre of literature recreates the action with

maximum spontaneity. Drama does not allow summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And it is, as Yu. Olesha noted, “a test of rigor and at the same time the flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and amazing that makes up talent.” (71, 252). Bunin expressed a similar thought about drama: “We have to compress thoughts into precise forms. But it’s so exciting.”

FORMS OF BEHAVIOR OF CHARACTERS

Characters in drama reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in spoken words) more clearly than characters in epic works. And this is natural. Firstly, the dramatic form encourages the characters to “talk a lot.” Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are oriented towards the wide space of the stage and auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as addressed directly to the audience and potentially loud. “The theater requires... exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation and gestures” (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that “you cannot be a playwright without having eloquence” (52, 604).

The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, flashiness, and effectiveness. It is, in other words, theatrical. Theatricality is speech and gestures carried out with the expectation of a public, mass effect. It is the antipode of the intimacy and inexpressiveness of the forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in drama. Dramatic action often involves the active participation of a wide range of people. Such are many scenes of Shakespeare’s plays (especially the final ones), the climax of Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” and Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm,” and the pivotal episodes of Vishnevsky’s “Optimistic Tragedy.” The viewer is especially strongly influenced by episodes where there is an audience on stage: depictions of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. Stage episodes that show a few people, if their behavior is open, not inhibited, and impressive, also leave a vivid impression. “Like he acted out in the theater,” comments Bubnov (“At the Lower Depths” by Gorky) on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Kleshch about the truth, which, with an unexpected and sharp intrusion into the general conversation, gave it its own theatrical character.

At the same time, playwrights (especially supporters

realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing private, home, intimate life, where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unpretentiously. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which according to the logic of what is being depicted should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, and hyperbolically expressive. This reflects a certain limitation of the possibilities of drama: playwrights (like actors on stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art.”

In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, it is not identical to real life. At the same time, the term convention (in the narrow sense) denotes ways of reproducing life, in which the inconsistency and even the contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect, artistic conventions are opposed to “plausibility” or “life-likeness”. “Everything should be essentially vital, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. “Among many forms there may also be a conditional form.” (96, 662) (i.e. “non-life-like.” - V. X.).

In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatricalized, conventions are especially widely used. The inevitable departure of drama from life-likeness has been spoken about more than once. Thus, Pushkin argued that “of all types of works, the most improbable works are dramatic ones.” (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater “the citadel of everything conventional” (61, 350).

Characters in dramas often speak out not because they need it in the course of the action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. Thus, additional characters are sometimes introduced into dramatic works, who either themselves narrate what is not shown on stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their luminaries in ancient tragedies ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, the Renaissance, and classicism). In so-called epic dramas, actor-characters from time to time address the audience, “step out of character” and, as if from the outside, report on what is happening.

A tribute to convention is, further, the saturation of speech in drama with maxims, aphorisms, and reasoning about what is happening. The monologues pronounced by the heroes alone are also conventional. Such monologues are not actual speech acts, but a purely stage technique of bringing internal speech out into the open; There are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the drama of modern times. Even more conventional are the “to the side” lines, which seem to not exist for the other characters on stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.

It would be wrong, of course, to “assign” theatrical hyperbole to the dramatic genre of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, but if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in drama that the convention of verbal self-disclosure of characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would speak if in the spoken words he expressed his moods with maximum completeness and brightness. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar situation in life. As a result, speech in drama often takes on similarities with artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to speak like improvisers - poets or sophisticated speakers. Therefore, Hegel was partly right when he viewed drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical principle (speech expression).

From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the overwhelming majority of cases gravitated toward dramatic and demonstrative theatricalization. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, which allegedly “violates the possibility of artistic impression.” From the very first words,” he wrote about the tragedy “King Lear,” “one can see the exaggeration: exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feelings and exaggeration of expressions.” (89, 252). In his assessment of Shakespeare's work, L. Tolstoy was wrong, but the idea that the great English playwright was committed to theatrical hyperbole is completely fair. What has been said about “King Lear” can with no less justification be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.

days, dramatic works of classicism, Schiller's tragedies, etc.

In the 19th-20th centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity of artistic paintings prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in drama began to be reduced to a minimum. The origins of this phenomenon are the so-called “philistine drama” of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century - A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the authenticity of the life forms recreated. But even when playwrights focused on the verisimilitude of what was being depicted, plot, psychological and actual speech hyperboles were preserved. Even in Chekhov’s dramaturgy, which showed the maximum limit of “life-likeness,” theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a closer look at the final scene of Three Sisters. One young woman, ten or fifteen minutes ago, broke up with her loved one, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And so they, together with the elder, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of what happened, reflecting to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of humanity. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we don’t notice the implausibility of the ending of “Three Sisters”, since we are accustomed to the fact that drama significantly changes the forms of people’s life.

Dramatic works are organized by the characters' statements. According to Gorky, “the play requires that each acting unit be characterized in word and deed independently, without prompting from the author” (50, 596). There is no detailed narrative-descriptive image here. The actual author's speech, with the help of which what is depicted is characterized from the outside, is auxiliary and episodic in drama. These are the name of the play, its genre subtitle, an indication of the place and time of action, a list of characters, sometimes

accompanied by their brief summative characteristics, preceding acts and episodes, descriptions of the stage situation, as well as stage directions given in the form of a commentary on individual remarks of the characters. All this constitutes the secondary text of a dramatic work. Basically, his text is a chain of dialogical remarks and monologues of the characters themselves.

Hence the certain limitations of the artistic possibilities of drama. A writer-playwright uses only part of the visual means that are available to the creator of a novel or epic, short story or story. And the characters of the characters are revealed in drama with less freedom and completeness than in epic. “I...perceive drama,” noted T. Mann, “as the art of silhouette and I feel only the person being told as a three-dimensional, integral, real and plastic image.” (69, 386). At the same time, playwrights, unlike authors of epic works, are forced to limit themselves to the volume of verbal text that meets the needs of theatrical art. Plot time in a drama must fit within the strict framework of stage time. And the performance in forms familiar to European theater lasts, as is known, no more than three to four hours. And this requires an appropriate size of the dramatic text.

At the same time, the author of the play also has significant advantages over the creators of stories and novels. One moment depicted in the drama is closely adjacent to another, neighboring one. The time of the events reproduced by the playwright during the stage episode (see Chapter X) is not compressed or stretched; the characters in the drama exchange remarks without any noticeable time intervals, and their statements, as Stanislavsky noted, form a solid, uninterrupted line. If with the help of narration the action is captured as something in the past, then the chain of dialogues and monologues in the drama creates the illusion of the present time. Life here speaks as if on its own behalf: between what is depicted and the reader there is no intermediary - the narrator. The action of the drama takes place as if before the eyes of the reader. “All narrative forms,” wrote F. Schiller, “transfer the present into the past; everything dramatic makes the past present.” (106, 58).

The dramatic genre of literature recreates the action with

maximum spontaneity. Drama does not allow summary characteristics of events and actions that would replace their detail. And it is, as Yu. Olesha noted, “a test of rigor and at the same time the flight of talent, a sense of form and everything special and amazing that makes up talent.” (71, 252). Bunin expressed a similar thought about drama: “We have to compress thoughts into precise forms. But it’s so exciting.”

FORMS OF BEHAVIOR OF CHARACTERS

Characters in drama reveal themselves in behavior (primarily in spoken words) more clearly than characters in epic works. And this is natural. Firstly, the dramatic form encourages the characters to “talk a lot.” Secondly, the words of the characters in the drama are oriented towards the wide space of the stage and auditorium, so that the speech is perceived as addressed directly to the audience and potentially loud. “The theater requires... exaggerated broad lines both in voice, recitation and gestures” (98, 679), wrote N. Boileau. And D. Diderot noted that “you cannot be a playwright without having eloquence” (52, 604).

The behavior of the characters in the drama is marked by activity, flashiness, and effectiveness. It is, in other words, theatrical. Theatricality is speech and gestures carried out with the expectation of a public, mass effect. It is the antipode of the intimacy and inexpressiveness of the forms of action. Behavior filled with theatricality becomes the most important subject of depiction in drama. Dramatic action often involves the active participation of a wide range of people. Such are many scenes of Shakespeare’s plays (especially the final ones), the climax of Gogol’s “The Government Inspector” and Ostrovsky’s “The Thunderstorm,” and the pivotal episodes of Vishnevsky’s “Optimistic Tragedy.” The viewer is especially strongly influenced by episodes where there is an audience on stage: depictions of meetings, rallies, mass performances, etc. Stage episodes that show a few people, if their behavior is open, not inhibited, and impressive, also leave a vivid impression. “Like he acted out in the theater,” comments Bubnov (“At the Lower Depths” by Gorky) on the frenzied tirade of the desperate Kleshch about the truth, which, with an unexpected and sharp intrusion into the general conversation, gave it its own theatrical character.

At the same time, playwrights (especially supporters

realistic art) feel the need to go beyond theatricality: to recreate human behavior in all its richness and diversity, capturing private, home, intimate life, where people express themselves in word and gesture sparingly and unpretentiously. At the same time, the speech of the characters, which according to the logic of what is being depicted should not be spectacular and bright, is presented in dramas and performances as lengthy, full-voiced, and hyperbolically expressive. This reflects a certain limitation of the possibilities of drama: playwrights (like actors on stage) are forced to elevate the “non-theatrical in life” to the rank of “theatrical in art.”

In a broad sense, any work of art is conditional, that is, it is not identical to real life. At the same time, the term convention (in the narrow sense) denotes ways of reproducing life, in which the inconsistency and even the contrast between the forms depicted and the forms of reality itself are emphasized. In this respect, artistic conventions are opposed to “plausibility” or “life-likeness”. “Everything should be essentially vital, not necessarily everything should be life-like,” wrote Fadeev. “Among many forms there may also be a conditional form.” (96, 662) (i.e. “non-life-like.” - V. X.).

In dramatic works, where the behavior of the characters is theatricalized, conventions are especially widely used. The inevitable departure of drama from life-likeness has been spoken about more than once. Thus, Pushkin argued that “of all types of works, the most improbable works are dramatic ones.” (79, 266), and Zola called drama and theater “the citadel of everything conventional” (61, 350).

Characters in dramas often speak out not because they need it in the course of the action, but because the author needs to explain something to readers and viewers, to make a certain impression on them. Thus, additional characters are sometimes introduced into dramatic works, who either themselves narrate what is not shown on stage (messengers in ancient plays), or, becoming interlocutors of the main characters, encourage them to talk about what happened (choirs and their luminaries in ancient tragedies ; confidantes and servants in the comedies of antiquity, the Renaissance, and classicism). In so-called epic dramas, actor-characters from time to time address the audience, “step out of character” and, as if from the outside, report on what is happening.

A tribute to convention is, further, the saturation of speech in drama with maxims, aphorisms, and reasoning about what is happening. The monologues pronounced by the heroes alone are also conventional. Such monologues are not actual speech acts, but a purely stage technique of bringing internal speech out into the open; There are many of them both in ancient tragedies and in the drama of modern times. Even more conventional are the “to the side” lines, which seem to not exist for the other characters on stage, but are clearly audible to the audience.

It would be wrong, of course, to “assign” theatrical hyperbole to the dramatic genre of literature alone. Similar phenomena are characteristic of classical epics and adventure novels, but if we talk about the classics of the 19th century. - for the works of Dostoevsky. However, it is in drama that the convention of verbal self-disclosure of characters becomes the leading artistic trend. The author of the drama, setting up a kind of experiment, shows how a person would speak if in the spoken words he expressed his moods with maximum completeness and brightness. Naturally, dramatic dialogues and monologues turn out to be much more extensive and effective than those remarks that could be uttered in a similar situation in life. As a result, speech in drama often takes on similarities with artistic, lyrical or oratorical speech: the heroes of dramatic works tend to speak like improvisers - poets or sophisticated speakers. Therefore, Hegel was partly right when he viewed drama as a synthesis of the epic principle (eventfulness) and the lyrical principle (speech expression).

From antiquity to the era of romanticism - from Aeschylus and Sophocles to Schiller and Hugo - dramatic works in the overwhelming majority of cases gravitated toward dramatic and demonstrative theatricalization. L. Tolstoy reproached Shakespeare for the abundance of hyperbole, which allegedly “violates the possibility of artistic impression.” From the very first words,” he wrote about the tragedy “King Lear,” “one can see the exaggeration: exaggeration of events, exaggeration of feelings and exaggeration of expressions.” (89, 252). In his assessment of Shakespeare's work, L. Tolstoy was wrong, but the idea that the great English playwright was committed to theatrical hyperbole is completely fair. What has been said about “King Lear” can with no less justification be attributed to ancient comedies and tragedies.

days, dramatic works of classicism, Schiller's tragedies, etc.

In the 19th-20th centuries, when the desire for everyday authenticity of artistic paintings prevailed in literature, the conventions inherent in drama began to be reduced to a minimum. The origins of this phenomenon are the so-called “philistine drama” of the 18th century, the creators and theorists of which were Diderot and Lessing. Works of the greatest Russian playwrights of the 19th century. and the beginning of the 20th century - A. Ostrovsky, Chekhov and Gorky - are distinguished by the authenticity of the life forms recreated. But even when playwrights focused on the verisimilitude of what was being depicted, plot, psychological and actual speech hyperboles were preserved. Even in Chekhov’s dramaturgy, which showed the maximum limit of “life-likeness,” theatrical conventions made themselves felt. Let's take a closer look at the final scene of Three Sisters. One young woman, ten or fifteen minutes ago, broke up with her loved one, probably forever. Another five minutes ago found out about the death of her fiancé. And so they, together with the elder, third sister, sum up the moral and philosophical results of what happened, reflecting to the sounds of a military march about the fate of their generation, about the future of humanity. It is hardly possible to imagine this happening in reality. But we don’t notice the implausibility of the ending of “Three Sisters”, since we are accustomed to the fact that drama significantly changes the forms of people’s life.

Introduction

Familiarity with the specifics of drama as a special kind of literature and teaching methods will help to understand the originality and originality of each of the studied dramatic works and will contribute to a more meaningful perception of it.

“A play, a drama, a comedy is the most difficult form of literature,” wrote M. Gorky. “... In a novel, in a story, the people portrayed by the author act with his help, he is with them all the time , he shows the reader how to understand them, explains to him the secret thoughts, hidden motives of the actions of the depicted figures, shades their moods with descriptions of nature, situation... controls their actions, deeds, words, relationships... The play is troubling. wants each unit operating in it to be characterized both in word and deed independently, without prompting from the author...”

The playwright does not talk about the life or characters of his characters, but shows them in action. The absence of author's characteristics, portrait and other components of the image characteristic of prose complicates the perception of drama by students. Therefore, it is necessary to look for techniques and forms of work that, on the one hand, would make it possible to introduce schoolchildren to the specifics of drama as a special kind of literature, and on the other hand, would help them to see in the samples being studied works intended for the stage and therefore requiring much more imagination and effort on the part of the reader. This is the relevance of the work, that the uniqueness of drama, its difference from epic and lyric poetry give grounds to raise the question of some features in the correlation of methods and techniques used in the analysis of dramatic works in secondary school.

Purpose of the work: to identify the specifics of teaching a dramatic work based on the material of A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “Dowry”.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

Identify the specifics of drama as a type of literature;

Get acquainted with the methodology of teaching drama at school;

Find out the features of studying A.N. Ostrovsky’s play “Dowry”

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion, and literature.

Study of Dramatic Works

Specifics of the drama

Drama occupies a special position in the literary system, since it is both a full-fledged literary genre and a phenomenon that naturally belongs to the theater. Drama as a genre has specific content, the essence of which is the awareness of the contradictions of reality, and “first of all, its social contradictions through the relationships of people and their individual destinies.” Unlike the epic, in drama we see “imitation of action... through action, not a story." According to the precise and figurative definition of V. G. Belinsky, “drama represents the accomplished event as if taking place in the present time, before the eyes of the reader or viewer.”

The specific features of drama as a genre are the absence of a narrator and a sharp weakening of the descriptive element. The basis of drama is visible action, and this affects the special relationship in it between the movement of events and the speeches of the characters. The statements of the characters and the arrangement and relationship of parts are the most important ways of revealing the author’s thoughts. In relation to them, other ways of expressing the author’s position (list of characters, stage directions, instructions for directors and actors) play a subordinate role.

The most important content category in drama is conflict. Of course, conflicts also exist in an epic; they can also be present in a lyrical work, but their role and meaning in an epic and lyrical plot are different than in a drama. The choice of conflicts and their arrangement into a system largely determine the uniqueness of the writer’s position; dramatic clashes are the most essential way of identifying the life programs of characters and self-disclosure of their characters. The conflict largely determines the direction and rhythm of the plot movement in the play.

The content of conflicts, as well as the methods of their embodiment in a dramatic work, can be of a different nature. Traditionally, drama conflicts, based on their content, emotional severity and coloring, are divided into tragic, comic and actually dramatic. The first two types are distinguished in accordance with the two main genre forms of drama; they originally accompany tragedy and comedy, reflecting the most significant aspects of life conflicts. The third one arose at a rather late stage of dramaturgy, and its understanding is associated with the theory of drama developed by Lessing (“Hamburg Drama”) and Diderot (“Paradox of the Actor”).

Of course, conflict, with all its meaningful ambiguity and diversity of functions, is not the only component that determines the specificity of drama as a genre. No less important are the methods of plot organization and dramatic narration, the relationship between the speech characteristics of the characters and the construction of the action, etc. However, we deliberately focus on the category of conflict. On the one hand, analysis of this aspect allows, based on the generic specifics of the drama, to reveal the depth of the artistic content of the work and take into account the peculiarities of the author’s attitude towards the world. On the other hand, it is the consideration of conflict that can become the leading direction in the school analysis of a dramatic work, since high school students are characterized by an interest in effective clashes of beliefs and characters, through which the problems of the struggle between good and evil are revealed. Through the study of the conflict, it is possible to lead schoolchildren to comprehend the motives behind the words and actions of the characters, to reveal the originality of the author's intention and the moral position of the writer. To identify the role of this category in creating the eventual and ideological tension of the drama, in expressing the social and ethical programs of the characters, in recreating their psychology is the task of this section.

Drama depicts a person only in action, in the process of which he discovers all sides of his personality. “Dramaticism,” emphasized V. G. Belinsky, noting the features of drama, “consists not in one conversation, but in the living action of those talking to each other.”

In works of the dramatic genre, unlike epic and lyrical ones, there are no author's descriptions, narration, or digressions. The author's speech appears only in stage directions. The reader or viewer learns everything that happens to the heroes of the drama from the heroes themselves. The playwright, therefore, does not talk about the lives of his characters, but shows them in action?

Due to the fact that the heroes of dramatic works express themselves only in action, their speech has a number of features: it is directly related to their actions, more dynamic and expressive than the speech of the heroes of epic works. Intonation, pause, tone, i.e., all those features of speech that become concrete on stage, are also of great importance in dramatic works.

The playwright, as a rule, depicts only those events that are necessary to reveal the characters' personalities and, therefore, to justify the developing struggle between the characters. All other life facts that are not directly related to what is depicted and that slow down the development of the action are excluded.

Everything shown in a play, tragedy, comedy or drama is tied by the playwright, in Gogol’s apt expression, “into one big common knot.” Hence the concentration of depicted events and secondary characters around the main characters. The plot of the drama is characterized by tension and rapid development. This feature of the plot of dramatic works distinguishes it from the plot of epic works, although both plots are built on common elements: plot, climax and denouement.

The difference between drama and epic and lyric poetry is also expressed in the fact that works of the dramatic genre are written for the theater and receive their final completion only on the stage. In turn, the theater influences them, subordinating them to some extent to its laws. Dramatic works are divided, for example, into actions, phenomena or scenes, the change of which involves a change of scenery and costumes. In approximately three or four acts of the play, that is, during the three or four hours occupied by the performance, the dramatist must show the emergence of the conflict, its development and completion. These requirements for playwrights oblige them to choose such phenomena and life events in which the characters of the people depicted are especially clearly manifested.

While working on a play, the playwright sees not only his hero, but also his performer. This is evidenced by numerous statements of writers. Regarding the performance of the roles of Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, N.V. Gogol wrote: “... when creating these two little officials, I imagined. their skin of Shchepkin and Ryazantsov...” We find the same thoughts in A.P. Chekhov. During the period the Art Theater was working on the play “The Cherry Orchard,” Chekhov informed K. S. Stanislavsky: “When I wrote Lopakhin, I thought that this was your role.”

There is another dependence of a dramatic work on the theater. It manifests itself in the fact that the reader connects the play with the stage in his imagination. When reading plays, images of certain supposed or actual performers of roles arise. If theater, in the words of A.V. Lunacharsky, is a form, the content of which is determined by drama, then the actors, in turn, help the playwright complete the images with their performance. The scene to some extent replaces the author's descriptions. “Drama lives only on stage,” wrote N.V. Gogol to M.P. Pogodin. “Without it, it is like a soul without a body.”

Theater creates a much greater illusion of life than any other art. Everything that happens on stage is perceived by the audience especially acutely and directly. This is the enormous educational power of drama, distinguishing it from other types of poetry.

The originality of drama, its difference from epic and lyric poetry, give grounds to raise the question of some features in the correlation of methods and techniques used in the analysis of dramatic works in secondary school.

Russian legislation classifies dramatic works as literature in general (Art. 282, Vol. XIV, Census, st., ed. 1857); but among all other works of literature, dramatic ones have their own, very important, feature.

FEATURES OF DRAMATIC WORKS

This peculiarity lies in the fact that dramatic works, for their publication and distribution, in addition to the method common to all other literature, i.e. printing have a different method that inherently belongs to them and directly follows from the essence of this kind of poetry. This method of promulgation and dissemination characteristic of dramatic literature is stage performance. Only during stage performance does the author’s dramatic fiction receive a completely completed form and produces exactly the moral action that the author set himself as a goal to achieve. Although dramatic works are printed both for the most profitable reproduction of copies and in order to perpetuate the work, printed reproduction is not their final goal, and dramatic works, although printed, should be considered not literary works, but stage works.

In this case, the printed text of dramatic works has a great similarity with published scores of operas, oratorios, etc.: just as the latter, in order for the impression to be complete, lacks musical sounds, so dramatic works lack a living human voice and gestures.

THE VALUE OF A DRAMATIC WORK

Dramatic fiction, reaching the public in two ways - through print and through performance - receives in both cases a material value that is far from the same. Just as the need to see a stage performance of a play is higher than the need to simply read it, so the value of a dramatic fiction reproduced in the theater is higher than the value of the same fiction made public through the press. Most dramatic works are not published for fear that the sale of printed copies will not cover the costs of printing. The proceeds for a printed play, relative to the amount received for the performance of the same play in the theaters in which it is performed, are so insignificant that they cannot be compared. A play that has some stage merits will go around all theaters in a short time; hundreds of thousands of people will review it and pay money for it; and the same play, when printed, will not sell even two thousand copies within four or five years. Many people watch a good play several times, each time paying money for a seat; and each person buys only one printed copy for himself.

Thus, a dramatic play has real value only when performed on stage; this value, directly dependent on the degree of interest of the play that attracts spectators, is expressed by the amount of money received from its performance.

The fee for seats in the theater when a play is presented, while serving as a measure of its stage merit, also serves as a determination of its material value. But since the performance itself is a complex act, carried out with the participation of various figures, such as: the art and labors of artists, the expenses of the management or the owners of theaters and the play composed by the author, it is necessary to determine to what extent the interest and success of the performance and its material value , i.e. collection depend on each of these three figures.

ARTISTS' PARTICIPATION IN THE SUCCESS OF THE PERFORMANCE

First of all, without a play, no matter how talented the actors are, they have nothing to play. There is no doubt that the skillful play of the actors greatly increases the interest of the performance; but it is also not subject to dispute that a talented troupe certainly requires talentedly written plays, otherwise it would have nothing to perform and nothing to show its talent. The artist's fame also depends on the number of well-known roles played, and the more famous artists become, the more they need the best works to develop and show their abilities.

The public watches, in fact, not the actors, but how the actors perform a famous play; otherwise, with the performance of your favorite actors, all plays would have equal success; but it is known that when the same actors play, one play does not even last two performances, and the other never leaves the repertoire.

Not all troupes contain good artists; the majority consists of very mediocre ones; such troupes, if we accept that the success of stage performance depends only on the artists, would never see success and could not even exist. Meanwhile, it is known that wonderful plays, having success in theaters rich in talent, also have their share of success in poorly composed troupes. If, whether the composition of the troupes is good or bad, some plays do not make money, while others stay on stage with constant success, giving great benefits for several years, then it is obvious that the material value of a stage performance does not depend mainly on the artists.

PARTICIPATION OF THE PRODUCTION IN THE SUCCESS OF THE PERFORMANCE

The interest and value of the performance depend even less on the costs of the management and theater owners for the production. It often happens that a play with expensive scenery and costumes falls from the first performance, while another one survives in the repertoire in a poor environment. Gogol's “The Inspector General”, in order to have the success that he enjoys, required little expense from the management. The internal merits of a play always redeem its production, and the higher the play is in its internal interest, the less it requires expenditure on its appearance. The author, who has given considerable interest to his dramatic work, gives significant benefits to the theater owner by also reducing expenses on his part. To make the value of the stage performance of a play dependent on the production is as unfair as it is unfair to attribute the success of a book to the luxury of its publication or the skill of the bookbinder. .

THE VALUE OF A PERFORMANCE DEPENDS ON THE PLAY PRESENTED

Thus, the interest, success, and therefore the value of the performance depend mainly on the play presented. Artists and management only contribute to success, but it is the author who produces success. The validity of this position is obvious because as the author’s fame increases, the value of presenting his works also increases. The benefit prices and benefit fees of even the most beloved artists by the public depend very much on the name of the author of the play being performed. Not only benefit performances, but in general the first performances of plays by famous authors are quite expensive for the public; the increased demand for seats in the theater raises their price, causing a certain profiteering in theater tickets. In these cases, the author's name alone, displayed on the poster, increases the value of the performance - and here the author is the first and main producer of the benefits delivered by the performance.

All of the above leads to the following conclusion: if the material value of dramatic performances depends mainly on the plays presented, then justice requires that the authors of these plays be given the opportunity to have their share in the benefits brought about by the performances, and that they be given the right to freely dispose of stage assets. presentations of their works. This attitude of dramatic authors to the stage performances of their plays has long been recognized in Europe and was expressed in the recognition of the authors right of representation(droit de representation).

The censorship regulations currently in force in Russia, classifying dramatic works as literature in general, on an equal basis with other works of print, friend the method of publishing them, i.e. about the stage performance, does not mention and does not seem to acknowledge it at all.

The absence in our legislation of a department on dramatic property (droit de faire representer [ right of representation (French)]) especially from literary (droit de faire imprimer [ right of printing (French)]) placed and still places dramatic writers in a special, strange and exceptional position: the dramatic author ceases to be the owner of his work and loses all right to it precisely at the very moment when it takes its final form and acquires significant value.

CONSEQUENCES OF FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE AUTHORS' RIGHT OF REPRESENTATION

This peculiarity in the position of Russian playwrights could not do without consequences, unfavorable: a) for dramatic literature in Russia; b) for the development of theaters and dramatic arts; c) for stage education of artists.

DRAMATIC LITERATURE

a) Just as it is true that stage literature is in decline, it is equally true that work in this branch of literature is paid very poorly and does not provide workers with any benefits. Dramatic literature as a product of mental labor. subject to the same economic laws as all productivity. Can unsecured and unprofitable production flourish? How much effort will be attracted by labor, the fruits of which do not belong to the workers, but are stolen by everyone at will? And the conditions of dramatic work are precisely this: work, and others enjoy the fruits of your labors. To work for the common benefit or for common pleasure, without hope of sufficient remuneration for work, is more or less a feat and, in any case, an exceptional phenomenon; the legitimate desire for acquisition has always been and will be the main motive of working people. Therefore, writers, gifted with quite diverse talents, inevitably choose other, more profitable branches of literature, neglecting unprofitable works in the dramatic field. What remains are the specialists, i.e. the same writers who, due to the special conditions of their talent, are forced to work exclusively for the stage, are condemned to continuous and hasty work in order to compensate for the unprofitability of their work with at least the number of works. Working hastily and, therefore, to the detriment of the internal dignity of their works, they, from constant mental stress, either exhaust their strength early, or cool down to their work and seek means for their existence in other, more profitable activities. The surprising thing is not that dramatic literature does not flourish in Russia, but that it still retains some significance and does not decline completely. The occasional appearance of remarkable plays is explained by purely accidental circumstances: it is certainly either the first work of a young man, for whom the work of his vocation and the first glory are still very seductive, and material needs are very easily endured, or the work of a rich man, who has a lot of free time and whose needs do not hurries to work.

THEATERS

b) From the non-protection of copyright, it would seem that there should be a benefit for provincial theaters, since they are thereby freed from unnecessary expenses; but it turns out the opposite. Never and nowhere can the free use of someone else's property bear good fruits; This truth is most confirmed by provincial theaters, the development of which the free use of plays not only does not contribute, but even hinders. It hinders, firstly, because the gratuitous use of a varied repertoire, with insignificant other costs, and then paid from fees, making the business of entrepreneurs very easy, makes it possible for people without education and absolutely without any means to take on this business. The supply of aesthetic pleasures in provincial towns is undertaken mostly by people who cannot successfully run any business; but why not take it? - there is no risk, there is nothing to lose, but you can gain something, and you can probably make money at someone else’s expense. The mainspring of the whole mechanics is to invite a clever poster who knows how to temptingly paint the play on the poster, i.e. come up with special, enticing names not only for each act of the play, but also for the phenomena - and then the whole matter is considered over. Such an entrepreneur does not care about the scenery, nor about the costumes, nor about the troupe, nor about conscientious performance, but only cares about the poster, which alone makes him a profit by arousing curiosity. For such an entrepreneur, every new work by a famous writer is a “find” (their own word), and the more famous the author, the more valuable the find, because they can charge the public a fee or two for just the poster, i.e. for the name of the author, without any costs or hassle. Entrepreneurs rush to take advantage of such a find and often stage the play the next day upon receipt, without preparing the roles and without any staging. The public, attracted by the poster, gives a fee or two, looking not at the merits of the performance, but at the number of curious people in the city - and then they will not watch this play even for nothing. What does it matter to the entrepreneur that the play is killed forever? His job was done: the money was taken, there were no expenses. (It is known that in the provinces it is considered rare for a play to be performed more than twice). In this case, theater owners take money for free, not even for the play (because it is not the play indicated on the poster that is being played, but who knows what), but only for the name of the author, which undoubtedly belongs to the one who bears it*. Fame doesn't come for free; it costs the dramatic author many works, very often associated with material deprivation; and not only does he not enjoy this fame, which costs him dearly, but others do, but he is also condemned to see how his fame is abused, making it a sign to deceive the public.

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* It also happened to the authors themselves to attend such performances. The situation is unenviable! Sometimes the work dear to the author is distorted to the last possible extent, the audience gets a completely wrong idea about it, and the author cannot not only protest, but even make any remark to the artists or the entrepreneur, who has the right to not even allow the author onto the stage.

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ARTISTS

c) Having an extensive gift repertoire at hand, entrepreneurs do not care about careful execution to strengthen the plays on the stage, which, firstly, spoils the young audience, developing ungraceful taste in them, and, secondly, harms the artists. However, recently, when, with the development of the provincial merchant classes and bureaucrats, the entrepreneurial business begins to bring significant benefits, in many cities quite wealthy people are taking up this business, having the opportunity to pay artists dearly and spend on external production. But even in this case, the free use of other people's plays only harms the development of dramatic art in the provinces. Paying the artists quite dearly, the entrepreneurs try to earn their money only with variety, giving new plays almost every day. There are many talented artists in the provinces; they could form a good supply to replenish the capital's troupes, which are becoming poorer in talent from year to year; but provincial actors, exploited by entrepreneurs, ruin their talent early. Forced to constantly play new plays, they, of necessity, get used to not learning roles, playing according to a prompter, and thus early lose artistic integrity and acquire routine and shamelessness - qualities from which it is almost impossible to free themselves later. Such artists, despite their natural talents, cannot be useful to the capital's theaters.

Thus, the absence in our legislation of provisions protecting dramatic property, on the one hand, delaying dramatic productivity, diverting mental forces to other branches of literature, and on the other, developing a careless and disrespectful attitude towards art, is the main reason for the decline of stage literature and the low level of performing arts in Russia.

If the unpunished use of someone else's rights were not in the order of things, then the entrepreneurs, having paid the authors for the right to present, would have to, in order to get the money spent and benefit themselves, carefully rehearse and arrange the plays, which, in any case, would be the case for They would be beneficial and would advance the talents of artists and stage art, and would develop taste in the public. With the development of taste, the need for aesthetic pleasures instead of rough and sensual pleasures also develops, which cannot but be desired for our provinces.

GROUNDS EXISTING IN RUSSIAN LEGISLATION FOR DETERMINING THE RIGHTS OF DRAMATIC PROPERTY

The general spirit of our legislation, the principles adopted by it to determine the rights of writers and artists, and some individual legalizations provide solid grounds for determining the rights of dramatic property.

These are the reasons.

1) There are two views on the basic, fundamental principle of copyright law in Europe: the rights of authors are subsumed either under the category of property or under the category of privilege. The first view was developed and approved by a government commission established in 1861 in Paris, chaired by Walewski, and the second is set out with particular detail in Proudhon’s famous pamphlet: “Majorats litteraires”. Russian legislation, like all European legislation, recognizes and names the rights of authors, artists and musicians to their works - property(Vol. X, Part 1, Art. 420, Note 2, ed. 1857) and establishes the period of use of this property - the longest of all existing ones - 50 years (Art. 283 Census Establishment).

The main quality of legislative wisdom is consistency, for the sake of which the once accepted principle of property for works of art and mental labor must be extended to dramatic works. It is unthinkable to suppose that legislation, considering all works of mind and art to belong to their creators by right of property, would make an exception only for dramatic authors and base the rights of dramatic authors on a privilege that the government may or may not grant.

2) Our legislation has already defined musical property, similar to dramatic property. If - identical with the right of representation - the right to perform operas and oratorios is already recognized for their authors (Article 349 of the Census, const.), then the recognition of dramatic property rights appears as a further inevitable step in the consistent course of Russian legislation.

3) Dramatic art, while its literary side belongs to verbal art, its other side - stage - fits the definition of art in general. Everything that is called stagecraft in a play depends on special artistic considerations that have nothing in common with literary ones. Artistic considerations are based on the so-called knowledge of the scene and external effects, i.e. on purely plastic terms. Thus, dramatic creativity in its nature has a close, analogous resemblance to artistic creativity. If artistic property is already recognized, then dramatic property, as a form of it, deserves recognition.

4) Article 321 of the Censorship Charter defines artistic property: it consists in the fact that the artist, in addition to the right to the thing, also has the exclusive right to “repeat, publish and reproduce his original work in all possible ways characteristic of this or that art." If all artists are granted the exclusive right to reproduce their works in all ways characteristic of their art, then there is no reason to assume that dramatic writers, of the two methods of publication, will be left with only one, unprofitable and unusual for their art. There can be no doubt that the literary method of publishing dramatic works is unprofitable for authors. In a rare provincial city you can find more than one copy of some famous play, while the same play was seen by the entire city in its theater. The author's creation is widespread, but the benefits from its distribution are in the wrong hands.

5) Although dramatic property has not yet been defined by the Censorship Regulations, it is already installed our legislation: Article 2276 of the Penal Code, ed. 1857 (Art. 1684 ed. 1866) prohibits, under penalty of punishment, the public presentation of a dramatic work without the permission of the author. By virtue of this article, all the owners of private theaters now existing must be imprisoned in a straight house if dramatic writers want to persecute them. But since, due to the absence of positive laws on the rights of dramatic property, it is almost impossible for authors to prove and calculate the losses caused to them (although compensation for losses is awarded to them by the same 1684 Art.), and criminal prosecution of theater owners is not only completely useless, but also associated with expenses, then the owners of private theaters remain unpunished violators of the law and property rights. But this order of things should not continue, since it violates the main foundations of civil improvement: respect for the law and the inviolability of other people's property.

These are the grounds that are found in our legislation on which dramatic writers can consider their right of dramatic property already recognized and ready for implementation. To be a valid right with practical application, dramatic property lacks only those positive definitions that exist in the Censorship Regulations for other types of property - for literary, artistic and musical.

The definitions (grounds of ownership, terms of use and order of protection) that are desirable for dramatic property will not constitute anything new in our legislation: they are directly derived from existing laws on artistic property, identical with dramatic property.

The compiler of the note dares to think that the provisions presented below, if possible, satisfy the stated conditions.

DRAFT LEGISLATION ON DRAMATIC PROPERTY

1) Writers and translators of dramatic plays, in addition to the right of literary property to their works (Article 282 Census, const.), also enjoy dramatic property throughout their lives. It consists of the author's right to permit public performances of his works.

This paragraph is drawn up on the basis of Art. 321 Cens. mouth Lifetime use of copyright can hardly be objected to. A working person has the right to be provided for during his old age and illness; and how can he be better and more fairly provided for, if not the fruits of his own labors?

2) Public representations should be those for which, on the basis of Art. 194 XIV volume of the Code of Laws (Charter on the Prevention and Suppression of Crimes), police permission is sought.

3) The right of dramatic property after the death of the author passes to his heirs by law or by will, unless it was transferred by him to someone else during his lifetime.

Art. 323 Cens. mouth

4) The period of use of the right of dramatic property, to whomever this right is transferred, lasts no longer than 50 years from the date of the death of the author or from the date of publication of his posthumous work.

Fairness and appropriateness in the draft of the 3rd and 4th §§, in addition to the analogy in the legislation on artistic property, which is identical in all respects to dramatic property, have more solid and significant foundations.

a) Stage works are short-lived anyway; The repertoire changes almost daily. How many plays remain in the repertoire of the closest authors to us, loved by the public - Kukolnik, Polevoy, Prince Shakhovsky, Zagoskin, Lensky? None. The period of use of dramatic work is already short; a lot if, after the death of a dramatic writer, one or two of his plays survive for another year. Why deprive his heirs of this little thing? Currently, from all of our more than a century of dramatic literature, only two plays remain on stage: “The Inspector General” and “Woe from Wit”; If in the next century there are two or three such plays that can bring benefits to theaters for a long time without losing their value, then justice requires that the theaters share at least some part of their benefits with those heirs for whom the author worked during his lifetime .

b) The consideration that human life is subject to chance and that anyone can suddenly die should significantly reduce the price of dramatic property. Who would want to purchase at a high price and secure for themselves such works that tomorrow could go into free public use?

c) The value of dramatic property, already reduced by the assumption of the accidental death of the writer, will decrease more and more for him, the weaker his health and the closer he moves to old age and, consequently, the more he will need material support. Finally, who will pay at least something for the last labor of a poor, dying worker, when this labor, perhaps, could be taken for nothing tomorrow? Thus, the right of dramatic ownership will remain for life only on paper, but in reality it will no longer die with the owner, but before him. And the older or sicker the author, the earlier his right will die and the more helpless his position will be.

d) In the countries of Western Europe, where dramatic literature is more developed (France, Italy, etc.), dramatic property is hereditary and the period of its use is constantly increasing. When in France the posthumous period for the use of dramatic property was five years, this is what Beaumarchais wrote in his petition to the Legislative Assembly on December 23, 1791:

Toutes les proprietes legitimes se transmettent pures et intactes d"un honime a tous ses descendants. Tous les fruits de son industrie, la terre qu"il a defrichee, les choses qu"il a fabriquees, appartiennent, jusqu"a la vente qu" ils ont toujours le droit d"en faire, a ses heritiers, quels qu"ils soient. Personne ne leur dit jamais; "Le pre, le tableau, la statue, fruit du travail ou du genie, que votre pere vous a laisse, not doit plus vous appartenir, quand vous aurez fauche, ce pre, ou grave ce tableau, ou bien moulu cette statue pendant cinq ans apres sa mort; chacun alors aura le droit d"en profiter autant que vous".

Personne ne leur dit cela. Et pourtant quel defrichement, quelle production emanee du pinceau, du ciseau des homines leur appartient plus exclusivement, quelle production emanee du pinceau, du ciseau des hommes leur appartient plus exclusivement, plus legitimement que l "oeuvre du theater echappee du genie du poete, et lui couta plus de travail?

Cependant, tous leurs descendants conservent leurs proprietes; le malheureux fils d"un auteur perd a la sienne au bout de cinq ans d"une jouissance plus que douteuse, au meme souvent illusoire, - cette tres-courte heredite pouvant etre eludee par les directeurs des spectacles, en laissant reposer les pieces de G auteur qui vient de mourir pendant les cinq ans qui s"ecoulent jusqu"a 1"instant ou les ouvrages, aux termes du premier decret, deviennent leur propriete, il s"ensuivrait que les enfants tres malheureux des gens de lettres, dont la plupart ne laissent de fortune qu"un vain renom et leurs ouvrages, se verraient tous exheredes par la severite des lois*.

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* All legal property passes intact and intact from a person to all his descendants. All the fruits of his activity - the land he plowed, the things he produced - belong to his heirs, whoever they are, who always have the right to sell them. No one will ever tell them: “The meadow, the picture, the statue, the fruit of labor or inspiration left to you by your father, should no longer belong to you, after you have mowed this meadow, engraved this picture or cast this statue in the course of five years after his death; after this period, everyone will have the right to use them in the same way as you.” 6) No original or translated dramatic work, even if it has already been published or performed, can be publicly presented without the permission of the author or translator.
Nobody will tell them this. And yet, why should arable land or a work of brush or chisel constitute a more exclusive and more legitimate property of people than a theatrical work produced by the genius of a poet, did they cost them more labor?
However, all their heirs retain their right of ownership, and the ill-fated son of the poet is deprived of his right after five years of use of it - use that is more than dubious and even often imaginary, since theater owners can bypass this very short-term right of inheritance by not putting on the stage plays of a deceased writer for five years, after which these works, by virtue of the first decree, become common property. As a result, the ill-fated children of writers, who in most cases leave behind only barren fame and their writings, find themselves completely deprived of their inheritance due to the cruelty of the laws.

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As a result of this petition, the five-year period was extended for another five years. But the French did not stop there: the government commission, chaired by State Minister Walewski, completed in April 1863 a project on literary and artistic property: in this project the Commission was not content with even a 50-year term (“Commision de la propriete litte-raire et artistique", Paris, 1863).

The commission, proud of its work, writes in its report: "Quand des actes semblables ont pris place dans la legislation d"un pays, ils doivent at rester pour la gloire du souve-rain qui les a introduits, pour l"honneur de la nation Qui a su les comprendre et aussi pour servir d"exemple et d"enseig-nement"*.

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* When such decrees have entered the legislation of the country, they should remain therein, to the glory of the monarch who legitimized them, to the honor of the petition, which knew how to evaluate them, and also in order to serve as an example and instruction. (Translation is given from Morozov’s copy.)

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5) The right of dramatic ownership of works can be sold or assigned by the author during his lifetime; in this case, it completely passes to the acquirer and his legal heirs. The transfer of dramatic property rights is carried out in compliance with all formalities established by law for such transactions.

Art. 325 Cens. mouth

The fact that the authors did not prosecute the violators of dramatic law within a two-year period (Article 317 of the Census, const.) does not at all mean that the authors renounce their right. Failure to prosecute within a two-year period only frees the person who made predatory use of someone else's property from trial and its consequences, but does not in any way transfer to him the right to repeat his offense. Otherwise, you can come to such an absurdity that by breaking the law you can acquire any right. The inviolability of dramatic property was established by the law of 1857, and everything written after 1857 must belong to the authors. It is enough for the theater owners to have the mercy that they are not persecuted.

Such a provision in the Charter on dramatic property is absolutely necessary for the following reasons:

a) Private theaters are scattered throughout Russia; Authors living primarily in the capitals cannot have any information about what plays are performed in Yekaterinburg, Buzuluk, Sterlitamak, Staraya Russa, Kremenchug. Maintaining agents in all cities of Russia will present more costs to authors than benefits.

b) Distance from the capitals and weak supervision can serve as a temptation for the owners of private theaters and involve them in an offense for which, if persecuted, they will have to pay very dearly and also be imprisoned in a straight house. The concept of the crime of counterfeiting is not yet clear enough in our provinces; Without warning from the police, a large number of cases of violation of copyright property rights can be expected at first, which is not at all desirable due to the severity of the punishment.

c) The prevention of offenses and crimes for which the law threatens severe punishment is one of the main duties of the police power.

8) For the unauthorized performance in front of the public of a dramatic work that belongs to anyone with the rights of dramatic property, those guilty, beyond liability on the basis of Art. 1684 Lay. about nak., are subject, in favor of the one whose right is violated, to the collection of double payment for all seats in the theater in which the said performance took place. In clubs and meetings, the price for all seats in theater halls is determined by the entrance fee charged to guests on the days of performances - and in no case less than 1 silver ruble.

Art. 351 Cens. mouth imposes for the unauthorized performance of an opera or oratorio before the public the penalty of “double the fee” received for the performance in which such a play was performed; but this amount of collection is inconvenient: 1) calculating the collection from any performance, especially after some time, given the lack of control of our theaters, presents insurmountable difficulties; 2) there is some inconsistency in this amount of the penalty. Unauthorized performance of someone else's work before the public is counterfeiting; for all types of counterfeiting the criminal penalties are the same; Monetary penalties should also be the same. For counterfeit printing of someone else's book, the counterfeiter pays for all copies, both sold and unsold by him; and for a counterfeit performance of someone else's play, the counterfeiter is ordered to pay only for the seats in the theater that were sold?

Art. 351 Cens. mouth would be completely inapplicable to performances given in clubs and meetings: members and seasonal visitors, having paid a lump sum for their annual or seasonal ticket, pay nothing for admission to performances; therefore, the more members a club has, i.e. the richer he is, the less, in case of collection, he will pay for copyright infringement, since with a large number of members, guests paying for admission to the performance, the most limited number can be admitted, and the fee for the performance will be negligible. Meanwhile, the harm from a counterfeit performance of someone else’s play depends not on the price of seats, but on the number of visitors. Thus, free counterfeiting is much more unprofitable for authors than expensive ones. In the latter case it will be available to a few, and in the former to the entire public. For clubs, completely free performances are also not without benefit: the public, attracted by a free performance, covers the club's expenses for the performance with increased demands for food, wine, cards, etc. Recently, club performances in the capitals have begun to bring very noticeable harm to the authors, reducing the number of performances of a famous play and the very fees from it in the imperial theaters, from which the authors receive remuneration: who would want to pay for a place in the theater if, as a member, he can see the same play in a club for nothing? If a play, based on its merits, can bring in ten fees at the imperial theater, then it will now only earn no more than five, and the remaining five are lost to the author: they take place in clubs from which the authors receive nothing. Dramatic writers have long expected the government to take action to stop such brazen violation of their property rights.

9) Cases of violation of dramatic property rights are carried out, in civil and criminal proceedings, on the basis of laws established to protect copyright property rights, Art. 319 - 320 Cens. mouth and Art. 217 Est. citizen legal proceedings.

10) Permission for the public presentation of dramatic works is given by their authors or translators or by persons who have dramatic property rights to them, with a precise designation of the person to whom the permission is given and the time of use of that permission.

Note. With permission to publicly present a play, no other rights are transferred from the author to the person to whom permission is given, except for the right of personal use under the conditions specified in the permission. Permission given to one person does not deprive the author of the right to authorize the performance of the same play by other persons.

11) Translations and adaptations of foreign plays, after their publication through the press, come into general use. In the same way, translations and adaptations come into general use in the event that the theater that has them for exclusive use renounces its right, allowing them to be presented by some other theater.

Translations and adaptations do not require any special work or abilities, and therefore cannot claim any other remuneration other than the ordinary literary fee for such work.

OBJECTIONS TO THE RIGHT OF DRAMATIC PROPERTY

Discussions about dramatic property are not new in our society and literature; Some of the statements of dramatic writers have already met with objections, strong and energetic in tone, but hardly so in practice. Here are the main objections:

1) Dramatic writers are sufficiently rewarded for their labors with payments from the imperial theaters, and their further claims testify only to their greed.

Firstly, in this objection, even if we admit the validity of its first position, the mistake is that the legal issue is being analyzed from a moral point of view. Moral teachings about human vanity and self-interest have force only in general and abstract judgments about virtue; but in cases based on property rights and obligations, they are at least inappropriate. No matter how much the debtor lavishes moral maxims on creditors, such as “he is not poor who has little, but he who desires a lot” and “he is not happy who has a lot, but he who is satisfied with little,” they they will not be satisfied and their claims will still remain claims requiring material satisfaction.

Secondly, in this objection, in addition to logical inconsistency, there is untruth. The remuneration given by the imperial theaters to dramatic authors cannot be called sufficient; on the contrary, it is very insufficient, almost insignificant. The highest approved regulation on the remuneration of authors and translators for plays has existed without change since November 13, 1827; Now, after 42 years, not only royalties for works of art, but also prices for all work in general have risen significantly, and only authors of dramatic plays are forced to work at the 1827 rate. Almost everywhere, for a play that has already been published, constituting an entire performance, the minimum remuneration is 10% of the proceeds, and for handwritten ones it is much more significant; In our country, only for plays in verse, in 5 or 4 acts, the author receives 10%, and that is not from the full collection, but from two-thirds; and for five-act comedies and dramas in prose, printed and unprinted, - a fifteenth share of two thirds, i.e. only 4 4/9% of the full collection. Not to mention France, where an author with two or three plays can create a secure position for himself; in Italy, according to the latest copyright legislation (1862), a dramatic writer can receive up to 15% of the total gross in capital theaters for 5 acts of comedy in prose and , in addition, 10% from provincial theaters; and in Italy, as many cities, there are almost as many theaters. We advise the author not to be self-interested and to be content with only four and a little percent from two theaters in all of Russia!

The four percent fee, although in no way representing remuneration for work, could be for the authors at least something like help or material support in the event that the capital's theaters, taking advantage of their monopoly, wanted to expand the range of their activities to the limits indicated by need ; but this is not the case either.

Until the spring of 1853, the large Petrovsky Theater existed in Moscow for dramatic performances - and it was too small for the entire Moscow public; since that time, with the gradual development of a class of medium and small traders and officials, the Moscow public has more than doubled; In addition, several railways deliver non-resident audiences to Moscow every morning from 14 or 15 provinces, for whom one of the main conditions of a trip to Moscow is to visit the theater. What? Now - two or three large Russian drama theaters? No: Russian performances have been transferred to the Maly Theater, which is half the size of the Bolshoi. In Moscow, the average public, Moscow and non-Moscow, has absolutely nowhere to go: for it there is neither the theater, which it rushes to, nor other pleasures; only taverns remain. Meanwhile, for the average public the theater is more necessary than for any other: it is just beginning to wean itself from home and tavern drinking bouts, it is just beginning to get a taste for the pleasures of grace, and there is no place for it in the theater. This audience will not go to the armchairs in vain, embarrassed by their costume and their manners; she needs coupons - and there are only 54 of them in all of Moscow, and besides, the price for them, due to the increased demand for tickets, has become equal in the hands of the dealers to the price of seats in the first rows. The profiteering speculation, inevitable where demand greatly exceeds supply, significantly raised prices for places and made them inaccessible to people, although educated, but insufficient, to which the majority of student youth and young officials belong; For the trading class, high prices would not hurt, but there are no places, even expensive ones. Many families in Moscow have given up even any attempts to be in the theater: what is the probability of getting a ticket when ten applicants appear at the box office for each seat? Leaving aside the question: should an aesthetic, noble pastime be made expensive and an inaccessible rarity, let us turn to another: with a low percentage and with such a mode of action of state-owned theaters, how much will a dramatic author receive for his work?

The privileged theater does not want to take the money that is offered to it, with which the public flocks to it; from this, the authors receive less than half of what they could receive in the capitals, even with the meager remuneration that currently exists. So, what is sufficient turns out to be insufficient and a lot - very little.

But, firstly, poverty is not an indispensable condition for entrepreneurialism; Today a poor entrepreneur runs a theater, but tomorrow a rich entrepreneur can take over the same theater. Secondly, there is no reason to assume that dramatic authors are richer than entrepreneurs and therefore must support them with their labor. Thirdly, this forced tax on dramatic authors for the benefit of the poor is too great: according to the most moderate calculation, it amounts to more than half of all the income that the author receives from his work. Fourthly, it is hardly fair to deprive dramatic authors of the opportunity to do a good deed, i.e. the opportunity to donate your work to a truly poor person. Fifthly, not all entrepreneurs can be called poor: most of them have the means to pay useful actors 100 rubles. per month and a benefit performance in the winter, and the best actors - up to 200 rubles. per month and up to 4 benefit performances per year. The best metropolitan actors in the provinces were usually offered 1000 rubles. for 10 performances and a benefit performance, guaranteed at 1000 rubles, and now they offer even better conditions. People who have the opportunity to make such expenses cannot be called poor. A smart entrepreneur has only to sacrifice one performance per season in favor of the authors, and he will be out of debt with them for a whole year of using their plays. Even if it were necessary to devote even two performances to the benefit of the authors, this would amount to almost no damage to the entrepreneurs.

The remark about the poverty of provincial cities, on which the author's payment would supposedly fall as an extra tax, does not even deserve a refutation. If a city is very poor, then no one will open a theater in it without royalties; If the theater exists, but the fees are so small that they are only enough to feed the owner, then the author’s share will be so insignificant that no one will be flattered by it. In general, the authors have no intention of ruining the development of theatrical art in Russia; on the contrary, they will have to try by all means to strengthen and support it as a source of their own income. And why assume that dramatic authors, wanting recognition of their rights, certainly count on provincial theaters?

Finally, the last objection:

If it’s difficult, then it’s still possible; Now, if it were impossible, then there is nothing to say. In any case, in this objection there is a lot of unnecessary concern for dramatic authors; perhaps they will not be afraid to work in order to get what they deserve. While the right to receive has not yet been exercised, it is difficult to judge whether the receipt itself will be difficult or not difficult; this will prove to be the case in practice. Maybe it will be easy. Of course, if each dramatic author wants to conduct his business with entrepreneurs separately from others, then their mutual relations will be difficult; but if dramatic writers form a society and elect from among themselves representatives who will be given the authority, on behalf of the whole society, to enter into relations with the owners of private theaters, enter into terms with them, monitor their implementation and pursue violators of the right of dramatic property, then the whole matter will be greatly simplified.

Ostrovsky Alexander Nikolaevich (1823-1886) - an outstanding Russian playwright, corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

In general, drama refers to works that are intended to be staged. They differ from narrative ones in that the presence of the author is practically not felt and they are built on dialogue.

Genres of literature by content

Any is a historically established and developed type. It's called a genre (from the French genre- genus, species). In relation to the different ones, four main ones can be named: lyrical and lyroepic, as well as epic and dramatic.

• The first, as a rule, includes poetic works of the so-called small forms: poems, elegies, sonnets, songs, etc.
• The lyric epic genre includes ballads and poems, i.e. large forms.
• Narrative examples (from the essay to the novel) are examples of epic works.
• The dramatic genre is represented by tragedy, drama and comedy.

Comedy in Russian literature, and not only in Russian literature, was quite actively developed already in the 18th century. True, it was considered of lower origin compared to epic and tragedy.

Comedy as a literary genre

A work of this type is a type of drama where some characters or situations are presented in a funny or grotesque form. As a rule, it exposes something with the help of laughter, humor, and often satire, be it human vices or some unsightly aspects of life.

Comedy in literature is the opposition to tragedy, at the center of which there is certainly an insoluble conflict. And its noble and sublime hero must make a fatal choice, sometimes at the cost of his life. In comedy, the opposite is true: the character is absurd and funny, and the situations in which he finds himself are no less absurd. This distinction arose in antiquity.

Later, in the era of classicism, it was preserved. The heroes were portrayed according to moral principles as kings and burghers. But nevertheless, comedy in literature set itself such a goal - to educate, ridiculing shortcomings. The definition of its main features was given by Aristotle. He proceeded from the fact that people are either bad or good, differ from each other either in vice or virtue, therefore the worst should be portrayed in comedy. And tragedy is designed to show those who are better than those existing in real life.

Types of comedies in literature

The cheerful dramatic genre, in turn, has several types. Comedy in literature is also vaudeville and farce. And according to the nature of the image, it can also be divided into several types: comedy of situations and comedy of manners.

Vaudeville, being a genre variety of this dramatic type, is a light stage performance with entertaining intrigue. In it, a large place is devoted to singing couplets and dancing.

The farce also has a light, playful character. His progress is accompanied by external comic effects, often to please crude taste.

A sitcom is distinguished by its construction on external comedy, on effects, where the source of laughter is confusing or ambiguous circumstances and situations. The most striking examples of such works are “The Comedy of Errors” by W. Shakespeare and “The Marriage of Figaro” by P. Beaumarchais.

A dramatic work in which the source of humor is funny morals or some exaggerated characters, shortcomings, vices can be classified as a comedy of manners. Classic examples of such a play are “Tartuffe” by J.-B. Moliere, “The Taming of the Shrew” by W. Shakespeare.

Examples of comedy in literature

This genre is inherent in all areas of fine literature, from Antiquity to modernity. Russian comedy has received special development. In literature, these are classic works created by D.I. Fonvizin (“Minor”, ​​“Brigadier”), A.S. Griboedov (“Woe from Wit”), N.V. Gogol (“Players”, “The Inspector General”, “Marriage”). It is worth noting that his plays, regardless of the amount of humor and even dramatic plot, and A.P. Chekhov was called a comedy.

The last century was marked by classic comedy plays created by V.V. Mayakovsky, “The Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”. They can be called examples of social satire.

A very popular comedian in the 1920-1930s was V. Shkvarkin. His plays “The Harmful Element” and “Someone else’s Child” were readily staged in various theaters.

Conclusion

The classification of comedies based on the typology of the plot is also quite widespread. We can say that comedy in literature is a multivariate type of dramaturgy.

So, according to this type, the following plot characters can be distinguished:

• domestic comedy. As an example, Moliere’s “Georges Dandin”, “Marriage” by N.V. Gogol;
• romantic (P. Calderon “In My Own Custody”, A. Arbuzov “Old-Fashioned Comedy”);
• heroic (E. Rostand “Cyrano de Bergerac”, G. Gorin “Til”);
• fairy-tale-symbolic, such as “Twelfth Night” by W. Shakespeare or “The Shadow” by E. Schwartz.

At all times, comedy’s attention has been drawn to everyday life and some of its negative manifestations. Laughter was called upon to fight them, depending on the situation, cheerful or merciless.