turer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the
touchstone by which Ostrovsky tries character, and this may be hidden
beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior. The scapegrace, Lyubim
Tortsov, has a sound Russian soul, and at the end of the play rouses his
hard, grasping brother, who has been infatuated by a passion for aping
foreign fashions, to his native Russian worth.

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

The master grim, the lowly serf that tills his lands;
With lordly pride the first sends forth commands,
The second cringes like a slave.
--_Nekrasov._

Despite the unvarying success of his dramas on the stage, Ostrovsky for a
long time derived little financial benefit from them. Discouragement and
overwork wrecked his health, and were undoubtedly responsible for the
gloomy tone of a series of plays written in the years following 1860, of
which "Sin and Sorrow Are Common to All" (1863) is a typical example. Here
the dramatist sketches a tragic incident arising from the conflict of two
social classes, the petty tradesmen and the nobility. From the coarse
environment of the first emerge honest, upright natures like Krasnov; from
the superficial, dawdling culture of the second come weak-willed triflers
like Babayev. The sordid plot sweeps on to its inevitable conclusion with
true tragic force.

Towards the end of his life Ostrovsky gained the material prosperity that
was his due. "There was no theatre in Russia in which his plays were not
acted" (Skabichevsky). From 1874 to his death he was the president of the
Society of Russian Dramatic Authors. In 1885 he received the important
post of artistic director of the Moscow government theatres; the harassing
duties of the position proved too severe for his weak constitution, and