The Project Gutenberg EBook of The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume
I. No. 8, by Various

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Title: The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8
Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850

Author: Various

Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #13796]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY MISCELLANY

Of Literature, Art, and Science.

* * * * *

Vol. I. NEW YORK, AUGUST 19, 1850. No. 8.

* * * * *

THE THEATER IN RUSSIA AND POLAND.

The following interesting sketch of the Drama in the empire of
the Czar is translated for the _International_ from the Leipzig
_Grenzboten_. The facts it states are not only new to most readers,
but throw incidentally a good deal of light on the condition of that
vast empire, and the state of its population in respect of literature
and art in general:

* * * * *

The dramatic taste of a people, the strength of its productive
faculty, the gradual development of its most popular sphere of art,
the theater, contain the key to phases of its character which cannot
always be recognized with the same exactness from other parts of its
history. The tendencies and disposition of the mass come out very
plainly in their relations to dramatic art, and from the audience of
an evening at a theater some inference may be drawn as to the whole
political scope of the nation. In truth, however, this requires
penetration as well as cautious judgment.

In the middle of the last century there were in the kingdom of Poland,
beside the royal art institutions at Warsaw, four strong dramatic
companies, of genuine Polish stamp, which gave performances in the
most fashionable cities. Two of them were so excellent that they
often had the honor to play before the court. The peculiarity of these
companies was that they never performed foreign works, but literally
only their own. The managers were either th