No More Learning

GENDARME: The inspector-general sent by imperial command has
arrived, and requires you to attend him immediately. He awaits you at
the inn.

[_Thunderstruck at this announcement, the whole group
remained as if petrified, and the curtain falls_.


FOOTNOTES:

[C] Nicolai Vasilieyitch Gogol is famous not only as the
prince of Russian humorists, but as the real founder of both the
modern drama and the novel in Russian literature. He was born on
March 31, 1809, in the province of Poltava, in South, or "Little,"
Russia, and died at Moscow on March 3, 1852. His life was replete
with romantic episodes. After a short career on the stage, in St.
Petersburg, followed by the tenure of a minor Government office, he
returned to the South, and at once found his true vocation and achieved
a wide popularity by a collection of stories and sketches of Cossack
life, entitled "Evenings at a Farm House," which appeared in 1830.
Other "Cossack Tales" rapidly followed, including the famous "Taras
Bulba"; in recognition of which, and of his project for writing a
history of Russia in the Middle Ages, he was rewarded with a chair of
history at St. Petersburg. This he held but for a short time, however.
Turning his attention to comedy, Gogol now produced the drama "The
Inspector-General" ("Revizor") in 1836, the play achieving a tremendous
success on the stage in the spring of the same year, whilst in 1842 his
novel entitled "Dead Souls" embodied the fruits of the same idea in
fiction. The play is intended to bring a scathing indictment against
the corruptions and abuses of officialism and administration. The
following epitome has been prepared from the original Russian.




OLIVER GOLDSMITH[D]




She Stoops to Conquer


_Persons in the Play_

MR.
HARDCASTLE MARLOW

TONY LUMPKIN KATE HARDCASTLE

HASTINGS SIR CHARLES MARLOW

MRS. HARDCASTLE CONSTANCE NEVILLE

SERVANTS


ACT I

SCENE I. --MR. HARDCASTLE'S _house_. MR. _and_ MRS. HARDCASTLE.

MRS. HARDCASTLE: I vow, Mr. Hardcastle, I hate such old-fashioned
trumpery.

HARDCASTLE: And I love it; old friends, old times, old manners, old
books, old wine, and I believe you'll own I've been pretty fond of an
old wife.

MRS. HARDCASTLE: Oh, you're for ever at your old wife. I'm not so old
as you'd make me. I was twenty when my son Tony was born, and he's not
come to years of discretion yet.

HARDCASTLE: Nor ever will, I dare answer; you've taught him finely.