A PROTEGEE OF THE MISTRESS
A monologue from the
play by Alexander
Ostrovsky
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Plays of Alexander Ostrovsky. Ed. George Rapall Noyes.
New York: Scribners, 1917. |
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POTAPYCH: Girls? There are some on the estate, and
among the house servants; only it must be said that in these
matters the household is very strictly run. Our mistress, owing
to her strict life and her piety, looks after that very carefully.
Now just take this: she herself marries off the protégées
and housemaids whom she likes. If a man pleases her, she marries
the girl off to him, and even gives her a dowry, not a big one--needless
to say. There are always two or three protégées
on the place. The mistress takes a little girl from some one
or other and brings her up; and when she is seventeen or eighteen
years old, then, without any talk, she marries her off to some
clerk or townsman, just as she takes a notion, and sometimes
even to a nobleman. Ah, yes, sir! Only what an existence for
these protégées, sir! Misery! The lady says: "I
have found you a prospective husband, and now," she says,
"the wedding will be on such and such a day, and that's
an end to it; and don't one of you dare to argue about it!"
It's a case of get along with you to the man you're told to.
Because, sir, I reason this way: who wants to see disobedience
in a person he's brought up? And sometimes it happens that the
bride doesn't like the groom, nor the groom the bride: then the
lady falls into a great rage. She even goes out of her head.
She took a notion to marry one protégée to a petty
shopkeeper in town; but he, an unpolished individual, was going
to resist. "The bride doesn't please me," he said,
"and, besides, I don't want to get married yet." So
the mistress complained at once to the town bailiff and to the
priest: well, they brought the blockhead around.
MORE MONOLOGUES BY ALEXANDER OSTROVSKY |
