For the television drama of the same name, see The Government Inspector (television drama).
The Government Inspector
, also known as The Inspector General
(Russian: ??????? or Revizor
or in German Der Revisor
), is a satirical play by the Russian playwright and novelist Nikolai Gogol, published in 1836 and revised for the 1842 edition. Based upon an anecdote allegedly recounted to Gogol by Pushkin [1], the play is a comedy of errors, portraying human greed, stupidity, and the deep corruption of powers in Tsarist Russia.
According to D.S. Mirsky, the play "is not only supreme in character and dialogue — it is one of the few Russian plays constructed with unerring art from beginning to end. The great originality of its plan consisted in the absence of all love interest and of sympathetic characters. The latter feature was deeply resented by Gogol's enemies, and as a satire the play gained immensely from it. There is not a wrong word or intonation from beginning to end, and the comic tension is of a quality that even Gogol did not always have at his beck and call." [2]
The dream-like scenes of the play, often mirroring each other, whirl in the endless vertigo of self-deception around the main character, Khlestakov, who personifies irresponsibility, light-mindedness, absence of measure. "He is full of meaningless movement and meaningless fermentation incarnate, on a foundation of placidly ambitious inferiority" (D.S. Mirsky). The publication of the play led to a great outcry in the reactionary press. It took the personal intervention of Tsar Nicholas I to have the play staged, with Mikhail Shchepkin taking the role of the Mayor.
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THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR TICKETS
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Background
Early in his career Gogol was famous for his short stories, which earned him the admiration of the Russian literary circle, including Alexander Pushkin. After establishing a reputation, Gogol began working on several plays. His first attempt to write a satirical play about
imperial bureaucracy in 1832 was abandoned out of fear of
censorship. In 1835, he sought inspiration for a new satirical play from Pushkin.
Do me a favor; send me some subject, comical or not, but an authentically Russian anecdote. My hand is itching to write a comedy... Give me a subject and I'll knock off a comedy in five acts — I promise, funnier than hell. For God's sake, do it. My mind and stomach are both famished.
—Letter from Gogol to Pushkin, October 7, 1835
Pushkin had a storied background and was once mistaken for a government inspector in 1833. His notes alluded to an anecdote distinctly similar to what would become the basic story elements for
Revizor
.
Krispin arrives in the Province ... to a fair - he is taken for [illegible] ... . The governor is an honest fool - the governor's wife flirts with him - Krispin woos the daughter.
—Pushkin, Full collected works
, volume 8, book 1
Plot summary
The corrupt officials of a small Russian town, headed by the Mayor, react with terror to the news that an
incognito inspector (the
revizor
) will soon be arriving in their town to investigate them. The flurry of activity to cover up their considerable misdeeds is interrupted by the report that a suspicious person has arrived two weeks previously from
Saint Petersburg and is staying at the inn. That person, however, is not an inspector; it is
Khlestakov
, a foppish civil servant with a wild imagination.
Having learned that Khlestakov has been charging his considerable hotel bill to the Crown, the Mayor and his crooked cronies are immediately certain that this upper class twit is the dreaded inspector. For quite some time, however, Khlestakov does not even realize that he has been mistaken for someone else. Meanwhile, he enjoys the officials' terrified deference and moves in as a guest in the Mayor's house. He also demands and receives massive "loans" from the Mayor and all of his associates. He also flirts outrageously with the Mayor's wife and daughter.
Sick and tired of the Mayor's outrageous demands for bribes, the village's
Jewish and
Old Believer merchants arrive, begging Khlestakov to have him dismissed from his post. Stunned at the Mayor's rapacious corruption, Khlestakov states that he deserves to be exiled in chains to
Siberia. Then, however, he pockets still more "loans" from the merchants, promising to comply with their request.
Terrified that he is now undone, the Mayor pleads with Khlestakov not to have him arrested, only to learn that the latter has become engaged to his daughter. Khlestakov, however, announces that he is returing to St. Petersburg, having been persuaded by his
valet that it is too dangerous to continue the charade any longer.
After Khlestakov and his valet depart on a coach driven by the village's fastest horses, the Mayor's friends all arrive to congratulate him. Certain that he now has the upper hand, he summons the merchants, boasting of his daughter's engagement and vowing to squeeze them for every
kopeck they are worth. However, the Postmaster suddenly arrives carrying an intercepted letter which reveales Khlestakov's true identity and mocking opinion of them all.
The Mayor, after years of bamboozling Governors and shaking down criminals of every description, is enraged to have been thus humiliated. He screams at his cronies, stating that they, not himself, are to blame. While they continue arguing, a message arrives from the
real
Government Inspector, who is demanding to see the Mayor immediately.
Meyerhold's interpretation
In
1926, the expressionistic production of the comedy by
Vsevolod Meyerhold "returned to this play its true surrealistic, dreamlike essence after a century of simplistically reducing it to mere photographic realism".
[3] Erast Garin interpreted Khlestakov as "an infernal, mysterious personage capable of constantly changing his appearance".
[4] Leonid Grossman recalls that Garin's Khlestakov was "a character from
Hoffmann's tale, slender, clad in black with a stiff mannered gait, strange spectacles, a sinister old-fashioned tall hat, a rug and a cane, apparently tormented by some private vision".
Meyerhold wrote about the play: "What is most amazing about
The Government Inspector
is that although it contains all the elements of... plays written before it, although it was constructed according to various established dramatic premises, there can be no doubt — at least for me — that far from being the culmination of a tradition, it is the start of a new one. Although Gogol employs a number of familiar devices in the play, we suddenly realize that his treatment of them is new... The question arises of the nature of Gogol's comedy, which I would venture to describe as not so much "comedy of the absurd" but rather as "comedy of the absurd situation".
[5]
In the finale of Meyerhold's production, the actors were replaced with dolls, a device that
Andrei Bely compared to the stroke "of the double Cretan ax that chops off heads", but entirely justified as in this case "the archaic, coarse
grotesque is more subtle than subtle".
[6]
Other adaptations
The play was repeatedly filmed in the Soviet Union and Russia, first in 1977
[7] by
Leonid Gaidai under the title
Incognito from Petersburg
and most recently in 1996 with
Nikita Mikhalkov playing the Mayor. Neither adaptation was deemed a critical or box-office success.
The first film based on the play was actually made in
German, by
Gustaf Gründgens in 1932; the German title was
Eine Stadt steht Kopf
, or
A City Stands on Its Head
.
In 1949, a Hollywood
musical comedy version was released, starring
Danny Kaye. The film bears only passing resemblance to the original play. Kaye's version sets the story in Napolean's empire, instead of Russia, and the main character presented to be the ersatz IG is not a haughty young government bureaucrat, but a down-and-out illiterate, run out of a Gypsie's travelling medicine show for not being greedy and deceptive enough. This effectively destroys much of the foundation of Gogol's work by changing the relationship between the false Inspector General and members of the town's upper class.
In 1958 the comedian
Tony Hancock appeared in a live TV version on BBC Television in the part of Khlestakov, one of his only performances outside situation comedy. This was recorded at the time on movie film but has not been made available for public showing.
In
Italy, in
1962 Luigi Zampa directed the film
Anni ruggenti
(starring
Nino Manfredi), a free adaptation of the play, in which the story is transposed to a small town of South Italy, during the years of
Fascism.
In México, in 1974 Alfonso Arau directed and co-wrote an adaptation in film called
Calzonzin Inspector
, using the political cartoonist/writer
Rius's characters.
In the Netherlands, a movie version was released in 1982,
De Boezemvriend
(The Bosomfriend) starring
André van Duin. This was a musical comedy, in which an initerant dentist in the French-occupied Netherlands is taken for a French tax inspector.
In 1992, Tony-winning Broadway director Daniel Sullivan collaborated with the Seattle Repertory Company to write the Gogol-inspired "Inspecting Carol", which the Western Washington Center for the Arts describes as "A Christmas Carol meets Noises Off meets Waiting for Guffman. A man auditioning at a small theatre is mistaken for an informer for the National Endowment for the Arts. As the cast and crew cater to his every whim, they also turn the traditional tale of A Christmas Carol on its head."
The children's TV show
Wishbone adapted the story for an episode.
In 2005, playwright
David Farr wrote and directed a "freely adapted" version for London's National Theatre called "The UN Inspector," which transposed the action to a modern-day ex-Soviet republic.
In 2006,
Greene Shoots Theatre performed an ensemble-style adaptation at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Directed by Steph Kirton, the acting used physical theatre, mime and chorus work which under-pinned the physical comedy. The application of Commedia dell'Arte-style characterisation also heightened the grotesque as well as sharpening the satire.
In 2007, the integrated group of the Nottingham Youth Theatre presented a comedy version, in which there were modern songs, and the setting was Snottinggrad, a fictional Russian town. The show was revived for one night in May 2008.
In 2008,
Jeffrey Hatcher adapted the play for a summer run at the
Guthrie Theater in
Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A slightly revised version of that adaptation plays at
Milwaukee Repertory Theater in September 2009.
Operatic Versions
Karel Weis(s) (1862–1944):
Der Revisor
, 1907; probably an operetta.
Eugene (Jeno) Zádor (1894–1977): His
The Inspector General
was originally performed 1928; revised version first performed on
11 June 1971 by the Westcoast Opera Company at
El Camino College in Los Angeles.
Amilcare Zanella (1873–1949): His
Il Revisore
premiered in Trieste on
20 February 1940.
Werner Egk (1901–1983): His
Der Revisor
was first performed at the
Schwetzingen Festival in 1957.
Krešimir Fribec (1908–1996): His
Dolazi revisor
was completed in 1965.
Giselher Klebe (1925–):
Chlestakows Wiederkehr
was first performed at the
Landestheater Detmold
in 2008.
Also: Incidental Music by Mikhail Gnesin (1882–1957).
The play has been translated into all European languages and remains popular, inasmuch as it deals with the hypocrisies of everyday life along with the corruption perpetrated by the rich and privileged. In the Netherlands, for instance,
André van Duin made his own Dutch version of the play called
De Boezemvriend
(meaning "bosom friend", "best buddy"); it is set in the Netherlands during the Napoleonic era.
In
Marathi,
P. L. Deshpande adapted this play as "
Ammaldar
" (literally 'the Government Inspector') in the late 1950s, skillfully cladding it with all indigenous politico-cultural robe of
Maharashtra, while maintaining the comic satire of the original.
See also
The following plays utilize a
dramaturgical structure similar to
The Government Inspector
:
- Carl Zuckmayer's The Captain of Köpenick
(1931)
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt's The Visit
(1956)
References
- Notes for the Theater of Nikolay Gogol
- D.S. Mirsky. ''A History of Russian Literature''. Northwestern University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8101-1679-0. Page 161. (Public Domain).
- Karlinsky, Simon. ''Anton Chekhov's Life and Thought''. Northwestern University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8101-1460-7. Page 370.
- Listengarten, Julia. ''Russian Tragifarce: Its Cultural and Political Roots''. Susquehanna University Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57591-033-0. Page 37.
- Ibidem. Page 27.
- Fusso, Susanne. Essays on Gogol: Logos and the Russian Word. Northwestern University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-8101-1191-8. Page 55.
- Sovscope 70