The Inspector-general - A Comedy in Five Acts

The Government Inspector, also known as The Inspector General, 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, the play is a comedy of errors, portraying human greed, stupidity, and the deep corruption of powers in Tsarist Russia.<br/><br/>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 tensity is of a quality that even Gogol did not always have at his beck and call."<br/><br/>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 impersonates the irresponsibility, the light-mindedness, the 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 interference of Tsar Nicholas I to have the play staged, with Mikhail Shchepkin taking the role of the Mayor.<br/>(Quote from wikipedia.org)<br/><br/><br/>About the Author<br/><br/>Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (1809 - 1852)<br/>Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol (April 1, 1809 - March 4, 1852) was a Ukrainian writer of Ukrainian ethnicity and birth. Nikolai Gogol was one of the first Ukrainian authors to criticize his