The players (Gogol)

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The Players , also The Big Fraud ( Russian Игроки , Igroki ), is a comedy by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol , which was published in 1842 and premiered on February 5, 1843 in Moscow's Maly Theater with Mikhail Shchepkin as Uteschitelnyj and Prow Sadovsky as Samuchryschkin.

action

In the Russian provinces the player Icharew stays in a pub, asks the waiter about the guests and learns that the players Uteschitelnyj, Schwochnew and Krugel, a colonel of German descent, have stayed.

Three weeks before this conversation with the waiter, the cardsharger Icharev relieved a senior officer for 80,000 rubles. Icharew befriends the three other players and shows them his card art, the game Adelaida Ivanovna , as he calls it. The “colleagues” from the guild are impressed. Icharew recognizes every card in the hands of his opponents on the back of the decks of cards he carries in his suitcase. The astonished other cardsharps find a useful partner. The only thing missing for the four fraudsters is one wealthy victim to be duped. That is found in the aged landowner Michal Glow. He pledged his property for 200,000 rubles . The office does not hurry to pay out the cash. The experienced Glow doesn't play along, but leaves and authorizes his 22-year-old son Alexander, a budding hussar , to continue the business on site. The four of them take 200,000 rubles from Alexander Glow in one go. Since Alexander is insolvent, he issues a bill of exchange . How can the cash be obtained? Uteschitelnyj bribes the officer Samukhryshkin. Uteschitelnyj, Schwochnew and Krugel pretend an urgent deal in Nizhny and leave Icharev to Alexander Glow's bills of exchange for 80,000 rubles in cash.

When the three of them left and Icharew wanted to collect the 200,000 rubles in gambling debts, Alexander Glow put him in the picture. Michal Glow's real name is Ivan Krynitsyn and is a member of a gang of cheats that includes Uteschitelnyj, Schwochnew, Krugel and Alexander Glow. The officer Samuchryschkin also belongs to the gang and is called Mursafeikin. Icharew wants to sue. Going to court is not possible, he is informed, because Icharew and the three departed people played wrongly against him. The loser sums it up soberly: "... next to you there is always a crook who is still cheating on you."

Adaptations

Movie

Opera

Used edition

  • The players. German by Johannes von Guenther . P. 221–275 in Johannes von Guenther (Ed.): Nikolai Gogol: Gesammelte Werke. Volume V. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 1952

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Russian Prow Michailowitsch Sadowski the Elder