Theatre
Глитай, або ж Павук
Not translated into English
Marko Kropyvnytskyi · 1882
Opening lines
Мартин
Осипе Степановичу! Слухайте сюди: я же кажу, не дає шинкар набір, не дає!..
Osyp Stepanovych! Listen here: I'm telling you, the tavern keeper won't give credit, he won't!…
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from uk.wikisource.org
Synopsis
In a village in the Kherson region, old Bytchok, a rich widower and moneylender, holds the peasants in his grip through their debts and calls himself their benefactor; he is known as the Glutton and the Spider. Andriï Kouhout, a poor and honest man married to Olena, has to hire himself out far from home to a passing townsman, and leaves his wife alone with his mother. Bytchok, who desires her, then begins to spin around Olena his web of self-interested kindnesses and lies about the absent man.
Context
The play appeared in 1882, the very year its author founded his company, a year after the lifting of the ban that had struck Ukrainian theatre in the Empire since 1876, though still under heavy restrictions. The nickname of the character, whom critics compare to Balzac's Gobseck, designated in the villages the usurer who swallows other people's property. Ivan Franko reviewed its performances in Lviv in 1890 and then in 1892, faulting the construction for lacking action while praising the truthfulness of the village scenes.
Who it is for
Four acts, entirely in village dialogue. The title joins two words: the one who swallows, and the spider.
Prizes and reception
The best known of its author's dramas, which gave Ukrainian theatre its figure of the village moneylender.
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