In the forties and the early fifties this school had attained its highest perfection at Moscow, and had in its ranks such first-class actors and actresses as Schépkin--the real soul of this stage--MOTCHÁLOFF, SADÓSKIY, S. VASÍLIEFF, and MME. NIKÚLINA-KOSSÍTSKAYA, supported by quite a pleiad of good secondary aids. Their _répertoire_ was not very rich; but the two comedies of Gógol (_Inspector-General_ and _Marriage_), occasionally Griboyédoff’s great satire; a comedy, _The Marriage of Kretchínsky_, by SUKHOVÓ-KOBÝLIN, which gave excellent opportunities for displaying the best qualities of the artists just named; now and then a drama of Shakespeare,[22] plenty of melodramas adapted from the French, and vaudevilles which came nearer to light comedy than to farce--this was the ever varied programme of the Small Theatre. Some plays were played to perfection--combining the _ensemble_ and the “go” which characterise the Odéon with the simplicity and naturalness already mentioned. The mutual influence which the stage and dramatic authors necessarily exercise upon each other was admirably illustrated at Moscow. Several dramatists wrote specially for this stage--not in order that this or that actress might eclipse all others, as happens nowadays in those theatres where one play is played scores of nights in succession, but for this given _stage_ and its actors as a whole. OSTRÓVSKIY (1823-1886) was the one who best realised this mutual relation between the dramatic author and the stage, and thus he came to hold with regard to the Russian drama the same position that Turguéneff and Tolstóy hold with regard to the Russian novel. OSTRÓVSKIY: “POVERTY--NO VICE” Ostróvskiy was born at Moscow in the family of a poor clergyman, and, like the best of the younger generation of his time, he was from the age of seventeen an enthusiastic visitor of the Moscow theatre. At that age, we are told, his favourite talk with his comrades was the stage. He went to the University, but two years later he was compelled to leave, in consequence of a quarrel with a professor, and he became an under clerk in one of the old Commercial tribunals. There he had the very best opportunities for making acquaintance with the world of Moscow merchants--a quite separate class which remained in its isolation the keeper of the traditions of old Russia. It was from this class that Ostróvskiy took nearly all the types of his first and best dramas. Only later on did he begin to widen the circle of his observations, taking in various classes of educated society.