" " 53

YOU TELL ME NOT TO FEAR MEN? " " 91

WELL, DEAR, AND WHAT PROGRESSION IS OUR BUSINESS MAKING? " " 174

THERE, YOU SEE! YOU ARE BEING MADE A FOOL OF " " 223

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE ix

Plays published during Tolstoy's life

THE POWER OF DARKNESS (1886) 3

THE FIRST DISTILLER (1886) 97

FRUITS OF CULTURE (1889) 125

Posthumous Plays

THE LIVE CORPSE 229

THE CAUSE OF IT ALL 303

THE LIGHT SHINES IN DARKNESS 321

PREFACE

_The Power of Darkness_, Tolstoy's first and greatest play, was not
written until he was fifty-eight years of age, and it was not allowed to
be performed in Russia till some years later. Both there and elsewhere
abroad it was highly successful on the stage, as was also the comedy,
_Fruits of Culture_, which he wrote three years later, to be performed
by his own family and their friends.

The only other play published during his lifetime, _The First Distiller_,
is a very slight piece of no particular dramatic importance. It was
written in the cause of temperance.

Besides these, he left three other plays finished, or nearly finished,
when he died.

_The Live Corpse_ (which in English has also been called _The Man who
was Dead_) is the one best adapted for the stage. _The Cause of it All_
is, like _The First Distiller_, a short and unimportant piece dealing
with the effects of drink. The most interesting, not dramatically but
psychologically, of the three is _The Light Shines in Darkness_, which
was left in an unfinished state. In it Tolstoy presents his own case,
and deals with the contradiction that existed and has so often been
commented on, between practice and theory in his own life and teaching.

For the purpose of the play he greatly simplified his own highly complex
personality, and, though many of the details and characters are drawn
from life with extraordinary exactitude, the picture pres