The Theatre

There was some fear in Russia, whose dramatists are equal to any in the world, that the Soviet authorities in Moscow would suppress public performances of Alexis Tolstoy's play The Golden Book of Love, a light comedy which features Catherine the Great. It was felt that the Empress, being at the head of a Tsarist State, would be too much for the Bolsheviki.

At a private performance, witnessed by Minister of Education Lunarchasky, who is in charge of theatres, it was considered that the play was "quite unworthy of the fuss made over it." "Which," said the theatre manager, on whose stage the play is to be reproduced, with delicate cynicism, "won't hurt the box office receipts, however." M. Lunarcharsky decided not to place a ban on the play.

The plot of the play is: "The beautiful young wife of an old, countrified Prince receives a copy of a rather gallant book of love with a letter from the Empress Catherine, announcing she intends to pay an unceremonious visit. A handsome young guardsman arrives as the Empress's vanguard and immediately begins to flirt with the girl Princess, whose imagination is stirred by the golden book. The husband intervenes, and a grotesque duel is cut short by the appearance of the Empress with one lady-in-waiting. The husband finds the latter's middle-aged charms so much more to his taste than those of the willful child he has married that the course of true love would undoubtedly run smooth were it not that the elderly Empress cannot resist the temptation to captivate her young soldier. He, too, discovers imperial experience outweighs youthful naivete and the poor little Princess is left lamenting.

"In the last act, while the Empress is resting after a hearty lunch, the young lady applies the maxims of the golden book well enough to win back her admirer. The empress, at first piqued by the guardsman's disloyalty, finally relents and pairs off the couples anew with a truly autocratic disregard for marriage laws."