Summary of the drama of M. Yu. Lermontov “Masquerade”
Evgeny Alexandrovich Arbenin, a man of not the first youth, a player by nature and by profession, getting rich on cards, decides to change his destiny: conclude an “alliance with virtue,” marry and heal with a master. It is conceived – done. Life, however, makes a significant correction to this most beautiful plan. After getting involved not so much that by direct calculation, rather “by thinking mature”, Eugene, unexpectedly for himself, falls in love, and not in jest, in his young wife. And this, with his gloominess and his temperament – like lava, “bubbling” – does not promise spiritual comfort. It seems to have “died down”, moored to the family pier, but feels like a “broken shuttle”, thrown again into the open, stormy sea. His wife, no doubt, an angel, but she is a child, and with her soul, and for years, and in a childlike way loves everything that glitters, but most of all “and shine and noise,
Next day, Nina goes to the jewelry store; she naively hopes that the husband will change his anger at mercy if he can find the exact same thing in return for the lost trinkets. Having bought nothing, Madame Arbenina calls in a secular friend of the young widow Baroness Shtral and, meeting Zvezdich in the living room, tells him unconcerningly about his trouble. Deciding that the mysterious lady in the mask and Nina Arbenina are one and the same person, and the “fairy tale” about the supposedly lost bracelet – with a hint, Zvezdich is instantly transformed from a bored bovivan into a fiery lover. Cooling his ardor with a “baptismal cold”, Nina hastily withdraws, and the frustrated prince lays out the “entire history” of the baroness. The widow is horrified, for it is she, who was not recognized under the mask of mask, found and gave Ninin a bracelet!
Rescuing her reputation, she leaves Zvezdic in error, and the one, in the hope of confusing Nina and thereby achieving her, sends her a prefaced letter to her home address: they say that she will die sooner than refuse, after notifying her about half of the secular Petersburg. As a result of the multi-stage intrigue, the scandalous message falls into Arbenin’s hands. Now Eugene is not only convinced that he is cruelly deceived. Now he sees in the incident also a certain prophetic sign: they say, it’s not for someone who has experienced “all the sweetness of vice and villainy” – to dream of peace and carelessness! Well, which of it, the player, the husband? And the more so the virtuous father of the family! However, take revenge on the insidious “seducer” in the same way that a “genius of villainy” and vice, that is, to strangle Zvezdich like a kitten, – sleeping, Arbenin can not: “
Meanwhile Baroness Shtral, frightened for the life of the prince, who, despite everything, loves, for which – not knowing, “perhaps, so, from boredom, from vexation, from jealousy”, decides to open to Arbenin the truth and thereby prevent the inevitable, according to her, a duel. Arbenin, scrolling through his mind variants of revenge, does not listen to her, rather, listening, does not hear. Mistress Shtral is desperate, although she worries in vain: the duel is not included in Eugene’s plans; he wants to take away from the lucky beggar and the darling of fate is not life – why should he live a “red tape”, but something more: honor and respect for society. The clever enterprise manages completely. Taking the spineless prince into a card battle, he cares at trifles, publicly accuses him of fraud: “You are a shamer and a scoundrel,” he slaps.
So, Zvezdich is punished. The queue for Nina. But Nina is not an immoral and godless prince; Nina is Nina, and Arbenin, superstitious like all the players, hesitates, waiting for him to say what fate will tell him, her old and faithful slave. The fate of “behaving” is very insidious: unraveling the intrigue, immediately and confusing it! Mistress Shtral, after an unsuccessful attempt to explain herself frankly with her friend’s husband and realizing that at any turn of events her secular career is hopelessly ruined, decides to retire to her village estate, and before leaving Zvezdich explains the “clue to this charade.” The prince, already translated, at his own request, to the Caucasus, lingers in Petersburg to return the ill-fated trinket to her real owner, and most importantly, to warn Nina, who is sympathetic to him: beware that your husband is a villain! Without thinking up another way to talk privately with Madame Arbenina, he very carelessly approaches her at another glorious ball. The prince does not dare to call names by their proper names, and Nina decisively does not understand his hints. Her Evgeny is a villain? Is the husband going to take revenge on her? What nonsense? She also does not know what decision Arbenin has been coming to from afar. Flushed with dancing, having long forgotten about the ridiculous officer, Nina asks her husband to bring her ice cream. Eugene obediently paddles into the pantry and before serving a saucer with ice cream to his wife, pours poison there. Poison – fast, true, the same night, in terrible agony, Nina dies. To say goodbye to the body of the deceased come friends and acquaintances. Granting the visitors grief to the servants, Arbenin wanders in a gloomy solitude along the empty house. In one of the distant rooms he is found by Zvezdich and that same unknown gentleman who, a few days ago, at Engelhardt’s masquerade, predicted to Arbenin “misfortune”. This is his longtime acquaintance, whom Yevgeny Alexandrovich once beat and let, as they say, around the world. Having learned, in his bitter experience, what this man is capable of, Unknown, confident that Madame Arbenina died not with her own death, declares openly, under Zvezdic: “You killed your wife.” Arbenin – in horror, for a while the shock deprives him of the gift of speech. Taking advantage of the pause, Zvezdich, in detail, sets out the true story of the fatal bracelet and as evidence passes Evgeny a written certificate of the Baroness. Arbenin is going crazy. But before forever plunging into the salutary darkness of insanity, this “proud”
The unknown triumphs: he is completely avenged. But Zvezdich is inconsolable: a duel under the present condition of Arbenin is impossible, and, therefore, he, young, full of strength and hope, handsome, forever deprived of peace and honor.
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