Notes of actor Shchepkin

Mikhail Semenovich Shchepkin (1788–1863) - great actor and one of the founders of the Russian acting school. His biography is striking: the serf from the Kursk province, which will perform at the Imperial Theater, be friends with Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Nekrasov and other master literature.
However, its autobiography is no less striking. The witty, living and ridiculous life history of the genius of the theater would not be without the efforts of Alexander Pushkin. On May 17, 1836, the poet gave the actor a notebook, entitled her “Notes of the actor Shchepkin”, and he himself entered the first lines: “I was born in the Kursk province of Oboyansk district in the village of Krasnoye, in the Penka River.” Now we can reliably, in the first person, to find out what happened next: about parents, landowners, ransom, cities and nozzles, and most importantly - about the secrets of acting.