Shchepkin, Mikhail Semenovich

Shchepkin, Mikhail Semenovich (1788–1863), Russian actor, son of a serf, who in his youth played small parts in private amateur theatricals in Kursk, his birthplace, and also appeared at the Kursk theatre during several summer seasons. In 1808 he took over a number of leading comic roles there, which he continued to play until the company was disbanded in 1816. A movement was then set on foot by Prince Repin, one of his admirers and patrons, to purchase his freedom, and in 1822 he was invited to join the company at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, where he made his début in Nov. 1822 in Zagoskin's comedy Gospodin Bogatonov; or, A Provincial in the Capital. From 1825 to 1828 he was in St Petersburg, but it was in Moscow that he did his best work, particularly during the 1840s, when Griboyedov's Wit Works Woe and Gogol's The Government Inspector provided him with two of his best parts. He was also noted for playing a number of minor comic characters in Molière and Shakespeare, though sometimes, particularly in his later years, he was criticized for too boisterous buffoonery. Nevertheless his influence was far-reaching, and he was recognized by Stanislavsky as the founder of the tradition of realistic acting on the Russian stage, his synthesis of Mochalov's passion and Karatygin's technical perfection creating a style well suited to the plays of Ostrovsky, Chekhov, and Gorky.