Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin

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Fonvizin, Denis Ivanovich (1744–92), Russian dramatist, whose first attempt at playwriting was a comedy, The Minor, which pointed the contrast between the uneducated noblemen of the provinces and the cultured nobility of the city. He put it aside unfinished in favour of The Brigadier—General, which he read before the Court in 1766 with great success. It satirized the newly rich illiterate capitalists and also attacked the current craze for praising everything from Western Europe. It was not until 1781 that Fonvizin again took up The Minor, and virtually rewrote it, sharpening his satire on the landowners and their politics; this version is still in the repertory of the Soviet theatre. As the landowning party was then in the ascendant, Fonvizin's daring was his downfall and he was forced into premature retirement. Although he wrote in the comic tradition of Molière and the French 18th century, he imparted to his work a native element of Russian folk comedy which was to be further exploited by his successors. His later plays included A Friend of Honest People, or Starodum (1788) and The Choice of a Tutor (1790).