The Covetous Knight by Alexander Pushkin


I finished reading The Covetous Knight (1830), a short play by Alexander Pushkin, translated by A. F. B. Clark. I subsequently learned that Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote a one act opera known as The Miserly Knight based closely on Pushkin’s text.

The plot is simple and focuses on the avarice of an elderly baron and his son’s attempts to use the influence of the local duke to extract some money from his father. It’s a tragedy and, like so many well-written plays, I found myself drawn into the characters and plot very quickly.

“Yet by trifles ‘tis
That treasures grow.”

Photograph from The New York Public Library Digital Collections. The title “The Covetous Knight, by Alexander Pushkin” is given, but no other information is provided. I believe it is a photo of the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski in the role of the knight in Rachmaninoff’s opera produced by The Moscow Society for Art and Literature in 1888.
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