The story of F.M. Dostoevsky “The permanent husband” and I.L. Shcheglov's dramatization “Gentleman with the crepe on his hat”

The dramatization of “Gentleman with the Crepe on his Hat” based on Dostoevsky’s story “The Permenent Husband” was made by the now-forgotten writer and playwright I.L. Leontiev-Shcheglov. Although Dostoevsky did not intend his novels to be staged in the theater, and in his letters to correspondents he emphasized the differences between the poetics of epic and dramatic works, a few attempts were made to transform his prose into drama even during his lifetime. Is Dostoevsky’s prose scenic? The real stage life of Dostoevsky’s works began after the writer’s death. Today, they have a long history. Until recently, the story “The Permanent Husband” lived somewhere in the shadows and was not eagerly sought for by theater directors as Dostoevsky’s other works. “Gentleman with the Crepe on his Hat” - the play written by a Dostoevsky’s contemporary - the prose writer and dramatist of the secondary category - was the first experience of staging the story and, although it was intended for production, it had never appeared in theater. Why? In an effort to adapt the play for the stage, Shcheglov changed the compositional structure of the story, the system of characters, which led to the destruction of the uniqueness of the artistic style of the work. The aim of this paper is not only to present Shcheglov’s play, which was published in the magazine “Awakening” (1911), but also to identify the features of the architectonics of Dostoevsky’s story by comparing the two works of different genres. Although Shcheglov treated Dostoevsky’s wording carefully, as he himself wrote in a small preface to the dramatization, he nevertheless failed to preserve the author’s style of the original.