Count Aleksander Fredro - comedy playwright, writer of fables and memoirs, poet - was born on 20 June 1793 at the foot of the Carpathians, in Surochów near Przemyśl, to a wealthy noble family.

He lived a long time for his day, 82 years, and for a Polish writer in the 19th century he led an affluent and comfortable life. His youth was eventful. He was taught at home, but not very much and not for long, because as a 16-year-old lad he joined the Napoleonic army of the Duchy of Warsaw and marched with it for 6 years - right up to the downfall of Napoleon's Empire. During the retreat from Moscow he was ill with typhus, and escaped from Russian captivity. He was an orderly officer in the general staff. For war-time service he was awarded a Virtuti Military gold cross and a Cross of the Legion of Honour. He left the army in 1815 and settled in Bieńkowa Wisznia, his father's estate near Lwów [today Lviv, Ukraine].

He met Countess Zofia Skarbek, née Jabłonowska, around 1817 and she was the love of his life. When she was 15, Zofia Jabłonowska had been married off to Count Skarbek, one of the wealthiest men in Galicia. She left him after a few years of unhappy marriage, but she waited over 10 years to marry Aleksander. The whole affair is rather mysterious, as Count Skarbek raised no objections, while arranging a "church divorce" in that social class was mainly a question of money. The resistance came from the Jabłonowski family, probably motivated by propriety. However, after the couple were wed in 1828, the marriage was a very happy one. They also had two children with literary aspirations: Zofia, who became Countess Szeptycka, author of "Wspomnienia z lat ubiegłych / Memories of Bygone Days", and a son, Jan Aleksander, also a comedy writer.

Fredro was very efficient at running the family estate, but was also very civic-minded. He was active in the social life of the landed gentry, and represented their interests in the Galician Sejm (parliament) after 1831. During the Spring of Nations he was accused of treason for anti-Austrian activity. The case was ultimately dismissed. He spent the years 1850-55 with his family in Paris. He was a member of the Society of Friends of Science, and a member of the Academy of Learning from 1873. He spent the last years of his life in Lviv, of which he was an honorary citizen. He died there on 15 July 1876.

Today Fredro is best known as a comedy playwright, but one should not forget that he also practised other literary genres. He is the author of the excellent journal "Trzy po trzy / Nineteen to the Dozen" which he wrote in 1844-46, subsequently editing and expanding it. In it, he takes a trip down memory lane, mainly to his military youth but also reaching back to his childhood, making numerous digressions, citing anecdotes. He uses the language of free story-telling. This diary is an invaluable source of knowledge about the era and about the writer himself. It starts off beautifully:

"On the eighteenth of February in the year 1814, a man of medium height, slightly overweight, in a frock coat buttoned up to his neck, in a bicorn hat with no mark but a small tricolour ribbon, rode by on a white horse. Behind him, some distance away, rode a second man, much younger. ... The first rider was Napoleon, the other was myself."

Near the end of his life, he wrote "Zapiski starucha. Też trzy po trzy / Notes of an Old Man. Also Nineteen to the Dozen" - a collection of proverbs, adages, and parables in which he took a bitter look at human nature and society from the perspective of his years. He also wrote short stories as well as short and long poems. His fables enjoy a special place, many of them having become a part of our culture often no longer associated with the writer ("Osiołkowi w żłoby dano" about a donkey unable to make up his mind what to eat, "Małpa w kąpieli" about a monkey wreaking havoc in the bathroom, "Paweł i Gaweł" about two warring neighbours). His writing in general found its way into the vernacular; sometimes we don't even realize we "speak Fredro" ("Wolno-ć Tomku w swoim domku" / "Tom, do as you please in your own home", "jak ty komu, tak on tobie" / "as you do to others, so they will do to you", "szanuj zdrowie należycie, bo gdy umrzesz stracisz życie" / "take care of your health, for when you die, you lose your life", "jeśli nie chcesz mojej zguby, krokodyla daj mi luby" / "if you want what's best for me, buy me a crocodile, my love").

In his youth, Fredro also wrote pieces that we could euphemistically call frivolous, worthy of a soldier who was frequently seen backstage; never published, they were circulated in manuscript copies among the youth of Galicia. (Some were published in 1990 under the title "Sztuka obłapiania / The Art of Fondling", illustrated by Szymon Kobyliński.)

Fredro's writing ran parallel to two great eras in Polish literature - Romanticism and Positivism. It was parallel because he was an era and a literary trend in himself: a link between the rhymed comedy of the Enlightenment and the bourgeois comedy of Young Poland. However, this was writing devoid of the didacticism of the former and the aggressiveness of the latter. His humour was usually quite gentle and the understanding he showed towards the faults of his fellow men - substantial. Fredro had fun writing his comedies and wanted theatre audiences to have fun, too. This exposed him to violent attacks. In an age promoting national martyrdom and patriotic service, anyone who did not want to help develop, testify to, and stimulate patriotic feelings was ideologically unacceptable. Fredro was attacked by Seweryn Goszczyński (in "Powszechny Pamiętnik Nauk i Umiejętności", 1835), who was joined by Edward Dembowski, Aleksander Dunin-Borkowski (pen-name Leszek), and Julian Bartoszewicz. He was accused of having a second-rate talent, succumbing to French models, immorality, and even - this eulogist of the Polish gentry tradition - of a lack of national spirit.

Commentators often point to this attack as the reason for Fredro's withdrawal from writing for many years. He resumed writing after 1854, but only wrote for himself. It has always seemed psychologically rather incomprehensible that an author who was financially and intellectually independent of literary coteries, applauded enthusiastically at theatres, could have been so upset at a few virulent articles. It was a pleasure, therefore, to read in "Obrachunki Fredrowskie / Settling Accounts with Fredro" that this disbelief was shared by Tadeusz Żeleński-Boy himself:

"All that business of 'breaking his pen', what an affair, the only one of its kind in literature! Hara-kiri committed by a writer to punish a critic. That's revenge worthy of Rejent Milczek: in front of a resentful nation, to pillory poor Goszczyński with one's silence for forty years..."

In any case, the silence is a fact and the causes for it unclear. Perhaps there were personal reasons involved? This comedy writer did have a tendency for misanthropy which grew with age.

Fredro's comedies reveal the author's familiarity with the Polish and European tradition of the genre. They contain references to the Enlightenment-era rhyming comedy of Franciszek Zabłocki or Wojciech Bogusławski, but also the much older itinerant comedy troupe shows (changing places, pretending to be someone else). They contain elements of Alfred de Musset (love intrigues) and Molière (miser and hypocrite characters). However, Fredro fills his theatrical world with an array of original characters derived from the Polish manor, and later also from the bourgeois home. He presents a colourful gallery of characters: noblemen, money-lenders, military men of various rank, wild youths and yarn-spinners, sentimental maidens and calculating ladies, servants of all descriptions... They often have names describing their personalities: Milczek (from silence), Raptusiewicz (from a quick temper), Birbancki (from roistering), Jowialski (from jovial)... These characters have very diverse individual qualities, leading Czesław Miłosz to refer to Fredro's output very aptly as "the comedy of temperaments". Apart from comedy characters, the charm of Fredro's works also lies in bold and very dense situational and verbal humour.

Fredro's language is in fact extraordinary: most of the comedies are written in verse which - though often as sophisticated as the 8-syllable trochee in "Zemsta / The Revenge" - flows as easily as colloquial speech, without any constraint or rigour.

Fredro wrote for the stage, mostly for Lviv theatres. His contemporaries claimed he often invented characters to match specific actors, whom he even consulted about his ideas. His son said his father didn't go to the theatre but - as Żeleński-Boy rightly noted - the son was talking about the elderly, embittered man, not the slightly rowdy youth. Stage thinking is actually noticeable in the material of the works themselves, containing numerous suggestions about the stage sets, the characters' appearance, and how they should be played. Examples include the instruction that "places marked with a double comma can be let go in the acting", or that participants in the marked fragment of dialogue should speak almost at the same time. The stage directions often describe the scene very precisely: "The desktops and sofa in place ... Orgon dressed to travel, wearing a peaked cap - large moustache - a watch on a wide ribbon etc., behind him the Jews and Servants of the inn".

Fredro wrote dozens of plays: one-act and multiple-act comedies, farces, grotesque pieces, and vaudevilles. Before he fell silent, they made their way quickly onto theatre stages in Lviv, Warsaw, and Kraków. After he resumed his writing, he did not publish his works or offer them to theatres. They were not published until after his death. The best plays which are the most well-known today were written in the first period. His debut was a comedy, not very successful, called "Intryga na prędce / Hasty Scheming" (premiere: Lviv 1817), later rewritten as "Nowy Don Kichot czyli sto szaleństw / The new Don Quixote or a hundred lunacies", with music by Stanisław Moniuszko. In 1818, with the finished manuscript of "Pan Geldhab / Mr. Geldhab" in hand, he went to Warsaw but initially no theatre director was interested. The play was ultimately staged in Warsaw in 1821 and after that, next to poorer works, his greatest comedies premiered in Lviv: "Mąż i żona / Husband and Wife" (1822), "Cudzoziemszczyzna / Foreign Influences" (1824), "Damy i huzary / Ladies and Hussars" (1825), "Pan Jowialski / Mr. Jowialski" (1832), "Zemsta / The Revenge" (1833), "Śluby panieńskie czyli magnetyzm serca / Maidens' Vows or the Magnetism of the Heart" (1833), "Dożywocie / The Annuity" (1835).

The plot in these plays usually centres on money, love, and marriage, and the main dilemma is whether to marry for money (something the parents or guardians usually want) or for love.

The title character in "Mr. Geldhab" made his money - not quite honestly, it is suggested - on supplying the military. With the pride of a nouveau-riche, he shows off his wealth: he decorates his home lavishly with the help of the Merchant, the Tailor, the Upholsterer etc., and exhibits his silverware in public. (At the same time, he fails to pay his ill sister her due allowance.) With the help of his money, he wants to be accepted into high society by having his daughter Flora marry Duke Radosław. Creditors are hounding the duke, so he is willing to agree to a marriage involving a large dowry. Flora also wants to become a duchess, so she rejects the true love of Ludomir, an officer in Napoleon's army. In a twist of fate, Radosław receives an inheritance from an aunt and, pretending that Ludomir's love has moved him, refuses to proceed with the marriage. Now Ludomir would be handy as a consolation prize, but he has discovered how hypocritical and calculating Flora is.

"Mr. Geldhab" is one of few comedies by Fredro without a happy ending. Meanwhile, the true ending of "Husband and Wife" is not clear. Here is a love quadrangle. Elwira, wife of Count Wacław, is cheating on him with Alfred. At the same time, both gentlemen are having an affair with the nimble chambermaid, Justysia. It all comes to light and then (in the ending played in Fredro's day) the only guilty party turns out to be Justysia, who will be sent to a convent as punishment. The love triangle remains in place. This ending exposed Fredro to accusations of immorality: he didn't condemn dissolution and marital infidelity. A posthumous edition published in 1880 had a different ending, its author unknown: Justysia is forgiven, so is the unfaithful wife, and morality is saved. In 1938 at the Cricot theatre, Adam Polewka staged the play with both endings.

"Foreign Influences", like "Nikt mnie nie zna / Nobody Knows Me" and "Mr. Jowialski", exploits the motif of dressing up, playing someone else. At Radost's estate, two young men are courting his daughter. To gain the father's favour, Astolf pretends to be an expert on foreign countries and an admirer of foreign fashion. Zdzisław, who really knows the world, having travelled extensively with Napoleon's army, pretends to be a simpleton. Of course he is the one who wins, and converts Radost to the maxim which concludes the play: "Wszędzie dobrze, ale w domu najlepiej" / "Foreign countries are fine, but one's homeland is finer".

"Ladies and Hussars", one of few of Fredro's comedies in prose, presents a gallery of characters from the Napoleonic army. The people staying at the Major's rural home include, besides himself, the Cavalry Captain, the Lieutenant, the Chaplain, and "two old hussars". This masculine world is upset by the visit of the Major's two fat sisters, young Zosia who is the daughter of one of them, and a flock of maids: Józia, Zuzia, and Fruzia. The mother wants to marry Zosia off to the wealthy Major, while the girl herself loves the Lieutenant, and he loves her. After numerous twists and misunderstandings, Zosia marries her beloved and the Major bequeaths his wealth to him.

"Mr. Jowialski", also in prose, is one of Fredro's most interesting comedies. In Pustakówka, Jowialski's estate, there lives an extraordinary cast of characters. There is himself, a senile old man (or pretending to be that way), his wife, his son the Chamberlain who seems retarded and is engrossed completely with catching birds and building cages, and the Chamberlain's wife whose favourite pastime seems to be reminiscing about her first husband. There is also Helena, the Chamberlain's niece, and the provincial nobleman Janusz who is courting her. The Chamberlain's wife insists on the marriage, Helena is unsure because a union without love seems unromantic to her, but on the other hand the years are slipping by... Mr. Jowialski loves good fun and forces everyone else to enjoy themselves, too. Janusz sees an opportunity when he finds a sleeping man. This is how the comedy starts: Ludmir the poet and Wiktor the painter are resting in a meadow. They are in the middle of a sightseeing tour which seems to be taking them from one inn to the next. Ludmir pretends to be asleep when Janusz plans his prank: they will kidnap the sleeping man and convince him he is a sultan. Ludmir joins in the fun and pretends to be Kurek, a shoemaker, mysteriously turned into a ruler. This allows him to manipulate those around him, to tell everyone unpleasant truths, and also to gain Helena's favour, the fact that she is wealthy having its importance in all this. The protests of the Chamberlain's wife cease when it turns out Ludmir is her son who went missing when he was a baby.

In this comedy Fredro used elements of various origins: the dressing-up mentioned earlier, romantic journeys amidst nature, a romantic maiden, the sentimental motif of a missing baby found years later thanks to a birthmark on his hip. The main asset of this work, though, is the title character. Mr. Jowialski forces everyone around him to act silly, he speaks in dictums and proverbs, and has a fable to match every occasion. It's never quite clear if he really is senile, or just likes poking fun at everyone, or clowns around to conceal some major void in his life in Pustakówka or a bitterness caused by watching his family degenerate.

As an exception, it's not money issues that are the cause of matrimonial difficulties in "Śluby panieńskie / Maidens' Vows", a light, merry, and charming comedy. Having decided they don't really like the male species, two maidens are resisting the men who court them, and swear they will never marry. However, the perseverance and scheming of the gentlemen in their desire to marry, and the magnetism of the heart from the play's title, manage to overcome the maidens' vows. The comedy's charm is in the pairs of amusingly contrasted characters: the gentle and sentimental Aniela, the go-getting Klara, and the men wooing them: the cunning joker Gustaw and the sighing Albin. The plot of Fredro's most famous comedy, "Zemsta / The Revenge", is set in turns in the households of Cześnik Raptusiewicz and Rejent Milczek, in two parts of an old castle. The former man is a violent person, the latter - a sly hypocrite. Between their homes is the object of their quarrel: the border wall which Rejent orders to be built while Cześnik has it pulled down. Rejent has a son, Wacław, and Cześnik has a niece, Klara - together, this adds up to romantic lovers with a family feud getting in the way of their love. Rejent wants Wacław to marry the pretentious widow Podstolina because he (wrongly) suspects her of being wealthy. The gallery of characters is supplemented by Dyndalski and Śmigalski, members of Cześnik's household, Perełka the cook, masons building the wall and then being chased away, and the crowning of it all - Papkin, a farcical character, a braggart, clown, and coward. The young people's worries and the family war come to an end thanks to the revenge that Cześnik perversely cooks up: he lures Wacław with a letter allegedly written by Klara and "forces" them to marry to spite Rejent. This is Fredro's most frequently staged comedy, and it ends with an apotheosis of the gentry's way of life and national harmony.

The plots of most of the comedies staged in the writer's lifetime are set in gentry households, idyllic despite scheming and disputes, respecting tradition and cultivating family virtues. In "Dożywocie / The Annuity" the location changes, and this is a harbinger of the second period of his work. The plot unfolds in a country inn where Łatka the money-lender and Leon Birbancki, a young wastrel, are staying. Posing as someone else, Łatka has bought Birbancki's annuity and is now very concerned to keep him alive for as long as possible. He has appointed Filipek, his servant, to watch over the man's health as he himself tries to sell the annuity to another money-lender, Twardosz. Leon doesn't make his task easy: partying all night, he looks and feels pretty bad. Also staying at the inn is Orgon, an impoverished nobleman who wants his daughter Rózia to marry Łatka. Leon and Rózia become romantic lovers, naturally, the lack of money standing in the way of their happiness. After many twists and Leon's pretended suicide attempt, there comes a happy ending: Leon regains Rózia and his money.

Love wins in practically all of Fredro's comedies: sincere love overcomes all obstacles - family resistance, scheming, and financial complications. It is precisely this recognition of the value of love, family life and home virtues which forms the creed of a writer who was accused of being immoral.

Fredro filled his gentry world with a cast of original, unique individuals representing various degrees of comicality - from farcical and grotesque characters to gently humorous ones. These characters often have a deeper meaning, though. Who in truth is Jowialski? What bitterness and helplessness lie beneath Papkin's chattering? What needs lie sleeping in Birbancki's mind when he gets euphoric over a balloon flight? The greatest actors with their outstanding acting creations have given different answers to these questions. It's true that the material of these works offers possibilities for a wealth of interpretations.

Upon returning from Paris, Fredro took up writing again, but he never returned to the idyllic nobleman's manor. He sensed that this world was a thing of the past. It was replaced with contemporary Galicia with all its deprivation and pretentiousness. Now, the plot would unfold in a small town ("Z jakim się wdajesz takim się stajesz / You Become Who You Associate with", "Jestem zabójcą / I am a Killer"), a town house and a hotel ("Ożenić się nie mogę / I Cannot Marry"), at a railway station and a restaurant ("Z Przemyśla do Przyszowa / From Przemyśl to Przyszów"). If a rural manor appears, it's in the context of bills of exchange and loans, Galician officials, landowner associations, and dissatisfied peasants ("Wielki człowiek do małych interesów / A Great Man for Small Business", "Wychowanka / The Ward"). If there is a country cottage - it's just a stop on a coach journey. Money, business, clerical ambitions, and women on the way to emancipation - these replaced the earlier love episodes.

The "great man for small business" (the play premiered in Lviv, Kraków and Warsaw in 1877) is Ambroży Jenialkiewicz, a landowner. His mind is bursting with great ideas which he writes down and then cannot decipher. He invests, runs the estates of young relatives, plans their marriages. He schemes to get his friend to become a director with the Loan Society. Nothing comes of his plans, but he is satisfied, claiming everything went the way he wanted, with just minor modifications, and he never stops his sham actions and futile activity.

"Rewolwer / The Revolver", a grotesque play with a prop in the main role, is an unusual piece from this period. First of all, the plot is set in the 1850s in Parma. Secondly, politics is involved. In the time of Charles III the atmosphere was thick with plotting, surveillance, and police violence. This is the world in which Baron Mortaro, a banker and speculator, conducts his shady business, prepared to cheat even his lover and his friend. A package containing a revolver falls into his hands, a dangerous object in the current political situation. One rather strange idea the playwright had was Paolo, the "dumb commissioner" who speaks in sign language and then Mortaro repeats his text out loud on stage. It is Paolo's fault that the revolver, of which Mortaro wants to rid himself, keeps returning to him. In the end the wretched object turns out to be a cigar cutter.

Also worth mentioning from this period is "Brytan Bryś / Bryś the Hound", a "dramatic tale in verse" in which - rather like Orwell's "Animal Farm" - various animals play social roles.

Fredro was and is the writer whose works are staged the most often in Poland. All the greatest 19th- and 20th-century actors played in his comedies, including Antoni Benza, Jan Nowakowski, Apolonia Kamińska, Adam Żółtowski, Józef Rychter, Bolesław and Jerzy Leszczyński, Antoni Hoffman, Stefan Jaracz, Józef Węgrzyn, Mieczysława Ćwiklińska. Helena Modrzejewska's Aniela and Ludwik Solski's Łatka were historic performances. After 1877, theatres in Lviv and Kraków began staging works unpublished in Fredro's lifetime. When Stanisław Koźmian was the manager of the Municipal Theatre in Kraków, the repertoire included 14 of them.

In the 19th century Fredro's plays were staged as contemporary drawing-room comedies, which did them little harm, as the historical references, mostly to the Napoleonic era, were not all that important. With the Young Poland movement came a fashion for Empire-period stylisation with the help of costumes and sets. Theatrical experiments appeared in the 1920s and after World War II, including a bold staging of "Damy i huzary / Ladies and Hussars" by Jaracz (1932), Leon Schiller's version of "Nowy Don Kichot / The new Don Quixote" with music by Moniuszko (1923), Maciej Prus's "Śluby... / Vows..." (1971), Grzegorz Jarzyna's "Magnetyzm serca / Magnetism of the Heart" (1999). The most important post-war productions maintaining the style of the plays' era include "Maidens' Vows" directed by Władysław Zawistowski (Stary Teatr in Kraków, 1956) and Andrzej Łapicki (Teatr Polski in Warsaw, 1984), "The Annuity" (Teatr Współczesny in Warsaw, 1963) and "A Great Man for Small Business" (the same theatre, 1968) by Jerzy Kreczmar, "The Revenge" by Gustaw Holoubek (Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw, 1970) and Zygmunt Hübner (Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, 1978).

Fredro's works have been translated into many languages, including English, French, German, Russian, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovakian.

"Zemsta / The Revenge" was adapted for the screen by Antoni Bohdziewicz and Bohdan Korzeniewski in 1956 (premiere: 1957) with Jan Kurnakowicz, Jacek Woszczerowicz, Danuta Szaflarska and Beata Tyszkiewicz as main characters and by Andrzej Wajda in 2002 with Janusz Gajos, Andrzej Seweryn, Daniel Olbrychski and Roman Polański.

Critical edition: "Pisma wszystkie" / "Complete Works" vol. 1-15, Warsaw 1955-80.

Author: Halina Floryńska-Lalewicz, May 2004.

Browsing history