Denis Fonvizin wrote The Minor — and the word entered the language. Mitrofanushka, coddled by his mother to the age of sixteen and unwilling to learn, became a byword. “I don’t want to study, I want to marry.”
Born in Moscow in 1745, Fonvizin studied at the university and knew Latin, German, and French. He served under Panin, an influential grandee of Catherine’s reign.
The Brigadier (1769) was his first play — Gallomania and Russian ignorance. The Minor (1782) is his chief work: the provincial landowner Prostakova, her limp rag of a husband, their son Mitrofan, and the visitors who bring in the light of reason.
Then came illness and paralysis. He wanted to write more; the censors would not let him. He died in 1792. The Minor is staged to this day.