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He Who Gets Slapped

First published: 1916
Pages: 109

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About this book

A cultured man arrives at a European circus and asks to become a clown, taking the stage name He and building an act around being slapped for the crowd's delight. Behind the greasepaint lies a wounded past he refuses to name, and a growing tenderness for Consuelo, the young bareback rider promised in marriage to a wealthy baron. Leonid Andreyev turns the circus ring into a stage for cruelty, longing, and the masks people wear, letting laughter and despair press against each other until the final act. First performed in 1915, the play became one of the Russian symbolist's most widely staged works. Free PDF and EPUB editions are available here.

About the author

Leonid Andreyev

Andreyev was for a few years around 1905 the most talked-about writer in Russia, outselling Gorky, who had helped him start. His best-known novella follows five revolutionaries and two ordinary criminals through their last days under sentence, and refuses to make any of them heroic.