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# Bastardy in “King Lear” and Ostrovsky’s “The Snow Maiden” and in real life
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/pozvolte-skazat-neskolko-slov-o-vesma-rasprostranennom-osuzhdenii-bastardizma-v-kulture/
- Published: 2017-12-06T14:08:58.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T19:08:27.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Mores

Allow me to say a few words on the widespread condemnation of bastardy in culture. One recalls the play “King Lear”, which is, in essence, about bastardy. It all begins with an illegitimate son. The Earl of Gloucester has two sons: one legitimate, one illegitimate. The illegitimate son seduces Lear’s daughters, and from this the conflict is born, in which Lear and Cordelia perish. And only when the legitimate son kills the illegitimate one does order return to the world. Or take the charming and clever play “The Snow Maiden” by Alexander Ostrovsky. What happens there? Why the scandal, why does Tsar Berendey suffer, why is the whole of Berendeya in torment? It turns out that the bastard Snow Maiden, the illegitimate daughter of old Frost and Spring, must melt and die. When at last the bastard who has troubled the whole country and tangled all its fates is dead, Tsar Berendey says: “The offspring of the cold frost, the cold Snow Maiden, has perished, and now the sun rises over Berendeya.” But that is philosophical reality; in life, say, Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans, was a personage of high rank, with no difficulties whatever. Evidently there is a great chasm between the philosophical (cultural) and the real perception of bastardy.