ABSTRACT
The problem of A Puppet Show, The King on the Square, and The Stranger as a trilogy is at once one of the most difficult and, at the same time, one of the least examined questions in the critical literature on the three plays. Problems of terminology reflect the failure of this question to penetrate into the criticism on Blok’s dramas. On one hand, Gromov (1961c), Rodina, Rubtsov, and Volkov (1926) all refer to the three plays as a trilogy. On the other, Fedorov (1972, 41; 1980, 54) refers to them as a “cycle of lyrical dramas,” which echoes Dolgopolov’s phrase, the “dramatic cycle of 1906” (4: 559). Other critics do not dwell on the plays as a trilogy at all and opt for the generic term “lyric dramas” (Medvedev, 11-15 passim).
