ABSTRACT
After the publication of The Song of Fate, nearly three years would elapse before Blok returned to drama. It is of no small significance that, as when he undertook to write A Puppet Show, a commission, not his own initiative, proved to be the catalyst. The commission was not, however, for the play that would eventually result, but for a ballet scenario. In March of 1912, with Aleksei Remizov acting as intermediary, Mikhail Tereshchenko, who had ties to the Director of the Imperial Theaters, broached the subject of a scenario with Blok. According to Blok’s aunt, Mar’ia Beketova, Tereshchenko “hoped to stage in his own future theater some new, significant piece” (Beketova 1922, 173). Tereshchenko had already contacted the composer Aleksandr Glazunov who was to supply the music. The original proposal, however, was rather confused. Medieval Provence was suggested as a setting because Glazunov “loves the provenÇal troubadours of the XIV- XV centuries?!” (7: 136). As the punctuation of his diary entry indicates, Blok had spotted Tereshchenko and Glazunov’s historical error and would eventually correct it by setting the action at the dawn of the thirteenth century.
