O scrisoare pierdută

O scrisoare pierdută
O scrisoare pierdută
Written by	Ion Luca Caragiale
Date premiered	1884
Place premiered	National Theatre Bucharest
Original language	Romanian
Genre	comedy

O scrisoare pierdută (Romanian for "A Lost Letter") is a play by Ion Luca Caragiale. It premiered in 1884, and arguably represents the high point of his career.^[1]

It was adapted into a 1953 film A Lost Letter.

It was first performed in English in 2019 at the Romanian Cultural Institute in London. The translation is available here: https://www.pdf2html5.com/pdfupload/server/php/uploads/admin_oxffauqbza/lost-letter-2019/complete.php

Characters

Nae Cațavencu: lawyer, manager and owner of the „Răcnetul Carpaților” (The Roar of the Carpathians) newspaper, president and founder of the Enciclopedic- Cooperative Society „Aurora Economică Română” (the Romanian Economical Aurora), scoundrel greedy for power
Ștefan Tipătescu: the prefect of the county, celibate, arrogant and abusive treats his county like his own estate, Zoe Trahanache's lover
Zaharia Trahanache: President of the Permanent Committee, of the Electoral Committee, of the School Committee, of the Agricultural Committee and of other Committees, aware of his wife's affair, but which he accepts
Zoe Trahanache: Trahanache wife, the coquettish type, intelligent, authoritative, ambitious, Ștefan Tipătescu's lover
Ghiță Pristanda: the town's policeman, the all-round good man of prefect Ștefan Tipătescu, who often uses him as a kind of personal servant
Cetățeanul turmentat: character of the comedy that hides one of the most subtle dramaturgical tricks of the brilliant Caragiale – in a society that has lost the cult for authentic human values, honesty could appear as a vice and would have disturbed the intrinsic order of the play, so that the playwright was forced to create a vicious person in order to endow him with certain qualities
Agamemnon (Agamiță) Dandanache: an old warrior from the 1848 Revolution, "stupider than Farfuridi and more scoundrel than Cațavencu"
Tache Farfuridi: lawyer, member of the committees above mentioned, fanfaron and demagogue
Iordache Brânzovenescu: member of Trahanache's political team forms, together with Farfuridi, a comic couple, both by behavior and by their names with culinary resonances