Summary
Act III
Scene 1
Anna and Marya stand looking out the window, Anna still criticizing her daughter for preening too much. Marya tells her Dobchinsky is coming, but Anna stubbornly claims it is not him.
Finally, Anna sees that it is Dobchinsky, and she yells at him not to dawdle. She rues that the man is a fool and won’t say anything until he is inside.
Scene 2
Anna lambasts Dobchinsky for being so slow, then orders him to tell them what happened. He gives her the note from her husband. Anna asks what kind of man the inspector is. Dobchinsky says he is cultured and dignified like a general but isn’t a general. He was hard on Anton Antonovich (the Mayor) at first, but then things went smoothly and now they’ve gone to the charity hospital.
Anna asks more about what he’s like. Dobchinsky explains that he is young but talks properly like an old man. He has light, darting eyes.
Anna reads the letter and realizes the inspector is coming there. She calls for Mishka to get a room ready and order plenty of wine from Abdulin’s.
Scene 3
Anna tells her daughter that they must figure out to wear for the cultured guest from St. Petersburg. She tells Marya to wear the blue dress, but Marya wants to wear the yellow one. Anna bitterly says that she is going to wear yellow, but Marya tells her mother she needs to have dark eyes to look good in yellow. Anna angrily says that her eyes are dark and her daughter is full of nonsense.
Scene 4
Mishka brings Osip into the room with Khlestakov’s things. He asks how his master is, but Osip avoids really replying. He asks Mishka for food.
Scene 5
The constables open doors for the distinguished men—Khlestakov, the Mayor, the Warden of Charities, the Inspector of Schools, Dobchinsky, and Bobchinsky.
Khlestakov remarks on how nice the institutions are; the Mayor brags that, whereas other towns want to feather their own nests, this town cares about law and order. He compliments the food and then remarks that there were not very many patients in the charity hospital. The Warden brags that the patients have been recovering like flies.
The Mayor speaks of his own duties and how busy he is, insisting that things are running quite smoothly. Other mayors care only for themselves, but he is always consumed with order, cleanliness, and morality. He wants no honors, just to please his superiors.
Khlestakov wonders if there are any societies for one to play cards, but, thinking he is trying to trap them, the Mayor feigns shock and insists that there are none of those. The Judge rolls his eyes and says to himself that the Mayor took money off of him just last night. Khlestakov is a little bemused, and he comments that he doesn’t mind an occasional game.
Scene 6
The Mayor introduces his wife and daughter to Khlestakov, who falls over himself with compliments. He raves about how cosmopolitan St. Petersburg is and how important he is there. He speaks of the actresses he knows, the literary works he’s written, and the balls he throws at his incredible home. He often hobnobs with the best of society. Once, he was asked to come home and take care of a whole department because everyone knew how capable he was.
When Khlestakov laughs that everyone knows to be on their toes when he is around, the others tremble. He comments that he is not to be trifled with, especially as he is welcome to drop into the Palace whenever he wants.
The Mayor invites Khlestakov to take a rest, to which he eagerly assents.
Scene 7
Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky extol Khlestakov’s merits, while the Warden of Charities expresses to the Inspector of Schools how terrified he is.
Scene 8
Anna is delighted with Khlestakov and claims that he was looking at her and liked her. Marya replies that he was looking at her. Anna says snidely that it was probably only out of politeness.
Scene 9
When the Mayor returns to his wife, he says ruefully that he gave Khlestakov a bit too much to drink and that he obviously exaggerated some things a bit. He does add that most things have fibs in them, though. Anna praises Khlestakov as not being intimidating at all.
The Mayor sighs at his wife and expresses that he is still frightened. This is especially due to the fact that the man doesn’t look the part, which would have been too obvious. At least the Mayor got Khlestakov to open up at the inn and reveal that, even though he is the inspector, he is still new to the job.
Scene 10
Anna and the Mayor call Osip over to them and ask him numerous questions about his master, such as whether or not counts and princes call on him, what his master’s rank is, and whether he goes around in uniform. The Mayor ignores his wife and daughter’s facile comments about what kind of eyes Khlestakov likes and asks what, above all else, Osip’s master values. Osip replies “warm hospitality and good food” (264). The Mayor is pleased because he knows he can work with this.
Scene 11
The Mayor cheerfully sends Osip back to his master to tell him everything at the house is at his disposal; then, once Osip is gone, he sternly orders the newly-arrived Derzhimorda and Svistunov to stand guard at the door and not let any of the shopkeepers in.
Analysis
Gogol ups the irony, comedy, and incisive commentary on these bureaucrats’ failings in this middle act. Khlestakov is even more laughable with his ludicrous stories of life in St. Petersburg, the Mayor continues to do everything in his power to impress a nobody, the Mayor’s wife Anna acts as a model of vanity and selfishness, and the civil servants continue to quake in their boots at the thought that this man—who, again, is actually a nobody—might discover their ineptitude. It is abundantly clear that this is a comedy, intended to provoke laughter as it exposes the ways of the world and encourages moral behavior.
What is less clear to the average reader, however, is that this play can also be read as a Christian allegory of the Last Judgment. Yes, this is a comical apocalypse, but it is an apocalypse nonetheless; as Milton Ehre notes in his article on the topic, the play “mocks the way of the world but its mockery is part of an effort to obliterate the world as a prelude to final judgment." As Nabokov famously commented, “the play ends with a blinding flash of lightning and ends in a thunderclap. In fact it is wholly placed in the tense gap between the flash and the crash.” The Mayor’s terse announcement is met with horror, and his civil servants begin to protest and scramble to cover their flaws. They are representative of humanity in all of its corruption, foibles, and self-interest. They are vain, greedy, lazy, prevaricators, and charlatans.
This situation would, of course, make Khlestakov the False Pretender, the Antichrist. He is merely an illusion, a “man without substance, a creature of pure improvisation who can only respond to the signals of the moment.” He is empty but terrifying to the townspeople, and, like his association with the devil, he is excessively fond of pleasure of all sorts. Vladimir Glyantz provides other examples of the association of Khlestakov with the Antichrist, explaining how Khlestakov not only brags excessively about how intelligent and how much of a “genius” he is, but also, seemingly randomly, how Khlestakov shows concern for Bobchinsky’s nose wound: “Chlestakov’s concern for a ‘small’ man, which seems rather unnecessary, is also justified symbolically: the behavior of Chlestakov-antichrist should be typically attentive to men (just as Christ was).”
When the gendarme arrives announcing the official inspector—Christ—the townspeople realize that they have “pursued an illusion, and in the end [the society’s] fabric is rent.” This society that has shown itself to be devoid of affection, morality, compassion, and truth is “doomed by its own fragmented and unsubstantial nature.” Glyantz references the mute scene at the very end (to be discussed in the next Summary/Analysis), asking, “Was not the famous ending of the Mute scene invented with this very idea of letting Heaven have its word once human passions are over on the stage?”
This is heady stuff, to be sure, but this is still a comedy, and Gogol makes sure that we believe the characters to be too ridiculous to feel bad for or to take their “disaster” seriously. Ehre concludes by stating that “without the presence of the recognizably human there would be no concern, and hence no cause for laughter. Remorselessly, Gogol has reduced his characters to absurdity, and yet they survive his onslaught to convey a mirror image, however crooked, of the human condition. As such his apocalypse takes on the aspect of an admonition.”
