the couple. A wedding toast is a custom where a close friend or relative of the groom or the bride says a few words to wish the couple, then everyone raises their glass of wine, and drink it up at the same moment. The groom is then asked to kiss the bride. After a few toasts, people start eating and drinking, and generally have fun.
After some time, the bride gets ‘stolen’! She disappears, and when the groom starts looking for her, he is asked to pay a fee. Usually it is his friends who ‘steal’ the bride. Then there are the bride’s friends — they steal the bride’s shoe.
The groom must pay money for the shoe too. The guests enjoy watching these tussles, and continue partying. . Do you think Indian and Russian weddings have any customs in common?
With the help of a partner, fill in the table below. ‘‘The Proposal’’ (originally titled ‘‘A Marriage Proposal’’) is a one- act play, a farce, by the Russian short story writer and dramatist Anton Chekhov. It was written in – . The play is about the tendency of wealthy families to seek ties with other wealthy families, to increase their estates by encouraging marriages that make good economic sense.
Ivan Lomov, a long time wealthy neighbour of Stepan Chubukov, also wealthy, comes to seek the hand of Chubukov’s twenty-five-year-old daughter, Natalya. All three are quarrelsome people, and they quarrel over petty issues. The proposal is in danger of being forgotten amidst all this quarrelling. But economic good sense ensures that the proposal is made, after all — although the quarrelling perhaps continues!
Characters S TEPAN S TEPANOVITCH C HUBUKOV : a landowner N ATALYA S TEPANOVNA : his daughter, twenty-five years old I VAN V ASSILEVITCH L OMOV : a neighbour of Chubukov, a large and hearty, but very suspicious, landowner A drawing-room in Chubukov‘s house. Lomov enters, wearing a dress-jacket and white gloves. Chubukov rises to meet him. C HUBUKOV : My dear fellow, whom do I see!
Ivan Vassilevitch! I am extremely glad! [ Squeezes his