His plays, like life, break off short, after the climax, with some insignificant scene, generally between personages of secondary rank, and he tries to convince the audience that in life there are no beginnings, no endings; that there is no moment after which one would venture to place a full period.

Moreover, they are "plays of life" rather than either "comedies" or "tragedies," as he chanced to label them; they are purely presentations of life.

In their scope they include almost every phase of Russian life, except peasant and country life, which he had no chance to study.
For the sake of convenience we may group the other dramatic writers here.

The conditions under which the Russian stage labored were so difficult that the best literary talent was turned into other channels, and the very few plays which were fitted to vie with Ostrovsky's came from the pens of men whose chief work belonged to other branches of literature.

Thus Ivan Sergyeevitch Turgeneff, who wrote more for the stage than other contemporary writers, and whose plays fill one volume of his collected works, distinguished himself far more in other lines.
Yet several of these plays hold the first place after Ostrovsky's.