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stoutfellowI currently have my computer set to go, at random, through all of the music on my hard drive. One of the disks I've copied contains the songs from the original Broadway performance of Fiddler on the Roof; a bit ago, one of those songs, one I'd never heard before, came up. The song's title is "The Rumor"; it is set sometime after Tzeitel's wedding, when Hodl's beloved, the radical student Perchick, is arrested. The report of his arrest undergoes a game of Telephone, being magnified and distorted as it passes from person to person. That's not what I'm bugged about. What I'm bugged about is this: one iteration of the rumor refers to Tevye's other daughters - Schprintze and Beilke, the two whose love affairs do not appear in the film (and, I assume, in the play). Schprintze, it is said, is down with the measles.
There's only one problem with this. I've read the original stories by Sholom Aleichem, including the story titled "Schprintze". She was Tevye's eldest daughter, and her story comes first, before even Tzeitel's. It ends with Tevye being led to the lake where she drowned herself after her love affair was cut off by both sets of parents. That is: by the time of the events described above, Schprintze was several years dead.
I know, it's a nitpick; the play is not the collection of stories, and there are always going to be deviations. But I've always felt that Schprintze's death was a significant factor in Tevye's lenience with Tzeitel and Hodl, and to use her name only to amplify a joke... diminishes the story somewhat. (I also have a bone to pick with the very end, when Chava *and her husband* join Tevye and the rest in leaving Anatevka. Her, yes; but emphatically not him - not in the original story, and not in turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russia. No way.)
There's only one problem with this. I've read the original stories by Sholom Aleichem, including the story titled "Schprintze". She was Tevye's eldest daughter, and her story comes first, before even Tzeitel's. It ends with Tevye being led to the lake where she drowned herself after her love affair was cut off by both sets of parents. That is: by the time of the events described above, Schprintze was several years dead.
I know, it's a nitpick; the play is not the collection of stories, and there are always going to be deviations. But I've always felt that Schprintze's death was a significant factor in Tevye's lenience with Tzeitel and Hodl, and to use her name only to amplify a joke... diminishes the story somewhat. (I also have a bone to pick with the very end, when Chava *and her husband* join Tevye and the rest in leaving Anatevka. Her, yes; but emphatically not him - not in the original story, and not in turn-of-the-century Tsarist Russia. No way.)
