An old Russian proverb, God's Thing Is Strong, the Foe's One Just Sticky (Боже крепко, а враже лепко), gave the play its working title.
The play's second version, a three-act drama now called Live Not As You Would Like To was set in the 18th century Moscow, in the days of the traditional Russian Maslenitsa pancake carnival.
[2] Alexander Serov thought the play's plot was an ideal material for an opera, and insisted that Ostrovsky should write a libretto, which he did while in Shchelykovo, in the summer of 1857.
Serov's attempts to change the final scene (notably, to have Pyotr killing Dasha) have been heartily disapproved by Ostrovsky, for whom the idea of the hero's moral reformation was crucial.
2, 1856 issue) argued that "only in the first, best-known Ostrovsky play, the Family Affair, such vivid, masterfully depicted characters could be found... Each and every face here exudes the true Russian spirit."
Once Ostrovsky's friend, now a prominent Slavophile Terty Filippov in Russkaya Beseda (No.1, 1856) admitted that "the idea of this drama was of great importance and its dramatic implementation would be worthy of a critical support if only for an insightful artistic intention."