Set in Dealul Spirii neighborhood (mahala), south-central Bucharest, A Stormy Night focuses on the nighttime intrusion of Venturiano, a liberal demagogue employed as a government clerk, into the townhouse of Dumitrache Titircă, embodying the more commercially successful layers of the liberal-voting petty bourgeoisie.

A Stormy Night remained a staple of Romanian theater, with productions overseen by Caragiale down to his death in 1912; at the time, he was working on a sequel that also mixed in characters from his other major comedy, O scrisoare pierdută, and broadened the scope by also attacking conservatives.

His posterity saw a split between "sociological" (and generally Marxist) productions of the play, as recommended by Sică Alexandrescu, and experimental versions by Alexa Visarion, Sorana Coroamă-Stanca, and Mihai Măniuțiu; both visions are occasionally opposed by "innocent" readings of the text, which emphasize the farcical elements.

[4] Other than taking up this attack on liberal culture, A Stormy Night focuses mainly on the Civic Guard, an urban paramilitary formation that had been established in March 1866—its stated purpose was "to represent at the highest level the nation, the civilian population in its entirety, irrespective of its social standing and wealth, hereby called under arms and ever-ready to defend its country.

[9] Dramatist Ion Marin Sadoveanu, dismissing claims that Caragiale was vague in describing nature, suggests that fragments of dialogue help to precisely locate the mahala on an identifiable portion of Dealul Spirii, in the vicinity of a limepit.

[10] Museologist Ionel Ioniță argues the same, noting that the Iunion can be reliably located on Calea Victoriei, just north of the present-day Telephones Company Building, whereas the house in which the action takes place is most closely traced to the portion where Izvor Street led into Dealul Spirii.

[13] Literary historian Iulian Boldea, building on earlier observations made by theatrologist Maria Vodă Căpușan, proposes that the Bucharest which emerges from the various verbal clues is a "crooked City" and "labyrinthic space", as dictated by both the needs of the plot and by Caragiale's own infatuation with the "mingle-mangle" (talmeș-balmeș) of the universe.

Essayist and theologian Nicolae Steinhardt opposed this interpretation, proposing instead that lăsata secului refers in this context to 30 August, the last day before another period of fasting—non-canonical in Romanian Orthodoxy, which is the protagonists' religion, but embraced by many Orthodox under the influence of Transylvanian Greek Catholics.

[18] Scene I takes place in a ground-floor room, revealed to be part of a house inhabited by Jupân Dumitrache Titircă, nicknamed Inimă-Rea ("The Bad Heart"), who is the owner of a lumber yard and a Captain in the Civic Guard; a guardsman's rifle and bayonet hang in the background.

The episode, as recounted by Dumitrache, ended only because a pack of stray dogs cut off the stranger's path; Titircă attempted to return to the scene with his acolyte and shop assistant, Chiriac, whom he entrusts with defending "my honor as a family man", but the stalker "was no more".

Venturiano, now agitated, reassures her that he is an honorable man of good intentions, and introduces himself, spelling out his employment as an archival clerk, his youthful age (he is 25 going on 26), his ongoing education at the University of Bucharest Faculty of Law, as well as his other profession—he is a "publicist" for Vocea Patriotului Naționale.

The young man is introduced through Dumitrache's narration of the beer-garden incident; in this early part of the play, the captain voices his disdain for the youth, writing him off as a bagabont de amploaiat ("wage-collecting wastrel"), but also minutely describing his appearance, and indicating the Venturanio paraphernalia: top hat, ascot tie, glasses and cane.

[26] Another literary historian, Gabriel Țepelea, argues that Rică's vocabulary is more politically neutral, being largely based on the "Latinate imprint" that Caragiale had observed in his erstwhile schoolteacher, Zaharia Antinescu, who continued to express himself in the made-up language as late as 1899.

Its Romantic hero was "Alesandru Ventureanu", whose name, which would more naturally be rendered as "Alexandru Vântureanu", was spelled according to extreme Latinate norms that Caragiale habitually mocked; he took over the surname, and pretended to pronounce it as written, also changing the final vowel to reflect Francization.

[35] The root verb, a vântura, means "to scatter", and was probably used in Orientul Latin to suggest that Alesandru had been chased out of his home by a cruel fate; as argued by Cioculescu, the "Venturiano" version may bring in contrasting echoes from Romania's Phanariote legacy, making Rică a cosmopolitan and a "parvenu".

[38] This juxtaposition of two neologisms was recorded in a solemnly religious register, and can reportedly be found on an 1850s tombstone at Curtea Veche; according to linguist Mihaela Popescu, the two component words had such widespread use in Caragiale's time that Venturiano can be read as a joke on the public itself.

[39] Iorga reports that the first ironic use of such poetic language, including the word angel, had first appeared in an 1874 comedy by Teodor Myller, which Caragiale probably read; however, after comparing the two samples, Cioculescu proposes that Venturiano is a much more outrageous caricature, linking a whole tradition of Romantic and "elegiac" cliches—leading back to the 1840s poet, Dimitrie Bolintineanu.

[47] Among the literary scholars, Barbu Lăzăreanu believed to have identified the core inspiration for Titircă in a report of 1865, which records that a Dumitru Andrei poreclit Inimă Rea ("nicknamed Bad Heart") had assaulted a Gendarme and had torn off his uniform in places.

[8] Maiorescu's diaries record the text as a "lively comedy", giving its working title: Noaptea furtunoasă de la numĕrul 9 ("The Stormy Night at No 9");[100] Negruzzi recalled in 1931 that Caragiale had a "rather raspy voice which fit in perfectly with the characters of the Bucharest mahala".

[103] The young author was affected by "something resembling stage fright", asking for his name to be removed from the playbill; the premiere's audience included Barbu Bălcescu and his daughters, one of whom reported seeing him "all pale and shivering, cursing the day he got down to write it".

[106] Another paper, Binele Public, featured an unsigned chronicle which questioned the play's validity, since, it argued, the characters were "perishable"—as Cioculescu notes, the anonymous author was the first in a line of Caragiale skeptics, leading down to Pompiliu Eliade and Eugen Lovinescu, all of whom raised the same marginal objection.

[121] According to Vianu, the twin efforts by Caragiale and Macedonski had managed to reshape the "young romantic intellectual" type into a full-blown caricature, down to the 1910s—when the idealistic depiction returned timidly, with plays by Dimitrie Anghel, Ștefan Octavian Iosif, and Mihail Sorbul.

Ornea suggests that this work expands on the critique of Rosettism, shown here to have been embraced by a whole class of "extremist-minded intellectuals"; lawyer Nae Cațavencu is a more vociferous version of Venturiano, with his own newspaper, Răcnetul Carpaților ("The Roar of the Carpathians"), being intentionally "a few octaves higher than Vocea Patriotului Naționale".

[152] The film version takes some liberties with the theatrical standard, including with cameo appearances by Țârcădău (George Ciprian)[149] and Tache the Shoemaker, the latter of whom is shown to by terminally ill.[153] Spiridon is unusually performed by a 13-year-old with no previous acting experience, Ștefan Baroi.

"[160] There were state celebrations of the Caragiale centennial in 1952, even as the writer's daughter, Ecaterina Logadi, was held in prison for political crimes; the 1942 film was re-released, but the print was heavily modified by communist censorship, which permanently deleted a scene in which Veta strips down to her negligee.

This was also his attempt to perpetuate his "Caragiale School" by having young trainees such as Mihai Fotino (Venturiano) and Coca Andronescu (Zița) appear alongside the aging Giugaru (who was again acclaimed as Dumitrache), the middle-aged Niki Atanasiu (who chose to play Chiriac as "violent and abject"), and other consecrated figures.

Costache Titircă, as the inspiration for Dumitrache, chances upon the real-life Caragiale after having seen the play; instead of being upset at his wife's secrets being exposed for the world, he is adamantly unpersuaded that the caricature targets her and himself, listing all the superficial differences between reality and its fictionalized version.

[165] Modernist rehashing of Caragiale's text, specifically directed against the sociological reading of Alexandrescu and others, began in the 1960s, when director Valeriu Moisescu called for joining A Stormy Night with the Theater of the Absurd; columnist Dinu Săraru looked back on this as a mistake.

Calion believes that experimentalism reached its "peak" in 1979, when Alexa Visarion redid A Stormy Night at Giulești Theater—its protagonists displayed a "highly aggressive stupor", with the exception of Spiridon (Răzvan Vasilescu), appearing as the "prototype" of "indolent stupidity".

[70] During the early- to mid-1970s, Gelu Bogdan Ivașcu took on as Rică for productions at the National Theater Cluj, and received praise for returning the character to his roots—rather than resuming a caricature with its mannerisms, he aimed to depict the firebrand journalist as a man of his time, made ridiculous by his skewed perspective on things.