[1] In the actress Golskaya's dressing room between acts three and four of the show, her impresario (and fellow actor) Alexander Petrovich, whom she loves, announces the end of their affair and promises to provide for the child she is expecting.

[2] The story was based on a real life incident, the suicide by poisoning on stage in Kharkov of an aspiring Russian actress, Yevlalya Kadmina, who played that evening the leading role in Vasilisa Melentyeva, a historical drama by Alexander Ostrovsky.

It inspired Ivan Turgenev's novella "Clara Milich" (1882) and Alexey Suvorin's drama Tatyana Repina, premiered at the Maly in 1889.

[1] Alexander Kuprin approached the poet Liodor Palmin who arranged for the story to be published in the Russian Satirical Leaflet (signed "А. К-rin"), on 3 December 1889.

[2] The story was re-issued for the first time in 1939 when it appeared in the Soviet Literary Contemporary (Literaturny sovremennik) magazine's July and August issues.