The Snow Maiden (Russian: Снегурочка, Snegurochka) is a play in verse by Alexander Ostrovsky written in 1873 and first published in the September 1873 issue of Vestnik Evropy.
The idea of the play based on a fairytale about Snegurochka came to Ostrovsky in his Shchelykovo estate, the place he admired and almost worshipped, imagining it as a piece of wonderland here on Earth, saturated with the spirit of Old Rus with its heroic warriors and gentle, benevolent tsars.
The play tells the story of an idyllic utopian kingdom ruled by the Berendei, a poet and an artist who believes in love, peace and good will and promotes this belief of his.
Raw heap of folk songs, bits of Slovo o Polku Igoreve and even from A.Tolstoy and Mei... Nekrasov had sense enough: despite his friendship with Ostrovsky, he read half of the play and returned it, saying: Boring!
When the two met, Ostrovsky tried to justify himself, arguing that "even Shakespeare had fairytales alongside serious plays," citing A Midsummer Night's Dream to prove his point.
As Ostrovsky submitted the play to him for the first time, he responded with a letter (the business-like tone of which the author took as an offence) implying that only a modest fee for it could be offered.