The founder of the Russian national theatre A. N. Ostrovsky was a good hand at literary translation of foreign plays, his special interest being in the Italian theatre. The translations by Ostrovsky are characterized by a peculiar stylistics, a thorough work on words, a careful approach to the specific genre features of the plays. There turned out quite a few parallels and creative things in common between Ostrovsky’s plays and the works of Italian playwrights. The art of Italian translations by A. N. Ostrovsky is thoroughly and scientifically analyzed in the monograph by I. B. Budanova and A. M. Zhilyakova.
Key words: Ostrovsky, the translator; the art of translation; the correlation of the Russian and the Italian drama.