This anthology offers the reader six important Russian plays of the nineteenth century, in readable modern translations. The editor has provided an introduction surveying the development of drama and the theater in Russia and discussing the significance of the plays, and he has included a note on each play commenting on its literary and historical context.

-As if they were a crowd of pilgrims/singing in the rain.../their music rises from an earth/that will not stay in tune.- So F.D. Reeve writes in a poem entitled -Violets in a Pewter Vase.- For nearly fifty years, he has found in nature both a refuge from human imperfection and an exquisite rejoinder to it. Whether that imperfection be the war in Afghanistan, worsening economic inequality, or even the ridiculous pretense of a thoroughly professionalized poetry, Reeve makes of aesthetic perception a kind of subjunctive faith. For a moment one man's skill offers the possibility of redemption,...