Masquerade (Russian: ) is a verse play written in 1835 by the Russian Romantic writer Mikhail Lermontov. The four-act play, set in 1830's St. Petersburg aristocratic society, highlights the rebellious spirit and noble mind of the protagonist, Yevgeny Arbenin. It is often compared with Shakespeare's Othello in its essential story line. Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov; (1814 -1841), a Russian Romantic writer, poet and painter, sometimes called "the poet of the Caucasus," became the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837. Lermontov is considered the supreme poet of...