Boris Godunov was written in 1825 and published in 1831 (delayed by censorship). It dramatizes the crisis of the Russian state in 1598-1605: Boris Godunov seizes the throne after the death of Ivan the Terrible’s heir (possibly murdered on Boris’s orders), rules with increasing paranoia, and is overthrown by a pretender claiming to be the murdered Tsarevich Dmitry.
Pushkin wrote the play in conscious emulation of Shakespeare’s histories — particularly Richard III and the Henry plays — and in deliberate rejection of the French neoclassical unities that dominated Russian theatre. The play has twenty-three scenes spanning years and ranging across Russia and Poland; it mixes verse and prose; it includes comic scenes alongside tragedy; and it gives voice to the narod (the people) as a collective character whose silence or assent determines the fate of tsars.
The play was never successfully produced in Pushkin’s lifetime — its sprawling form defeated theatrical convention. But it became the foundation of Russian historical drama and provided the libretto for Mussorgsky’s opera (1869/1874), which is the form in which most audiences encounter the story. Pushkin’s text is terser, more ironic, and more politically ambiguous than the opera: Boris’s guilt is implied rather than confirmed, and the people’s silence at the play’s end is more ominous than any explicit judgment.
Collecting Boris Godunov
First edition (St. Petersburg, 1831): Russian-language, extremely rare.
Key translations: D.M. Thomas (1982), Antony Wood (2007).
Market values:
- Original Russian first (1831): Museum pieces
- Fine translations in first editions: $20–$50