Persons in the Prologue

PETER SABOUROFF (an Innkeeper)
VERA SABOUROFF (his Daughter)
MICHAEL (a Peasant)
DMITRI SABOUROFF
NICOLAS
COLONEL KOTEMKIN

Persons in the play

IVAN THE CZAR
PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI (Prime Minister of Russia)
PRINCE PETROVITCH
COUNT ROUVALOFF
MARQUIS DE POIVRARD
BARON RAFF
GENERAL KOTEMKIN
A PAGE
COLONEL OF THE GUARD

Nihilists

PETER TCHERNAVITCH, President of the Nihilists
MICHAEL
ALEXIS IVANACIEVITCH, known as a Student of Medicine
PROFESSOR MARFA
VERA SABOUROFF
SOLDIERS, CONSPIRATORS, Etc.


A Drama in a Prologue, and Four Acts

PROLOGUE

SCENE: A Russian inn. Large door opening on snowy landscape at back of stage. PETER SABOUROFF and MICHAEL.

PETER:

[(warming his hands at a stove)] Has Vera not come back yet, Michael?

MICHAEL:

No, Father Peter, not yet; 'tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plaguey creature for a wench to handle.

PETER:

Why didn't you go with her, you young fool? She'll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered.

MICHAEL:

She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I fear she'll never love me after all.

PETER:

Tut, tut, boy, why shouldn't she? You're young, and wouldn't be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face. Aren't you one of Prince Maraloffski's gamekeepers; and haven't you got a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl want?

MICHAEL:

But Vera, Father Peter---

PETER:

Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I don't think much of ideas myself; I've got on well enough in life without 'em; why shouldn't my children? There's Dmitri! Could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law? Let a man do his duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.

MICHAEL:

Ay! but, Father Peter, they say a good lawyer can break the law as often as he likes, and no one can say him nay. If a man knows the law he knows his duty.

PETER:

True, Michael, if a man knows the law there is nothing illegal he cannot do when he likes: that is why folk become lawyers. That is about all they are good for; and there he stays, and has not written a line to us for four months now---a good son that, eh?

MICHAEL:

Come, come, Father Peter, Dmitri's letters must have gone astray---perhaps the new postman can't read; he looks stupid enough, and Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how he shot the bear at the barn in the great winter?

PETER:

Ay, it was a good shot; I never did a better myself.

MICHAEL:

And as for dancing, he tired out three fiddlers Christmas come two years.

PETER:

Ay, ay, he was a merry lad.