These four Russian comedies were written during the reign of Nicholas I, a period of considerable repression and censorship. They represent the most popular genres of the period. <BR>Lensky's <EM>Her First Night </EM>was an immensely popular vaudeville which held the stage for years; Kozma Prutkov's <EM>Fantasy </EM>is a parody of vaudeville which was banned after one night. Turgenev's <EM>Luncheon with the Marshal</EM> is a comedy of manners about provincial life, and Saltykov-Schedrin's Pazukhin's <EM>Death </EM>is a satire of greed and corruption so savage that it was forbidden during the author's lifetime. <BR>This collection constitutes a remarkable comic spectrum which will assist in enlarging the English language repertoire with a set of newly available and hightly stageworthy scripts.
