During the four decades of his creative life Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Shakhovskoi wrote, translated, and adapted more than 110 plays. Sensitive to the interests and disposition of his audience, he worked in the most varied of genres, from classical tragedy to romantic drama, from high comedy in verse to vaudeville, from the "volshebno-romanticheskoe zrelishche" (romantic-fairy-tale spectacle) to scenes from Russian peasant life. His experiments and quests in the sphere of language and verse prepared the ground for Aleksandr Griboedov's masterpiece, the comedy Gore ot uma (Woe from Wit, 1833). Shakhovskoi's oeuvre reflects nearly all of the major developments in the evolution of Russian drama in the first third of the nineteenth century, especially its first twenty years. Fanatically devoted to the theater, Shakhovskoi labored in its service not only as a playwright: as an official of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters, he determined their repertoire for almost two decades. As theatrical...