Vasilii Vasil'evich Kapnist achieved fame with a single masterpiece, the satiric five-act verse comedy Iabeda (Chicanery, 1798). A work of adroit rhymes and ingenious stagecraft, Iabeda continuously attracted audiences into the 1850s, when other plays from the extensive eighteenth-century Russian tradition of full-length verse comedy had been largely forgotten. Rivaling for some spectators and readers Aleksandr Griboedev's more famous comedy, Gore ot Uma (Woe from Wit, 1833), Kapnist's masterwork was successfully revived in 1970. The author's enduring popularity as a satiric playwright has overshadowed the other achievements of a remarkably varied literary and administrative career. Indeed Kapnist was much more active as a poet throughout his life than as a playwright.

Although it is certain that Kapnist was born to the son of a Greek immigrant in the Ukrainian village of Obuhovka, it is difficult to determine the poet's precise date of birth. Kapnist claims in a letter to his wife...