SOURCE: An introduction to The Patriot: A Play in Three Acts, by Alfred Neumann, Boni & Liveright, 1928, pp. v-xiv.

In the following essay, Gabriel provides an overview of Neumann's drama The Patriot.

Neumann's drama [The Patriot] is of intrigue and assassination at the Russian Court, St. Petersburg, in the turbulent year of 1801. It is the tragedy of poor Tsar Paul I. and of his Judas, his minister and military governor, Count Pahlen.

These two are the chief tilting posts of The Patriot. Against them—especially against the enigmatic, ironclad, character of Peter Pahlen—the whole of Neumann's drama jousts. A very fiend this Pahlen is depicted, a spider of most intricate cunning, weaving coldly and expertly his plot of betrayal, sedition and regicide, dragging into its strands all admirals and officers, courtiers and whole garrisons, baiting for the emperor with the body of his own mistress, binding the agonized...