A drama of ambition, murder, remorse and retribution, Boris Godunov charts the decline of a Russian statesman, whose dynastic aims were foiled by a guilty past and an audacious upstart. Based on history and inspired by Shakespeare, Alexander Pushkin’s daring masterwork is presented here in its rarely published uncensored version of 1825.

Set in Vienna, Flanders, Madrid and London, Pushkin’s celebrated Little Tragedies – Mozart and Salieri, The Mean-Spirited Knight, The Stone Guest and A Feast during the Plague – each focus on a protagonist’s driving obsession – with status, money, sex or risk-taking – and its devastating consequences.

This edition features an appendix containing extra historical material, notes on the play’s staging and versions of the text, as well as an extract from John Wilson’s The City of the Plague.