Woe from Wit: A Verse Comedy in Four Acts

Woe from Wit is a masterpiece of Russian drama that offers sharply drawn characters, clever repartee, and biting social critique in a verse comedy set in Moscow high society after the Napoleonic wars.

Its protagonist, Alexander Chatsky, is an idealistic ironist who speaks out against the hypocrisy of aristocratic society, only to be met with accusations of madness.

Despite undergoing heavy-handed tsarist censorship, this influential play has been translated into lively contemporary English by Betsy Hulick, making it accessible to a wider audience.

With its sparkling wit, spirited dialogue, and effortless crossing of registers from elevated to colloquial, Woe from Wit is an enjoyable, clever, and very amusing read that deserves to be better-known and more widely performed beyond Russia.