The Naked King, the Shadow and the Dragon

This volume collects together the three satirical plays written during the Stalin era which secured the reputation of the playwrite.

The first (1934), the Naked King, is the most light-hearted and is based on three Anderson tales, the most obvious being The Emperer's New Clothes. It satirizes not only Stalin's own idiosyncracies but also the many hypocracies of 1930's Soviet ideology, among them the simulteneous enabling and exploitation of proletariats.

The second play, The Shaow (1949) is more sinister by carrying the Andersen story about the man separated from his shadow by the climate of mutual suspcian and paranoia that had become prevalent in Russia. In the play, the man's shadow actually betrays him. This was at a time that many credulous western observers chose to see in Societ communism a fairy tale world. In the play destroys those illusions.

The final play, The Dragon (1944) is an eloquent and powerful portayal of the degrading and destructive effections of totalitarianism on the human spirit. Through the struggles of its its protagonist, who shooses to fight and overthrow the tyrant and rish the assumption of power in the belief that it can be used for good ends, Shvarts decries not only the abuses of government, but the deluded compacency and self-enslavement of the people themselves who submit to the tyrant's rule.

Banned for many years, Shvarts work has more recently been restored in Russia and the former Eastern Bloc. He died in 1958.