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    Vera, Or The Nihilists
    Vera, Or The Nihilists
    Vera, Or The Nihilists
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Vera, Or The Nihilists

    By Oscar Wilde

    3/5

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    About this ebook

    After becoming involved with the Nihilist movement and being trained as an assassin, Vera falls in love with Alexis, another member of the group. But Vera soon finds out that the truth about Alexis puts the two of them at odds, and she will have to choose between him and her cause.

    Loosely based on the life of Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich, Vera was not performed until years after it was written, when an American actress, Marie Prescott, and her husband purchased the rights to perform the play.

    HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateNov 25, 2014
    ISBN9781443442558
    Author

    Oscar Wilde

    Born in Ireland in 1856, Oscar Wilde was a noted essayist, playwright, fairy tale writer and poet, as well as an early leader of the Aesthetic Movement. His plays include: An Ideal Husband, Salome, A Woman of No Importance, and Lady Windermere's Fan. Among his best known stories are The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Canterville Ghost.

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    Reviews for Vera, Or The Nihilists

    3/5

    21 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      As Oscar Wilde's first play this is more of a historical curiousity than anything resembling his subsequent great works. A melodrama about a group of Russian nihilists, Vera has some good drama, some witty exchanges, and a decent plot. But it is also a bit odd, heavy handed at times, and hardly scintilating from beginning to end.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      As Oscar Wilde's first play this is more of a historical curiousity than anything resembling his subsequent great works. A melodrama about a group of Russian nihilists, Vera has some good drama, some witty exchanges, and a decent plot. But it is also a bit odd, heavy handed at times, and hardly scintilating from beginning to end.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Another weak effort from Wilde. He should have stuck with his drawing room comedies. This "power to the people" thing just didn't cut it. The "betrayal" by the prince never made sense. Why did these people not use their brains? He protects them, kills his evil father, but he's not on their side suddenly?

    Book preview

    Vera, Or The Nihilists - Oscar Wilde

    VERA, OR THE NIHILISTS

    A Drama in a Prologue, and Four Acts

    Persons in the Prologue

    PETER SABOUROFF (an Innkeeper)

    NICOLAS

    COLONEL KOTEMKIN

    DMITRI SABOUROFF

    VERA SABOUROFF (his Daughter)

    MICHAEL (a Peasant)

    Persons in the Play

    IVAN THE CZAR

    PRINCE PAUL MARALOFFSKI (Prime Minister of Russia)

    PRINCE PETROVITCH

    COUNT ROUVALOFF

    MARQUIS DE POIVRARD

    BARON RAFF

    GENERAL KOTEMKIN

    A PAGE

    COLONEL OF THE GUARD

    Nihilists

    PETER TCHERNAVITCH, President of the Nihilists

    MICHAEL

    ALEXIS IVANACIEVITCH, known as a Student of Medicine

    PROFESSOR MARFA

    VERA SABOUROFF

    SOLDIERS, CONSPIRATORS Etc.

    PROLOGUE

    SCENE: A Russian inn. Large door opening on snowy landscape at back of stage. PETER SABOUROFF and MICHAEL.

    PETER (warming his hands at a stove): Has Vera not come back yet, Michael?

    MICHAEL: No, Father Peter, not yet; ‘tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plaguey creature for a wench to handle.

    PETER: Why didn’t you go with her, you young fool? She’ll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered.

    MICHAEL: She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I fear she’ll never love me after all.

    PETER: Tut, tut, boy, why shouldn’t she? You’re young, and wouldn’t be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face. Aren’t you one of Prince Maraloffski’s gamekeepers; and haven’t you got a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl want?

    MICHAEL: But Vera, Father Peter –

    PETER: Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I don’t think much of ideas myself; I’ve got on well enough in life without ‘em; why shouldn’t my children? There’s Dmitri! Could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law? Let a man do his duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.

    MICHAEL: Ay! But, Father Peter, they say a good lawyer can break the law as often as he likes, and no one can say him nay. If a man knows the law he knows his duty.

    PETER: True, Michael, if a man knows the law there is nothing illegal he cannot do when he likes: that is why folk become lawyers. That is about all they are good for; and there he stays, and has not written a line to us for four months now – a good son that, eh?

    MICHAEL: Come, come, Father Peter, Dmitri’s letters must have gone astray – perhaps the new postman can’t read; he looks stupid enough, and Dmitri, why, he was the best fellow in the village. Do you remember how he shot the bear at the barn in the great winter?

    PETER: Ay, it was a good shot; I never did a better myself.

    MICHAEL: And as for dancing, he tired out three fiddlers Christmas come two years.

    PETER: Ay, ay, he was a merry lad. It is the girl that has the seriousness – she goes about as solemn as a priest for days at a time.

    MICHAEL: Vera is always thinking of others.

    PETER: There is her mistake, boy. Let God and our little Father the Czar look to the world. It is none of my work to mend my neighbour’s thatch. Why, last winter old Michael was frozen to death in his sleigh in the snowstorm, and his wife and children starved afterwards when the hard times came; but what business was it of mine? I didn’t make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. And then the blight came, and the black plague with it, and the priests couldn’t bury the people fast enough, and they lay dead on the roads – men and women both. But what business was it of mine? I didn’t make the world. Let God and the Czar look to it. Or two autumns ago, when the river overflowed on a sudden, and the children’s school was carried away and drowned every girl and boy in it. I didn’t make the world – let God or the Czar look to it.

    MICHAEL: But, Father Peter –

    PETER: No, no, boy; no man could live if he took his neighbour’s pack on his shoulder. (Enter VERA in peasant’s dress.) Well, my girl, you’ve been long enough away – where is the letter?

    VERA: There is none to-day, Father.

    PETER: I knew it.

    VERA: But there will be one to-morrow, Father.

    PETER: Curse him, for an ungrateful son.

    VERA: O Father, don’t say that; he must be sick.

    PETER: Ay! Sick of Profligacy, perhaps.

    VERA: How dare you say that of him, Father? You know that is not true.

    PETER: Where does the money go, then? Michael, listen. I gave Dmitri half his mother’s fortune to bring with him to pay the lawyer folk at Moscow. He has only written three times, and every time for more money. He got it, not at my wish, but at hers (pointing to VERA), and now for five months, close on six almost, we have heard nothing from him.

    VERA: Father, he will come back.

    PETER: Ay! The prodigals always return; but let him never darken my doors again.

    VERA (sitting down pensive): Some evil has come on him; he must be dead! Oh! Michael, I am so wretched about Dmitri.

    MICHAEL: Will you never love any one but him, Vera?

    VERA (smiling): I don’t know; there is so much else to do in the world but love.

    MICHAEL: Nothing else worth doing, Vera.

    PETER: What noise is that, Vera? (A metallic clink is heard.)

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