Boris Godunov (play) opera, "Boris Godunov" (1874), is based on this play. Having finished the play, Pushkin famously wrote to his friend Pyotr Vyazemsky: "What a Pushkin, what a son of a bitch!" . Pushkin wrote of the play: "The study of Shakespeare, Karamzin, and our old chronicles gave me the idea of clothing in dramatic forms one of the most dramatic epochs of our history. Not disturbed by any other influence, I imitated Shakespeare in his broad and free depictions of characters, in the simple and careless combination of plots; I followed Karamzin in the clear development of events; I tried to
Boris Godunov (play) only in an English translation. This production was based on Meyerhold's design and featured Prokofiev's music, together with supplemental music by Peter Westergaard. Chester Dunning, Caryl Emerson, and Sergei Fomichev's "The Uncensored Boris Godunov" seeks to rescue Pushkin's play from obscurity. The Royal Shakespeare Company staged the British premiere of the original 1825 edition at Stratford on Avon in the fall of 2012. The play had been translated into English by Adrian Mitchell. A familiarity with the historical events surrounding the Time of Troubles — the interregnum period of relative anarchy following the end of the Rurik Dynasty (1598) and