Critics noted, though, that history as such was secondary to Tolstoy; he was driven mostly by his own personal views and feelings, tending to judge his 16th century characters using mid-19th century moral values. "The life of today seeps through everywhere," Tolstoy himself admitted, speaking of his ballads. According to the author, historical drama had to be "true" only in a "humanist way". "A poet... has just one responsibility: to his own poetic self... human truth is his one law. Historical truth is something he is not bound to. If it fits into the concept, very good, if not, he can easily do without it," he wrote. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- "The Death of Ivan the Terrible", "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" and "Tsar Boris"- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik or the imitation of the French "tragedie des allusions" which Aleksander Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian "noble men" (he associated them with the boyarstvo) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to.