These four Russian comedies were written during the reign of Nicholas I, a period of considerable repression and censorship. They represent the most popular genres of the period. Lensky's Her First Night was an immensely popular vaudeville which held the stage for years, Kozma Prutkov's Fantasy is a parody of vaudeville which was banned after one night. Turgenev's Luncheon with the Marshal is a comedy of manners about provincial life, and Saltykov-Schedrin's Pazukhin's Death is a satire of greed and corruption so savage that it was forbidden during the author's lifetime. This collection constitutes a remarkable comic spectrum which will assist in enlarging the English language repertoire with a set of newly available and hightly stageworthy scripts.