Four plays in which Pushkin reflects on human vices and the game with fate, settles accounts with his father, and poses the question of whether genius and villainy are compatible.
“Little Tragedies” is a conditional cycle of four one-act verse plays set in Western Europe at different times. The plots of three plays (“The Stone Guest,” “The Miserly Knight,” “Mozart and Salieri”) are built around human passions (love, jealousy, greed, envy) and their dramatic manifestations. The theme of the fourth—“A Feast during a Plague”—is a global catastrophe conceived as retribution or a test.