The Death of Ivan the Terrible

The Death of Ivan the Terrible
F.B.Kitto, London, 1869
Written by	Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Date premiered	1867
Place premiered	Alexandrinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg
Original language	Russian
Genre	Historical drama

The Death of Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Смерть Иоанна Грозного, Smert Ioa′nna Gro′znogo) is a historical drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy written in 1863 and first published in the January 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski magazine. It is the first part of a trilogy that is followed by Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich and concludes with Tsar Boris. All three plays were banned by the censor. It dramatises the story of Ivan IV of Russia and is written in blank verse. Tolstoy was influenced by the work of William Shakespeare in writing the trilogy, which formed the core of his reputation as a writer in the Russia of his day and as a dramatist to this day.

In the early 1863 Aleksey Tolstoy informed Yakov Polonsky in a letter from Dresden that he was working upon "a large poem in verse The Death of Ioann Grozny… Two acts of it are being finished and, as people tell me, are good", he added. The deterioration of health hindered the creative process, but Act 3 has been completed by the summer of that year and in the end of 1863 the play was virtually ready.

Some details as to the original draft of it have been traced through Tolstoy's correspondence with Karolina Pavlova who was translating the text into German, and was being asked to make changes according to those Tolstoy was making to his original text. Some of the scenes that have been excluded by the author from the final version of the play looked significant, one being Boris Godunov's conversation with tsarina Anastasia Romanovna about her granting him trusteeship right over Dmitry after Ioann and Fyodor's respective deaths. Also cut has been the scene of Godunov's talk with Dmitry's nanny. Both, according to Tolstoy, precipitated Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich, the second play of the trilogy and both have made their way into it later, although, as critics noticed, some fragments of which exactly the same could be said, have been kept in the original text.