Vera; or, The Nihilists

In 1795 Vera Sabouroff, an innkeeper's daughter in the Russian countryside, sees her brother Dmitri led through her father's inn in chains, a Nihilist bound for the mines of Siberia. He slips her an address in Moscow and the conspirators' oath: to strangle whatever nature is in her, neither to love nor to be loved. She swears to keep it and to avenge him.

Five years later Vera leads the Nihilists of Moscow. Among them is Alexis, a gentle student of medicine who turns out to be the Czarevitch, the Czar's own son. He saves the conspirators from a police raid, then defies his father in council by declaring himself a Nihilist. Moments later the Czar is shot dead at his window, and Alexis is proclaimed Czar in his place.

When Alexis keeps the crown, the Nihilists condemn him to death, and Vera, who loves him, draws the lot to kill him. She finds him asleep in the palace, but he wakes and tells her that he kept the crown only for her and for the people's freedom. She cannot strike. As midnight strikes she stabs herself and throws the bloody dagger to the conspirators waiting below, the sign that the Czar is dead, and dies having saved his life.

Key themes

• Love against the oath
• Liberty and revenge
• Tyranny and fear
• The cynic at court
• Crowns and reform
• Fathers and children

Vera; or, The Nihilists was Oscar Wilde's first play. He wrote it in 1880 and had it privately printed the same year, long before the society comedies that made his name in the theatre.

The play was first performed at the Union Square Theatre in New York in August 1883. It was not a success, and closed after about a week.

This text is the 1902 private printing, made from Wilde's own corrected copy two years after his death. It sets the prologue in Russia in 1795 and the four acts in Moscow in 1800, with an invented Czar Ivan on the throne and the Nihilists plotting against him.

Wilde's first play, privately printed in 1880 and first performed in New York in August 1883, where it closed within a week. This text is the 1902 printing from his corrected copy.

About this edition

• Text: Privately printed, 1902, from the author's corrected copy. Public domain. We change only the layout.
• Audiobook: a full-cast reading by volunteers for LibriVox, in the public domain.
• Every quotation and glossary word in these notes is checked against the text.