or staged. In an unpublished foreword, Pushkin wrote, "There is much of Henri IV in Dmitri. Like him he is brave, generous and boastful, like him indifferent to religion -- both abjure their faith for a political cause, both love pleasures and war, both devote themselves to chimerical projects, both are victims of conspiracies... But Henri IV didn't have a Ksenya [Xenia] on his conscience -- it is true that this horrible accusation hasn't been proved and, as for me, I make a point of not believing it." Pushkin intended to write further plays about the reigns of Dmitry and Vasili, as well as the subsequent Time of Troubles. Pushkin was prevented from fulfilling these plans by his death in a duel at the age of 37. Although based on Pushkin's play, Modest Mussorgsky's opera of the same name demonizes False Dmitry, the Polish people, and the Roman Catholic Church. False Dmitry's engagement to Marina Mniszech is portrayed as instigated by a Jesuit. Marina balks at seducing the pretender, and the Jesuit threatens her with hellfire until she grovels at his feet. In contrast, Pushkin's believed that Marina was motivated by pathological ambition. At the opera's denouement, the pretender's ascent to the throne is lamented by the holy fool Nikolai, who appears in Pushkin's play only to rebuke Tsar Boris for murdering the real Dmitry. In Mussorgsky's opera, the holy fool proclaims, "Weep, weep Orthodox soul", and predicts that "the enemy will come" leading to "darkness blacker than night." False Dmitry's story was also told by Schiller (in Demetrius), Sumarokov, Khomyakov, by Victorin Joncières in his opera Dimitri, and by Antonín Dvořák in his opera Dimitrij. Rainer Maria Rilke recounts the overthrow of False Dimitry in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rilke's only longer prose work. Harold Lamb fictionalizes the demise of False Dimitry in "The Wolf Master", in which the claimant survives his assassination through trickery, and flees east, pursued by a Cossack he had betrayed. Features in the second story of The Ninth Doctor Adventures: Back to Earth (Volume 2.1), a boxset of Doctor Who audio dramas from Big Finish Productions. See also Bibliography of Russian history (1223–1613) Ivan Bolotnikov Isaac Massa Polish–Muscovite War (1605–18) Tsars of Russia family tree References External links The Reporte of a bloudie and terrible Massacre in the Citty of Mosco, with the fearefull and tragicall end of Demetrius the last Duke,