I am a magician. By the occult sciences I am endowed with the extraordinary gift of evoking the shades, and in dead bodies breathing an enchanted life. Here before you will live again the droll masks of an old fairy tale. The tale’s not true, but there’s a hint in it; a lesson to all of you, good people.
(Disappears.)
ACT I.
(Before the curtain rises there is a feeling that something extraordinarily important and solemn is to be presented. And in fact one sees a vast hall in the palace of the famous King Dodon during the sitting of the Council of Boyars. The hall is richly ornamented with Russian carving, gilded and painted, by which it is clearly evident that green, blue, and yellow are the favorite colors of King Dodon’s people. On benches covered with brocade, the Boyars are seated in a semicircle,—grave and bearded men. Upon a throne in the middle, magnificently decorated with peacock feathers, is seated King Dodon himself, wearing a golden crown and in royal vestments of yellow. On either side of him are the impatient Princes—his sons Afron and Guidon. Amongst the Boyars is the old and rude Voevoda[1] Polkan.)
[1] Voevoda—a head of the army.
King Dodon
(appears overwhelmed with cares).
I have summoned you hither, so that everyone
In the kingdom should know, what a burden it is
To the mighty Dodon to wear a crown.