A parallel can be drawn between this period of English history and the period of medieval Russian history depicted in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov: the years 1598–1605, part of the turbulent era known as Smutnoe vremia (‘the Time of Troubles’, 1598–1613), which culminated in the establishment of the Romanov dynasty (1613–1917). As Caryl Emerson has suggested in relation to Pushkin’s play, doubles and pretenders are inevitable in any system in which power remains in the hands of one person.65 I would add, following Shakespeare and Pushkin, that there is always a danger of mistakes of birth, mental illness, or tyranny if authoritarian rule is left in one person’s hands. For many Russians, however, the lessons to be learnt from the Wars of the Roses and the ‘Time of Troubles’ are the dangers of a
