Saki’s one‑act political satire, "The Death Trap" unfolds in a small Balkan castle on the eve of an insurrection. Prince Dimitri, the gentle young ruler of the state of Muravia, has been warned that rebels plan to murder him that night; only a handful of advisers and servants stand between him and the assassins outside the walls. His only remaining friend, Stronetz, coolly weighs two grim alternatives: let the rebels breach the castle and plunge the country into civil war, or sacrifice the prince to satisfy their fury and spare thousands. Before dawn breaks, Stronetz devises an unorthodox “death trap” that turns loyalty into treachery and makes Dimitri’s fate a calculated act of statecraft, revealing Saki’s dark view of power, expediency, and the human cost of political stability.

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Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 14 November 1916), popularly known by his pen name Saki and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirize Edwardian society and culture. He is considered by English teachers and scholars a master of the short story and is often compared to O. Henry and Dorothy Parker. Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling, Munro himself influenced A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.

Besides his short stories (which were first published in newspapers, as was customary at the time, and then collected into several volumes), Munro wrote a full-length play, The Watched Pot, in collaboration with Charles Maude; two one-act plays; a historical study, The Rise of the Russian Empire (the only book published under his own name); a short novel, The Unbearable Bassington; the episodic The Westminster Alice (a parliamentary parody of Alice in Wonderland); and When William Came, subtitled A Story of London Under the Hohenzollerns, a fantasy about a future German invasion and occupation of Britain.

*Any views/ideas expressed in these plays are not my own, and I do not believe in the censoring of anything controversial or problematic that the playwright/poet/author has written which will impact the way in which the story is told. The integrity of these works is much more important to me than any triggering content, and therefore I would ask that you have the same maturity and mental framework to listen to these pieces and appreciate them in their proper historical context.*