The Shakespearean International Yearbook 18: Special Section: Soviet Shakespeare [1 ed.] 0367442981, 9780367442989

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The Shakespearean International Yearbook

For its eighteenth volume, The Shakespearean International Yearbook surveys the present state of Shakespeare studies, addressing issues that are fundamental to our interpretive encounter with Shakespeare’s work and his time, across the whole spectrum of his literary output. Contributions are solicited from among the most active and insightful scholars in the feld, from both hemispheres of the globe. New trends are evaluated from the point of view of established scholarship, and emerging work in the feld is encouraged. Each issue includes a special section under the guidance of a specialist guest editor, along with coverage of the current state of the feld. An essential reference tool for scholars of early modern literature and culture, this annual publication captures, from year to year, current and developing thought in Shakespeare scholarship and theatre practice worldwide. There is a particular emphasis on Shakespeare studies in global contexts.

General Editors Tom Bishop, Professor of English, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Alexa Alice Joubin, Professor of English, George Washington University and Research Affliate, MIT, US.

THE SHAKESPEAREAN INTERNATIONAL YEARBOOK 18: Special Section, Soviet Shakespeare

Edited by Tom Bishop, Alexa Alice Joubin and Natalia Khomenko

First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 9780367442989 (hbk) ISBN: 9781003048763 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Preface

vii

TOM BISHOP AND ALEXA ALICE JOUBIN

General Editors

ix

PART I

Soviet Shakespeare: Guest Editor 1 Introduction: Shakespeare After the October Revolution

1 3

NATALIA KHOMENKO

Early Soviet Context 2 Ivan Aksenov and Soviet Shakespeare

19 21

ALEKSEI SEMENENKO

3 Stalin and Shakespeare

43

IRENA R. MAKARYK

4 Shakespeare, Formalism, and Socialist Realism: The Censured Hamlets of Michael Chekhov and Nikolay Akimov

61

KIM AXLINE MORGAN

Late Soviet Context 5 Feeling Love in Soviet Russia: The Slippery Lessons of Romeo and Juliet NATALIA KHOMENKO

83 85

vi

Contents

6 Hamlet’s Soviet Operatic Afterlife: Between Individuality and Allegory

102

MICHELLE ASSAY

Soviet but Not Russian: Language and National Identity 7 Negotiating With the Socialist Realist Discourse: The Case of Romanian Shakespeare Scholarship

121 123

MADALINA NICOLAESCU

8 WHO IZ HOO ΣND WHAT IZ WATT? Between ΣFΣZ, CCCP and USSR

139

JANA B. WILD

The Soviet Past After the Collapse 9 Laughing at Tragedy: Elena Chizhova’s Critique of Popular Shakespeare

163 165

SABINA AMANBAYEVA

10 Anti-Stratfordianism in Twentieth-Century Russia: Post-Soviet Melancholy and the Haunted Imagination

183

VLADIMIR MAKAROV

PART II

11 Madness and Metaphor in Lisa Klein’s and Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia

203

TOM UE

12 Innovation and Retrospection: Some Books About Shakespeare and His Times, 2015–2016

217

JOHN MUCCIOLO

Notes on Contributors Index

236 240

Preface

As scholars and critics, we can learn a great deal about the politics of literary interpretation by studying the encounter between Shakespeare’s works and cultures that are far removed from the context in which the playwright worked. In Stalinist Russia, just a few years before the Great Purges, Maxim Gorkii encouraged USSR writers during an All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 to emulate Shakespeare as a model of socialist realism. This is only one of the better-known landmarks of Shakespeare’s afterlife in the Soviet cultural sphere. While there were ideologically homogeneous approaches to Shakespeare, there were also debates about the value of Shakespeare after the First World War. Thanks to Karl Marx’s references in his political treatises, Shakespeare held a signifcant place in a number of communist and other leftauthoritarian countries, including China and the USSR. And although there were themes in Shakespeare that turned out to be inconvenient for communist ideology, other Shakespearean plays were put into service. In Part I of this volume of the Yearbook, the special section of chapters explores the vicissitudes of artistic and political uses of Shakespeare in Soviet culture and ideology after the October Revolution in 1917, including in some of the continuing resonances of those uses since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And while the real and perceived resistance to prevailing ideologies of Soviet directors has tended to capture recent critical attention, there is a wide range of Soviet and post-Soviet interpretations of Shakespeare. Scholarship on global Shakespeare has drawn more frequently on Sergei Iutkevich’s Othello (for its infuence outside the USSR) and on Grigori Kozintsev’s mid-century flms of Hamlet and King Lear, since Kozintsev is seen as a political dissident. The present cluster of chapters, edited by Dr Natalia Khomenko, not only sheds new light on differing interpretations of these canonical flms but also expands our horizon beyond Kozintsev and Iutkevich, telling a lesser-known story of Soviet Shakespeare by attending not only to conficts but also to uneasy collaborations between artists and the representatives of offcial ideologies. In this way, the current chapters offer a more nuanced picture than has been usual of the dynamics between ideology and “front-line” artists,

viii

Preface

complicating the more traditional narrative of mere opposition between stifing socialist realism and political dissent. In Part II of this volume, Tom Ue presents interviews with novelist Lisa Klein and flmmaker Claire McCarthy, creators of two recent revisionings of Ophelia’s story, and John Mucciolo discusses recent work in Shakespeare studies in the review essay format, which is a regular feature of the Yearbook. Tom Bishop Alexa Alice Joubin General Editors

General Editors

Tom Bishop, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington University, Washington, DC, US

Advisory Board Supriya Chaudhuri, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India Natasha Distiller, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Republic of South Africa Jacek Fabiszak, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland Atsuhiko Hirota, University of Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan Ton Hoenselaars, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands Peter Holbrook, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia Jean Howard, Columbia University, New York City, US Ania Loomba, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, US Kate McLuskie, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK Alfredo Michel Modenessi, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México Ruth Morse, Université Paris VII, Paris, France Bill Worthen, Barnard College, New York City, US

Part I

Soviet Shakespeare Guest Editor Natalia Khomenko

1

Introduction Shakespeare After the October Revolution Natalia Khomenko

The past decades have seen a turn towards interrogating the relevance and usefulness of Shakespeare’s works – at individual, social, and global levels. In reference to this turn, Graham Holderness remarks in a recent essay that “cultural production can be measured by its utility – its contribution to human happiness – rather than by reference to any concept of immanent virtue, or ahistorical value.”1 Holderness’ essay, along with the collection in which it appears, focuses on individual utility, with readers being understood as users. However, the slippery scale of human happiness is never entirely free from the shaping infuence of social and political forces: when it comes to the question of Shakespeare’s utility, the personal overlaps with the collective, or the ideological. This overlap is particularly explicit in the context of the socialism-building project, undertaken by the Bolshevik party after seizing state control, which promised a paradise of free collective labour to the people. To interpret Shakespearean drama after the revolution was, inescapably, to refect on its utility in relation to the central cultural ideologies, which purportedly were directed at producing a happy classless society. This collection explores the complexity of purpose-driven cultural appropriation through multifaceted, fuctuating approaches to Shakespeare’s works and biography in the cultural space of the former Soviet Bloc. In doing so, it aims to offer a critical lens for a globally oriented consideration of Shakespeare’s use and usefulness. The phrase “Soviet Shakespeare” in the title of this collection is necessarily somewhat ambiguous. The term “Soviet” does not point to any ethnic or linguistic cohesion or even to a shared national past but rather derives from the Russian word for “council” and was selected in part to suggest the democratic, collective, grassroots nature of the state that emerged from the October Revolution of 1917. The word initially appeared in the name of the Russian Soviet Federated Soviet Republic, established in 1918. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or the USSR, was formally created in 1922, after several years of power struggle between political parties, to mark the beginning of the journey towards the future socialist society. The term “Soviet Shakespeare” thus necessarily suggests an

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element of ideological aspiration for a future collective happiness in which Shakespeare’s works and biography might potentially be implicated. At the same time, the construct of Soviet Shakespeare is anchored in a particular geographical location, even though the borders of the USSR were in constant fux throughout its existence: the state absorbed further republics throughout its existence. Following the Second World War, the USSR offcially absorbed the Baltic states and brought further satellite states (including Eastern Germany) under its power, forming the Eastern Bloc, which did not begin dissolving until 1989. We adopt the term “Soviet Shakespeare” to situate our discussion in the ideologically charged cultural space created by the October Revolution. While Russia, technically, was only one of the many Soviet republics, it was also a major power and the cultural centre of the Soviet Union, forcibly exporting – or attempting to export – the Russian language to other cultures within its reach. The ideological construct of Soviet Shakespeare, accordingly, was anchored largely in the Russian translation, performance, and scholarship tradition, but it was not limited to it. A multitude of Shakespearean conversations within the Soviet Bloc were happening in languages other than Russian, often responding to specifcally local concerns, sometimes in covert or open opposition to the central cultural policies.2 This collection necessarily privileges Russia-centric productions, scholarship, and literary treatments while also examining treatments of Shakespeare in Georgia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, to offer a sense of how this ideological construct was being negotiated across the Soviet Bloc. The chapters are concerned with interpretations of Shakespearean works in close conversation with the development and change of cultural policies throughout the existence of the USSR. But this discussion is not limited by the collapse of the USSR in 1991: nearly 30 years later, the Soviet past continues to cast a long shadow on present-day Russia and surrounding countries. The chapters in this collection thus trace the evolution of Soviet Shakespeare into the twenty-frst century Russia, where it continues to play an important role in both academic and literary considerations of the pre-collapse past. It is not surprising that Shakespeare became the focus of such intense scrutiny almost immediately after the October Revolution. Shakespearean drama, after all, was popular in Tsarist Russia, even though the playwright’s tricentennial anniversary was celebrated, under Alexander II, with noticeably less pomp than it was in Western Europe.3 The early twentieth century saw numerous productions – most famously perhaps the 1911–1912 Hamlet codirected by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Gordon Craig in Moscow.4 Indeed, Shakespeare’s plays were being performed in Russian theatres through the social and political turbulence of the revolution, sometimes as if in open defance of the terrifying world beyond the theatre walls. A review of Twelfth Night staged at the end of 1917 by the Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre calls the production a

Introduction

5

gift of fate, delivered “at the end of this desperate year” and “offering an escape from this menacing reality.”5 However, this escape from the events of the October Revolution was not a welcome development as far as the post-revolutionary theories of theatre were concerned. From the beginning, Shakespeare’s position on the Soviet stage (or what would soon solidify as the Soviet stage) was in continuous fux: Soviet Shakespeare emerged and continued to exist as a site of rapidly changing estimations of cultural value and its potential utility, rather than as a single ideological construct. The changes in attitude towards Shakespearean drama were further fuelled by the central role allocated to theatre in the post-revolutionary project of culture building and by the scarcity of available repertory. In his travelogue, originally published as a series of essays during his 1920 trip to Russia, H. G. Wells admiringly noted that the continuing government subsidies intended to keep theatres not simply open but constantly expanding their repertory and commented on the efforts to make productions accessible to all citizens by the government’s distributing tickets to various organizations, often at no cost.6 As the Bolshevik state engaged in a vigorous campaign for advertising the new regime while working to educate the masses, theatre was immediately recognized as an effective and valuable tool for reaching diverse audiences. Soviet theatre transformed into a centralized system, funded and governed by the Theatre Division (Teatral’nyi otdel) of the newly formed Commissariat of Enlightenment, with the prominent communist thinker Anatoly Lunacharsky at the helm.7 The issue of building an appropriate and useful repertory, by creating new plays or adapting works written before the revolution, rapidly became a crucial one. It was hotly debated at the meetings organized by offcial bodies and discussed at length by every culture-related periodical. Since new plays were generated slowly and not all of them were being deemed suitable (from the point of view of ideology and that of artistic value), the usability of pre-revolutionary drama in the new context inevitably came under discussion. Shakespearean drama, representing cultural capital but offering questionable social lessons, occupied a prominent place in these discussions, which were progressively affected by the shifts in social and political contexts and the accompanying fuctuations in cultural ideologies. In 1921, an up-and-coming Russian theatre director, Sergei Radlov, published an opinion piece in The Life of Art (Zhizn’ iskusstva), one of the many periodicals intended as a space for post-revolutionary cultural discussions. The opinion piece, titled “For the two hundred and frst, and the last, time about the theatre crisis,”8 mockingly suggested that “probably we should have auditoriums where well-taught actors will be loudly reciting the poetry of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Pushkin,”9 and it went on to ask whether this is where the true living theatre might be found. The piece implied an answer: obviously not. Radlov concluded

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by stating bluntly, “The great old men – Shakespeares and Sophocleses – are dried-out toast. Give us juicy, nutritious grain – modern drama for the stage, and not for reading.”10 This piece effectively became one of Radlov’s programmatic publications throughout the 1920s, included in both of his collections published during this time (in 1923 and 1929).11 Its position on the classics, including Shakespeare, was much less daring than it might seem. Cultural debates of the frst post-revolutionary decade closely examined the value that Shakespeare, along with the other “great old men,” could hold for the newly created egalitarian society. While there was no doubt that proletarian audiences deserved access to the artistic treasures so long denied to them, it was also generally agreed that Shakespearean drama was not only ideologically questionable but also rapidly becoming outdated (or already was so) in its representation of human emotion and social concerns. But as the Soviet concern with global cultural capital grew, Radlov’s presentations and publications showed a striking re-evaluation of Shakespeare’s signifcance. In a 1933 lecture, he explained, drawing on the work of German socialist Franz Mehring, that Shakespeare’s theatre “found support with aristocratic – but nonetheless strong and valiant – youths, who during that time of greatest progress, when broad horizons were opening, were the vanguard faction of the great people.”12 Smoothly skirting the contested issue of the playwright’s own class, this explanation is readily recognizable as an example of early socialist realist rhetoric. It references an authoritative, ideologically approved source; foregrounds “the people” as a key driving force in cultural building; and zeroes in on the English Reformation as the “greatest progress,” implicitly understood to prefgure the October Revolution. With Shakespeare viewed as “the singer of his era’s rising class,” his plays are established as progressive and eminently deserving of being staged. And several years later, with socialist realism picking up steam,13 Radlov’s writeup for the Shakespeare jubilee of 1939 confdently identifed the early modern playwright as “the greatest realist” and the “true friend and mentor, teacher and comrade” to Soviet theatre.14 Even this limited survey of early Soviet approaches to Shakespearean drama, generated by briefy following one theatre director over the period of some 20 years, highlights the fraught terrain of Soviet Shakespeare negotiations. The complexities of these negotiations go far beyond the standard dichotomy of “offcial” ideological interpretations on the one hand and “subversive” performances or adaptations on the other. Despite numerous claims to the contrary, no fully stable and consistent Soviet Shakespeare construct had emerged, even after the formal adoption of socialist realism as the central cultural ideology in 1934. By defning socialist realist art as a refection of an imagined, historically inevitable utopian reality that would eventually hatch from the egg of the October Revolution, Soviet ideologues were able to include much

Introduction

7

of the world culture under that ideological umbrella. Broadly speaking, Shakespeare’s plays could be seen as “realist” insofar as they purportedly longed for a classless, socialist future and presaged the Soviet revolution. Still, Shakespeare’s own decidedly non-proletarian origins, reliance on aristocratic patronage, usurious practices, and obnoxious will presented a serious problem of interpretation. His plays, furthermore, offered few attractive characters who could be seen as belonging to “the people” or at least supporting “the people’s” rise to power and required a great deal of effort before they could be read and staged as didactic realist drama. Transcripts of rehearsals and public pre- and post-production debates, as well as bloody battles waged in periodicals, attest to the intense effort and precariousness of attempting to generate an ideologically appropriate version of Shakespeare.15 Soviet engagements with Shakespeare were further complicated by the tensions between the centre and the margins: the relentless pressure of offcial scrutiny weakened as one moved farther away from the twin cultural nuclei of Moscow and St Petersburg. The sheer size of the Soviet Union (and later, even more, of the Eastern Bloc), and the diversity of its inhabitants, precluded close control of all, or even most, theatre productions and publications originating away from these two cities. Shakespeare Cabinet, a section of the Vserossiiskaia Teatral’naia Organizatsiia [Russia-Wide Theatre Organization], attempted to perform at least some regulatory functions, although it is unclear how much intercessory power it wielded.16 Numerous initiatives were directed at creating a more homogenous Soviet culture, and Shakespeare, and the cultural capital that his plays offered, often served as a convenient unifying element. The language accompanying the lavishly celebrated Shakespearean festivals insisted that all Soviet citizens, regardless of their education and profession, their ethnicity and language, or their place of residence came together as one in their appreciation of the British playwright’s oeuvre.17 And yet the potential for inept handling, ideologically troubling interpretations, and outright departures from the current guidelines increased as Shakespeare was handled by theatres and scholars in rural and newly industrialized areas, as well as in the Soviet territories linguistically and ethnically other to the primarily Slavic, Russian-speaking cultural centres. The Soviet emphasis on ideologically “correct,” nationally homogenous approaches to Shakespearean drama on stage and in print was closely tied to the increasingly recognized need for cultural competition with the West. Terence Hawkes records the kerfuffe of 1924, which resulted from an attempt to prevent the Soviets from participating in the jubilee celebrations.18 The Soviet state, however, insisted on playing a part in the Stratford-upon-Avon proceedings, thus positioning itself as an active cultural force on the global stage. Furthermore, as the Soviet Union grew increasingly insular, making it nearly impossible by the late 1920s for even distinguished fgures to pay routine visits to other

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countries, it became commonplace for Russian publications to comment snidely on the Western lack of interest in Shakespeare. This commonplace was dramatized vividly in Iurii Olesha’s The List of Blessings (Spisok blagodeianii), eventually staged, after much enforced revision, in 1931 by Vsevolod Meyerhold. The play’s heroine, a Soviet actor famous for her performance in the part of Hamlet, emigrates to France, hoping for greater creative freedom and a better-educated, more discerning audience. But upon arrival, she discovers that Western tastes run more to the burlesque than to Shakespeare’s monologues. A French theatre manager urges the actor to perform an adjusted version of the recorder scene, in which she would strip and “play” the recorder inserted into her anus.19 Olesha’s play, whose heroine ultimately comes to recognize her error and sacrifces herself in service of the global revolution, neatly encapsulated the self-congratulatory Soviet refrain, echoed more and more insistently throughout Stalin’s rule and beyond. According to this refrain, the seeming creative freedom of the Western theatres was little more than abject pandering to the base tastes of capitalist audiences who had no capacity for appreciating Shakespeare. From this followed that Western theatres did not fnd Shakespearean plays suffciently proftable to be staged frequently, certainly not without remaking them to align with bourgeois ideologies. In a piece published a year before Stalin’s death, in an atmosphere of intense dread created by the new wave of political purges, the Shakespearean scholar A. Anikst explained that “In England and USA we see a systematic, decadent perversion of Shakespeare’s great legacy. . . . this dirty work has one goal: depriving the nations [narody] of the great democratic and realist art traditions.”20 In contrast, Soviet theatre, with its supposed ability to practise the only “authentic” approach to Shakespeare’s democratic plays, was presented as the last bastion defending the global culture from the corrupting infuence of capitalism. This meant that not only were the stakes for producing ideologically correct interpretations of Shakespeare onstage and in publications astonishingly high but also the evolution of these interpretations was directly tied to the Soviet international relations.21 Indeed, Soviet Shakespeare became an important cultural export, delivered to the countries that came under the Soviet control after WWII,22 to communist countries such as China23 and well beyond.24 The recent decades saw important studies viewing Soviet Shakespeare as a product of ongoing ideological entanglements. Irena R. Makaryk has published extensively on the subject and, with Joseph G. Price, edited a seminal volume Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism in 2006. Spencer Golub’s and Laurence Senelick’s research on Soviet theatre has also generated important insights into Shakespeare productions in post-revolutionary Russia.25 Today, scholars working both in the West and in the post-Soviet space are taking up periodical publications

Introduction

9

and archival records to begin reconstructing the convoluted history of Soviet Shakespeare.26 At the same time, while Global Shakespeare scholarship produced in the West today shows understandable interest in Soviet Shakespeare, frequently its attention has been confned to the more accessible, widely exported cultural products – primarily materials associated with jubilee celebrations and flms. Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet (1964) and King Lear (1971) in particular have received and continue to receive a great deal of attention,27 with occasional mention of Ian Frid’s Twelfth Night (1955) and Sergei Iutkevich’s Othello (1956).28 There is now a well-established tradition in Western scholarship of associating Kozintsev’s flms in particular with political dissent, although – not altogether surprisingly – the two relatively recent pieces that engage with materials in Russian are somewhat sceptical about Kozintsev’s subversiveness.29 This gathering of essays responds to the current scholarly interest in the uses of Shakespeare after the October Revolution by seeking to offer a comprehensive introduction to the rich complexity of approaches informed by the power dynamics and ideological reconfgurations in the Soviet and post-Soviet space. Building on the earlier explorations of Shakespeare in the context of socialist thought, the chapters in this cluster develop a focus on the Soviet Union’s investment in developing a state-wide uniform approach to Shakespearean drama and examine the reading and performative strategies implicated in this project. As a whole, this collection works against the assumed dichotomy of stifing socialist realism on the one hand and vibrant dissent in Soviet performance and scholarship on the other. It begins to chart the history of Soviet Shakespeare on stage, in scholarship, and in literature by closely attending to negotiations and even collaborations between the so-called cultural workers (directors, writers, translators, scholars) and offcial ideologies. The chapters in this collection have been divided into four groupings, which are organized in a roughly chronological order and move from the early post-revolutionary years to the twenty-frst century. Each grouping opens with a brief preface outlining the key cultural and political contexts in order to supplement the readers’ knowledge of Soviet and post-Soviet history. The frst grouping of chapters examines the range of engagements with Shakespearean drama during the frst post-revolutionary decades – in academia, on stage, and in political discourse. Aleksei Semenenko’s chapter, “Ivan Aksenov and Soviet Shakespeare,” closely follows the career of one prominent literary scholar and translator, whose interest in early modern drama generally and in Shakespeare specifcally spans the period from 1916 to his death in 1935. Using Aksenov’s work during this time as a case study, this chapter explores the politics of early Soviet translation, affected both by early avant-garde tendencies and by intensifying Marxist ideologies. Semenenko argues that Aksenov’s last

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publications – a translation of Othello, published posthumously, and several articles on Shakespeare’s language and characters – refect a series of compromises with the offcial socialist realist ideology, whereby the emphasis is placed on class struggle and the emergence of Renaissance humanism. The case of Aksenov, a fully formed scholar by the time of the revolution who was nonetheless able to continue producing infuential work, opens up the discussion of adaptive strategies developed by Shakespeare scholars during the Soviet period. But how were the offcial ideologies shaped in the 1930s and beyond? Irena R. Makaryk directs her inquiry at the highest cultural authority in Soviet Russia after Lenin’s death in 1924: Joseph Stalin. Her chapter, “Stalin and Shakespeare,” examines assumptions about the Soviet dictator’s close familiarity with the playwright’s work, suggesting potential sources for some of Stalin’s references to Shakespeare’s plays. More broadly, Makaryk explores the Soviet appropriation of Shakespeare after the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934, where socialist realism was offcially adopted as the central cultural ideology, with Shakespeare at its helm. Narratives of Stalin’s familiarity with Shakespeare functioned as a powerful component in production of Soviet Shakespeare intended to solidify the socialist state’s position in relation to the world culture. Kim Axline Morgan’s chapter, “Shakespeare, Formalism, and Socialist Realism: The Censured Hamlets of Michael Chekhov and Nikolay Akimov,” examines two early productions of Hamlet: one directed by Chekhov in 1924 and another directed by Akimov in 1932. The two productions bridge the transition from the period of independent economic enterprise that lasted for most of the 1920s, to the establishment of socialist realism as the offcial cultural policy in the early 1930s. Morgan’s analysis suggests that Chekhov’s and Akimov’s approaches to the play, later criticized as formalist, may be read as innovative attempts to reclaim the protagonist, in the nineteenth century associated with the weak intelligentsia, for the post-revolutionary stage. Comparing the critical responses to the two productions, Morgan highlights the unpredictable evolution of audience expectation and censorship practices directed at Shakespearean performance in early Soviet Russia. The second grouping of chapters, extending into the late Soviet period, focuses on the encounter between the progressively centralized Soviet cultural ideologies on the one hand and Shakespeare on stage and in literary adaptation on the other. Natalia Khomenko’s chapter, “Feeling Love in Soviet Russia: The Slippery Lessons of Romeo and Juliet,” moves from performance to literary adaptation and the didactic uses of Shakespearean drama. Her chapter follows the changing interpretative strategies brought to bear on Romeo and Juliet from the 1920s culture building and early socialist realism to the more liberal 1970s. Exploring a range of primary sources, from the 1920s never-staged scripts preserved in Russian archives through the furry of periodical pieces in the 1930s and to

Introduction

11

late Soviet young adult works, this chapter examines the role of Shakespearean plays as affective models in the Soviet cultural imagination. Michelle Assay’s examination of Soviet approaches to Hamlet takes up the less-known subject of opera adaptations, moving from post-Stalinist Georgia to Russia shortly after the collapse. Her chapter, “Hamlet’s Soviet Operatic Afterlife: Between Individuality and Allegory,” looks at two operas emerging from moments of ideological rupture in Soviet history. She analyzes the never-staged opera by Georgian composer Alexi Machavariani, the vocal score for which was fnished in 1967, shortly after the abrupt end of Khrushchev’s Thaw and after the composition by Sergei Slonimsky, which was completed in Leningrad amid the fnal collapse of the USSR in 1991 and which premiered in 1993. Paying attention to the problems of national identity in individual republics and of the new globalization in the era of perestroika, Assay considers how the two Soviet composers balanced sociopolitical demands with their own artistic goals. The third grouping of chapters moves beyond the borders of the USSR to engage with the export of socialist realist Shakespeare to the Soviet Bloc territories and to explore the potential for local negotiation and resistance. By looking at the career of the prominent literary scholar Tudor Vianu, Madalina Nicolaescu focuses on Shakespeare scholarship in Romania after World War II while under Soviet occupation. Her chapter, “Negotiating with the Socialist Realist Discourse: The Case of Romanian Shakespeare Scholarship,” assesses the ideological demands made on the Soviet Bloc academic publications between 1951 and 1964, and it considers the avenues for circumventing these demands. Vianu has incurred a great deal of criticism for what is often viewed as scholarly collaborationism with a totalitarian power. However, Nicolaescu argues that his publications on Shakespearean drama offered a model for using superfcial compromises with the central ideology to mask de-ideologized intellectual inquiry, introducing his Romanian audiences to otherwiseinaccessible scholarly ideas. Jana B. Wild deals with the similarly fraught issue of staging Shakespeare in the context of Soviet military occupation and ideological oppression. Her chapter, “WHO IZ HOO ΣND WHAT IZ WATT? Between ΣFΣZ, CCCP, and USSR,” considers a 1971 production of The Comedy of Errors at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, staged shortly after the Soviet Union’s 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. Wild makes a case for drawing on her personal memories of the period in re-examining the materials created to supplement the production, which at the time seems to have passed under the offcial radar. Reading the extant documents and images through the lens of vividly remembered, tense cultural collisions and social instability, Wild’s chapter examines the reliability of reviews produced in the context of ideological censorship and locates a subversive turn in this (supposedly) innocuously entertaining production.

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The concluding chapters of this collection trace the persistence of Soviet Shakespeare beyond the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in 1991, turning their attention to the uses of this construct in later literary and scholarly works. Sabina Amanbayeva’s chapter, “Laughting at Tragedy: Elena Chizhova’s Critique of Popular Shakespeare,” examines the post-1991 reaction against the Soviet interpretation of Shakespeare as a socialist realist playwright. This chapter focuses in particular on Elena Chizhova’s novel Kroshki Zaches, which draws on the author’s own experience of encountering Shakespearean drama while growing up in the late USSR, and argues for privileging the intense individual experience of Shakespeare’s verse over crude collective engagement. The version of Shakespeare produced in Soviet Russia for “the people” is retrospectively associated with the social deprivations and humiliations of the former Soviet Union, and the false promise of unity it offered. Dismissing the utopian vision of global culture made accessible to all, Chizhova’s novel claims Shakespearean drama for the members of the intellectual elite, fnally set free by the collapse of the Soviet culture. Finally, focusing on post-Soviet Shakespeare scholarship, Vladimir Makarov examines a parallel reaction against Soviet ideologies and a longing for the long-withheld cultural alternatives. His chapter, “AntiStratfordianism in Twentieth-Century Russia: Post-Soviet Melancholy and the Haunted Imagination,” takes up the peculiarly Russian strain of ideological anti-Stratfordianism, with the Earl of Rutland as the preferred candidate, which briefy reigned in the post-revolutionary 1920s and had a powerful rebirth after the dissolution of 1991. The rhetoric of post-Soviet anti-Stratfordianists suggests a desire to recapture the cultural capital perceived as lost or diminished during the Soviet era. The elaborate narratives intended to explain the gaps and contradictions in the theory are presented as a recovery of the truth about authorship suppressed by the socialist ideological approaches to Shakespearean drama. In sum, this cluster of chapters argues for Soviet Shakespeare as a discrete construct, sharply distinguished from the approaches to Shakespearean drama in Tsarist Russia by the ideological pressure to re-evaluate the new state’s relationship with cultural heritage. Nuanced, often contradictory, and directly affected by the changing cultural policies, Soviet interpretations of Shakespearean drama present a compelling study in canon formation and high-stakes interaction between art and ideology. Exported both internally and externally during the Soviet era, and continuing to infuence Russian thought today, the concept of Soviet Shakespeare has a global presence that invites closer, informed study. To Western scholars, this collection offers an entry point into the complex deliberations, collaborations, and subversions that underlay the many uses of Shakespeare in the Soviet context.

Introduction

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Notes 1 Graham Holderness, “Shakespeare and the Undead,” in The Shakespeare User: Critical and Creative Appropriations in a Networked Culture, eds. Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), esp. 207. 2 This is explored, for example, in the monograph published by Irena Makaryk, one of our contributors, on Shakespearean productions in early Soviet Ukraine. See Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 3 Mikhail Alekseev, Shekspir i russkaia kultura (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), 411. 4 For a detailed overview, see Laurence Senelick, Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet: A Reconstruction (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982). 5 Iurii Sobolev, “Kogda tsvetet molodoe vino (‘Dvenadtsataia noch’ v Studii Khudozhestvennogo teatra),” Rampa i zhizn’ nos. 2–3 (1918): 8–10, esp. 8. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 6 H. G. Wells, Russia in the Shadows (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921), 35–36. 7 See Sheila Fitzpatrick’s seminal study, The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, October 1917–1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). 8 Sergei Radlov, “V dvesti pervyi i poslednii raz o krizise teatra,” Zhizn’ iskusstva nos. 727–729 (May 11–13, 1921): 26. 9 Ibid. Emphasis mine. 10 Ibid. Emphasis in the original. 11 See Sergei Radlov, Stat’i o teatre: 1918–1922 (Petrograd: Tsentral’noe kooperativnoe izdatel’stvo ‘Mysl,’ 1923), 25–29, and Desiat’ let v teatre (n.p.: Priboi, 1929), 53–60. 12 Sergei Radlov, “Shekspir i sovremennost’ ” [Shakespeare and Modernity], transcript of lecture delivered to theatre workers on October 10, 1933, RGALI, fond 2932, opis’ 1, item 40, sheet 15. 13 See Arkady Ostrovsky’s “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 56–83, which outlines the considerations leading to Shakespeare’s installation as a central fgure of the new offcial ideology. 14 Sergei Radlov, “Nasha rabota nad Shekspirom” [Our Work on Shakespeare], in Len. Gos. Teatr p/r S. Radlova k shekspirovskomu festivaliu: Otello: Romeo i Dzhul’etta: Gamlet (Leningrad and Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1939), 7 and 12. For an overview of Radlov’s biography and his later fate, see David Zolotnitsky, Sergei Radlov: The Shakespearean Fate of a Soviet Director (Newark, NJ: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995). 15 An unsettling example of this is the series of torturously anxious negotiations involved in the preparation for publishing the complete works of Shakespeare in the 1930s. The fears of the scholars involved were not futile: the original general editor for the collection, Gustav Shpet, was arrested in 1935, a year before the frst volume saw print, and executed in 1937. For a comprehensive volume of primary materials, with detailed comments, see Tatiana Shchedrina, ed., Gustav Shpet i shekspirovskii krug [Gustav Shpet and the Shakespearean Circle] (Moscow: Petroglif, 2013). 16 In the prominent Soviet scholar Mikhail Morozov’s pamphlet Shakespeare on the Soviet Stage, published in David Magarshack’s English translation with

14

17

18 19

20 21

22

23

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Natalia Khomenko an introduction by J. Dover Wilson (London: Soviet News, 1947), Morozov briefy commented on the role of the VTO. For all of the emphasis on “helping” the peripheral theatres, his carefully worded paragraph still suggests that “if required, a Shakespearean authority will be dispatched who will not only give a series of lectures to the actors but will also be present at rehearsals” and that the performance and subsequent discussions would be overseen by the local VTO branch, who then sent a report to the central hub in Moscow (60). In the same year, Liubov Vendrovskaia’s essay “Rabota kabineta Shekspira VTO” [The Shakespeare Cabinet at VTO and Its Work] points, among other activities of this institution, to the professional consultations offered, in particular to small theatres located far from cultural centres (in Shekspirovskii sbornik: 1947, eds. G. N. Boiadzhiev, M. B. Zagorskii, and M. M. Morozov (Moscow: VTO, 1947), 270). See, for example, Iu. Iuzovskii’s description Shakespeare festival in Armenia in 1944 in Obraz i epokha: Na shekspirovskie temy [Image and Epoch: Shakespearean Variations] (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel, 1947). Iuzovskii’s description of his visit to Erevan is notable not only for the rather expected point about Shakespearean drama bringing Soviet citizens together even as WWII unfolded in the background but also for the festival’s choice of Hamlet as one of its central pieces. Although there seems to have been suffcient uncertainty regarding Stalin’s opinion of the play to have effectively removed it from the central stages beginning with the late 1930s, theatres operating on the margins of Soviet power apparently did not feel the same pressure to conform. For further discussion of the Hamlet–Stalin controversy, see Michelle Assay, “What Did Hamlet (Not) Do to Offend Stalin?” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 35 (2017). http://journals.openedition.org/ shakespeare/3840. Terence Hawkes, Meaning by Shakespeare (London: Routledge, 1992), 49–50. For this scene, see the fnal script reproduced in Violetta Gudkova, Iurii Olesha i Vsevolod Meyerhold v rabote and spektaklem ‘Spisok blagodeianii’: Opyt teatral’noi arkheologii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002), 336–337. Aleksandr Anikst, “Upadok i razlozhenie burzhuaznogo teatra” [The Decline and Decay of the Bourgeois Theatre], in Burzhuaznyi teatr na sluzhbe imperialisticheskoi reaktsii (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1952), 21. See Irena R. Makaryk, “ ‘Here Is My Space’: The 1964 Shakespeare Celebrations in the USSR,” in Shakespeare in Cold War Europe: Confict, Commemoration, Celebration (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) for a nuanced examination of how Soviet contributions to the jubilee events were carefully shaped both to assert cultural superiority and to build “networks of Western supporters” (54). In addition to Madalina Nicolaescu’s and Jana B. Wild’s chapters in this collection, see Alexander Shurbanov and Boika Sokolova’s excellent Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-European Appropriation (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2001), chapters 3 and 4. See Alexa Joubin, “The Politics of an ‘Apolitical’ Shakespeare: A SovietChinese Joint Venture, 1950–1979,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 1, no. 2 (2005). www.borrowers.uga. edu/1402/show. Margaret Litvin comments on the Arabic turn towards the Soviet Union after 1955 and on the impact of Grigori Kozintsev’s flm version of Hamlet on Arabic audiences in the 1960s in her monograph Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), 76–85. Kozintsev’s King Lear was screened at the World

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26

27

28

29

15

Shakespeare Congress in Vancouver in 1971, and the director, rather unusually for the time, was permitted to accompany the flm to Canada and give a lecture to the gathering of international scholars. In addition to Makaryk and Price’s volume, see the essays in Dennis Kennedy, ed., Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Spencer Golub, The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1994) and materials in Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky, eds., The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2014). There are too many to list here, but for the recent studies examining specifcally ideological approaches to Shakespeare, see section 1 in the Festschrift for Igor Shaitanov, Noscere est comparare: Komparativistika v kontekste istoricheskoi poetiki, eds. I. V. Ershova, E. M. Lutsenko, and E. Iu. Vinogradova (Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarsvtvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2017); and Catriona Kelly, “ ‘Ein Kämpfer für das Recht auf Glück und Freiheit’: Shakespeare für den sowjetischen Schüler und das breite Lesepublikum der 1920er und 1930er Jahre,” in Schrift und Macht: Zur sowjetischen Literatur der 1920er und 30er Jahre, eds. Tomáš Lipták and Jurij Murašov (Wien and Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), 135–158. The most notable recent example is Courtney Lehmann’s long essay “Grigori Kozintsev,” in Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffrelli, eds. Mark Thornton Burnett, Courtney Lehmann, Marguerite H. Rippy, and Ramona Wray (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2013), 92–140, but Kozintsev’s work is often examined in studies of Shakespearean adaptation and has generated entire dissertations and monographs. See, for example, David Gillespie, “Adapting Foreign Classics: Kozintsev’s Shakespeare,” in Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001: Screening the Word, eds. Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), 47–58. See Alexander Etkind’s “Mourning the Soviet Victims in a Cosmopolitan Way: Hamlet from Kozintsev to Riazanov,” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema 5, no. 3 (2011): 389–409; and Mark Sokolyansky’s “Grigori Kozintsev’s ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear,’ ” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, 2nd ed., ed. Russell Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 203–215.

Works Cited Alekseev, Mikhail. Shekspir i russkaia kultura. Moscow: Nauka, 1965. Anikst, Aleksandr. “Upadok i razlozhenie burzhuaznogo teatra.” In Burzhuaznyi teatr na sluzhbe imperialisticheskoi reaktsii. 3–30. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii nauk SSSR, 1952. Assay, Michelle. “What Did Hamlet (Not) Do to Offend Stalin?” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 35 (2017). http://journals.openedition. org/shakespeare/3840. Ershova, I. V., E. M. Lutsenko, and E. Iu. Vinogradova, eds. Noscere est comparare: Komparativistika v kontekste istoricheskoi poetiki. Moscow: Rossiiskii gosudarsvtvennyi gumanitarnyi universitet, 2017. Etkind, Alexander. “Mourning the Soviet Victims in a Cosmopolitan Way: Hamlet from Kozintsev to Riazanov.” Studies in Russian & Soviet Cinema 5, no. 3 (2011): 389–409.

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Fitzpatrick, Sheila. The Commissariat of Enlightenment: Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts Under Lunacharsky, October 1917–1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Gillespie, David. “Adapting Foreign Classics: Kozintsev’s Shakespeare.” In Russian and Soviet Film Adaptations of Literature, 1900–2001: Screening the Word, edited by Stephen Hutchings and Anat Vernitski. 47–58. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2005. Golub, Spencer. The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in TwentiethCentury Russia. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Gudkova, Violetta. Iurii Olesha i Vsevolod Meyerhold v rabote nad spektaklem “Spisok blagodeianii”: Opyt teatral’noi arkheologii. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2002. Hawkes, Terence. Meaning by Shakespeare. London: Routledge, 1992. Holderness, Graham. “Shakespeare and the Undead.” In The Shakespeare User: Critical and Creative Appropriations in a Networked Culture, edited by Valerie M. Fazel and Louise Geddes. 207–228. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Iuzovskii, Iu. Obraz i epokha: Na shekspirovskie temy. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1947. Joubin, Alexa. “The Politics of an ‘Apolitical’ Shakespeare: A Soviet-Chinese Joint Venture, 1950–1979.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 1, no. 2 (2005). www.borrowers.uga.edu/1402/show. Kelly, Catriona. “ ‘Ein Kämpfer für das Recht auf Glück und Freiheit’: Shakespeare für den sowjetischen Schüler und das breite Lesepublikum der 1920er und 1930er Jahre.” In Schrift und Macht: Zur sowjetischen Literatur der 1920er und 30er Jahre, edited by Tomáš Lipták and Jurij Murašov. 135–158. Wien and Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2012. Kennedy, Dennis, ed. Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Lehmann, Courtney. “Grigori Kozintsev.” In Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffrelli, edited by Mark Thornton Burnett, Courtney Lehmann, Marguerite H. Rippy, and Ramona Wray. 92–140. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2013. Litvin, Margaret. Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. Makaryk, Irena R. Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. ———. “ ‘Here Is My Space’: The 1964 Shakespeare Celebrations in the USSR.” In Shakespeare in Cold War Europe: Confict, Commemoration, Celebration. 51–62. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Makaryk, Irena R., and Joseph G. Price, eds. Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Morozov, Mikhail. Shakespeare on the Soviet Stage, translated by David Magarshack, introduction by J. Dover Wilson. London: Soviet News, 1947. Radlov, Sergei. “V dvesti pervyi i poslednii raz o krizise teatra.” Zhizn’ iskusstva nos. 727–729 (May 11–13, 1921): 26. ———. “Shekspir i sovremennost’.” Transcript of the lecture delivered to theatre workers on October 10, 1933. RGALI, fond 2932, opis’ 1, item 40, sheet 15.

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———. “Nasha rabota nad Shekspirom.” In Len. Gos. Teatr p/r S. Radlova k shekspirovskomu festivaliu: Otello: Romeo i Dzhul’etta: Gamlet. 6–13. Leningrad and Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1939. Senelick, Laurence. Gordon Craig’s Moscow Hamlet: A Reconstruction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982. Senelick, Laurence, and Sergei Ostrovsky, eds. The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Shchedrina, Tatiana, ed. Gustav Shpet i shekspirovskii krug. Moscow and St Petersburg: Petroglif, 2013. Shurbanov, Alexander, and Boika Sokolova. Painting Shakespeare Red: An EastEuropean Appropriation. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Sobolev, Iurii. “Kogda tsvetet molodoe vino (‘Dvenadtsataia noch’ v Studii Khudozhestvennogo teatra).” Rampa i zhizn’ nos. 2–3 (1918): 8–10. Sokolyansky, Mark. “Grigori Kozintsev’s ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear.’ ” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film, 2nd ed., edited by Russell Jackson. 203–215. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Vendrovskaia, Liubov. “Rabota kabineta Shekspira.” In Shekspirovskii sbornik: 1947, edited by G. N. Boiadzhiev, M. B. Zagorskii, and M. M. Morozov. 261–272. Moscow: VTO, 1947. Wells, H. G. Russia in the Shadows. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1921. Zolotnitsky, David. Sergei Radlov: The Shakespearean Fate of a Soviet Director. Newark, NJ: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995.

Early Soviet Context

The early post-revolutionary years were marked by civil war lasting from 1918 to 1921, as the Bolshevik party was struggling to consolidate and maintain state control. During these years, most of the normal supply chains were severely destabilized, resulting in shortages of food, fuel, clothing, and various household staples. Visitors to Russia, such as the writer H. G. Wells and the theatre critic Oliver Sayler, commented admiringly on the vibrant life that continued in the newly nationalized theatres of Petersburg and Moscow. But an open letter published in 1919 in connection with the production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Aleksandrinsky Theatre painted a bleak picture of the actors’ day-today existence. The letter detailed the scarcity of running water, wood for burning, and reliable transportation, and it pointed out that “There have already been deaths due to starvation at the theatre, and almost everybody is ill.”1 At the end of the Civil War, shortly before the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics was formally created in 1922, the Bolshevik party temporarily permitted private enterprise in a desperate attempt to achieve at least some level of economic stability. The era of the so-called New Economic Policy (NEP) lasted from 1921 to 1928. While this decision was perceived by some as a concession, these years also saw an increasing centralization and control of theatre and cinema, publishing, and education.2 There were, furthermore, ongoing debates about the place of the pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in the new society, and specifcally about employing specialists who had been trained in the capitalist world. These debates extended to theatres and universities as well, frequently placing those working with Shakespearean texts in a precarious position. Following Lenin’s death in 1924 and the ensuing internal struggle over state power, Stalin emerged as the new leader of the USSR. In 1928, he terminated the NEP and instead initiated a programme of expropriation and later mass collectivization in the rural areas, as well as the frst fve-year plan for industrialization. With an aim of transforming the USSR into a country that was highly advanced, both technologically and culturally, Stalin supported hiring non-communist specialists and inviting

20

Early Soviet Context

foreign professionals to take part in numerous building projects across the Soviet territory and in producing a new, proletarian intelligentsia.3 In 1934, socialist realism was offcially announced as the new cultural policy at the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers. Soviet arts were encouraged to be “realistic,” but this brand of realism had to align with the imagined socialist society of the future. The same years saw a turn to pre-revolutionary historical and literary fgures now adopted as idealized fgureheads of the new Soviet culture.4 The late 1930s in the USSR are also particularly known for the years of Great Terror or the purges – a series of political repressions that lasted from 1936 to 1938, when anyone considered a threat to the regime was arrested, tortured, and executed or sent off to labour camps.

Notes 1 Georgii Ge, “Otkrytoe pis’mo Petru Petrovichu Gnedichu,” Zhizn’ iskusstva no. 81 (February 19, 1919): 2. 2 Christopher Read identifes the early 1921 as a key point in this process. See especially chapter 4, “Laying the Foundations of Cultural Power,” in Culture and Power in Revolutionary Russia: The Intelligentsia and the Transition from Tsarism to Communism (New York, NY: St Martin’s Press, 1990). 3 See Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite,” in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture and Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 149–182. 4 An excellent overview is offered by Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda, eds. Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). For a much more nuanced exploration focusing specifcally on Aleksandr Pushkin, see Jonathan Brooks Platt, Greetings, Pushkin! Stalinist Cultural Politics and the Russian National Bard (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2016). These ideological appropriations of Russian literary and historical fgures, of course, form an important context for the parallel appropriation of Shakespeare.

2

Ivan Aksenov and Soviet Shakespeare Aleksei Semenenko

The life of Ivan Aleksandrovich Aksenov (1884–1935) might well pass for the plot of a romantic adventure novel. He was born in Putivl (now in Sumy Oblast, Ukraine) and received a typical military education: he fnished the First Moscow Cadet School around 1900 and graduated from the Military Engineers School in Saint Petersburg in 1905. In 1907, when Aksenov served in an engineering regiment in Kiev, he was arrested on a charge of organizing a mutiny in the regiment and but eventually was released due to lack of evidence. At the same time, Aksenov was actively involved in Russian cultural life and began writing essays on literature and art, thus combining his artistic endeavours with his military career. In 1914, Aksenov visited Paris, where he got acquainted with several prominent artists of the period, including Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, and Liubov Popova. During the First World War, he was promoted to captain and organized a Bolshevik Party cell in the Revolutionary Committee at the Headquarters of Romanian Front in July of 1917. Despite this fact, it is hard to consider Aksenov a hard-boiled Bolshevik, because his political adventurism was most likely not an ideological stance but a part of his life strategy built on a romantic model.1 While the war was still going on, Aksenov actively participated in the Tsentrifuga publishing house, organized by Sergei Bobrov, and wrote the frst biography of Pablo Picasso: Picasso and the Environs (1917). In December 1917, he was captured by Romanian troops and spent four months in prison writing the novel The Pillars of Hercules (frst published in 2008). In 1918, Aksenov was exchanged for Romanian offcers held captive in Russia and headed for Moscow but was again captured, this time by the Cossack insurgents. He fnally arrived in Moscow in May 1919 and continued his literary activities and teaching practice, at the same time working in Cheka as head of the Committee for the Prevention of Desertion. In the beginning of the 1920s, with the poet Valerii Briusov, he was leading LITO, the Literary and Publishing Division of Narkompros (People’s Commissariat for Education). In 1922, he left the Bolshevik Party, offcially due to weak health, and fully devoted his life to writing and teaching.

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In 1921, Aksenov started working in Meyerhold’s theatre GosTIM as the dean of the directors’ school and a year later was elected chairperson of SOPO, the Union of Poets. He worked in Meyerhold’s theatre until 1927, writing reviews, translating plays for the theatre and lecturing in Gektemas (the school of dramatic art at Meyerhold’s theatre). In 1925, he wrote a history of the theatre (which remained unpublished) and was the frst biographer of his student Sergei Eisenstein (Sergei Eisenstein: The Portrait of the Artist, frst published in 1968). In 1927, Aksenov left GosTIM and Gektemas but was still deeply involved in Moscow’s cultural life, mostly as a lecturer. In 1930, he even appeared at Dneproges, the construction site of the Dnepr Hydroelectric Station, teaching mathematics and physics to the workers for a short period of time, but he then returned to Moscow and was invited by his former student Sergei Eisenstein to lecture at the State University of Cinematography. He died on September 3, 1935, in Moscow, apparently after an operation on a malignant tumour. For anyone who was involved in cultural production in the 1920s, Ivan Aksenov was an omnipresent fgure who left an imprint on practically all the spheres of Russian culture. Nevertheless, half of his works were published only after his death and a large part of them in the post-Soviet period. By the end of the 1980s, his legacy was practically forgotten, and if the name Aksenov was mentioned, it referred predominantly to the writer Vasilii Aksenov (1932–2009). It was not until the twenty-frst century that scholarly works on Ivan Aksenov started to appear.2 Aksenov wrote about 15 works on Shakespeare, but his frst book on that period was a collection of translations of Elizabethan dramatists rather than the Bard himself: The Elizabethans (Elizavetintsy, 1916). The book contained the translations of John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, John Webster’s The White Devil, and Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy. The second volume of the collection was written right after the frst but not published until 1938. It consisted of Thomas Heywood’s The Fair Maid of the West, John Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, and Thomas Dekker’s The Honest Whore. In the early 1930s, Aksenov prepared a collection of works by Ben Jonson in two volumes and published the book Hamlet and other essays (1930). Most of Aksenov’s works on Shakespeare written between 1930 and 1935 were published posthumously in 1937 in the book titled Shakespeare, and his only translation of Shakespeare, Othello (in collaboration with Iu. Anisimov), was frst published in electronic form in 2015 in a collection of articles. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: to present the unique contribution of Aksenov to Shakespeare studies in Russia and to demonstrate how closely it was intertwined with the politics of translation in the

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1930s, refecting the paradoxical relationship between the avant-garde – with its striving for new, “more precise” methods of translation – and the Marxist ideology. Let us frst look at Aksenov’s method.

Method: The Elizabethan Context As I mentioned earlier, Aksenov’s frst “Shakespearean book” was not on Shakespeare but on the lesser-known writers of “the Elizabethan alleys,” as Eisenstein put it.3 In the frst volume of The Elizabethans, Aksenov explains his deliberate choice to translate the Elizabethan authors instead of Shakespeare “dialectically” and “sociologically”: We are well familiar with the Russians’ love for Shakespeare and those touching forms that it takes among our and foreign Shakespearean actors and no less Shakespearean public. However, the public and the actors are slowly growing outdated and we will soon have to acknowledge that this naïve attitude is obsolete. What is then left to the consciousness? We defne any object by observing its interaction with the environment. From that point of view, we have no clue about Shakespeare.4 In other words, Aksenov insists on the importance of the actual historical context of the epoch without which it would be impossible to understand Shakespearean drama, a point he would return to in almost every work on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Aksenov describes this method of translation as follows: § 5. In the present translation I have preserved: the number of lines of the original throughout the text; the movement of the verse – almost everywhere (as long as the syntactic compatibility of the English and the Russian allows that). I did not want to break the tradition of the Russian blank verse and therefore did not follow the manner in which the translated authors utilize dactylic endings, [that is,] the accumulation of unstressed syllables both in the beginning of the verse and after the caesurae. The shortcomings of the translation are more obvious to me than to any of my future judges, and I especially cherish them. . . . what makes me love the weakness of my work is my hope to irritate someone who is much more capable and to whom I will owe my relief from the hard and demanding duty to continue this series.5 Half-humble disclaimers in the vein of “he that cometh after me is mightier than I” are not rare in translation practice, but in Aksenov’s case, it would not be wrong to consider them genuine. For Aksenov, translation

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was frst and foremost a hermeneutic and (to an extent) didactic instrument, and his self-assigned mission of a “cultural pioneer” was much more important to him than the artistic quality of the end product. As Mikhail Meilakh shows in his analysis, Aksenov’s method can be characterized as typically literalist. For example, Aksenov attempted to closely follow the English iambic pentameter and did not hesitate to push the boundaries of the (poetic) norms of the Russian language.6 As a result, Aksenov’s translations exhibit a signifcant language compression, which leads to numerous cases of lexical, syntactical, and grammatical idiosyncrasies and even simple mistakes resulting from misunderstanding the original.7 This is not surprising in the frst volume of The Elizabethans given that Aksenov was writing it during the war and had limited access to academic literature, but even after the war, his translations often suffered from similar problems. Aksenov’s literalism was not an exception in the translation practice of that period. Literalist translation as a strategy is usually a reaction to the governing norm and the canonized repertoire, a signal that the literary system needs new, fresher material for its development. In literary history, literalist translation never becomes a dominant trend, because it obviously fails to be presented as an aesthetic paradigm, but it does shift focus to the source culture, challenges the norms of the target language, and often accentuates the educational ethos of translation. Shakespeare translation in Russia experienced a similar “crisis” in the 1920s, when the Shakespeare canon of the nineteenth century (represented by translations of Aleksandr Sokolovskii, Aleksandr Druzhinin, Andrei Kroneberg, Pavel Veinberg, and others) was already considered to be obsolete. The general sentiment was that the nineteenth-century translators interpreted Shakespeare too freely and thus presented a distorted image of his work in Russian culture. The eternal discussion of “word vs spirit” in translation resumed again, and at that time, it centred on the question of equilinearity and equirhythmia in translation as the most adequate way to approach the original. This debate got even more complicated in the 1930s, when the ideological control over literary production and translation practice in particular became more tangible, as we will see later.8 Aksenov was consistent in his method and followed the aforementioned principles without making any distinction between Shakespeare and lesser-known writers. For example, in his frst book on Shakespeare, Hamlet and other essays (1930), he especially chose to translate parts of the tragedy in prose “for greater precision.” In a short paper, “What is the question?” (written in 1933 and published in 1937), Aksenov presented his own version of the “To be or not to be” soliloquy instead of using one of the many existing ones:

Ivan Aksenov and Soviet Shakespeare

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Interlinear translation:9

The original:

To be or not to be: that is the question now:

To be, or not to be; that is the question:

What is nobler: to endure in mind

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The spits and arrows of insolent mischief

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to riot against the sea of troubles

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And end them, by opposing? To die – to sleep;

And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep –

No more; this means that by sleep we end

No more, and by a sleep to say we end

The pain of heart and all the suffering

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

That is inherent in the body. We should The fesh is heir to – ’tis a consummation only ask For such an outcome. To die – to sleep; Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep. To sleep. Maybe to dream as well: that’s the bump. –

To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,

In the dormition of death what dreams For in that sleep of death what dreams may come will come When we will shed this dead uproar –

When we have shuffed off this mortal coil

And we stand [still]. On that ground

Must give us pause. There’s the respect

They drag out the trouble of the longest life.

That makes calamity of so long life,

Who would endure the shame and whips of time,

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

The evil of oppressors, the arrogance of the proud,

Th’oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,

The pain of rejected love, the circumvention of law,

The pangs of dispised love, the law’s delay,

The insolence of bureaucrats and the kicks

The insolence of offce, and the spurns

That the worthy receive from the unworthy,

That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,

When one could simply get rid [of it]

When he himself might his quietus make

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Interlinear translation:9

The original:

On their own, with a pathetic awl. Who would haul an armful,

With a bare bodkin? Who would these fardels bear,

Cursing and sweating under a weary life,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

If the fear of something after death,

But that the dread of something after death,

Of the undiscovered land, from whose boundary

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler has returned, had not led astray our will,

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

Had not convinced us to live among our troubles,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Not to fee from them to others, unknown to us?

Than fy to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience turns us all into cowards.

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

The innate blush of resoluteness

And thus the native hue of resolution

Withers from the pale touch of thought.

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,

The intentions of great power and terms

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard divert their current

With this regard their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.

And lose the name of action. Shush!

– Soft you now.

Beautiful Ophelia! Nymph, in your prayers

The fair Ophelia!–Nymph, in thy orisons

Remember all my sins.

Be all my sins remembered.

It is typical for Aksenov to eclectically combine Church Slavonic words like “pred,” “vorochat’sia” (meaning here “to come back”), “krasa,” etc. with modern lexemes such as “kantseliaristy” (bureaucrats) and literalist expressions: “kochka” (bump) for “rub” or “okhapka” (armful) for “fardels.” At the same time, by choosing to translate “that sleep of death” as “uspen’e smerti” (the dormition of death), Aksenov plays on the double meaning of the word “uspenie” as both death and sleep, thus enhancing the macabre connotations of the phrase. Like many translators of Shakespeare before him, Aksenov sometimes uses explanatory substitutions – for example, “awl” for bodkin (following an interpretation

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of bodkin as a needle, an awl – that is, a simple weapon which is opposed to a “noble” dagger). The cases of adlibbing are also quite typical here: Aksenov chooses the pejorative “tsyts” (shush!) instead of “Soft you now,” translates “fortune” as “neschast’e” (mischief) and “to take arms” as “miatezhom vosstat’ ” (to riot). Aksenov’s interpretation of the whole monologue is contextual: in the article “What Is the Question?” Aksenov emphasizes the necessity to study Elizabethan drama “in order to obtain a clear understanding of Shakespeare’s poetry”10 and argues, through the context of Ben Jonson and John Webster, that “conscience” in Hamlet’s soliloquy should be read as “religion,” camoufaged due to censorial reasons. As we see, Aksenov’s approach to Shakespeare exhibits the same tendency as that of his other works on Elizabethan drama. Although the attempt to interpret Hamlet through its cultural context remains the main focus of the book, it is also a re-evaluation of (and resistance to) the canon of the nineteenth century. In that sense, Aksenov’s method is in many ways congenial to Anna Radlova’s, whose translations of Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet in 1933, Othello in 1935, and Hamlet in 1937) gained a lot of popularity in the early 1930s, partly because they were used in the theatre productions by her husband Sergei Radlov in the Leningrad Malyi Theater, one of the most productive directors of Shakespeare’s plays. Many praised Radlova’s “revolutionary” translations which bring Shakespeare “back to earth”11 – for example, the 1935 edition of The Literary Encyclopedia commended her translations as “masterpieces of precise translation”12 – whereas others criticized her for an extreme compression of language, stylistic eclecticism, and adlibbing, among them none other than the prominent Soviet writer Kornei Chukovskii. In the late 1930s, he wrote several articles about Radlova’s translations and labelled them “mutilated human speech” [kul’tiapki chelovecheskoi rechi].13 The same criticism could be applied to Aksenov’s translation as well; as the prominent Shakespeare scholar of that time Aleksandr Smirnov mentioned, Aksenov’s translations of Elizabethan dramatists and Ben Jonson were full of “extraordinary oddities,”14 and he was therefore cautious to use Aksenov for his editions of Shakespeare works. Despite these shortcomings, Aksenov’s work on the Elizabethan epoch earned him a generally good reputation in the Shakespeare scholarly circles. It was refected in the fact that his article on Hamlet – “What is the question?” – was included in the remarkable collection Shakespeare in the Soviet Union, published in English by Moscow Progress Publishers in 1966. The book introduced the texts of Soviet Shakespeare scholars such as Mikhail Morozov, Aleksandr Smirnov, Aleksandr Anikst, and Ivan Anisimov, but it also included various texts written by renowned theatre/cinema directors, actors, and public fgures, including Aleksandr Blok, Anatolii Lunacharsky, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Grigorii Kozintsev,

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Innokentii Smoktunovskii, and Nikolai Okhlopkov. Given the almost total oblivion of Aksenov’s work by that time, his inclusion in the collection in question was especially signifcant. One of the possible reasons for this inclusion could be Aksenov’s conformist stance on the ideological direction of Shakespeare translation, which we will explore in the next section.

Translating Shakespeare Aksenov’s only translation of Shakespeare was Othello, which was commissioned by Nikolai Okhlopkov in 193515 for a new production in the Moscow Realistic Theater (Realisticheskii teatr).16 Okhlopkov was a prominent theatre director who followed the principles set by Meyerhold and Eisenstein and in a way a rival of the director Sergei Radlov in Leningrad. The choice of this tragedy is by no means coincidental and should be viewed in the light of the events of the 1934 First Congress of Soviet Writers, which in many aspects was a turning point in the cultural history of the Soviet Union. It established socialist realism as the Soviet method and reconfrmed the repressive tendencies of the late years. As a result, many avant-garde groups, organizations, and movements in the sphere of cultural production were shut down; even in the Soviet context, it was a stark contrast from the relatively dynamic period of the early 1920s. Among other things, the 1934 congress put Shakespeare on the same plane as modern Soviet writers, and Maxim Gorky named Shakespeare among the models of the new socialist literature. Furthermore, A special set of measures was undertaken to promote Shakespeare in the country. In 1934, to mark Shakespeare’s 370th birthday, the Theatre Union of Russia set up a special Shakespearean Department, which provided consultation for directors (especially those from the provinces). From 1939 the Shakespearean Department organized annual conferences on Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s birthday was celebrated on the scale of a national holiday. By 1939 mass Shakespearization was in full swing.17 Nevertheless, that did not mean that Shakespeare was ideologically “safe” for translators and theatre directors. Some Shakespeare’s plays were considered more “appropriate” than others, such as Othello in comparison with Hamlet.18 Othello became the favourite tragedy of Shakespeare in the Soviet Union and was staged 100 times in 1938 alone.19 The contemporary actor Aleksandr Ostuzhev explained this unexpected preference in the following manner: The Soviet people love Othello, as I do, because we love man. Life in our country is devoted to ensuring through all its policies the

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realisation of a society which will care for man, for people, and teach the love of man. Both the tragedy of Shakespeare in itself and the image of the noble Moor make the same demands upon us. This is why he is so close and dear to us.20 This was the context of the Shakespeare frenzy of the 1930s that defnitely infuenced Okhlopkov’s choice of the play. Aksenov’s sudden death on September 3, 1935, halted Okhlopkov’s production for a short period of time, but then the translation was continued by Aksenov’s close acquaintance Iulian Anisimov (1886–1940), the writer, translator, and art connoisseur.21 Anisimov signed a contract with the theatre on September 11, 1935, and delivered the translation by the end of the year, thoroughly editing Aksenov’s draft and fnishing the rest of the play.22 The typescripts of the translation are preserved in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts (RGALI), and one of the draft typescripts is titled “Othello. Act 2. Translation by I. A. Aksenov” (see Figure 2.1).23 This typescript consists of an abridged version of Act 2 (ten pages) and seven pages from Act 1. The typescript is in much worse shape than the other two documents are; apparently, it is an older draft that was later edited. It has numerous handwritten corrections by Anisimov (the handwriting does not match Aksenov’s, and there are Anisimov’s initials on one of the pages).24 Anisimov’s corrections systematically eliminate any grammatical or lexical irregularities, normalize Aksenov’s literalist translation, and make the text more suitable for the stage.25 Apart from these 17 pages, the rest of the translation should be attributed to Anisimov, and it is not a coincidence that the programme of the premiere on April 10, 1936, indicated him as a sole translator.26 Okhlopkov’s production of Othello received a good deal of criticism,27 especially when it was compared to Sergei Radlov’s Othello in Anna Radlova’s translation.28 As has already been mentioned, at that time, Radlova’s translations were largely perceived as innovative, especially in comparison with the outdated versions by Pavel Veinberg (Weinberg). As Aleksandr Ostuzhev, who played Othello in Radlov’s production, recalled, Weinberg’s polished, sing-song translation lacked the vigour and the dynamic quality of Shakespeare’s thought. . . . Often the text served as a barrier between the actor and the image he was trying to create. This fault has been brilliantly corrected by the new translation by Anna Radlova and, although it was extremely hard to relearn the text to which I had become accustomed, I defnitely rejected Weinberg’s translation in favour of Radlova’s: in this text I felt Shakespeare’s earthiness, his clarity and the purposefulness of his language.29 The fnal version of the typescript was sent for review to Glavrepertkom, the state committee for theatre repertoire, which acted as a censorial

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Figure 2.1 Aksenov’s translation of Othello. RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 11, p. 142 Source: Courtesy of the RGALI Archive

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institution. It was favourably reviewed by the theatre theoretician and writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovskii (in Polish, Zygmunt Krzyżanowski), who concluded that [This translation] is more POETIC than the translations [by Weinberg and Radlova], but it is INCOMPLETE, which is not the case with the translation by Weinberg and Radlov [sic].30 . . . the overall impression is that the translation made by Iu. Anisimov and I. Aksenov is very valuable, poetic and theatrical, although textually not complete.31 The protocol dated July 23, 1939, was signed by politeditor Veniamin Radomyslenskii with the following resolution: The only shortcoming is perhaps an excessive transparency [prozrachnost’] and rationalism trying to approach the original intention of the author [stremlenie k podlinnosti avtorskogo smysla]. . . . they convey the author’s thoughts in a much sharper [ostree] manner than the previous translators of Shakespeare’s works.32 We can see that the reviewers’ favourable statements, in fact, confict with each other: Krzhizhanovskii argues that the translation is “poetic” and theatre oriented, whereas Radomyslenskii praises its precision and “rationalism.” This paradox refects the reality of the period: the formulation used to accept the translation did not really matter as long as it was ideologically correct. Most likely, the translation was accepted as the alternative to Radlova’s, and because of Aksenov’s reputation as an expert Elizabethan scholar. Anisimov’s extensive editing (and rewriting) of the translation, which eliminated any oddities in the text (and thus potential accusations of formalism), facilitated a positive outcome. However, as we have seen, the 1936 production of Othello did not feature Aksenov’s name at all, and thus his only translation of Shakespeare, albeit not compete and heavily edited, was buried in the archives until recent times. Simultaneously with the translation, Aksenov was writing a long essay on Othello, published posthumously in 1935. Aksenov interpreted the problem of the Moor’s jealousy through historical contextualization, at the same time – again – wrapping up his contextual commentary in the veil of class struggle and historical dialectics. Aksenov extensively referenced Benedetto Varchi’s The Blazon of Jealousie (translated into English by Robert Tofte in 1615), in which the four types of jealousy were defned: of pleasure, of passion, of property or right, and of honour. Aksenov, however, adds to this list the ffth defnition of jealousy, namely “the highest passion for the common good,” still present in the Russian adjective revnostnyi, meaning “zealous,” “devout.”33 In his interpretation, Othello turns out to be a complex text that combines all fve kinds of jealousy, and the personal tragedy of the Moor is that his

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self-confnement in personal passions leads to his alienation from the social interests and subsequently to self-destruction.34 In Aksenov’s analysis, Othello is the same hero as Hamlet, the one who fails to overcome the hegemonic power of the epoch and therefore perishes in history.35 From a similar Marxist-dialectical perspective, Aksenov assessed other Shakespearean tragedies, including Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. In Hamlet and Other Essays, which was based on his works and lectures written in the late 1920s, Aksenov writes at length about the historical context of the Elizabethan epoch and characterizes Hamlet as one of the typical genres of Elizabethan drama: the revenge tragedy. Aksenov identifes the “standard elements” of this genre: a conversation with an apparition, a soliloquy about the mortality of life, and the unexpected revenge in the end that does not give a chance of eternal salvation to the villain. Aksenov distinguishes the “themes” of the three avengers – Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet – that run parallel through the whole tragedy and “subdue” in the reverse order.36 Laertes represents the obsolete feudal moral, Hamlet represents the critique of this moral, and Fortinbras is the hero of the future who embodies the new moral and the new worldview. It is in this context that one has to assess the question of Hamlet’s perceived inability to act, which, argues Aksenov, was a much later interpretation of the tragedy. Hamlet is not guilty of postponing the revenge but “suffers due to the fact that he cannot reject the avenger’s duty as Fortinbras did.”37 As a result, the tragedy forces Hamlet to “reassess the moral values of feudalism” because he cannot accept the duties that the past epoch tries to impose on him. In Aksenov’s work on Romeo and Juliet published posthumously in 1937, he returns to the foregoing thesis of the tripartite composition of the tragedy. Aksenov asserts that the composition of three heroes representing the transition from the feudalism to Renaissance is particular to the “serious” Shakespearean tragedies, such as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet, and that “the middle hero” represents the real confict of the play between the old and the new: The frst hero is fully devoted to the false principle (the old feudal one or the outdated amoral one); the other tries to fnd a means to overcome the powers of the old world [veleniia starogo mira], and the third one stands frmly on the ground of the new consciousness. The main hero of the tragedy, the embodiment of its confict, is of course the middle hero. His inner victory against his own discrepancy of consciousness is what unfolds the tragedy, transforming, say, Hamlet into Fortinbras, who wins over his inner Laertes, and raising Macbeth to the level of Macduff, and Othello to the level of Desdemona.38 As we have seen, in his 1930s works, Aksenov was consistent in explaining the rhetoric and ethos of Shakespeare’s work through lesser-known

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contexts of the period, but at the same time he fully supported the discourse of Shakespeare as a Renaissance dramatist who challenged the old feudal moral and thus foreshadowed the new progressive era. This was not Aksenov’s only compromise with the offcial line. In the last section, we will see how signifcant the ideological aspect of Shakespeare translation turned out to be and how it shaped the metatexts produced by the translators.

The Dialectics of Realism By the late 1920s, the words “dialectics” and “realism” had already come to dominate the Soviet literary discourse. In Hamlet and other essays, Aksenov emphasizes the Marxist direction of his method as well and deems it necessary to categorically distance himself from the formal method. He states that Hamlet is a histrionic text that defes a formal(ist) literary analysis, and he therefore chooses a “thematic music analysis.”39 Aksenov defnes a theme as a “verbally expressed defnition of a scenic task which establishes a consecutive line of action by the actors during the entire composition (the main theme) or its specifc parts (derivative or secondary themes).”40 Apparently, Aksenov’s understanding of “theme” is metaphorical rather than grounded in musical theory; he is, in fact, describing the relation between the parts of the text, which is not far from the formal method that he so explicitly renounces. However, Aksenov insists that the musicological analysis is much better suited to his purpose because the themes of the scenic text are perceived “by the thinking consciousness which, as is known, is determined by the social being of the receiver.”41 He argues that music is thus suitable for the analysis not only of the text itself but also of the psychology of its audience – that is, the social context of the epoch. This explanation is rather arbitrary. After all, isn’t a literary text also perceived by thinking consciousness? It seems to merely allude to Marx’s famous statement from the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”42 Even more, the rejection of the formal method is included in the very title of the book, which parodies the old tradition of descriptive titles; it consists of 74 words and is printed in the form of a chalice (see Figure 2.2): “Hamlet and other essays in support of our Shakespeare studies, which give an account of bear hunts, pirated editions, blood feuds, Mr. Henslowe’s account-books, the groundlessness of the formal analysis . . .” This rejection cannot be attributed solely to Aksenov’s attempts to approach Shakespeare “dialectically”; rather, it is a refection of a general tendency of the period. On the other hand, Hamlet and the other essays can be read as an ambiguous, even subversive, book, which presents a de facto formal analysis of the play under the disguise of ideologically correct declarations.

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Figure 2.2 The title page of Aksenov’s Hamlet and other essays Source: Photograph by Aleksei Semenenko

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In his other works on Shakespeare, Aksenov focused on describing Shakespeare as a realist. It is not suprising as realism became a hot topic of literary discussion already in the late 1920s, before the adoption of socialist realism as offcial dogma in 1934. In the article “Shakespeare’s fowery and simple speech” [Kudriavaia i prostaia rech’ Shekspira], published in Literaturnaia gazeta, Aksenov sets out to present a de facto apologia of Shakespeare. The article was printed under the subsection “On the realism of the classics” and had a blurb with the main questions presumably tackled in the article: “Realism and rhetoric: Shakespeare’s example. – Shakespeare’s words and actions. – Shakespeare’s lessons. The realism of outlook [vozzrenie] and the realism of expression. – Is the rhetorical realism possible? Shakespeare’s answer. – The problem of the realistic speech in Shakespeare’s works.”43 Apparently, those were the editors’ attempts to emphasize the “realism-relatedness” of Aksenov’s text. In this article, Aksenov presents a relevant historical commentary but at the same time effortlessly sets it in the context of the required ideological context. He tells a story of how Robert Greene accused Shakespeare of an inability to write as the university-educated writers did. According to Aksenov, Shakespeare responded to the criticism by composing his poem “Venus and Adonis,” “written in the style of the most fowery conceit [samogo kudrevatogo konchetti]” thus proving that he had the ability to write in such a style but that he consciously rejected it already in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Lucretia. Aksenov concluded the article by saying that Shakespeare’s realism was “not only the matter of his personal taste but also a socially directed artistic method.”44 In the same article, Aksenov portrays Shakespeare’s theatre as a rising social power that “organizes the ideology of the contemporaries” and forces the ruling classes of that time to accept it. Shakespeare’s art is thus moulded by “the demands of the public and the interests of the theater,” and he turns out to be “an educator of broad masses.” Even music is used by Shakespeare as an instrument to convey “to his emotionally agitated audience the realistically grounded and extremely simply composed formulations.”45 It is not a coincidence that this formula sounds familiar: Aksenov indeed describes Shakespeare’s theatre as the precursor of the montage of attractions,46 thus tacitly bringing Meyerhold’s theatre under the umbrella of realism. One of Aksenov’s last-published works was the article “The characters and types of Shakespeare” (1935).47 The frst part presents a list of all the dramatis personae of Shakespeare’s 36 plays; the second part provides yet another contextualization of Shakespeare’s epoch: Aksenov argues that, to understand the psychology of Shakespeare characters, one frst needs to understand how the physiology of the Elizabethan culture worked. He goes on to describe the doctrine of the four elements and temperaments, and through them, he categorizes Shakespeare’s plays by their dominant

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passions. However, the main point of his excursus is that Shakespeare modifes and goes beyond the traditional scheme of passions: Shakespeare . . . tears apart the closed circuit of the microcosm, the small world of man, in which all happens according to its own laws without any infuence from the outside. He looks at man’s actions, comparing them with the two contrasting expressions of one and the same passion and pronounces his judgment according to the fate of man in the “greater” world, in the macrocosm. In this deed, Shakespeare is like Copernicus. Hamlet dies because he confnes himself in the nutshell of personal grief, personal revenge and personal doubts, and is conceited towards the wrongs and enormities that surround him. [. . .] The mind tames the passions to make them serve the common good. Shakespeare did not utter this formula. He expressed it in his characters and that is why even today they are still alive.48 This was one of the common points of Aksenov’s works on Shakespeare: the argument that the playwright challenged the obsolete feudal culture and revolutionized theatre by switching the focus from the particular to the general, from the ossifed misconceptions of the old epoch to the universal truths of human existence. The ritualistic reconfrmations of Shakespeare’s relevance for the new socialist state became a cliché by mid 1930s, and it is extremely diffcult to discern where the translator’s declarations were genuine and where they were a matter of compromise with ideological demands. Either way, although fully conforming to the socialist realist rhetoric, Aksenov remained faithful to his principle of contextualizing Shakespeare through the encyclopaedia of the Elizabethan period. We do not know what direction Aksenov’s works on Shakespeare could have taken if the 1930s had never happened, but judging from his pre-1917 works, we could have expected some much more original interpretations.

Concluding Remarks As we have seen, Ivan Aksenov played a signifcant role in the development of early Shakespeare studies in Soviet Russia, leaving his imprint on literature, theatre, art, and Shakespeare scholarship in particular. At the same time, Aksenov’s work can be seen as a kind of foil that refected the peculiarities of the period and especially the transition from the avantgarde criticism to total ideological control. On the one hand, Aksenov pursued the mission that he assigned himself: a cultural pioneer always trying to provide a relevant contextualization of the analyzed texts. On the other hand, he adapted well to the demands of the new political

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reality. Aksenov’s insistence to study the Elizabethan context in order to comprehend Shakespearean drama went hand in hand with his consistent efforts, especially in the 1930s, to position Shakespeare in the context of class struggle and historical dialectics, in which the playwright emerged as the forefather of (socialist) realism. On a more general note, the study of such authors as Ivan Aksenov is important for literary criticism and Shakespeare studies in particular because it brings to light long-neglected names and texts and also presents a much fuller picture of a given period, with all its intricacies, discrepancies, and contradictions.

Notes 1 More on that in Aleksei Semenenko, “ ‘Romanticheskii diskurs’ Ivana Aksenova,” in Aksenov and the Environs/Aksenov i okrestnosti, eds. Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012), 231–240. 2 See Ivan A. Aksenov, Iz tvorcheskogo naslediia: v dvukh tomakh, ed. Natal’ia Adaskina (Moscow: RA, 2008), Aksenov and the Environs / Aksenov i okrestnosti, eds. Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012); Lars Kleberg, Vid avantgardets korsvägar: om Ivan Aksionov och den ryska modernismen (Stockholm: Natur & Kultur, 2015); Daniela Rizzi, “Ivan Aksenov e dintorni: Note sulla recezione di Picasso in Russia,” in Studi e scritti in memoria di Marzio Marzaduri, eds. Giovanna Pagani-Cesa and Ol’ga Obuchova (Padova: CLEUP, 2002), 250–285. 3 See “An Essay About the Essayist,” Eisenstein’s remembrance note about Aksenov in Ivan Aksenov, Iz tvorcheskogo, Vol. 2, 311. 4 Ivan A. Aksenov, Elisavetintsy: Vyp. 1 (Moscow: Tsentrifuga, 1916), 279– 230. All translations of Russian sources are mine if not indicated otherwise. 5 Ibid, 283–284. 6 Mikhail Meilakh, “Aksenov-perevodchik,” in Aksenov and the Environs / Aksenov i okrestnosti, eds. Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012), 93–97. 7 The following are some examples: “to racket away” is translated as “postavit’ na raketu” (to put on a rocket); “a-ship-board” as “abordazh” (combat boarding); and “stones we give hawks for physic” as “kamni iz bol’noi pechenki” (stones from the diseased liver). See ibid, 96. 8 See, e.g., Susanna Witt, “Arts of Accommodation: The First All-Union Conference of Translators, Moscow, 1936, and the Ideologization of Norms,” in The Art of Accommodation: Literary Translation in Russia, eds. Leon Burnett and Emily Lygo (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), 141–184; Elena Zemskova, “Strategii loial’nosti: diskussiia o tochnosti khudozhestvennogo perevoda na Pervom vsesoiuznom soveshchanii perevodchikov 1936 g.,” Novyi flologicheskii vestnik 4 (2015): 70–83. 9 Aksenov’s translation in the original: Быть иль не быть: вот в чем теперь вопрос. Что благороднее – терпеть в уме Плевки и стрелы дерзкого несчастья, Иль мятежом восстать на море бедствий И кончить их, противясь? Умереть – спать; Не больше; значит, мы покончим сном

38

10

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12 13 14 15 16

Aleksei Semenenko И с болью сердца и со всем страданьем, Врожденным телу. О таком исходе Просить бы да просить нам. Умереть – спать; Спать. Может быть и грезить: вот в чем кочка. – В успеньи смерти, что за сны прийдут, Когда мы этот мертвый гам отбросим – И мы стоим. На этом основаньи Влачат беду такой длиннейшей жизни. Ведь кто бы снес позор и плети века, Зло угнетателей, надменность гордых, Боль презренной любви, обход законов, Наглость канцеляристов и пинки Достойнейшим от самых недостойных, Когда бы мог избавится спокойно Сам, жалким шилом. Кто бы поволок охапку, Бранясь и прея под усталой жизнью, Когда бы страх пред чем-то после смерти, Пред неоткрытым краем, с чьей межи Не ворочался странник, воль не сбил бы, Не убеждал нас жить средь наших бед, Не мчать от них к иным, нам неизвестным? Так совесть всех нас обращает в трусов. Решимости румянец прирожденный От бледного касанья мысли чахнет. Намеренья великих сил и сроков Согласно с этим ток свой уклоняют И имя действия теряют. Цыц! Краса Офелья! Нимфа, ты в молитвах Припомни все мои грехи! Ivan Aksenov, Shekspir: Stat’i: Chast’ 1 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1937), 152; translated in Ivan Aksyonov, “What Is the Question?” in Shakespeare in the Soviet Union: A Collection of Articles, eds. Roman Samarin and Alexander Nikolyukin (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 57. “Radlova brings Shakespeare down from the stilts on which he was put by the translators, directors and actors. She wants to bring Shakespeare back to the ground,” as quoted in Iu. Zobnin, “Radlova,” in Russkie pisateli: XX vek: Biobibliografcheskii slovar, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Prosviashchenie, 1998), 252. N. Presman, “Radlova,” in Literaturnaia entsiklopediia, Vol. 9 (Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1935), 501–502. Kornei Chukovskii, Vysokoe iskusstvo: o principakh khudozhestvennogo perevoda (Moskva: Iskusstvo, 1964), 176. Letter to Gustav Shpet, cited in Meilakh, “Aksenov – perevodchik,” 99. See Okhlopkov’s short interview in the newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta, “Beseda s zasl. art. resp. N. P. Okhlopkovym” (May 20, 1935), 6. The theatre was organized in 1927 on the basis of the Fourth Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. Okhlopkov was the general director of the theatre between 1931 and 1937. In 1938, the theatre was unsuccessfully merged with the Kamernyi Theater and ceased to exist.

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17 Arkady Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair with Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare in the World of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 58. 18 See Irena Makaryk, “Wartime Hamlet,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 119–135; Aleksei Semenenko, “Pasternak’s Shakespeare in Wartime Russia,” in Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity, eds. Irena Makaryk and Marissa McHugh (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2012), 143–162. 19 Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father,” 61. 20 Alexander Ostuzhev, “Alexander Ostuzhev on ‘Othello,’ ” in Shakespeare in the Soviet Union: A Collection of Articles, eds. Roman Samarin and Alexander Nikolyukin (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 150–164. 21 Iulian Anisimov studied in Matisse’s studio in Paris before the First World War and was involved, among other things, in the literary group Lirika with Boris Pasternak and Sergei Bobrov, but he later distanced himself from futurism. 22 See Anisimov’s letter to the Realistic Theater in Pis’ma Iu. P. Anisimova v otdel inostrannoi literatury Goslitizdata, Moskovskii realisticheskii teatr ob izdanii perevodov stikhotvorenii I. Bekhera, postanovke tragedii V. Shekspira “Otello” [1934–1935], RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 16, l. 2. This letter is evidence of the fact that at least Act 3, Act 4, and Act 5 were translated by Anisimov alone. 23 Aksenov’s draft is located in Anisimov’s fund: Iu. P. Anisimov and I. A. Aksenov, “Otello.” Perevod tragedii V. Shekspira s angliiskogo iazyka, [1935]– 1939, RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 11. The fnal draft under the title “Shekspir V. OTELLO. Per. I. Aksenova i Iu. Anisimova,” which was sent to Glaverpertkom, is preserved in the fund Shekspir V. “Otello” – tragediia. Perevod Iu. Anisimova i A. Aksenova. RGALI, 656, op. 5, d. 9012. 24 RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 11, l. 151. The handwriting is also similar to other Anisimov’s notes – for example, those preserved in RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 16. 25 See Zhatkin and Futliaev for a full comparative analysis of the fnal version with Aksenov’s draft. 26 Zhatkin and Futliaev argue that Anisimov acted merely as the editor but do not provide any evidence for this claim. See D. N. Zhatkin and N. S. Futliaev, “I. A. Aksenov – perevodchik ‘Otello’ Shekspira (Po materialam RGALI),” in Khudozhestvennyi perevod i sravnitel’noe literaturovedenie III, ed. D. N. Zhatkin (Moscow: Flinta, 2015), 187. See also N. S. Futliaev and D. N. Zhatkin, “Neizvestnyi perevod ‘Otello’ Shekspira,” Izvestiia vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii. Povolzhskii region: Gumanitarnye nauki 1 (2015): 111–125. 27 Cf. e.g.: “The theater of superfcial eccentric tricks and naturalistic episodes was proved powerless before the tragedy of Shakespeare” in Boris Alpers, Teatral’nye ocherki: v dvuch tomakh, Vol. 2 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977), 317. See also S. Nel’s, “Otello na moskovskoi stsene,” Sovetskii teatr nos. 4–5 (1930): 16–21; B. Ber, “Iskazhennyi Shekspir,” Teatr i dramaturgiia no. 6 (1936): 330–333. Even Okhlopkov himself lamented “the relapses of formalism and naturalism” in his production of Othello; see N. Okhlopkov, “Oshibki moei raboty,” Teatr and dramaturgiia no. 4 (1936): 196–197. 28 Radlov staged Othello four times between 1935 and 1939 (see Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father,” 68). 29 Ostuzhev, “Alexander Ostuzhev,” 164. The interview was recorded in 1938. 30 This was probably a typo; Krzhizhanovskii would have known the difference between the director Radlov and his wife Radlova.

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31 RGALI, F. 656, op.5, d. 9012, l. 5 ob; l. 7. The review is dated May 30, 1939, which raises some questions. In 1939, the theatre no longer existed, although the review was apparently meant for the 1936 production in the Realistic Theater. One possible (and most likely) reason for this anachronism might be some bureaucratic delay within Glavrepertkom. 32 RGALI, F. 656, op.5, d. 9012, l. 4. 33 Aksenov, “Otello,” 121. 34 Ibid, 128. 35 A similar interpretation of Othello’s actions as political and ideological was given by the already-mentioned Aleksandr Ostuzhev in 1938, an indication that by the late 1930s this interpretation of Othello became commonplace: The death of Desdemona . . . is more the tragedy of Othello than the tragedy of Desdemona. Her tragedy here is more intimate, more personal, whereas, for Othello, this is the collapse of the whole philosophy by which he lived. . . . There is no murder here; the death of Desdemona is a carefully considered plan of ideological revenge and of personal sacrifce, a part of Othello’s whole service of mankind. . . . Othello does not kill Desdemona, he destroys the source of evil (“Yet she must die, else she betray more men”), and, for this reason alone, when he later discovers that not she but he himself is a source of evil, does he execute judgement on his own person. . . . Only on this basis can Othello’s suicide be interpreted as a sign of strength rather than of weakness. (In Ostuzhev, “Alexander Ostuzhev,” 162–163) 36 Ivan Aksenov, “Gamlet” i drugie opyty v sodeistvie otechestvennoi shekspirologii (Moscow: Federatsiia, 1930), 110. 37 Ibid, 121. 38 Aksenov, Shekspir, 310–311. 39 Aksenov, “Gamlet,” 78–79. 40 Ibid, 83. 41 Ibid, 132–133. 42 Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1904), 11–12. 43 Ivan Aksenov, “Kudriavaia i prostaia rech’ Shekspira,” Literaturnaia gazeta (September 11, 1933): 3. 44 Ibid, 3. 45 Ibid, 3. 46 Cf. with Eisenstein’s now classical defnition: Theatre’s basic material derives from the audience: the moulding of the audience in a desired direction (or mood) is the task of every utilitarian theatre. . . . An attraction . . . is any aggressive moment in theatre, i.e. any element of it that subjects the audience to emotional or psychological infuence, verifed by experience and mathematically calculated to produce specifc emotional shocks in the spectator in their proper order within the whole. These shocks provide the only opportunity of perceiving the ideological aspect of what is being shown, the fnal ideological conclusion. See Sergei Eisenstein, “The Montage of Attractions,” in The Eisenstein Reader, ed. Richard Taylor (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 30. 47 Ivan Aksenov, “Litsa i kharaktery Shekspira,” Teatr i dramaturgiia 9 (1935): 43–46. 48 Ibid, 46.

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Works Cited Aksenov, Ivan A. Elisavetintsy: Vyp. 1. Moscow: Tsentrifuga, 1916. ———. Pikasso i okrestnosti. Moscow: Tsentrifuga, 1917. ———. “Gamlet” i drugie opyty v sodeistvie otechestvennoi shekspirologii. Moscow: Federatsiia, 1930. ———. “Kudriavaia i prostaia rech’ Shekspira.” Literaturnaia gazeta (September 11, 1933): 3. ———. “Litsa i kharaktery Shekspira.” Teatr i dramaturgiia 8 (1935): 12–19, continued in 9 (1935): 43–46. ———. “Otello.” Internatsional’naia literatura 10 (1935): 119–128. ———. Shekspir: Stat’i: Chast’ 1. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1937. ———. Iz tvorcheskogo naslediia: v dvukh tomakh, edited by Natal’ia Adaskina. Moscow: RA, 2008. Aksyonov, Ivan. “What Is the Question?” In Shakespeare in the Soviet Union: A Collection of Articles, edited by Roman Samarin and Alexander Nikolyukin. 51–57. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966. Alpers, Boris. Teatral’nye ocherki: v dvuch tomakh. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1977. Anisimov, Iu. P., and I. A. Aksenov. “Otello.” Perevod tragedii V. Shekspira s angliiskogo iazyka, [1935]-1939, RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 11. Ber, B. “Iskazhennyi Shekspir.” Teatr i dramaturgiia no. 6 (1936): 330–333. Chukovskii, Kornei. Vysokoe iskusstvo: o principakh khudozhestvennogo perevoda. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1964. Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Montage of Attractions.” In The Eisenstein Reader, edited by Richard Taylor. 29–34. London: British Film Institute, 1998. Futliaev, N. S., and D. N. Zhatkin. “Neizvestnyi perevod ‘Otello’ Shekspira.” Izvestiia vysshikh uchebnykh zavedenii: Povolzhskii region: Gumanitarnye nauki 1 (2015): 111–125. Kleberg, Lars, and Aleksei Semenenko, eds. Aksenov and the Environs/Aksenov i okrestnosti. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012. Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1904. Meilakh, Mikhail. “Aksenov – perevodchik.” In Aksenov and the Environs/ Aksenov i okrestnosti, edited by Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko. 93–97. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012. Nel’s, S. “Otello na moskovskoi stsene.” Sovetskii teatr nos. 4–5 (1930): 16–21. Okhlopkov, N. “Beseda s zasl. art. resp. N. P. Okhlopkovym.” Literaturnaia gazeta (May 20, 1935): 6. Okhlopkov, N. “Oshibki moei raboty.” Teatr and dramaturgiia no. 4 (1936): 196–197. Ostrovsky, Arkady. “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare in the World of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 56–83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Ostuzhev, Alexander. “Alexander Ostuzhev on ‘Othello.’ ” In Shakespeare in the Soviet Union: A Collection of Articles, edited by Roman Samarin and Alexander Nikolyukin. 150–164. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966. Pis’ma Iu. P. Anisimova v otdel inostrannoi literatury Goslitizdata, Moskovskii realisticheskii teatr ob izdanii perevodov stikhotvorenii I. Bekhera, postanovke tragedii V. Shekspira “Otello,” [1934–1935], RGALI, F. 1013, op. 1, d. 16.

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Rizzi, Daniela. “Ivan Aksenov e dintorni: Note sulla recezione di Picasso in Russia.” In Studi e scritti in memoria di Marzio Marzaduri, edited by Giovanna Pagani-Cesa and Ol’ga Obuchova. 250–285. Padova: CLEUP, 2002. Semenenko, Aleksei. “Pasternak’s Shakespeare in Wartime Russia.” In Shakespeare and the Second World War: Memory, Culture, Identity, edited by Irena Makaryk and Marissa McHugh. 143–162. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2012. ———. “ ‘Romanticheskii diskurs’ Ivana Aksenova.” In Aksenov and the Environs/Aksenov i okrestnosti, edited by Lars Kleberg and Aleksei Semenenko. 231–240. Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2012. Shekspir, V. “Otello” – tragediia. Perevod Iu. Anisimova i A. Aksenova. RGALI, 656, op. 5, d. 9012. Witt, Susanna. “Arts of Accommodation: The First All-Union Conference of Translators, Moscow, 1936, and the Ideologization of Norms.” In The Art of Accommodation: Literary Translation in Russia, edited by Leon Burnett and Emily Lygo. 141–184. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013. Zemskova, Elena. “Strategii Loial’nosti: diskussiia o tochnosti khudozhestvennogo perevoda na Pervom vsesoiuznom soveshchanii perevodchikov 1936 g.” Novyi flologicheskij vestnik 4 (2015): 70–83. Zhatkin, D. N., and N. S. Futliaev. “I. A. Aksenov – perevodchik ‘Otello’ Shekspira (Po materialam RGALI).” In Khudozhestvennyi perevod i sravnitel’noe literaturovedenie III, edited by D. N. Zhatkin. 187–326. Moscow: Flinta, 2015.

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Stalin and Shakespeare Irena R. Makaryk

On September 23, 1936, an obscure newspaper, The Advocate (then “North-Western Tasmania’s only daily newspaper”), ran the following headline on its frst page: “Stalin Learning English. Wants to Read Shakespeare.”1 To paraphrase Hamlet, what was Shakespeare to Stalin? Why did the Soviets feel compelled to advertise such a connection between Stalin and Shakespeare in 1936 and in a location as far away as Tasmania? What use and function did Shakespeare fulfl? And why are answers to these questions important? With the fall of the USSR in 1991, millions of archival fles were released for the frst time. One of the great surprises for scholars studying this material was the fact that a tremendous amount of attention had been paid to cultural matters. Despite the plethora of challenges of governing and controlling a huge multinational state, the smallest detail of culture received careful attention.2 Even more astonishing was the enormous amount of time that the head of state, Stalin himself, spent reading, annotating, commenting on, and editing plays, books, articles, and flm scripts. His infuence was “indisputably decisive” in the area of culture, a zone in which he took a special interest. Here, he “dominated policymaking absolutely,”3 turning various major and minor policies “on and off” at will, sometimes with a single memorandum.4 In the Soviet Union, culture was power. It was crucial in spearheading and promoting the cause of socialism; in inculcating and helping internalize the dominant system of values; in developing collective memory; and in aggrandizing and legitimizing the state and its leadership. It was also therefore dangerous. Examining key moments in Stalin’s life when he reputedly read, knew, or cited Shakespeare, this chapter makes some speculative proposals about the signifcance of the relationship between the Bard’s works and the ruthless dictator – a man who was ultimately responsible for the destruction of millions of lives but who also powerfully shaped the political, economic, literary, and cultural life of an enormous state not just during the nearly 30 years of his reign from the late 1920s to his death in 1953 but also long after – indeed, to this very day.

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Described by some as a dramatist, director, and actor controlling the drama of the whole USSR,5 Stalin also shares with Shakespeare a certain opacity about the details of his life: uncertainty about the exact birthdate; the absence of any frst-hand accounts of his inner life (such as a diary or intimate letters); a swirl of questions about actually held beliefs, convictions, and educational accomplishments; and unclear circumstances of death. In addition to these mysteries, at least three major factors complicate the task of discovering Stalin’s relationship to the work of Shakespeare. First, Stalin deliberately orchestrated the confusion, even obliteration, of details about his pre-1917 life. Historian Edward Ellis Smith claims – in rather purple prose – that Stalin’s drive to expunge the past “assumed the dimensions of a fully mounted military campaign replete with regiments of psychological warfare experts, trumpeters sounding false notes, and scores of writers acting as battering-rams to destroy the fortress of truth.”6 Second, Stalin’s massive personal working library of around 20,000 volumes was disbursed shortly after his death. Many works were given, or perhaps fnally returned, to Soviet libraries (Stalin notoriously kept the books he had borrowed); a few thousand others were sent to the offcial Russian archives (now, RGASPI7). The continuing online project of the Stalin Digital Archive, as catalogued by Geoffrey Roberts for Yale University Press, shows no sign of Shakespeare volumes in its listings.8 Third, comments about Shakespeare attributed to Stalin cannot always be confrmed. Some anecdotes are assuredly mythical, part of a retrospective hagiography. Others have been repeated for decades but do not lead back to a clearly documented source. Notably, Stalin was not only notoriously guarded with his words but also particularly careful about which of his pronouncements, speeches, and remarks were permitted to be printed. Thus, ironically, when an article appeared anonymously in the press, it was often considered to be actually written by Stalin or at his instigation. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the critical Pravda article about Dmitri Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The “Muddle Instead of Music,” a severe attack on atonal music, was made all the more frightening to the composer because it was unsigned and therefore understood to be likely authored or, at the very least, sanctioned by Stalin. Some anecdotes that circulated and were subsequently repeated by biographers and other scholars can be easily set aside. For example, the story that Salomon Mikhöels performed his famed role of King Lear at a private performance for Stalin and at the insistence of Lazar Kaganovich has been categorically refuted by Mikhöels’s daughter, Natalia, in her memoirs of her father.9 Other anecdotes occupy a middle, murky ground, such as Stalin’s purported tacit prohibition of the performance of Hamlet during the Second World War. Although productions of the play did take place in wartime, they were far away from the three centres that were of

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his special concern: Moscow, Leningrad (Petersburg), and Kyiv (Kiev). Generally, the farther away from the front, the more lax the censorship.10 Thus, this story cannot be absolutely dismissed as apocryphal, since even a casual comment from the vozh’d (leader) could be enough to be construed as a decree. The shadowy presence of Shakespeare does not, however, mean that his works were insignifcant; quite the opposite. From the beginning of the Soviet Union’s existence, Shakespeare was drawn into the vortex of debates about cultural legacies, cultural formation, literary and theatrical canons, and their role in shaping the new man. His works served both as a mirror of the twists and turns of Soviet politics and as a prism through which Soviet relations with the external world were explored, adjusted, and manipulated.

Reading Shakespeare? In the popular Russian imagination, Stalin’s reputation has undergone considerable, even remarkable, rehabilitation after 1991.11 Indeed, his reputation is on the rise. According to a recent Levada Center poll taken just before the Russian presidential elections in March 2018, Stalin was voted the greatest leader of all time for Russians: 38 percent of the 1,600 respondents granted him the number one rank – an amazing jump since the frst poll taken in 1989, when he received just 12 percent of the vote.12 A frequently stated attribute of Stalin’s greatness is his wide reading in various spheres of endeavour: history, science, linguistics, philosophy, socialist economics, genetics, European classics, and contemporary literary works. A consummate “close reader,” he paid astonishingly careful attention to texts, marking up passages and annotating texts. Born in Georgia either in 1878 or 1879,13 on the borderland of the Russian Empire, Ioseb (“Soso”) Dzhugashvili eventually fashioned himself as Iosif Stalin – the man of steel – an identity that combined Georgian, proletarian, and Russian components. Biographers of the young Stalin concur that he attended the local parish school in Gori, where he sat exams for bible studies, Church Slavonic, Russian, catechism, Greek, geography, and handwriting.14 Simon Sebag Montefore is alone in claiming that while at that school, Stalin showed “a taste for acting that would remain with him,” and he even “appeared in a satirical vaudeville that mocked Shakespeare.”15 This particular anecdote may be one of the many examples of retrospective mythologizing by a fellow Georgian, the source of Montefore’s assertion. Since the parish school focused on preparing the boys for the seminary and did not support theatrical endeavours, it is highly unlikely that Stalin frst learned about Shakespeare there. Nor could he have acquired knowledge of Shakespeare from his parents: his mother was illiterate, his father a brawling, abusive shoemaker who wanted Soso to follow in his (Soso’s father’s) craft.16

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At the Theological Seminary in Tbilisi (Tifis), the closest institution that Georgia had to a university, Stalin, like all Georgians, was required, by tsarist decree, to learn and study only in Russian.17 Everything related to the world outside of orthodox theology was prohibited, including attending the theatre and reading Georgian newspapers and literary works, Russian classics, and foreign writers such as Balzac and Shakespeare, to say nothing of Marx or Darwin.18 According to Joseph Iremaschwili, Stalin’s frst biographer and his schoolmate, seminary life was sad and monotonous.19 More bluntly, historians have described the seminary as a “monastic penitentiary,” where students were punished for the “the slightest deviation” from its “harsh regime.”20 A secret reading circle, which Stalin joined, made life easier; its members surreptitiously obtained banned books from the Cheap Library run by the Georgian Literacy Society and from a second-hand bookshop. Iremaschwili, a member of that group, recorded that they read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, “und vielen anderen” (many others) but does not mention any specifc titles.21 Another schoolmate, Grisha Glurdzhidze, cited second-hand by Leon Trotsky, purportedly mentioned that the boys read “Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Shelley, Lipert’s ‘History of Culture,’ the Russian radical publicist Pisarev.”22 Under the severe discipline of the seminary, clerical inspectors assiduously peered into every nook and cranny of the students’ lives and their private spaces, recording in offcial documents the books that were confscated during their searches. Stalin was caught a number of times with books by Victor Hugo, including Toilers of the Sea and The Year ’93.23 A younger friend and comrade, Giorgi Elisabedashvili, remembered Stalin not as a reader of Shakespeare but rather as an enthusiast of Pushkin, knightly tales, and other works about “heroes and individuals who defended the interests of the needy.”24 Psycho-historians have maintained that these reading preferences not only were created by the circumstances of the repressive seminary but also were the result of the Georgian masculine culture that embraced “mafa-style honour” and idealized the warrior.25 Such an early formation, David Priestland speculates, may have led Stalin to embrace a “quasi-romantic” Bolshevism “characterised by an emphasis on heroism, socialist commitment, will, and struggle.”26 Robert Tucker, on the other hand, argues that the theme of vengeance was more important than romanticism. Shakespeare’s works, even in their bowdlerized nineteenth-century Russian translations, hardly ft into such a generic model. If Stalin actually did read some Shakespeare during this youthful period, then these works would appear to have had little impact; he was never discovered attempting to secrete them. But let us revisit the Iremashwili’s list once again. He recalls three particular authors that the boys had read: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Turgenev. Did Stalin perhaps read Turgenev’s essay “Hamlet and Don Quixote”?27 Or did Stalin read Turgenev’s short story “Hamlet of

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Shchigrov District,” which appeared in A Sportsman’s Sketches – the book that had frst established Turgenev’s reputation? Turgenev regarded the prince as a weak, deeply fawed character, an egoist, and a “superfuous” man; his interpretation gave rise to the concept of “Hamletism.” Was this nineteenth-century view of an indecisive Hamlet the source of Stalin’s convictions about this character and play? Did it perhaps lead him to consider it representative of Shakespeare’s work? Or did Stalin indeed read Hamlet? Was it one of the “many other” unnamed books that the boys clandestinely devoured? Did he, perhaps, read the play in Nikolai Polevoi’s translation in which its weak-willed prince is given an infamous phrase, inserted by the translator – “Afraid, I am afraid for man”? Notably, Hamlet is the only Shakespearean character that Stalin actually ever mentions by name. If he imbibed the idea of a frail Hamlet in the formative years of his youth, this conviction seems to have held. The association of negative characters with Shakespeare crops up later in Stalin’s career. In 1940, in reviewing the screenplay of Law of Life (directed by Boris Ivanov and Aleksandr Stolper), Stalin commented, There is a demand for works to represent the enemy for us in all his most important aspects. Is this right or wrong? Wrong. There are different ways of writing – the way of Gogol, or of Shakespeare. They have outstanding heroes – negative and positive. When you read Shakespeare or Gogol, or Griboedov, you fnd one hero with negative features. All the negative features are concentrated in one individual. I would prefer a different manner of writing – the manner of Chekhov, who has no heroes but rather gray people who nevertheless refect the main course of life. This is another manner of writing . . . not lacking in human traits. The very worse scoundrel has human traits. . . . I would prefer it if enemies were shown to be strong.28 In 1947, Stalin again identifed Shakespeare with negative characters. Criticizing Sergei Eisenstein’s portrayal of Ivan the Terrible in the second part of his flm on this topic, Stalin commented that the flmmaker should have shown both the necessity for the tsar’s cruelty and the reason for his ultimate failure as not being suffciently cruel. In Eisenstein’s creation, Stalin remarked, the tsar came out “as indecisive, like Hamlet. Everyone suggests to him what should be done, but he can’t make a decision himself.”29

Socialist Realism and Shakespeare If Stalin read little or no Shakespeare as a young student or if he received his Shakespeare through Turgenev’s critique, then questions arise about why he would, at certain moments, turn to citing Shakespeare’s works as models for emulation. Stalin’s revolutionary years, when he became a

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Marxist convert, may supply part of the answer.30 The collected works of Marx and Engels, great admirers of Shakespeare, reveal over 160 references to his plays and his characters, including an extended citation from Timon of Athens and its analysis of the cash nexus. In his correspondence with the French writer Ferdinand Lassalle, Marx encouraged him to revise his work by setting aside a Schiller-like style, which “transformed individuals into simple mouthpieces of the spirit of the time” and counselled him to instead “Shakespearize,” by which he meant individualize characters and set them in the context of a wide social panorama.31 “Shakespearize” may have been a word that Stalin kept in his prodigious memory, as we shall see. In his revolutionary circle, Stalin was surrounded by those who admired Shakespeare. Lenin, for one, had grown up with Shakespeare and highly praised the classics, from which, he noted, much could be learned.32 The deeply intellectual Trotsky, soon to become a serious rival and bitter enemy, held similar views. In “Literature and Revolution,” for example, Trotsky strongly argued for retaining the classical heritage. By reading Shakespeare, he contended, workers would become richer and would take away “a more complex” and “a deeper and profounder understanding” of human nature.33 After the death of Lenin (1924) and after Stalin had fnally overcome all of his opponents towards decade’s end, he consolidated his power as general secretary of the USSR. He turned to creating a socialist offensive on every front with his Cultural Revolution (1928–1932), which aimed to “proletarianize” art and culture. From 1930 until his death, “there was virtually not a single ideological (and therefore cultural) question before the Politburo in which the decision was not made by him, or was made without his knowledge (and therefore assent).”34 During the same period, other portfolios, such as industry, agriculture, transport, defence, and security issues were sometimes examined by the Politburo in Stalin’s absence – but not culture. Throughout the 1930s and especially in the second half of that decade, Stalin “played an active role in censoring the content of individual works of literature, drama, and flm,” largely in terms of political rather than aesthetic concerns.”35 In 1932, Stalin successfully wooed Maxim Gorky out of exile, marking him for the position of leader of Soviet literature and “consolidator of literary forces,” thus helping to legitimize the regime.36 Showered with many privileges, Gorky became the frst head of the Writers Union and a powerful force in the USSR, largely responsible for initiating a major shift in the Soviet theatrical repertoire, which now turned back to the classics. The Bolshoi, Stalin’s favourite theatre, was elevated in rank; the Moscow Art Theatre was held up as a model for all theatres of the USSR; and Stanislavsky’s system became theatrical dogma. The era of the grand style, of the classics, was initiated.

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The turn to the classics like Shakespeare usefully dovetailed with the long-standing and rooted conviction among the intelligentsia that the theatre had to educate and improve the spectator rather than simply be a source of diversion. Such a conviction also ft well with the vision of Stalin at that time; the classics were promoted as helping to inspire, educate, and indoctrinate Soviet citizens, thus moving socialism forward. It was in Gorky’s apartment in October 1932, at a meeting to which Vyacheslav Molotov, Kliment Voroshilov, and Lazar Kaganovich were also summoned, that Stalin frst used the famous phrase “engineers of human souls” to describe the function of writers. Urged to suppress their need for individual expression, writers were, instead, to serve the greater cause of perfecting socialism. Marrying the technological with the religious, Stalin’s phrase, which became an oft-repeated mantra, revealed the depth of the signifcance that he attributed to culture. Indeed, “the production of souls,” he insisted, was “more important than the production of tanks.”37 At that same meeting, Stalin seems to have laid out the basic elements of the theory of socialist realism before it was formally and publicly articulated in 1934 at the famous Soviet Writers’ Congress.38 He contended that “an artist’s head” should be full of “the theories of Marx and Lenin. . . . And if he shows our life truthfully, on its way to socialism, that will be socialist art, that will be socialist realism.”39 Of all the genres, he declared, plays were the best suited for the mobilization of the masses. A few days earlier, speaking with communist writers, Stalin had made another one of his rare authorized recorded references to Shakespeare. Noting that there were two types of romanticism, bad and good, he affrmed that the former was represented by Schiller, whose work was “saturated with gentry-bourgeois idealism”: the latter was present in the work of Shakespeare and Gorky. “Gorky’s idealisation of man was the idealisation of the new man of the future, the idealisation of the new social system of the future”; this character type, Stalin asserted, would move the USSR forward.40 The vague reference to the “good romanticism” of Shakespeare hardly indicates a knowledge of the works or, indeed, of any particular work. Perhaps it was generally derived from Marx’s comments to Lassalle. Certainly, Schiller’s works would seem more obviously congenial to the heroic-romantic tradition that Stalin usually preferred. The Robbers, for example, presents the clash between two brothers: one a conniving materialist, the other an idealist who becomes the leader of a band of outlaws, a revolutionary fgure fghting against the corruption of feudal authorities. Such a drama would seem to ft with Stalin’s reading habits. Had he now become a Shakespeare enthusiast, or more likely, was he simply “playing” Gorky by exalting him with the connection to Shakespeare, an author he knew that Gorky deeply admired?

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First Writers’ Congress Shortly after the discussions in his apartment, Gorky penned his 1933 essay “O p’iesakh” (On Drama), in which he attacked the current state of Soviet dramaturgy and invoked the need for a “socialist heroism” or “revolutionary romanticism”41 – phrases that seem infected by the meetings with Stalin. Gorky urged writers to create a new character type that would educate spectators in the high principles of socialism and its morality. To “describe this hero with an appropriate power and intensity of language,” playwrights were urged to “learn from the unsurpassed masters of this literary form, and, above all, from Shakespeare.”42 The following year, the formative 1934 First Soviet Writers’ Congress put an end to creative experimentation in the arts. A mammoth portrait of Shakespeare, like a venerated icon, stared down at the gathering, at which Gorky advised writers to emulate the Bard while employing the method of socialist realism, now the only permissible way to create aesthetic works. In his keynote address, Andrei Zhdanov, Stalin’s spokesperson, described this method as “a combination of the most stern and sober practical work with a supreme spirit of heroic deeds and magnifcent future prospects.”43 Literature was to have two functions: “both to depict life in its messy particularity, in its mundane, practical detail, and to idealize. . . . Citizens were to be transformed – assimilated – by inspiring themselves into the master narrative of history.”44 Literature must be “truthful” in its portrayal of reality in its “revolutionary development, and its ideological remolding and education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism.”45 Much could be learned from the classics. The conjunction of contradictory impulses – celebration and imitation of Shakespeare on one hand and control on the other – suggests the complex, uneasy, and unpredictable alliance of Shakespeare with communist ideology. While the Writers’ Congress was taking place, Stalin was holidaying, probably deliberately absent so that he could distance himself from debates while at the same time “exercising remote control over its proceedings, vetting keynote speeches and receiving regular updates from Kaganovich and others.”46 More Shakespeare! The 1930s and the Great Appropriation All independent cultural organizations were abolished in 1932–1933 and the massive Soviet censorship machine, along with internal passports, was introduced. Theatre was brought under Party control through the appointment of communists as producers and administrators; Party offcials and proletarian representatives from factories and unions served on “artistic councils” in order to prevent any deviations from the Party line. Stalin took an extraordinary interest in every aspect of theatre; he read, annotated, and edited plays in manuscript, conferred privileges

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on theatre artists, ordered openings and closings, commented on the decor, censured reviews, and judged prizes.47 Each and every comment of his “became the subject of rumours, myths and decisions that affected careers.”48 The centrality of theatre was refected in a variety of ways, including newly created awards (Meritorious Artist, People’s Artist of the USSR) and in the number of arrests of theatre artists before, during, and after the Great Terror.49 As Stalin’s remarks at the meetings in Gorky’s apartment suggested, culture was intended not just “to mobilize popular support” but also to help attain greatness for Soviet society. Repurposed for the needs of Marxist-Leninism, pre-Soviet Russian and European culture emerged as a symbol of national glory, not only as the area defning Soviet identity but as the arena in which Soviets claimed international dominance. Repeated assertions about Soviet cultural superiority were made at this time, along with the claim that the great works of the past were given more-careful attention in the USSR than they were in their own native countries. Shakespeare was supposedly “neglected” in England but attracted great interest in Soviet Russia.50 It was essential that offcial Soviet culture, like its Marxist-Leninist ideology, was perceived, both inside and outside the USSR, not only as signifcant, weighty, powerful but also as dominating “world culture.” In 1934, the Shakespeare Kabinet, an institution attached to the USSR Theatrical Society, was founded. Also at this time, the great project of translating Shakespeare into all the languages of the Soviet Union began. This was justifed as a way of presenting its citizens with the world heritage that had been previously denied them, but it was also one of the many means of creating a common, homogeneous Soviet culture as defned by the Party. The year 1935 saw the introduction of the slogan “Bol’she shekspirizirovat!” (“Shakespeare-ize More!”), an attempt to inspire Soviet writers to create a world-class literature – but also an amplifed echo of Marx’s comments to Lassalle. Shakespeare productions seemed to be everywhere, so much so that, as Katerina Clark suggests, 1935 “could be called the year of Shakespeare.”51 Articles on theatre frequently cited Shakespeare with the clear aim of showing off Moscow as the centre of world culture. “Popular humanism” was emphasized as residing at the core of the Bard’s most representative works. The tragedies in particular were regarded as having exposed the struggle between two social orders: the “protest of the exploited classes against the nascent power of capital.”52 A conference was organized for November, at which the various extant translations of Shakespeare’s plays were discussed and critiqued. Somewhat reminiscent of the early Soviet debates of the 1920s were polemics surrounding the status and place of Shakespeare. Was he indeed a people’s playwright? Was he a writer of high culture? Did he write in the tradition of bards or with the intent to fatter a monarch? Whatever the internal debates about the status of the Bard, the Soviets’

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projection abroad of their reverence for his work and, more broadly, for world literature was frequently and loudly made, fuelled by a desire to demonstrate the cultural superiority of the USSR on a global scale.53 Shakespeare could also serve another purpose: as a friendly overture to the West. Returning to our article in the Tasmanian newspaper, The Advocate, with its headline about Stalin learning English to read Shakespeare, we may now begin to contextualize its seemingly odd appearance. Although unsigned, the article was probably penned by novelist Katherine Susannah Prichard (1883–1969), who had cofounded the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and remained frmly committed to its goals until her death. As documents from the CPA show, from around February 1934, the West Australian published a number of articles by Prichard about her tour of the Soviet Union. These were also reprinted in various regional papers as “vivid accounts of the situation in the Soviet Union.”54 On July 17, 1935, the Anglo-American Secretariat of the Party recommended that Comrade Prichard mute her public declarations of Party loyalty so that she could be more effective in serving it. Instead, she should devote her energy to the Writers’ League and “should be prominently used to conduct work among the intellectuals, petty-bourgeoisie, etc.”55 A small example of Moscow’s control, The Advocate’s article reveals the extent of the Soviet Union’s infuential reach into even the farthest corners of the world in order to propagate its message both of cultural superiority and yet of friendly overtures.56 The article was also likely intended to contribute to the Stalin cult: the extraordinary, superhuman leader, a lover of world culture who even made time to learn English to read one of the greats. (Stalin had, in fact, made various earlier attempts to learn foreign languages, including English, without huge success.) The same article continued with the claim that the Commissariat of Education was arranging for English to replace German “as the most widely taught foreign language in Soviet schools. The number of schools where English and French will be compulsory will be quadrupled. Knowledge of English has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years.”57 In light of the gathering storm clouds of war, the references to the alleged compulsory study of English and French must have reassured some Western readers about the USSR’s “real” sympathies. Whether Stalin was truly attempting to learn English (again) was not important; what was of signifcance was the effect that such a report might have. It suggested his cultured, intellectual status and his willingness to engage with the West. By presenting Stalin as a lover of Shakespeare, the face of the USSR became more human; it might sooner become an ally than an enemy. Such an approach was in line with a change that had occurred in 1935 at the Comintern’s Seventh Congress at which a major policy had been unfurled: the Popular Front, “which aimed to fght fascism by creating strategic, cross-class alliances and supporting the (formerly

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demonized) social democratic parties”58. Prichard was one among many communists and “fellow-travellers” used by the Soviet Union to “paint fattering pictures for Western audiences,”59 countering the leaks about collectivization, famine, deportation of masses of people, and purges. Even as the Great Terror60 began to gain momentum in 1936, references to Shakespeare continued to abound. Eager to communicate the idea of Soviet cultural freedom to international audiences, Stalin took a particularly strategic approach to events, awards, and pronouncements with international implications.61 He was also obsessed with timing: the immediate political value of a particular production, publication, or event. This criterion, as Sarah Davies and James Harris point out, gained special importance “when the sensitive matter of the Soviet Union’s international relations was involved; in such cases he . . . would accelerate or retard their appearance in light of changing political imperatives.”62 Yet he also husbanded and policed his own published words, severely reprimanding those who printed his comments without offcial sanction. His “comments about individual works of art and about Soviet culture in general were rarely made public at the time or were published anonymously.”63 These tactics made it diffcult both then and now to discern his real beliefs; but they also permitted artists a certain degree of manoeuvre. As war loomed on the horizon, Shakespeare seemed useful. The young communist newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda (Komsomol Truth) thus emphasized the idea that because art plays “an immense role in educating the new socialist,” issues related to art, culture, and its “creative development” are crucial: “To learn from Shakespeare and Beethoven, Pushkin and Glinka, Ostrovsky and Mussorgsky, to scoop up from the inexhaustible source of creativity of all the peoples of our motherland – that is now the task of the art worker, from the young apprentice to the grizzled master.”64 Epilogue Stefaniia Andrusiv has claimed that “no regime guarded its monopoly on the word as much as the communist regime. And no other succeeded to such an extent in brandishing language and shaping it to its own purpose.”65 Similarly, Davies and Harris have argued that Stalin’s words deserve as much scholarly attention as his deeds; in a sense, his words were his deeds. . . . To a degree we are only now coming to realize, Stalin literally imposed his rhetoric upon the country he ran. To understand the nature of the dictator’s power, we need to be attentive to the various ways in which he deployed words in the struggle to create and impose a compelling vision of the world.66 Bringing his many years of experience as a writer, journalist, and editor before the October Revolution to his assiduous editing of flm scripts,

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historical works, decrees, slogans, up until the last months of his life, Stalin nonetheless generally preferred that his own words not be published, and never without offcial sanction. Instead, “behind the scenes, he commented regularly on artistic affairs, and his words often circulated quite widely, leaving a strong imprint on Soviet discourse.”67 As the decade unfolded, his “utterances came to be surrounded by a growing aura of sanctity and received correspondingly reverential treatment.”68 Such a “behind-the-scene” approach may perhaps explain the repeated anecdote, undocumented in print, of Stalin’s questioning of the need for Hamlet during the Second World War. Now, 65 years after Stalin’s death, busts and plaques memorializing the vozh’d are once again beginning to appear throughout Russia. The preservation or restoration of his memory and place in Russian history and an active and aggressive defence have been the recent norm. A case in point is the response of the current Russian government to director Armando Ianucchi’s satirical flm The Death of Stalin. Launched in early 2018 with the purported intent to serve as a volley against Western politics and growing European populism, the flm met with a barrage of Russian criticism and outrage at its apparent ridicule of Soviet leaders. It was banned in Russia allegedly not because of censorship but, Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky claimed, rather for having crossed a “moral line between critical analysis of history and the mockery of it.”69 The ban on Ianucchi’s flm was followed not long after by the announcement of the cancellation of all of the activities of the British Council, including the proposal to erect a monument to Shakespeare in Moscow. The latter, as it turned out, was only a temporary delay.70 However, these prohibitions are signals of related issues: the long-standing love–hate relationship with the West; the potency of culture; and, more particularly, the political uses of Shakespeare. Culture in Russia thus continues to hold its pre-eminent place as a player of considerable weight and of immeasurable importance in shaping the public’s imaginarium, in refecting its values and its aspirations to its citizens and to the world.

Notes 1 “Stalin Learning English: Wants to Read Shakespeare,” The Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania) (Wednesday, September 23, 1936): 1. https://trove.nla. gov.au/newspaper/article/68083456. 2 Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko, “Note on the Documents,” in Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953, trans. Marian Schwartz (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), xi. 3 Sarah Davies and James Harris, “Joseph Stalin: Power and Ideas,” in Stalin: A New History, eds. Sarah Davies and James Harris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 9. 4 Paul Gregory and Mark Harrison, “Allocation Under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archives,” Journal of Economic Literature 43, no. 3 (September, 2005): 724.

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5 Most notably by Stalinist survivor Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, Teatr Iosifa Stalina (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ACT, 2000), 4. An especially fascinating study of the link between theatrical tropes and show trials is Julie A. Cassidy’s The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000). 6 Edward Ellis Smith, The Young Stalin: The Early Years of an Elusive Revolutionary (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), 6–7. 7 Rossisky gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsia’lnoi i politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Social and Political History). 8 Regrettably for literary scholars, Stalin’s dispersed books were mostly fction and art books, although these did not have his usual annotations, autograph, or stamp indicating that they were part of his collection (and perhaps, though not necessarily, suggesting that they may not have been read). The remaining volumes eventually came into the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (RGASPI), where the annotated texts from Stalin’s library are currently stored as Opis’ 3 of the Stalin fond. This is part of the Stalin Digital Archive (SDA), a collaboration between Yale University Press and RGASPI; to date, over a third of the annotated texts have been digitized. There is no Shakespeare in the collection. I am grateful to Stephen Kotkin for answering my queries about the Stalin archives and especially for putting me in touch with Geoffrey Roberts, who has been working on the SDA. Roberts has been extraordinarily generous in sharing his expertise and his documents, including his overview essay “Guide to Fond 558, Opis’ 3: Part One: Overview of Stalin’s Personal Library.” 9 So claims Simon Sebag Montefore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003; rpt. Phoenix, 2004), 559, but he is completely contradicted by Natalia Vovtsi-Mikhöels, Mon père Salomon Mikhöels: Souvenir sur la vie et sur sa mort, trans. Erwin Spatz (Montricher: Les Editions Noirs sur Blanc, 1990), who calls this and similar anecdotes “fabulations,” 199. 10 See Michelle Assay, “What Did Hamlet (Not) Do to Offend Stalin,” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 2017, Shakespeare après Shakespeare. http://shakespeare.revues.org/3840; and Irena R. Makaryk, “Wartime ‘Hamlet,’ ” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 119–135. 11 And not just in Russia. The Stalinist Society, was founded in 1991 in London, UK, and has branches around the world; it has as its goal, “to refute anti-communist and anti-Stalin libels and slanders through rigorous scholarly research and vigorous debate.” The American branch of The Stalinist Society, founded in 2014, states that its “aim is nothing less [than] the overturning of the Cold War anti-communist historical paradigm; and the restoration of history’s original – and correct – verdict of Joseph Stalin as one of the titans of the 20th century and one of the central fgures in the history of progressive humankind.” See www.stalinsociety.org/. 12 Quoted in Meagan Ford, “Moscow Lashes Out Against Stalin Film,” The National Interest (March 6, 2018). http://nationalinterest.org/feature/ moscow-lashes-out-against-stalin-flm-24775. Tied at 34 percent are current president Vladimir Putin and poet Alexander Pushkin, while Lenin, who had received 72 percent of the vote in 1989, is now in fourth place with just 32 percent. Levada-Center is an independent, nongovernmental polling and sociological research organization. 13 The exact date of Stalin’s birth is still disputed and, as Alfred J. Rieber notes, is partly due to Stalin himself. See Rieber’s “Stalin as Georgian: The Formative

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14 15

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

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Irena R. Makaryk Years,” in Stalin, eds. Davies and Harris, 25. Also on this topic, Miklós Kun, Stalin: An Unknown Portrait (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2003), 8–10. Stephen Kotkin, Stalin, Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 (New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014), 26. Simon Sebag Montefore, Young Stalin (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007), 35. Unsubstantiated by any other scholar, Montefore cites Kote Khakhanashvili as his source for this information obtained from the Georgian archives (GF IML 82.1.49.185–210). See Kun on this point, 13–14. Biographies of Stalin are legion: among them, Joseph Iremaschwili, Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens (Berlin: Verfasser, 1932); Leon Trotsky, Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Infuence, 1941, trans. and ed. Charles Malamuth (New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1967); Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949); Robert Tucker, Stalin as Revolutionary: A Study in History and Personality 1879–1929 (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1973); Roy Medvedev and Zhores Medvedev, The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death and Legacy, trans. Ellen Dahrendorf (Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004); Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (London: Pan Books, 2004); Stephen Kotkin’s two volumes Stalin, Volume 1, Paradoxes of Power 1878–1928 (New York, NY: Penguin, 2014), and Volume 2, Waiting for Hitler (New York, NY: Penguin, 2017); and Christopher Read, Stalin: From the Caucasus to the Kremlin (New York, NY: Routledge, 2017), www.taylorfrancis.com/ books/9781315527642. Also note the excellent collection edited by Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin: A New History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and Alan Bullock’s fascinating Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993). Montefore, Young Stalin, 34. On the prohibition against going to the theatre, see Kun, Stalin, 22. Iremaschwili, Stalin, 16. Smith, The Young Stalin, 33. Iremaschwili, Stalin, 16. Trotsky, Stalin, 16. Montefore notes that of the foreign writers, Stalin read Zola, Schiller, Maupassant, Balzac, and Thackeray, all in translation, and read Plato in Greek. Of the Russians, he “adored Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Chekhov whose works he memorized and ‘could recite by heart.’ ” Alexander Kabegi’s novel The Patricide spurred him to take on, for a short time, the name of “Koba,” a Caucasian bandit hero who fghts against the Russians. Montefore, Young Stalin, 53. Roy Medvedev, Chto chital Stalin? Liudi i knigi. Pisatel’ i kniga v totalitarnom obshchestve (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Prava cheloveka,’ 2005), 36, lists Shakespeare among the European classics with whom Stalin was familiar, but, like other scholars, he does not provide the titles of any specifc works. Rieber, “Stalin,” 34. Ibid, 43; Read, Stalin, 29. David Priestland, “Stalin as Bolshevik Romantic: Ideology and Mobilisation, 1917–1939,” in Stalin: A New History, eds. Davies and Harris, 183. First delivered as a speech in St Petersburg, it was later amplifed in a major essay and printed in 1860. Interestingly, Stalin was referred to as “Koba-Don Quixote” by Noi Khomeriki, a militant of the Caucasian Social Democrats, in a letter to Vera Hodzhashvili, from November 2, 1904, quoted in Montefore, Young Stalin, 107. Uncorrected transcript of I. V. Stalin’s speech at the session of the TsK VKP(b). RGASPI, f. 77, op. I, d. 907, ll. 72–82, September 9, 1940; in Clark and Dobrenko, “Note,” 300–301.

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29 Document 175, authorized transcript of the conversation between I. V. Stalin, A. A. Zhdanov, V. M. Molotov, S. M. Eisenstein, and N. K. Cherkasov, concerning Ivan the Terrible, February 26, 1947, in Clark and Dobrenko, “Note,” 441. 30 On the diffculty of ascertaining exactly when Stalin transitioned from populism to Marxism and on his early work as a professional revolutionary, see Rieber, “Stalin.” 31 Karl Marx, Werke, Vol. 29 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1963), 29, 592. 32 Sarah Davies and James Harris, Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 251. http:// books.scholarsportal.info/viewdoc.html?id=248957. 33 Leon Trotsky, “Literature and Revolution,” in Writings on Literature, Politics, and Culture (New York, NY: Pathfnder, 1992), 58. 34 Clark and Dobrenko, “Introduction: The Culture of High Stalinism, 1932–1941,” in Clark and Dobrenko, 140. 35 Ibid, 141. 36 Ibid, 5. 37 RGASPI f. 558, op.11, d.1116, l.32 (26 October 1932), quoted in Priestland, “Stalin,” 194. 38 Erik van Ree, The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in TwentiethCentury Revolutionary Patriotism (London: Routledge, 2002), 174. 39 Ibid, 174. 40 RGASPI f. 558, op. 11, d. 1116, l.27 (October 20, 1932), quoted in Priestland, “Stalin,” 194. 41 Maxim Gorky (Gor’kii), “O p’esakh,” in M. Gor’kii o literature, ed. L. Levina (Moscow: Gosudarstevnnoe Idzdate’lstvo khudozhetvennoi literatury, 1961), 377. 42 Ibid, 382. 43 Quoted in Régine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, 1986, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 61. 44 Katerina Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 114. 45 Davies and Harris, World, 252. 46 Ibid, 252. 47 Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky, eds., The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 9. 48 Montefore, Court, 138. 49 The Great Terror or the Great Purges of the 1930s was a period in which millions were killed or incarcerated. While some scholars attribute this terrible period to the USSR’s fear of being surrounded by capitalist countries, others attributed it to Stalin’s paranoia. The “great mass of purge victims” were ordinary people. See David W. Lovell, “Piecing together the past: the Comintern, the CPA, and the Archives,” in Unswerving Loyalty: A Documentary Survey of Relations between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920–1940, eds. David W. Lovell and Kevin Windle (Canberra: ANU Press, 2008), 4, as well as Stalin’s important speech “Defects in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyite and Other Double Dealers,” in which he elaborates on his view of “capitalist encirclement” and the idea that bourgeois countries were sending “more wreckers, spies, diversionists, and killers than to the rear of any bourgeois state,” in “Report to the Plenum of the Central Committee of the RKP(b),” from March 3, 1937 (parts 1–3 of 5) (Moscow: Cooperative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the USSR, 1937), accessed through Marxists Internet Archive (2005). www.marxists.org/. 50 Clark, Moscow, 11.

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51 Ibid, 184. 52 Miklós Szenczi, “Shakespeare in Recent Soviet Criticism,” Angol Filológiai Tanulmáyok/Hungarian Studies in English 2 (1965): 38. 53 Marijan Dović and Jón Karl Helgason, National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe, National Cultivation of Culture 12 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), 67. 54 Document 54, RGASPI f. 495, op. 94, d. 53, Februrary 21, 1929, rpt. in David W. Lovell and Kevin Windle, eds., Our Unswerving Loyalty: A Documentary Survey of Relations Between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920–1940 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2008), 333. 55 Document 76, RGASPI 495–94–121, July 17, 1935, rpt. in Lovell and Windle, Our Unswerving Loyalty, 334. In his essay “Piecing Together the Past: The Comintern, the CPA, and the Archives” for this collection, Lovell argues that the documents show that the Comintern was crucial in the formation of the Communist Party of Australia; it played a major role in directing policies in both domestic and international matters; and the leadership of the CPA was “from 1929 onwards, shaped, trained and authorized by the Comintern” (1). The Communist International was founded in Moscow in 1919. As Lovell explains, “The pre-eminence of Moscow was built into the organization of the Comintern” (8). 56 Stalin struggled to learn foreign languages, especially German (so he could read Marx in the original) and English, and never achieved fuency. Montefore notes that “even in the early 1930s he was asking his wife Nadya to send him an English textbook to study on holiday” (Young Stalin, 54, n1). 57 The Advocate, 1. 58 Lovell and Windle, Our Unswerving Loyalty, 277. 59 Ibid, 278. 60 Estimates vary about the number of people arrested, interrogated, shot, or sent into labour campus during the Great Purge. Senelick and Ostrovsky suggest 10 million. Senelick and Ostrovsky, The Soviet Theater, 352. 61 Davies and Harris, World, 255. 62 Ibid, 262. 63 Ibid, 272. 64 Quoted in Senelick and Ostrovsky, The Soviet Theater, 377. 65 Stefaniia Andrusiv, “Strakh pered movoiu iak psykhokompleks suchasnoho ukraintsia,” Suchasnist’ nos. 7–8 (July–August, 1995): 148–149. 66 Davies and Harris, World, 2. 67 Ibid, 232. 68 Ibid, 13. 69 Meagan Ford, “Moscow Lashes Out Against Stalin Film,” The National Interest (March 6, 2018). http://nationalinterest.org/feature/moscow-lashesout-against-stalin-flm-24775. 70 This is in retaliation for the UK government’s expulsion of Russian diplomats and its assertion that Russia was to blame for the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on British soil.

Works Cited Andrusiv, Stefaniia. “Strakh pered movoiu iak psykhokompleks suchasnoho ukraintsia.” [Fear of Language as the Psychological Complex of the Contemporary Ukrainian] Suchasnist’ nos. 7–8 (July–August, 1995): 147–152. Antonov-Ovseenko, Anton. Teatr Iosifa Stalina [The Theatre of Iosif Stalin]. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ACT, 2000.

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Assay, Michelle. “What Did Hamlet (Not) Do to Offend Stalin.” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare (2017). http://shakespeare.revues. org/3840. Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1993. Cassidy, Julie A. The Enemy on Trial: Early Soviet Courts on Stage and Screen. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000. Clark, Katerina. Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. Clark, Katerina, and Evgeny Dobrenko. “Introduction.” In Soviet Culture and Power, edited by Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko. ix-xvii. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007. ———. “Introduction: The Culture of High Stalinism, 1932–1941.” In Soviet Culture and Power, edited by Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko. 139–149. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007. ———, eds. Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917–1953, translated by Marian Schwartz. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Abbreviated version of Vlast’ i khudozhestvennaia intelligentsia: Dokumenty TsK RKP(b)-VKP(b), VChK-OGPU-NKVD o kul’turnoi politike, 1917–1953 gg [Power and the Creative Intelligentsia: Documents (of the Communist Party and the Secret Police) on Cultural Policy, 1917–1953], edited by Andrei Artizov and Oleg Naumov. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnyi fond Demokratiia, 1999. Davies, Sarah, and James Harris, eds. Stalin: A New History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. Stalin’s World: Dictating the Soviet Order. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin: A Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949. Dović, Marijan, and Jón Karl Helgason. National Poets, Cultural Saints: Canonization and Commemorative Cults of Writers in Europe: National Cultivation of Culture 12. Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017. Ford, Meagan. “Moscow Lashes Out Against Stalin Film.” The National Interest (March 6, 2018). http://nationalinterest.org/feature/moscow-lashes-out-againststalin-flm-24775. Gorky [Gorkii], Maxim. “O p’esakh.” In M. Gor’kii o literature [Gorky About Literature], edited by L. Levina. 368–382. Moscow: Gosudarstevnnoe idzdate’lstvo khudozhetvennoi literatury, 1961. Gregory, Paul, and Mark Harrison. “Allocation Under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin’s Archives.” Journal of Economic Literature 43, no. 3 (September, 2005): 721–761. Iremaschwili, Joseph. Stalin und die Tragödie Georgiens [Stalin and the Tragedy of the Georgians]. Berlin: Verfasser, 1932. Kotkin, Stephen. Stalin: Volume 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014. ———. Stalin: Volume 2: Waiting for Hitler. New York, NY: Penguin, 2017. Kun, Miklós. Stalin: An Unknown Portrait. Budapest: New York Central European University Press, 2003.

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Lovell, David W., and Kevin Windle, eds. Our Unswerving Loyalty: A Documentary Survey of Relations Between the Communist Party of Australia and Moscow, 1920–1940. Canberra: ANU Press, 2008. Makaryk, Irena R. “Wartime Hamlet.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 119–135. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Marx, Karl. Werke, Vol. 29. Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1963. Medvedev, Roy. Chto chital Stalin? Liudi i knigi. Pisatel’ i kniga v totalitarnom obshchestve. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Prava cheloveka,’ 2005. Medvedev, Roy, and Zhores Medvedev. The Unknown Stalin: His Life, Death and Legacy, translated by Ellen Dahrendorf. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2004. Montefore, Simon Sebag. Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003; rpt. Phoenix, 2004. ———. Young Stalin. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007. Read, Christopher. Stalin: From the Caucasus to the Kremlin. London: Routledge, 2017. Ree, Erik van. The Political Thought of Joseph Stalin: A Study in TwentiethCentury Revolutionary Patriotism. London: Routledge, 2002. Roberts, Geoffrey. “Guide to Fond 558, Opis’ 3: Part One: Overview of Stalin’s Personal Library.” Typescript. Robin, Régine. Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, 1986, translated by Catherine Porter. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992. Senelick, Laurence, and Sergei Ostrovsky, eds. The Soviet Theater: A Documentary History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014. Service, Robert. Stalin: A Biography. London: Pan Books, 2004. Smith, Edward Ellis. The Young Stalin: The Early Years of an Elusive Revolutionary. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967. “Stalin Learning English: Wants to Read Shakespeare.” The Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania). (Wednesday, September 23, 1936): 1. https://trove.nla.gov.au/ newspaper/article/68083456. Suny, Ronald Grigor. “Beyond Psychohistory: The Young Stalin in Georgia.” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (Spring, 1991): 48–58. Szenczi, Miklós. “Shakespeare in Recent Soviet Criticism.” Angol Filológiai Tanulmáyok/Hungarian Studies in English 2 (1965): 37–46. Trotsky, Leon. Stalin: An Appraisal of the Man and His Infuence, translated and edited by Charles Malamuth, 1941. New York, NY: Stein and Day, 1967. Tucker, Robert. Stalin as Revolutionary, 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1973. Vovtsi-Mikhöels, Natalia. Mon père Salomon Mikhöels: Souvenir sur la vie et sur sa mort, translated by Erwin Spatz. Montricher: Les Editions Noirs sur Blanc, 1990.

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Shakespeare, Formalism, and Socialist Realism The Censured Hamlets of Michael Chekhov and Nikolay Akimov Kim Axline Morgan

Hamlet on the twentieth-century Russian stage has been a mirror of and prophet to the theatre at large and its attendant sociopolitical milieu. Shakespeare’s reluctant protagonist has consistently refected the complex character of the nation’s intelligentsia, presaging signifcant advances and revolutionary departures both on and off the Russian stage. While the Western theatre was caught in a “Hamletmachine” of madness and internal psychology, the Russian theatre was mired in what Spencer Golub dubs the “Hamlet Gulag” of political manoeuvring and retribution.1 The pressing questions of whether and on whom to take revenge have been well documented in numerous mid-century productions: Okhlopkov’s post-Stalin “Iron Curtain” staging (1954); Kozintsev’s tragedy of conscience in his seminal flm (1964); and Lyubimov’s epochal, humanist masterpiece starring Vysotsky at the Taganka (1971–1980). Yet the bulk of criticism detailing these “successful” productions has arguably overlooked two equally signifcant predecessors, whose ostensible “failures” nonetheless crystalize the shift from a post-revolutionary theatrical positivism to the emergent – and artistically stifing – doctrine of socialist realism. Michael Chekhov’s anthroposophic materialization of spiritual turmoil (1924) and Nikolay Akimov’s Machiavellian parody of political intrigue (1932) are both regularly cited as censured for “formalism” in their neglect of sociological poetics at the expense of modernist experimentation; yet both productions’ radical readings of the iconic classical text embody signifcant post-revolutionary artistic trends prior to and in anticipation of the ascension of a state-mandated, “correct” artistic ideology. Nearly a century of Western criticism reveals Chekhov’s production systematically dubbed as “mystical” and “deviant,” while Akimov’s is dismissed as “scandalous” and “diversionary.”2 Yet these critical reductions overlook the overwhelmingly positive reception in certain quarters for each of these productions upon its premiere, and they fail to register the subsequent revisionism of “formalist” censure. Chekhov’s stylized, compressed, and abstracted metaphor – which was a product of the NEP

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era’s economic reforms and artistic licence – offered a visual embodiment of light triumphing over darkness and was highly praised for the actor’s seminal performance, even as its more abstracted elements mystifed or aggravated the majority of critics. Akimov’s materialist, humanist spectacle of banalities – which ran afoul of the Central Committee’s decree issued a mere month before its premiere – attempted to wrest the play from its philosophical baggage and provided a popular visual feast for the proletarian masses enduring Stalin’s frst fve-year plan, but was retroactively dubbed an unorthodox failure by the newly prescribed rhetoric. Subsequent criticisms reduce the triumphs of these innovative, complex productions to more singular assessments of failure, scandal, and controversy; yet considered in their original contexts, these productions nonetheless reveal remarkable achievements and constitute signifcant signposts on the road from revolutionary revisionism to centralized dogma in the tumultuous early years of Shakespeare in the Soviet Union.

“But that I am forbid/To tell the secrets of my prison house”: Hamlet, the Intelligentsia, and Emergent Communist Doctrine To understand how each Hamlet was the product of its distinct era and a refection of the evolving sociopolitical context, we must frst briefy posit the following: the tragedy’s seminal position in the Russian psyche (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries); the shifting rhetoric surrounding “formalism” (1910s and 1920s); and the advent of the doctrine of socialist realism (1932–1934). Inevitably, Russian Hamlets’ struggles for meaningful action in a chaotic world would be profoundly impacted by and would refect therein the tumultuous contradictions, enduring inequalities, and sequential uprisings of early-twentieth-century Russia. These struggles would culminate in the 1917 Revolution(s), the ensuing Civil War (1918–1921), and Stalin’s brutal consolidation of totalitarian power (1930s). Though “foreign” in origin, Shakespeare’s tragedy has been fully acculturated over the centuries by Russia’s intellectuals and artists alike. Russia enjoined a long-standing affliation between Shakespeare and its aristocracy after the tragedy’s introduction during the mid eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century via various French translations, German critiques, and travelling companies (e.g. Caroline Neuber’s). Alexander Sumarokov – a disciple of Voltaire, the Enlightenment, and French Neoclassicism – was the frst to “translate” Hamlet into Russian in 1748. His loose adaptation, subsequent competent translations, and the enduring popularity of those French and German editions garnered the drama an astonishing popularity among the “intelligentsia”: the highly educated, literate class (so dubbed by critics Vissarion Belinsky

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and Alexander Herzen), who were geographically isolated and/or spiritually alienated and whose numbers swelled during the nineteenth century. Prince Hamlet quickly came to epitomize the grandiose aspirations and frustrated objectives of the “superfuous man” (lishnii chelovek), the archetypal obsession of the era. Shakespeare’s fctional protagonist served as the spiritual mirror for generations of Russian aristocrats and intellectuals: self-styled Byronic heroes who were incapable of meaningful reform despite a forceful mandate for action, whose fruitless idealism was canonized in the works of Pushkin, Turgenev, and Goncharov. Although the plot’s similarities to Catherine the Great’s deposition of her husband Peter III meant that staging the play was largely taboo from the mid eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century, the discussion fourished in literary circles. By 1860, Turgenev’s famous rumination in “Hamlet and Don Quixote” cemented the fgure’s seminal position in the Russian psyche – albeit now as less a Romantic hero and more a symbol of inaction, cynicism, and even despair. The “Hamlet question” – that is, how to circumvent or conquer superfuity – would then continue to plague the intelligentsia throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: in literary circles (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Blok); via continuous translations and adaptations (Vronchenko, Polevoy, Romanov, Pasternak); and, fnally, on the boards of Russia’s most hallowed stages (K. Stanislavsky’s and E. G. Craig’s monolithic “monodrama” at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1911–1912; Okhlopkov, Kozintsev, Lyubimov, et al.).3 Russia’s ambivalent relationship with Hamlet would dramatically evolve alongside the political normalization of the intelligentsia within the nascent Soviet state. Hamlet’s iconic inaction was continually refashioned to refect signifcant post-revolutionary critical formulations, most of which constituted a response to Russian formalism: a pre-revolutionary branch of literary scholarship that focused “attention on the analysis of distinguishing features of literature, as opposed to the prevailing tradition of studying literature in conjunction with other disciplines such as history, sociology or psychology.”4 Russian formalists strove to understand the techniques used in the creation of a given text, insisting that literature constituted a “unique aesthetic entity governed by its own internal laws”5 and that it could be isolated from its cultural context.6 Placing more weight on mechanisms than content or context, the formalists changed the focus of literary analysis “from the external conditions of the literary process to the internal organization of a literary work,” planting the seeds of the ensuing structuralist and semiotic schools and the reactionary approaches of the poststructuralists and deconstructionists.7 Early formalists (1916–1921) drew heavy criticism for mechanistically removing literature from the realm of the people. When a second wave of formalists (1921–1926) opted for a more dynamic, diachronic model that accommodated questions of “historical change and the evolution

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of literary forms,”8 they were again denounced by Lunacharsky’s Marxist critics, who condemned the movement as indicative of old Russia and the decadence of the ruling classes. The vehemence and frequency of these attacks increased, effectually equating this perceived ideological deviation with a concomitant political dissension, making formalist practitioners prime targets for state sanctions and reprisals. The pejorative designation of “formalism” carried over into all branches of artistic expression, such that visual artists, composers, and theatrical innovators – many of whom were similarly experimenting with a wide range of external devices and avant-garde techniques – were likewise denounced under this rubric whenever politically expedient. “Formalism” became a “code-word for modernist experimentations of all kinds, and under Stalin a cardinal sin punishable by the Gulag or worse.”9 The angst of superfuity from previous generations thus resolved into the acute persecution of Soviet nonconformists. Rejecting the formalists’ argued privileging of technique or aesthetics over ideological content, communist ideologues ultimately concocted their own totalizing ethos for the arts: socialist realism. Delimiting the form, content, and meaning of all “offcial” art (from operas to newspaper articles), the term – coined by Maxim Gorky in 1932 and ratifed as doctrine by the frst Writer’s Conference of 1934 – specifed an aesthetic that was ostensibly socialist in content and realistic in form: “Truth and historical concreteness of artistic portrayal must be combined with the task of ideologically transforming working people and educating them in the spirit of socialism,” charging artists as “the engineers of the soul.”10 The offcial paradigm mandated the following criteria for all art forms: 1 2 3 4

They must depict life not only as it is but as it should be, according to Marxist dogma. They must demonstrate progress as the only possible form of change. They must introduce a “positive hero,” an ideologically sound member of the heroic proletariat. They must depict a confict between the positive hero and a noncommunist antagonist or follow the doctrine of “confictlessness” for all-Soviet characters, wherein contradictions are ideologically impermissible and virtuous labourers work in accord for a better future.11

Socialist realism was consequently not a form of photographic realism but an “ideological projection” on par with medieval iconic painting’s defniteness, unifcation, and “ritualistic reordering of reality.”12 Initially, romantic melodrama and Shakespeare were valorized as past champions of the heroic proletariat; and while they would continue to provide material and models for the Soviet stage, a more prescriptive shape emerged as Stalin and his henchman engineered the arts according to his personal (mundane) tastes. As part of this systemic programme,

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“the government now decreed that the classics [e.g. Shakespeare] were not to be tampered with except by Marxist exegesis; and the greatest safeguards of the classics were the ‘academic theaters,’ the MAT, the Maly, and the Leningrad BDT.” Traditional performance techniques were favoured over any kind of “formalist” innovation, just as “the author’s script was privileged over the director’s deconstruction of it.”13 Shakespearean comedies thrived under a doctrine that wanted to resolve any and all misunderstandings, while successful (i.e. approved) mountings of tragedies emphasized evil or confict as something external introduced to the Soviet state, only to be conquered by the heroic proletariat.14 Soviet dogma and its leaders were apotheosized, actors were forced into character roles and lines of business for decades on end, innovation was met with reprisals, and the arts would come to stagnate under a regime that forcibly constructed its citizens’ identities in accordance with its own ideological concreteness. Viewed through this monolithic, monochromatic lens, Hamlet became an increasingly volatile property. And it is in this perilous context that we must consider Chekhov’s and Akimov’s innovative departures, as well as their ultimate censure.

“O my prophetic soul!”: Michael Chekhov’s Anthroposophic Hamlet (1924) Against this perilous sociopolitical landscape, it is understandable how Chekhov’s radically stylized and philosophical interpretation was lauded by the public and fellow artists for its gripping performances and also pilloried by left-wing critics and production personnel for its nonrealistic, spiritual mise en scene.15 As the frst major Hamlet of the postrevolutionary, post–Civil War era, it shouldered the burden of drama’s recently reaffrmed role in the epic struggle towards the optimistic future of the newborn Soviet state.16 Denouncing pre-revolutionary “misunderstandings” of the classics, the rank-and-fle members of the radical intelligentsia – communism’s new makers of policy – eagerly sought revolutionary readings of established dramatic texts in accordance with their own emerging sociopolitical aesthetic. Hamlet, accordingly, once again took centre stage: the issue being less the relevancy of Shakespeare under communism and more so the “correct” attitude towards this drama in particular, negotiating both the tragedy’s Russian heritage of ideological profundity and the state’s time-honoured practice of wielding “literature as an instrument of social and political control.”17 Against this backdrop and a full decade before the codifcation of socialist realism, Chekhov attempted to transform the “superfuous man” into an active, effective hero struggling to overcome an all-too-familiar world of shadowy intrigue. In doing so, Chekhov essentially echoed V. Volkenshtein’s 1923 decree that tragic characters’ strength lies in their actions

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(whereby “Hamlet is strong because he acts, though, alas, not always successfully”18); yet his visionary efforts were nonetheless misconstrued and dismissed by many critics and colleagues alike as a wild indulgence in mysticism and “formalism.” Premiering on November 20, 1924, Chekhov’s Hamlet was the frst new offering from the Second Moscow Art Theatre (a rebranding and recycling of players and productions from the Moscow Art Theatre’s First Studio). In the wake of the Civil War (1918–1921) which left the country’s infrastructure in ruins, Lenin offcially banned opposition within the Communist Party and introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) of limited privatization in an effort to resuscitate the economy. The quasi-liberal policies of this era fostered many rich examples of artistic licence and experimentation, including seminal works by Meyerhold, Mayakovsky, Tairov, Vakhtangov, and agitprop collectives such as the Blue Blouses. This artistic freedom would come to a crashing halt with the headlong industrialization, collectivization, and regimentation of Stalin’s frst fve-year plan in 1928 – the same year that Chekhov would take his fnal bow in the role, before feeing Russia under an arrest warrant. Yet we cannot underestimate the contextual backdrop of the NEP era’s artistic licence as the cultural crucible which gave rise to Chekhov’s Hamlet in 1924. Nor can we disregard Chekhov’s fragile emotional and psychological state at this time, as repeated “bouts of depression brought on by alcoholism, family deaths, war, fever, revolution, and civil war often undermined his mental equilibrium and ability to act.”19 Finding that psychiatry could not resolve his spiritual crisis, he explored Hindu philosophy and Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy: a “spiritual science” based on the principles of eurhythmy, or the “science of visible speech,” wherein dancers attempted to transform colour, mood, ideas, and the phonetics of speech into pure, abstracted movement.20 Profoundly infuenced by these therapeutic theories of artistic speech and movement, Chekhov incorporated them into his own work as actor, director, and teacher, attempting to marry the “inner truth and emotional depth of Stanislavsky’s System with the beauty and spiritual impact of Steiner’s work.”21 While a triumvirate of directors – Aleksandr Cheban, Valentin Smyshliaev, and Vladimir Tatarinov – were assigned to the production under Chekhov’s artistic direction, recent scholarship confrms that Chekhov deserves credit for most of the production’s innovations, aided by the assistants who would receive public billing for this work.22 As lead actor and artistic director of the Second MAT, Chekhov stamped his idiosyncratic signature on both the protagonist and the drama as a whole, radically breaking with traditional interpretations of the hero as a superfuous man incapable of effecting change. Building on the psychological realism of Stanislavsky’s teachings (who cast Chekhov as a supernumerary in E. G. Craig’s 1911 MAT production), and incorporating the broader

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theatricality of Vakhtangov (who mentored Chekhov’s work in MAT’s First Studio),23 Chekhov emphasized the “protesting, heroic, fghting side” of Hamlet’s character.24 Envisioning “a tragedy of Humanity undergoing a cataclysm,” the director(s) traced a series of “hieroglyphs” to create a radical new spiritual hero.25 Chekhov’s Hamlet was “restless, a man of action led to an examination of the fundamental question of good and evil.”26 His protagonist refused to be confned by either traditional interpretation or the normalizing effects of a prolonged run in a repertory system: using anthroposophy as his spiritual guide, “Chekhov claimed that his Hamlet, sometimes independent of his commands, varied from one performance to another in response to the unconscious needs of his audience.”27 While Konstantin Rudnitsky dismisses the “pessimistic” efforts of what he deems a “collective direction . . . [where] each actor performed in his own way, and all differently,”28 I argue that this “startlingly stylized ‘Hamlet’ . . . seen through colored and distorted lenses”29 constituted the dramatic realization of Chekhov’s evolving tenets. His psycho-spiritual combatant embodied the eurhythmic expression of the intuitive, “eternal soul” through a specifc vocabulary of gestures – a forerunner of his famous psychological gesture, embodying psychology and objective in abstract (frequently internalized) movement.30 Converting Shakespeare’s tragedy into a three-act play with 14 scenes, Chekhov radically cut the text – drawn from the translations of Kronberg, Gnedich, and Polevoy – to eliminate any actions or speeches that did not refect on Hamlet’s personal fate.31 The programme notes justify the transfer of the action to the Middle Ages as an effort to “concentrate our color values . . . [in] an epoch which expressed with dazzling brightness the elements and the spirit of this struggle.”32 Couching their Manichean skirmish in terms of Gothic architecture and medieval painting, Chekhov and his designers – the programme lists some 15 in all, in addition to the three additional directors – sought to alternately convey the solemnity and grandeur of a cathedral against the stylized eclecticism of individual characterizations and costumes.33 In general terms, “the aesthetic spectacle was ascetic.”34 The action progressed across designer Mikhail Libakov’s open stage, a series of movable step units providing different scenic confgurations as needed. In addition to the front traveller curtain, a second, inner curtain was used to facilitate “rapid, almost cinemagraphic scene shifts.”35 The space was dominated by two massive, brilliantly coloured stained-glass windows. The one used for the court scenes featured “13 long, narrow, golden panes, each with the towering fgure of a knight in armor on it.” The other, “an enormous rose window, depicted a knight on horseback prepared for battle against a silver-blue background,” was used as the backdrop for Hamlet’s meeting with the Ghost in Act 1, scene 4. The Ghost never actually materialized in this anthroposophic landscape but instead was embodied by eerie strains of music, a disembodied choral

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voice, shafts of light, and (above all else) Hamlet’s psychophysical reactions to this projection of his subconscious self.36 Alma Law describes the effect of the whole as “very stylized, almost nightmarishly phantasmagorical,” with Nikolai Rakhmanov’s lighting and music compounding the “mystical atmosphere.” Stylized costumes and exaggerated, mask-like makeup (particularly for the court) produced an effect not unlike that of constructivism: an artistic movement based on the principles of the machine age, where form follows function in the creation of mass-produced, impersonal, utilitarian geometrical shapes. Reminiscent of a psychomachia, characters were either friend or foe of Hamlet’s spiritual quest, schematizing the whole in broad strokes of dark and light, body and soul.37 All were clothed in hues of grey and black, yet Hamlet – in a dark-blue leather jerkin (reminiscent of armour), a silverlined cloak, a heavy chain bearing his father’s portrait, and unusually reserved makeup for Chekhov38 – remained isolated from the “mincing gaits,” “artifcial voices,” and shaved heads of the court, which “made them look like a colony of mice, an impression reinforced when they squealed in unison at the King’s death.”39 In the fnal scene, the “blacks” (courtiers) slowly “wither” as the “whites, that is, Hamlet’s friends (the soldiers and guards), fourish, as it were, and occupy the entire stage” that was gradually flling with white light. The sweet prince collapsed suddenly, his spiritual triumph and brief “Tell my story – the rest is silence” replacing the traditional belaboured death scene, funeral procession, and ascension of Fortinbras (who was fully excised). For Chekhov, this ending constituted the “visible embodiment of the victory of the spirit of Light over the spirit of Death.”40 Looking at the production’s programme notes, we fnd an intriguing explication of the director(s)’s psychological rationale and subsequent artistic manifestations: What interested us in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is the juxtaposition of two types of human nature and the development between them of the struggle with each other. One of them is of a protesting nature, heroic, fghting for the affrmation of that which forms the substance of his life. This is our Hamlet. . . . King Claudius embodies all that which impedes the heroic Hamlet. . . . Based on the understanding of Hamlet and the King as two forces constantly struggling with each other, the entire cast of characters is grouped into two hostile camps, confronting one another. . . . We [choose] only that which emphasizes more sharply the basic lines of the struggle between two ancient adverse elements: the heroic and the bright; the conservative and the dark.41 While undeniably cloaked in abstraction and mysticism, we might nonetheless argue that Hamlet as played by Chekhov embodied – vis-à-vis an anthroposophic lens – the progress of a positive hero in embryo against

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an external antagonist (i.e. morally, if not geographically). Although this distilled confict does not adhere to the ensuing strictures of socialist realism, nor should we expect it to do so a full decade in advance of the doctrine, it sheds an ironic light on the numerous critics who would then accuse Chekhov of being “formalist” and disconnected from the proletariat’s greater good. The public reaction to Chekhov’s performance (in particular) was exuberant: he was elevated to “People’s Artist” by the Ministry of Culture,42 and others measured him against an internationally famous opera singer, calling it a “Shalyapin success”!43 Pavel Markov argued that Chekhov’s Hamlet should be understood as “the man who survived our days” of upheaval, one who showed great love of the people and brought abstract ethical questions into the realm of concrete reality.44 Yet many more critics, noting the absence of Fortinbras at the fnale, were either confused or annoyed by what Rudnitsky labels the show’s “bitter pessimism” and “hopeless conclusion.”45 To them, Chekhov was painted as a “classsick . . . artist of the era of decline,” a solipsist obsessed with his own religious quest.46 The production was deemed mystical, pessimistic, and out of touch with the new “Soviet reality.”47 Mikhail Zagorsky opined that “this is not Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s ‘disease,’ with his wisdom, sorrow and insight, but the disease of a modern citizen whose nerves cannot endure the storm of our times. Do we need such a Hamlet now? No, it is not necessary!”48 Nikolai Chushkin proclaimed that “[n]ot only did many ordinary spectators fail to understand the hidden meaning of the production, a number of actors in it, especially those opposed to Chekhov’s religious ideas, couldn’t decipher it either.”49 Alexander Cheban (who played Claudius) formally denounced Chekhov’s “separation from modernity, separation from the collective and from his new worldview.”50 Even Stanislavsky criticized the production for its “eclectic, anti-realist . . . grotesquely symbolic interpretation of Shakespeare”51 – though some claim that he privately praised the force of Chekhov’s portrayal. In the end, Chekhov was roundly admonished by party critics to step outside his anthroposophic, otherworldly bubble and to “meet more factory workers” to inform his work!52 Ultimately, the production’s signifcance lies not in the allegory or philosophy that made it so incomprehensible to numerous critics, but rather in the iconic role it played when viewed contextually against contemporary politics and artistic movements. A product of the NEP era’s economic reforms and artistic licence, Chekhov’s Hamlet embodied the ethos of its age. The early Soviet theatre was dominated by stylized, formally experimental works using mixed media – known as “total theatre” – that were in many ways akin to the performance art of the late twentieth century in the West. By combining a unique psychology based on Dostoevsky, early existentialism and anthroposophy, with a sparse, stylized, metaphorical mise en scene, Chekhov stood at the vanguard of theatrical innovation,

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embodying in a classic text all that was fresh and dynamic on the postrevolutionary Russian stage. His was not the only production to take this approach, but it was undeniably one of the most visible. Unfortunately, his artistic innovations were quickly subsumed under the rhetoric of ideological deviation, and the work was offcially branded as “decadent and reactionary.”53 Yet it was arguably the production’s thematic topicality, rather than any “formalist” deviation in style, which made it such a volatile commodity. Decades later, Anatoly Smeliansky echoes Markov in noting that Chekhov’s was the “frst Hamlet who got through the civil war and the whole experience of civil war.”54 Despite the medieval and mystical trappings, this Hamlet’s spiritual conquest of “darkness” made him a contemporary of the post-revolutionary rank and fle, who also sought the “light” after years of upheaval and deprivation.55 The problem with most revolutions, however, is that once they are successful, they no longer desire to see revolutionary sentiment that might alter the new status quo – their own. Thus, Chekhov’s Hamlet was ultimately doomed by the relevancy of its own protagonist to a stillunnormalized Soviet populace. The very immediacy of the hero’s plight rendered the play unpalatable to offcial ideologues, and charges of antiMarxist heresy were added to those of formalism, presaging Chekhov’s own denunciation in the Moscow press a few years later as a “sick artist” and “alien and reactionary” idealist.56 After Stalin’s consolidation of power, the production and all that it represented was subsequently repressed by the powers that be in their quest to create state-sanctioned art and ideology. Artistic, ideological, and stylistic revolution did occur in Chekhov’s Hamlet; yet it was then sacrifced to the greater ongoing Communist Revolution.

“I am but mad north-north-west”: Nikolay Akimov’s Materialist Tragicomedy (1932) Apparently, Nikolay Akimov was one of Chekhov’s more-vocal detractors, labelling the 1924 Hamlet “mystical and decadent” and its protagonist (perhaps even the artist himself?) “a sickly degenerate.”57 Given the opportunity to place his own artistic stamp on the drama eight years later, Akimov spared no expense to create a production that was seemingly opposed to Chekhov’s in every way imaginable. Ceded the “national record for revising Shakespeare” by critic Nikolai Gorchakov58 – and dubbed by its composer, Dmitry Shostakovich, “the most scandalous . . . in the history of Shakespeare”59 – Akimov’s “optimistic, cheerful . . . play of intrigue” was intended to be unlike anything the Russian intelligentsia or the popular stage had ever seen.60 Yet for all its purported “deviationism,” the mass appeal of Akimov’s strong, active protagonist anticipated (in spirit if not in letter) the very currents of Soviet ideology that would soon be explicated in the doctrine of socialist realism. The true tragedy

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of this production, then, lies in its timing: approved in 1931 by Repertkom (Theatre Repertory Committee) and riding the tail end of the NEP era’s artistic experimentation (which Stalin’s accession had yet to curb), Akimov’s Hamlet was then taken to task upon its premiere the following year for not adhering to the Central Committee’s freshly minted “On the Restructuring of Literary and Artistic Organizations.”61 The production premiered (after more than 15 months of rehearsals) at Moscow’s Vakhtangov Theater on May 19, 1932, marking Akimov’s solo debut as a director. Well known in Leningrad as a talented albeit unorthodox scenic artist, Akimov was a product of the NEP era’s artistic experimentation and a theatrical offshoot of literary formalism. His visionary scenography repeatedly earned him the censure of Marxist critics for “formalist” experimentation with external structures at the expense of correct ideological content. For Akimov, however, this liberty with the physical trappings of a production – more comically playful than allegorically stylized – was inextricably tied to his avowed goal of revolutionizing the theatre, bringing it “back to the people” by depicting, as in Hamlet, “an actual struggle between real people acting in a concrete historical situation.” To wit, he consistently displayed a fascination with material objects (material’nost) and a cinematic penchant for fuid shifts between locales, referring to his sets as “assembled” constructions that employed signifcant, idiosyncratic details rather than any given, totalizing vision.62 “The sworn enemy of illusionism and mystery in the theatre,” Akimov insisted on unmasking the stage’s techniques, showing pieces of plywood to be no more than that and, in the words of Pavel Markov, transferring images of “stopped life” to the stage. As Alma Law puts it, “he did not so much ‘stage’ productions as ‘produce’ his pictures in the theatre.”63 Setting his sights on the quintessential drama of the Russian intelligentsia, Akimov declared he would “rehabilitate the play’s good name, separating it from putrescent ‘Hamletism,’ revivifying it, squashed as it is by its own tombstone of mysticism, to live on the Soviet stage.”64 Renouncing previous philosophical quandaries in his “war on idealism,” he aimed to dispel the “pall of gloomy symbolism cast by earlier interpretations” (i.e. Craig and Chekhov); drag the story down to earth as equal parts tragedy and comedy; excise all references to the divine or moral compunction in favour of political confict; and make Hamlet the “hero of a lusty and witty adventure story.”65 Law notes that he targeted the “people” as his audience from the start, aiming at the average Soviet theatergoer who he maintained would only be confused by philosophizing and murky symbolism and quickly bored by long monologs. “We hope,” Akimov said, “that Shakespeare’s realism, inadmissible in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, will be valued by our audience in all its stupendous power.”66

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Turning “principles into people,” his Renaissance mise en scene foregrounded the “story of the struggle of the Danish Prince Hamlet for his father’s throne in the concrete conditions of the sixteenth century – a story with plenty of action and plenty of interesting characters.”67 More than anything, Akimov wanted his Hamlet to entertain the masses. To this end, he signifcantly abridged Lozinsky’s translation, excising anything that “smacked of gloomy self-doubt.”68 To him, the great soliloquies had “no philosophical signifcance” and were accordingly “made materialistic” by placing them within the realm of daily banalities and jazzing up the dialogue by adding lines written especially for this production by well-known satirists Vladimir Mass and Nikolai Erdman. With “Alas, poor Yorick” relegated to a preceding scene in the library at court, the resulting abridged gravedigger scene had the two clowns parodying the protagonist’s legendary quandary: “To drink or not to drink” [“pit ili ne pit”], one gravedigger says to the other; “There is the question.” “What a question,” the second gravedigger, representing the voice of reason, answers, “Obviously, you drink.”69 Viewing Hamlet as a Machiavellian humanist who echoed the writings of Erasmus in blank verse, Akimov asked Lozinsky to interpolate (in iambic pentameter) several excerpts from the Renaissance philosopher’s Colloquies: preceding his consideration of Yorick’s skull, Hamlet was even seen studying anatomy and reading Erasmus in the library.70 Akimov then cut famous monologues with a vengeance, including “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I,” “How all occasions do inform against me,” “Now might I do it pat,” and most of Hamlet’s monologues in the closet scene (3.4). And most (in)famously of all, Akimov staged “to be or not to be” [“byt ili ne byt”] as a dialogue in the castle’s subterranean taproom: fngering the prop crown from the player’s rehearsal of The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet gives a concrete political interpretation to the lines (“to be or not to be king”), voicing the monologue’s positive assertions, while all expressions of doubt were appropriated by Horatio, Hamlet’s “double” and stand-in for the pessimistic, self-absorbed Russian intelligentsia.71 The result was an iconoclastic perhaps even grotesque parody of both Shakespeare’s original and traditional Russian interpretations, placing the action squarely in the realm of the people through its depiction of concrete – and, at times, seemingly irrelevant – details. In effect, laughter, happiness, and the mundane were allowed to permeate the gloomiest of tragedies.72 With lively original music composed by Dmitri Shostakovitch, Akimov “loaded his production with vaudeville acts and farcical tricks, sword fghts and duels, brilliant feasts and breathtaking pageantry.”73 Ophelia’s account of Hamlet’s malady was manically interrupted by the man himself dragging a pig on a leash and “exaggeratedly feigning madness.”74 The Ghost was alternately a clearly feigned reaction or a politically expedient impersonation, with either Hamlet or Horatio using the

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old king’s armour and roaring into a clay pot to mimic an otherworldly timbre.75 Any intimation of a love affair between Hamlet and Ophelia was summarily suppressed, the “nunnery” scene being staged in a forest as part of a royal hunt (replete with papier mâché stags). The mousetrap was performed offstage, with the King and Queen looking on from an upstage staircase: when Claudius – Hamlet’s peer, not elder – called out for light, he fed down the stairs with his massive crimson cape fowing behind him, evoking a trail of blood. When Claudius stepped off a dais where his portrait was being painted, his ermine robe remained upright behind him, with his “crown still held up over its emptiness by a sweating serf.”76 The scenes in the Queen’s chamber were played as a bedroom farce, where Gertrude’s weeping over Hamlet’s murder of Polonius kept Claudius awake all night. Ophelia was noticeably intoxicated rather than mad for her songs, “stagger[ing] about among the guests and fnally wander[ing] off to drown in the river.” And the fnal duel was staged as a public tournament with onstage spectators (some of them obviously papier mâché), into which rode a plumed Fortinbras on white horse, a “soldier of fortune” leading a group of mercenaries. Horatio, left only with the facemask worn by Hamlet during the duel, approached the footlights and in the evening’s coup de grace, sadly proclaimed, “What a joy it is to be alive.”77 Sacrifcing esoteric ruminations for dramatic action punctuated by moments of farce, “Akimov’s basic thesis was that Hamlet is a fghter and a political intriguer rather than a philosopher,” a man who desires the throne of his guilty uncle from the outset and who feigns madness only as a cloak for his politically motivated aspirations.78 This was not a Hamlet wracked by philosophical abstractions and self-torment; rather, he was a hedonist who enjoyed the simple pleasures of eating, drinking, and carrying on, and he knew how to manipulate other characters through his manifestations of lunacy. To this end, Akimov cast Anatoly Goriunov, a “paunchy, balding comic actor” in the lead, who was arguably more suited to play Falstaff than Hamlet.79 One imagines contemporary audiences were swathed in the palpable “realism” of the masses wafting off Akimov’s highly embellished production and its feshy, progressive hero – who smacked more of the proletariat than of royalty. The production garnered mixed reviews and censure from Soviet critics on various grounds, including its parodic topicality; numerous contradictions between its lavish staging and the remnants of Shakespeare’s jumbled text; the absence of criticism of Hamlet’s weakness or capitalism’s feudal roots; Hamlet’s self-interest at the expense of the greater (Soviet) cause; and even an intuited critique of Stalin’s regime and political avarice.80 Boris Alpers decried the play’s perspective as that of the “vulgar and petty bourgeoisie.” Vsevolod Meyerhold – who claimed that Akimov stole many of the production’s ideas from him – declared that Shakespeare’s play had been lost in the “mess” of “eclecticism.”81 To

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be fair, Akimov had been forced to alter and abbreviate his even longer incarnation after the dress rehearsal and prolonged discussions with the Vakhtangov Theater’s leaders.82 Yet despite its remaining four-anda-half hour length and negative “offcial” appraisals, this Hamlet was immensely popular with the public, and various Western critics dubbed it a “breakthrough masterpiece.”83 According to Shostakovitch, Akimov transformed the tragedy into a comedy precisely to bypass the censors: “There didn’t seem to be anything to forbid here. . . . It gave off the healthy smell of alcohol.”84 Yet neither this tonal shift nor the proletarian audience’s support were ultimately enough to protect the production from the powers that be. It was attacked in Pravda by Karl Radel, “a leading Soviet journalist and mouthpiece for the Party’s Central Committee,” who “complained that Akimov had included everything in his production ‘except Shakespeare.’ ” The show was forced to close in Moscow, and after a brief stint in Leningrad to fulfl a preexisting contractual agreement, it disappeared forever from the Russian stage.85 As Michelle Assay astutely notes, later criticisms of Akimov’s work focus on charges of “formalism” and Soviet censorship. Yet the more concrete reason for the production’s immediate censure was that the fnal abridged production failed to deliver on its promise to “bring Shakespeare back to ‘Soviet Reality.’ ”86 Had it premiered before the edict of April 23, 1932, that formed creative unions capable of enforcing dogmatic edicts (e.g. socialist realism in 1934), it would have enjoyed much better critical reception.87 This consensus would further evolve in 1943, when the Shakespeare Cabinet of the Soviet Union revisited the production in conversation with Akimov, critics, and scholars. The Shakespeare Cabinet rendered a kinder judgement in retrospect, wherein even the question of formalism was dismissed, with the explanation that a work would be formalist if it had no content or goal, whereas Akimov’s intentions, however wrongheaded they might have been, were crystal-clear: namely to depict the struggle for the throne of Denmark.88 This was the frst of many reconsiderations of Akimov’s Hamlet “to concede its artistic values and its importance as a landmark in Soviet theatre history.”89 While this evolving critical dialogue has often been overlooked by Western scholars, some international critics have been able to see beyond the ostensible scandal and controversy of 1932. Law views the production as “a high point in the reaction against the austere constructivist settings that had dominated the Russian stage in the lean years following the Revolution,” a kind of wish-fulflment with its lavish, “visual feast” of realistic details in the face of the austerities that the rank-and-fle proletariat endured daily in the middle of Stalin’s frst fve-year plan.90 A far cry from

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the stylized settings and constructivist costumes of Chekhov’s 1924 incarnation, Akimov’s Hamlet may be seen as an “experiment in theatrical form”91 – formalism, per se – that signalled a shift away from the aesthetics of the NEP era and towards those of incipient socialist realism. Although Akimov was not a proponent of the ensuing doctrine, Joseph Macleod astutely observes that “[n]evertheless, Akimov had a kind of Socialist-Realist idea in embryo. . . . he was trying to interpret the sixteenth century in terms that the Soviet audience, he thought, would most quickly appreciate – in terms of themselves.”92 For Assay, “by concentrating on the positive impact of a hero in something akin to the class struggle, Akimov’s Hamlet could be read as affrming the concept of epochal change as outlined by Marxist dialectics.”93 This Hamlet then embodied an early form of the “positive hero”: for the working classes to conquer the world, they must frst gain dominion over their own internal defciencies.94 By apportioning all negative sentiments to Horatio in the “to be or not to be” sequence, Akimov was, in Felicia Londre’s terms, “at least paying lip service to notion of the ‘positive hero’ ” of socialist realism, positing Hamlet as surrogate to the proletariat in their optimistic struggle towards a utopian future.95 It is tempting to see Akimov’s Hamlet, produced in the very year that Gorky coined the term, as a concession to or harbinger of the nascent doctrine of socialist realism. Marxist critics could debate the degree of progress embodied in the action, whether the protagonist – a product of an earlier bourgeois matrix – could truly be considered a “positive hero” and whether the confict between Communist and decadent forces was adequately resolved by Fortinbras’ heroic, climactic entrance. These concerns, however, are the letter of the socialist realist mandate; what Akimov presented in his Hamlet was the spirit. As Chushkin argued, Akimov’s concern was to expand the “social environment” from the point of view of “contemporaneity” and “historical materialism.”96 Through his insistence on detail, relevancy, and the creation of “a dialogue between the audience and the actor in which neither can remain silent,”97 Akimov captured the proto-aesthetics (form) – if not the full Party defnition (content) – of the socialist realist movement. His “humanist on a horse” signalled a pivotal shift in the history of the Russian stage, demarcating both a prevalent visual style and its castigation (“formalism”) and the shifting energies towards a new aesthetic and ethos (socialist realism). Ironically echoing the failed machinations of his wily protagonist, Akimov’s innovative yet rebuffed theatrical vision still foreshadows a revolutionary shift for both Hamlet and the Russian stage under the tightening grip of Stalin and socialist realism.

Notes 1 Spencer Golub, The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre & Memory in TwentiethCentury Russia (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1994), 174–197.

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2 While more-recent work (e.g. Byckling on Chekhov, Assay on Akimov) has begun to move the critical needle away from this prevalent appraisal in Western criticism, the spectre of twentieth-century “formalist” dismissals lingers. 3 For a comprehensive study of Hamlet’s translation history in Russia and its representation onstage and onscreen and as cultural icon, see chapters 3–4 of Aleksei Semenenko’s superb monograph: Hamlet the Sign: Russian Translations of Hamlet and Literary Canon Formation (Stockholm: Intellecta AB, 2007). 4 Nina Kolesnikoff, “Formalism, Russian,” in Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, ed. Irena R. Makaryk (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 53. 5 Ibid. 6 A prime example being Victor Shklovsky, whose 1917 “Art as Technique” introduced the notion of “defamiliarization” (ostranenie), a theory of estrangement from routine responses which many critics credit as the forerunner of Brecht’s “Alienation Effect” (verfremdung). 7 Kolesnikoff, “Formalism,” 55. 8 Ibid, 56. 9 Richard Drain, ed., Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook (New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), 80. 10 Andrey Zhdanov quoted in Inna Solovyova, “The Theatre and Socialist Realism, 1929–1953,” trans. Jean Benedetti, in A History of Russian Theatre, eds. Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 328. 11 Regina Zarhina, “Socialist Realism and Modern British Drama” (Transcript, Boulder, CO: University of Colorado, 1996), 10. See also Laurence Senelick, “Theatre,” in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture, ed. Nicholas Rzhevsky (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 287. N.B. The notion of confictlessness was formally added after World War II, and yet its incipient ethos arguably informs the whole of socialist realism. 12 Spencer Golub, “The Curtainless Stage and the Procrustean Bed: Socialist Realism and Stalinist Theatrical Eminence,” Theatre Survey 32, no. 1 (1991): 75. 13 Senelick, “Theatre,” 287. 14 Solovyova, “The Theatre,” 338. 15 Laurence Senelick, Historical Dictionary of Russian Theater (Toronto: Scarecrow, 2007), 257–258. 16 Felicia Londre, “Hamlet and Two Different Soviet Audiences: The Akimov and Okhlopkov Productions,” Transcript; published in Italian as “Il pubblico sovietico a confronto con la regie di Akimov e di Oklopkov,” Biblioteca Teatrale 13/14/15 (1989): 283–301. 17 Eleanor Rowe, Hamlet: A Window on Russia (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1976), 127. 18 Boika Sokolova, “Between Religion and Ideology: Some Russian ‘Hamlets’ of the Twentieth Century,” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 145. 19 Mel Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique: Russia (New York, NY: Applause Theatre Books, 1987), 122–123. 20 Ibid, 124; Nikolai A. Gorchakov, The Theater in Soviet Russia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1957), 200. 21 Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique, 125; Liisa Byckling, “Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov,” Stanislavski Studies 1, no. 2 (2013): 59–61. Given that

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anthroposophy was declared taboo by Soviet ideologues in 1923, Chekhov never overtly named Steiner to the company – though many (e.g. Mariya Knebel) easily deduced the infuence on his work. Liisa Byckling, “Michael Chekhov’s Work as Director,” The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov, eds. Marie-Christine Autant-Mathieu and Yana Meerzon (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 24. She notes, “in the 1920s Chekhov’s authority was indisputable.” See also Alma H. Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet’ (1924),” The Drama Review 27, no. 3 (1983): 34. For more on this relationship, see Andrei Malaev-Babel, “Michael Chekhov and Yevgeny Vakhtangov: A Creative Dialogue,” in Routledge Companion, 175–190. Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 146. Andrei Kirillov and Franc Chamberlain, “Rehearsal Protocols for ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare at the Second Moscow Art Theatre,” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 4, no. 2 (2013): 243–244. Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 34; Kirillov and Chamberlain, “Rehearsal Protocols,” 274. Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique, 131. Konstantin Rudnitsky, Russian and Soviet Theatre, 1905–1932, trans. Roxane Permar (New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), 113–114. Oliver M. Sayler, Inside the Moscow Art Theatre (New York, NY: Brentano’s, 1925), 169. For more detailed descriptions of exercises (e.g. “throwing balls”), see Kirillov and Chamberlain, “Rehearsal Protocols,” 252; Byckling, “Stanislavsky and MC,” 61; and Sharon Marie Carnicke, “Michael Chekhov’s Legacy in Soviet Russia,” Routledge Companion, 200–201. Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique, 35; Laurence Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” Routledge Companion, 148. N.B. The following synopsis of the production’s mise en scene was culled from various archival sources in STD (Theatre Union of the Russian Federation), including: Dm. Uzdiumova, “Gamlet vo vtorom MkhAT,” n.p. (1924); P. Markov, “Gamlet (MkhAT 2),” Pravda (November 29, 1924): n.p.; V. Gromov, Mikhail Chekhov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1970), passim; N. N. Chushkin, Gamlet-Kachalov (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1966), passim; and B. Alpers, “Russkii Gamlet,” Teatr 8 (1955): 65–80. Citations from English language works as follows. Quoted in Sayler, Inside, 169. For an additional archival perspective, see the limited edition of E. A. Kesler, ed., “Gamlet” na stene MXAT Vtorogo: Novye Materialy [Hamlet on Stage at MXAT 2: New Materials] (Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 2017). A. M. Smeliansky, ed., Moscovskii Khudozhestvennyi Teatr: Sto Let (Moscow Art Theatre: One Hundred Years), Vol. 2 (Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 1998), 190. Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 35–36. Ibid, 35–42; Sayler, Inside, 170; Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 146–147. Senelick also notes that Chekhov’s trance-like repetition of the Ghost’s lines is arguably the frst instance of Hamlet being “possessed” by his father’s spirit (“Brief Encounters,” 151). Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 146; Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 148. Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 149. Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’” 36–37; Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 148. Chekhov and Knebel, quoted in Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 43–44. For a detailed account of the “catharsis” of this fnal moment, see Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 152.

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41 Quoted and trans. in Sayler, Inside, 167–169. 42 Byckling, “Stanislavsky and MC,” 61. 43 Sofya Giatsintova, qtd. in MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi [Moscow Art Theatre 2: A Biographical Reconstruction], eds. I. N. Soloveva, A. M. Smeliansky, and O. V. Egoshina (Moscow: Moscow Art Theater, 2010), 69. 44 Quoted in MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi, 75; Carnicke, “Michael Chekhov’s Legacy,” 201; Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 153. 45 Rudnitsky, Russian, 114. 46 MKhaT Vtoroi: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty, 1926–1936 [Moscow Art Theatre 2: Testimonies and Documents, 1926–1936], eds. Z. P. Udaltsova and A. M. Smeliansky (Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 2013), 78–79. 47 Sofya Nels, Shekspir na Sovetskoi stsene [Shakespeare on the Soviet Stage] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1960), 58ff. 48 Quoted in MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi, 77; Senelick, “Brief Encounters,” 154. 49 Quoted in Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 45. From the start, some actors expressed fears that the play would be “lost in pure mysticism and philosophy.” Kirillov and Chamberlain, “Rehearsal Protocols,” 244. 50 Quoted in MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi, 305. 51 Quoted in Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 45; Byckling, “Stanislavsky and MC,” 61. 52 Arkady Ostrovsky, quoted in MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi, 77. 53 Zdenek Stribrny, Shakespeare and Eastern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 79. 54 Interview. Anatoly Lunacharsky also noted that Chekhov was a “child of the great humanist culture, caught off guard by the revolution,” making him the ideal Hamlet for his era. Quoted in Yana Meerzon, “On Expressionistic Mysterium: Michael Chekhov’s Tragic Character on Page and on Stage,” Stanislavski Studies 4, no. 2 (2016): 151. 55 James Billington, The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture (New York, NY: Random House, 1966), 515. He goes so far as to label the production “a new Revolutionary parable.” 56 Gordon, The Stanislavsky Technique, 132. 57 Quoted in Law, “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet,’ ” 45. Chekhov would eventually level the critical playing feld, writing of Akimov’s endeavours in strongly deprecatory terms: This confusion [about creative individuality] can lead to such extremes in the theatre as one Soviet production of Hamlet, which ridiculed the idea of monarchy, court, and aristocracy. Hamlet was played as a brutal, dirty lad with crown askew and a squalling pig under his arm, while Ophelia was a drunken prostitute. On the Technique of Acting, by Michael Chekhov (New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991), 18. Tit for tat. 58 Gorchakov, The Theater, 340. 59 Dmitri Shostakovich, Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, trans. Antonina W. Bouis, ed. Solomon Volkov (New York, NY: Limelight, 2004), 83. Shostakovich also contends that Chekhov’s production was set in a literal purgatory, populated by symbols and the souls of the dead, 88. 60 Nikolai Akimov, “O postanovke ‘Gamleta’ v Teatre im: Vakhtangova” [On the production of Hamlet at the Vakhtangov Theatre], in Teatralnoe Nasledie [Theatre Heritage], Vol. 2 (Leningrad: ART, 1978), 119–154.

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61 I am greatly indebted to Michelle Assay’s recent work on this production, which has clarifed my own thinking on how Akimov was a victim of circumstantial timing and how critical reception to his work has evolved: “Akimov and Shostakovich’s Hamlet: A Soviet ‘Shakesperiment,’ ” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 33 (2015). http://shakespeare.revues. org/3329. 62 Alma H. Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” The Drama Review 21, no. 4 (1977): 100–101; Billington, The Icon, 573; Joseph Macleod, The New Soviet Theatre (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943), 160. 63 Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 101. 64 Quoted in Macleod, The New Soviet, 160. 65 Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 147; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 100. Akimov soundly blamed Goethe and the Romantics for instigating the “weakness” of Hamlet’s spirit. 66 Quoted in Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 100. 67 Macleod, The New Soviet, 161. Akimov realized this radical, “authentic” Hamlet might nonetheless seem “false” to his audience in light of the entrenched Hamletism he was combatting (Assay, “Akimov,” 4). 68 Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 102. N.B. The following synopsis of the production’s mise en scene was culled from various archival sources in STD (Theatre Union of the Russian Federation), including: M. Zhezhelenko, “Akimov,” in Portrety Rezhisserov, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1972); A. Bartoshevich, Akimov-Khydozhnik (Leningrad: LOKhF CCCR, 1947); P. Markov, “ ‘Gamlet’ v Postanovke N. Akimova,” in Pravda Teatra (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1965); N. P. Akimov, “Masterstvo, Mycl, Priem,” in Teatralnee Nasledie, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1978); Marina Zabolotnyaya, “Akimov’s Comic Art,” Teatr 1 (2000): 63–76; and Ivy Low, “Hamlet in Soviet Dress,” Moscow Daily News (May 24, 1932): 18. Citations from additional English language works are as follows. 69 Macleod, The New Soviet, 341; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 102; Londre, “Hamlet,” 1. The splitting of this scene prompted Ivy Low to (erroneously) exclaim it had been wholly “omitted (except on the program’s design).” “Mr. Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet,’ Soviet Style,” New York Times (June 26, 1932): X1. 70 Rowe, Hamlet, 130; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 104. 71 Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 105; Londre, “Hamlet,” 6–8; Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 147. 72 Macleod, The New Soviet, 161. 73 Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 100. Shostakovich’s eclectic, contemporary score furthered this trend and perhaps highlighted some of Akimov’s shortcomings by writing music that was “too good” for the play (Assay, “Akimov,” 12). 74 Londre, “Hamlet,” 9–10; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 101. 75 Sokolova, “Between Religion,” 147. Akimov admits to cribbing this conceit directly from “The Ghost” section of Erasmus’s Colloquia. 76 Low, “Hamlet,” X2. 77 Londre, “Hamlet,” 11–13; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 105–109; Rowe, Hamlet, 130. 78 Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 101. 79 Londre, “Hamlet,” 8; Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 101. Shostakovich described this “fat Hamlet” as “with a loud voice, full of vitality,” 89. 80 Nels, Shekspir, 58ff; “Hamlet Produced as Comedy: Daring Experiment in Russia,” The Observer (June 26, 1932): 10. 81 Quoted in Assay, “Akimov,” 5.

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Kim Axline Morgan Ibid, 6. Ibid, 8. Shostakovich, Testimony, 89; Londre, “Hamlet,” 2. Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 110; Londre, “Hamlet,” 1; Stribrny, Shakespeare, 84. Assay, “Akimov,” 3. Sokolova echoes this, noting “in the idiom of the times, there was a major lack of realism,” “Between Religion,” 147. Ibid, 3, 7. Ibid, 7; Marina Zabolotnyaya, ed., “Obsuzhdenie akimovskogo ‘Gamleta’ ” [Discussion of Akimov’s ‘Hamlet’], (VTO, Kabinet Shekspira, September 29, 1943), in Mnemozina, Dokumenty i fakty iz istorii otechestvennogo teatra XX veka, ed. V. V. Ivanov (Moscow: ART, 2004). Assay, “Akimov,” 8. Law, “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov,” 100. Mikhail Morozov, Shakespeare on the Soviet Stage, trans. David Magarshack (London: Soviet News, 1947), 40–41. Macleod, The New Soviet, 162–163. Assay, “Akimov,” 12. Akimov quoted in Macleod, The New Soviet, 163. Londre, “Hamlet,” 6. Quoted in ibid, 10. Chushkin also conceded that the comedic approach may have gotten out of hand, ultimately undermining Akimov’s otherwise politically correct intentions. Akimov, quoted in Billington, The Icon, 573.

Works Cited Akimov, Nikolai. “O postanovke ‘Gamleta’ v Teatre im: Vakhtangova.” [On the Production of Hamlet at the Vakhtangov Theatre]. In Teatralnoe Nasledie [Theatre Heritage], Vol. 2. 119–154. Leningrad: ART, 1978. Assay, Michelle. “Akimov and Shostakovich’s Hamlet: A Soviet ‘Shakesperiment.’ ” Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare 33 (2015). http:// shakespeare.revues.org/3329. Autant-Mathieu, Marie-Christine, and Yana Meerzon, eds. The Routledge Companion to Michael Chekhov. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015. Billington, James. The Icon and the Axe: An Interpretive History of Russian Culture. New York, NY: Random House, 1966. Byckling, Liisa. “Stanislavsky and Michael Chekhov.” Stanislavski Studies 1, no. 2 (2013): 48–115. Chekhov, Michael. On the Technique of Acting. New York, NY: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. Drain, Richard, ed. Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook. New York, NY: Routledge, 1995. Golub, Spencer. “The Curtainless Stage and the Procrustean Bed: Socialist Realism and Stalinist Theatrical Eminence.” Theatre Survey 32, no. 1 (1991): 64–84. ———. The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre & Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia. Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 1994. Gorchakov, Nikolai A. The Theater in Soviet Russia. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1957. Gordon, Mel. The Stanislavsky Technique: Russia. New York, NY: Applause Theatre Books, 1987.

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“ ‘Hamlet’ Produced as Comedy: Daring Experiment in Russia.” The Observer (June 26, 1932): 10. Kesler, E. A., ed. “Gamlet” na stene MXAT Vtorogo: Novye Materialy [Hamlet on Stage at MXAT 2: New Materials]. Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 2017. Kirillov, Andrei, and Franc Chamberlain. “Rehearsal Protocols for ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare at the Second Moscow Art Theatre.” Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 4, no. 2 (2013): 243–279. Kolesnikoff, Nina. “Formalism, Russian.” In Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory, edited by Irena R. Makaryk. 53–60. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Law, Alma H. “ ‘Hamlet’ at the Vakhtangov.” The Drama Review 21, no. 4 (1977): 100–101. ———. “Chekhov’s Russian ‘Hamlet’ (1924).” The Drama Review 27, no. 3 (1983): 34–45. Londre, Felicia. “Hamlet and Two Different Soviet Audiences: The Akimov and Okhlopkov Productions.” Transcript. Also published in Italian as “Il pubblico sovietico a confronto con la regie di Akimov e di Oklopkov.” Biblioteca Teatrale 13/14/15 (1989): 283–301. Low, Ivy. “Mr. Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet,’ Soviet Style.” The New York Times (June 26, 1932): X1–X2. Macleod, Joseph. The New Soviet Theatre. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1943. Meerzon, Yana. “On Expressionistic Mysterium: Michael Chekhov’s Tragic Character on Page and on Stage.” Stanislavski Studies 4, no. 2 (2016): 137–155. Morozov, Mikhail. Shakespeare on the Soviet Stage, translated by David Magarshack, introduction by J. Dover Wilson. London: Soviet News, 1947. Nels, Sofya. Shekspir na Sovetskoi Stsene. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1960. Rowe, Eleanor. Hamlet: A Window on Russia. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1976. Rudnitsky, Konstantin. Russian and Soviet Theatre, 1905–1932, translated by Roxane Permar. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams, 1988. Sayler, Oliver M. Inside the Moscow Art Theatre. New York, NY: Brentano’s, 1925. Semenenko, Aleksei. Hamlet the Sign: Russian Translations of Hamlet and Literary Canon Formation. Stockholm: Intellecta AB, 2007. www.academia. edu/2057438/. Senelick, Laurence. “Theatre.” In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Russian Culture, edited by Nicholas Rzhevsky. 264–298. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. Historical Dictionary of Russian Theater. Toronto: Scarecrow, 2007. Shostakovich, Dmitri. Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich, translated by Antonina W. Bouis, edited by Solomon Volkov. New York, NY: Limelight, 2004. Smeliansky, Anatoly. Interview by Kim Axline. Moscow Art Theatre (November 5, 1998). ———. Moscovskii Khudozhestvennyi Teatr: Sto Let [Moscow Art Theatre: One Hundred Years], Vol. 2. Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 1998. Sokolova, Boika. “Between Religion and Ideology: Some Russian ‘Hamlets’ of the Twentieth Century.” Shakespeare Survey 54 (2001): 140–151.

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Solovyova, Inna. “The Theatre and Socialist Realism, 1929–1953.” Translated by Jean Benedetti. In A History of Russian Theatre, edited by Robert Leach and Victor Borovsky. 325–357. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Solovyova, I. N., A. M. Smeliansky, and O. V. Yegoshina, eds. MKhaT Vtoroi: Opyt vosstanovleniia biografi [Moscow Art Theatre 2: A Biographical Reconstruction]. Moscow: Moscow Art Theater, 2010. http://teatr-lib.ru/Library/ MAT2/biogr/. Stribrny, Zdenek. Shakespeare and Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Udaltsova, Z. P., and A. M. Smeliansky, eds. MKhaT Vtoroi: Svidetel’stva i dokumenty, 1926–1936 [Moscow Art Theatre 2: Testimonies and Documents, 1926–1936]. Moscow: Moscow Art Theatre, 2013. http://library.mxat.ru/ books/reader/11. Zabolotnyaya, Marina, ed. “Obsuzhdenie akimovskogo ‘Gamleta.’ ” [Discussion of Akimov’s Hamlet]. VTO. Kabinet Shekspira, September 29, 1943. In Mnemozina, Dokumenty i fakty iz istorii otechestvennogo teatra XX veka, edited by V. V. Ivanov. Moscow: ART, 2004. Zarhina, Regina. “Socialist Realism and Modern British Drama.” Unpublished Transcript. Boulder, CO: University of Colorado, 1996.

Late Soviet Context

The USSR perceived the Nazi regime in Germany as a threat early on but still entered into an alliance with Germany and participated in the invasion of Poland in 1939. From the Soviet point of view, the war (still known as the Great Patriotic War) lasted from 1941 to 1945, with Germany’s defeat signifying the moral and ideological superiority of the USSR over the corrupt West. The Great Victory eventually became the alternative originary point for the state, replacing the chaotic postrevolutionary years and the subsequent decades of Stalinism.1 After the end of the war, the USSR gained several satellite states, where Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Eastern Germany, among others, formed what was known as the Eastern or Soviet Bloc. The late 1940s and early 1950s in the USSR saw a new series of ideological repressions, and Stalin’s death in 1953 marked the beginning of a more permissive era, known as the Thaw.2 Upon becoming the new leader of the state, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalinism and supported the formation of closer relationships with other countries, making the USSR more permeable to foreign visitors. The Thaw opened up a cultural exchange between Soviet and Western theatre groups, making it possible, for example, for Peter Brook to bring his production of Hamlet to Moscow in 1955.3 This period, however, came to a halt when, after an internal conspiracy, Khrushchev was replaced in power by Leonid Brezhnev in 1964. The return of the repressive regime in the late 1960s was signalled by the Sinyavsky-Daniel ideological trials in 1966 and an invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the movement towards liberalization known as the Prague Spring. Nonetheless, continued exposure to Western infuence during the Cold War meant that ideological control of the arts was becoming more diffcult to maintain. The 1970s saw the fowering of the famous Taganka Theatre in Moscow, whose performances, including Iurii Liubimov’s Hamlet with Vladimir Vysotsky, trod a fne line between theatrical innovation and punishable trespass.4 Mikhail Gorbachev, assuming power after the rapid deaths of three Soviet leaders in the early 1980s (Brezhnev in 1982, his successor Iurii Andropov in 1984, and Konstantin Chernenko in 1985),

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acknowledged the need for policy changes. Accordingly, he embarked on a programme of democratizing the Soviet state, which was known as perestroika (restructuring), and supported open speech (glasnost). This non-repressive rule, in combination with the overall lack of cohesion, frst led to the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc in 1989–1990 and eventually culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union itself 1991, when individual republics started seceding and declaring independence.

Notes 1 Explored by Nina Tumarkin in The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of the World War II in Russia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1994). 2 For a compelling discussion of this period, in terms of both its relationship to the Stalinist past and its outward turn, see the collection of essays edited by Denis Kozlov and Eleonory Gilburd, The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture During the 1950s and 1960s (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013). 3 On the ideological signifcance of this visit on both sides of the Iron Curtain, see Sarah Davies, “From Iron Curtain to Velvet Curtain? Peter Brook’s ‘Hamlet’ and the Origins of British – Soviet Cultural Relations During the Cold War,” Contemporary European History 27, no. 4 (2018): 601–626. 4 Spencer Golub argues for this production’s function as an anti-Stalinist statement in his essay “Between the Curtain and the Grave: The Taganka in the ‘Hamlet’ Gulag,” in Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance, ed. Dennis Kennedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 158–177.

5

Feeling Love in Soviet Russia The Slippery Lessons of Romeo and Juliet Natalia Khomenko

In Iurii Olesha’s 1929 play The Conspiracy of Feelings (Zagovor chuvstv), he takes up the problem of love after the October Revolution: can this notoriously transgressive emotion ft into the just and orderly world of socialism, with its focus on labour and intellect? The play’s characters, resisting the confusion of personal longing, repeat, “The new world must have no love. . . . Chemistry and general technology will enable us to produce any emotions mechanically.”1 Olesha’s characters’ ruminations on the fraught position of “natural,” uncontrollable emotions in a society on its way to socialism point to the period’s acute attention to the ever-changing economy of emotion.2 As communist Russia embarked on a self-conscious process of reimagining the human to produce the perfect Soviet subject, love – this longing for another that bypassed the state-sanctioned, labour-oriented relationships – came into intense focus, demanding to be reconceptualized. In Olesha’s play, which ultimately stages the failure of reconciling passion to the noble world of labour, Shakespearean drama becomes the reference point for thinking through this essential contradiction. In Scene 4 of the play, Shakespeare’s cultural authority, initially introduced through a collected works left behind by the reactionary Kavalerov, nostalgic for pre-revolutionary emotion, is repeatedly invoked. As characters talk around the presence of unwelcome desire, failing in search of solid ideological foundation, the answer to the repeatedly asked question “Who said that?” is always “Shakespeare.”3 While in every case, this is a joking attribution, it points to the need for stable literary models that can guide the reinvention of love, translating disorderly desire into orderly and productive feeling. Recent scholarship has explored the uses of Shakespearean drama in guiding the audience towards grasping the cultural signifcance of socialist realism and shaping them into optimistic, grateful, and educated Soviet subjects.4 Taking its cue from Olesha, this chapter examines the role of Shakespeare – and more specifcally his quintessential play of individual desire, Romeo and Juliet5 – in the invention and mobilization of Soviet love. Although I make occasional references to performance

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and archival documents, my primary focus is on commentary in widely distributed periodical publications and on literary adaptation and allusion. My interest here lies in the shape assumed by Romeo and Juliet in the Soviet cultural imagination and on the social uses of this shape. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s model, in which emotions are produced through the social circulation of bodies and objects, I propose that in the context of the Soviet struggle to generate a new culture of emotion in relation to the pre-revolutionary past,6 Romeo and Juliet functions as an imaginary literary object that is “sticky, or saturated with affect, as [a site] of personal and social tension.”7 This chapter traces the changing quality of affective saturation and its didactic potential, moving from the early rejection of romantic love associated with Romeo and Juliet as bourgeois to the eventual deployment of the play in making the socialist realist case for a uniquely Soviet love that is nonetheless rooted in literary history. Ultimately, re-examining the “stickiness” of the play in the late 1960s and 1970s, late Soviet writers are able to question the ideological defnitions of love, recovering the space for personal rebellion.

Romeo and Juliet in the 1920s: Emotional Baggage Soviet periodicals in the 1920s saw a spate of heated debates about the usefulness of plays created before the revolution, with the consistently expressed fear that pre-revolutionary drama, including Shakespeare, can exert a deadening infuence on the new theatre. The most extreme view is succinctly illustrated by Platon Kerzhentsev’s unequivocal statement that given the persisting petite bourgeoisie’s adoration of the past, “it is more useful to deny and to reject, drag down from the pedestal and shatter into pieces, than to say that Pushkin is entirely ours, and Shakespeare is entirely ours.”8 Whatever the opinion on general usefulness, there was a general agreement that at least the passions depicted in Shakespearean drama were quickly becoming obsolete in the new society. A 1922 essay on proletarian theatre explained that Art is a form of ideology, a form of organizing social consciousness . . . there are no “eternal” or “universal” artistic values: everything is relative, everything is related to the conditions of time and space, to its historical and social environment. We need to understand that Macbeth’s ambition, Othello’s jealousy, Hamlet’s dilemmas, and other “eternal” passions only last as long as do the authoritarian and individualistic psychology and the social structures that produced them.9 As a play that seemingly had little to offer beyond a focus on personal emotion, Romeo and Juliet was caught in the crossfre of the cultural reconstruction debates. It was not on the lists of plays recommended

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for performance by the Repertory Committee of the Theatre Division in the frst post-revolutionary years.10 Indeed, periodical publications in the 1920s explicitly linked the play and its protagonists to outdated theatre traditions (more interested in romance than social reconstruction) that must be actively rejected and outgrown. A response to the Kamerny Theatre’s decision to stage Romeo and Juliet in 1921 is downright dismissive, calling its choice of the play “[r]espectable, well-established, venerable, but – old rubbish.”11 Vladimir Mayakovsky’s roughly contemporary poem “Prikaz #2 armii iskusstv” [Order #2 of the army of arts] takes this point further, suggesting that Romeo and Juliet is an example of theatre intended to distract the audience from active class struggle through a focus on empty, although entertaining, emotional experience. Mayakovsky sarcastically echoes the audience’s exclamations of pity for the characters’ suffering: “Oh, poor darling!/He loved so much/and was so miserable.” Condemning “the dens they call theatres,” Mayakovsky’s poem culminates in an impassioned plea for a “new art” that can lift the new nation out of its old “flth.”12 The prominent journal Sovetskii teatr [Soviet theatre] chose to reprint this poem in 1930 as part of commemorating the poet. It was followed up, in the next issue, with an unsigned piece lamenting the sorry fate of the Western audiences who, despite their hunger for a repertory refective of the current concerns, are being fed, yet again, the old “there is no story of more woe.”13 Dramatic adaptations of Romeo and Juliet in the 1920s refect this early Soviet rejection of the “old” love, frequently perceived as wasteful imitation of literary models that diverted energy from potential socially productive uses. The New Economic Policy (NEP), which temporarily reintroduced free market and independent enterprise in 1921 to revive the state’s failing economy, intensifed the perceived need for policing Soviet citizens’ personal lives in the context of conficting reforms.14 As post-revolutionary thinkers shifted from tentative contemplation of sexual freedom to the much stronger advocacy of self-containment and near celibacy, uncontrolled personal desire was viewed as a cultural atavism, a voluntary surrender to petite bourgeois tendencies.15 Not entirely surprisingly, Romeo and Juliet, in its energetic engagement with “neoPetrarchan kitsch”16 and “cute classicism,”17 was seen to promote precisely this kind of commodifed emotion. A one-act farce by V. Neelov, titled Love and Delectation (Romeo and Juliet), proposed to take a closer look at those who, unwilling to reform themselves and join the building of the new society, clung to the illusion of boundless love as modelled by Shakespeare’s play. Submitted to the Main Committee for Repertory Control in October 1927, Neelov’s farce hinges on a simple premise: a young and handsome frefghter has received an anonymous letter that addresses him as “My darling Romeo!” and is signed “Your Juliet.” The letter asks for a meeting, explaining that its author has fallen deeply in love with the recipient after watching him

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heroically put out a fre at the market (rynok): “You ignited in my heart a fre so immense that all frefghting divisions of Leningrad are not ft to put it out. My love for you burns like Mount Vesuvius, – and even the Arctic Ocean cannot dampen this tempestuous fame.” Flattered both by the overblown rhetoric and by the central allusion, the frefghter remarks, with obvious pleasure, “Romeo – she means me!” and settles on a park bench to await his Juliet. Somewhat predictably, the forceful romantic who arranged the meeting turns out to be rather more (literally) than her beau had anticipated: she is “very plump, gaudily dressed, with an umbrella, fan, and reticule,” wrapped in shawls, bonnets, and scarves, and bearing fowers at her breast. The new Juliet is hell-bent on pursuing her heart’s desire, and the hapless Romeo struggles in vain to ward off her advances.18 This farce openly mocks those who long for romantic love in the age of the revolution, questioning the characters’ ideological allegiances. The placement of the frefghter’s “heroic” feat at the local market, and the heroine’s haphazard accumulation of material objects, together suggest their commitment to what Eva Illouz calls “the romantic Utopia,” in which the thrill of love is directly associated with the consumption of commodities.19 The romantic Utopia required a complacent acceptance of the comforts generated by the NEP and thus existed in direct opposition to the future socialist Utopia that offered equality in exchange for continuous struggle. Reduced to a sentimental commonplace, as hilariously hyperbolic as the fat lady’s volcanic love, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was understood as yet another romantic commodity, signalling simultaneously excess and lack of sincerity. Although the farce was denied licence for stage performance because it was deemed a “crude” and “vulgar comedy,” the Political Editor’s brief review, attached to the manuscript, does not comment on Neelov’s misappropriation of Romeo and Juliet, suggesting if not tacit acceptance then at least an absence of open resistance against this irreverent approach. An intriguing attempt to revise Romeo and Juliet into a tale of love intertwined with revolutionary struggle is demonstrated in Dmitrii Smolin’s relatively successful Ivan Kozyr and Tatiana Russkikh.20 The action of this play unfolds on a steamer with a telling name, Old World [Staryi svet], sailing from Paris to Hamburg. Tatiana is a former village girl and maidservant, taken away from Russia during the revolution by an aristocratic family and later abandoned in the streets of Paris. The capitalist couple who have saved Tatiana from starvation now hope to set her up as a kept woman, for a reward, with Mr. Lloyd, the rich owner of the steamer (and the equivalent of Shakespeare’s Paris in this play). Ivan is a Russian soldier who had mistakenly fought on the side of the White army and consequently found himself in exile; with the help of communist sympathizers and oppressed workers on board of the steamer, he is hoping to make his way back to the Soviet Union.

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Although it does not acknowledge any connection to Romeo and Juliet, Smolin’s play reproduces the key plots point of its source, cleverly reworking each episode to ft the new setting and characters. We see that Ivan is accidentally present at the event intended to introduce Tatiana and Mr. Lloyd; a version of the balcony scene is re-enacted in the hall of the steamer, with Tatiana leaving and returning to speak of love as her name is called within; the couple has to part at dawn; Tatiana feigns her death; and so on. It might have been possible to dismiss these plot parallels as genre conventions, but Smolin also adapts whole speeches and scenes directly from Shakespeare’s text, often with deliberately incongruous results. Consider, for instance, how Tatiana’s mistress delivers the news about the fght between Ivan and the Police Chief (a stand-in for Tybalt): “I saw the wound! Terrible! A river of blood! a bloody river! From the throat, from the ears! From the wound, from the temple, from the breast. . . . And his body quickly grew pale, so pale.”21 This speech, based on the Nurse’s description of Tybalt’s death in 3.2.52–56, takes the opening line, “Ia ranu videla,” from Apollon Grigoriev’s nineteenthcentury translation of Romeo and Juliet and loosely paraphrases the rest of the scene. Since nobody dies in Smolin’s comedy,22 this moment threatens to tip over into parody, with the bourgeois character’s explosive emotional response unmoored from any event in this play and, instead, mechanically reproducing a literary model. As a whole, Ivan Kozyr and Tatiana Russkikh offers a conscious attempt to refashion the uncontrolled and futile passions of its source into productive, nationalistic emotion. Rather than having to negotiate familial ties, bonds of trust, or a desire for vengeance, Smolin’s lovers are entangled in the capitalist snares of the allegorical Old World: Tatiana is fnancially dependent, with her body as her only commodity, while Ivan is pursued by the police as a potential revolutionary. While Romeo and Juliet’s passion for one another isolates them from the world, Ivan and Tatiana’s love is always intertwined with their loathing of the capitalist power hierarchies and longing for Soviet Russia, voiced at length as early as the play’s equivalent of the balcony scene. Not only does Ivan and Tatiana’s love enable them to rejoin the national body, as they set out from the steamer in a boat and are picked up by the passing Soviet ship, but it also sparks a rebellion on Old World, leading the crew to take control into their own hands and steer the vessel towards the USSR. In an allegorical reading, prompted by the name of the steamer, the love of conscientious Soviet subjects (however far from home they might be) becomes the tool of social liberation for the lovers and potentially a step towards the world revolution. As an adaptation that conceals its origins while maintaining a sustained intertextual conversation, Smolin’s play refects the early Soviet culture’s uneasy relationship both with Shakespeare and with the romantic love explored in Romeo and Juliet. None of the contemporary reviews

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commented on Smolin’s textual debts, seemingly accepting his play as an entirely original, innovative contribution that could fnally replace some of the old repertory. Functioning as a kind of textual palimpsest, Smolin’s play is a monument to the impossible dream, voiced by some early Soviet thinkers, of generating a new culture and a new way of feeling ex nihilo, and as such, it prepares the ground for Romeo and Juliet’s change of fortunes in 1930s.

Romeo and Juliet as an Optimistic Tragedy The solidifcation of Stalinist culture in the 1930s called for a formal ideological stand on the Soviet approach to the arts. Responding to this urgent need, the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers in 1934 announced socialist realism as the new cultural policy, with Maksim Gorky defning it in his speech as a genre that celebrates “socialist individuality,” which, paradoxically, “can develop only in the conditions of collective labour directed at the highest and wise goal of liberating the workers of the entire world.”23 The function of this genre, then, was to refect not what is but the what, in the inevitable progress of history, must be and to bring this vision into reality by contributing to the reformation of the reader into the socialist individual. But could this future of collective liberated labour accommodate personal emotion, especially love?24 The discussion of emotion at the congress follows the ideas of the 1920s in suggesting that the October Revolution has reformed not simply social structures but feeling itself. A writer and journalist, Leonid Sobolev explained that “[t]he ability to feel is taught to us by our entire existence – the unbroken chain of victories, also organized by our Party.”25 In this explanation, personal feeling is intensely politicized. Not only does it derive from ideological successes achieved by the Communist Party (with Stalin at the helm), but it must also be continuously taught to the Soviet subjects and be mastered by them. Moreover, love occupies a highly contested position in the socialist realist model. As the playwright Vladimir Kirshon points out, for the good Soviet subject, “there are feelings more exalted than personal attachments and affections . . . our understanding and feeling of duty distinguishes us from bourgeois literature.” Lauding the imaginary subject who seeks their own happiness in collective labour, Kirshon disapproves of the imaginary philistine who values “the nuances of [their] own two-bit angst” above everything else.”26 Socialist realist love must transcend the personal and instead refect both the collective and the political, creating the unifed Soviet body and justifying the movement from the petty pre-revolutionary past to the socialist present. Seeking literary models for the depiction of such emotion, Soviet writers turned, yet again, to Shakespeare, reassessing his usefulness. In contrast to the earlier rush to dispose of pre-revolutionary literature and drama, the more practical Stalinist era recognized the value of establishing

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strong cultural roots through identifying the English Renaissance and Reformation as a precursor to the October Revolution.27 Symbolizing an era of shifting paradigms and social restructuring, Shakespeare could be appropriated as a creative mentor for Soviet writers, aiding them in narrating the new reformation of emotion, and more generally for all Soviet citizens, who were expected to embody this reformation. Sergei Dinamov’s famous line “We need Shakespeare’s art as our lungs need air” sharply highlights the juncture where ideology is grafted onto suffocating fesh, producing the perfect subject who lives socialism feelingly and whose personal feelings are always an expression of collective emotion. In Shakespeare’s plays, he was able “to infuse all the white-hot metal of his era, the intense heat of the enormous worldwide historical battle between capitalism and feudalism into a character, a persona.” The plays now teach the captive Soviet audience “to pack history into a person and infuse a person into history.” In imitating Shakespearean drama, the ideal Soviet subjects are enabled to feel the revolution and the ongoing struggle between socialism and capitalism; the authority of Shakespeare channels the intensity of historical emotion into individual bodies, “so that our love can be the purest, most tender, and most moving love possible.”28 Responding to these ideological developments, the view of Romeo and Juliet rapidly changed from the earlier rejection of identifcation with the play and its characters to embracing the protagonists as valid affective models. As late as 1933, theatre workers still insisted that Romeo and Juliet’s love, while an inspiration, could not be seen as straightforwardly didactic. This view was voiced by Aleksei Popov when he was preparing to direct what would become a much-discussed production of the play at the Theatre of Revolution in 1935. In a piece announcing the theatre’s decision to stage this play, published two years earlier (and before the fateful congress), Popov argued that Shakespeare, as an artist, emerged out of the decaying feudal order. He was thus constrained by his “class limitations” and wrote as an “ideologist of his class, wishing to discover some way of salvation, to stop the fow of history.” Romeo and Juliet, according to Popov, stages its author’s internal struggle: grasping the inevitable transition from feudalism to capitalism, Shakespeare longed for the old order and its authority fgures – “the wise ruler and the kind monk Laurence.” The play’s protagonists are similarly incapable of transcending the pull of the past: Romeo and Juliet are feudal fgures, and they represent the contradictions of their era: heroically defending their deep and meaningful love and acting in contravention of bloody family feud, they still cannot fully resist the traditions of feudal honour, cannot leap beyond their class. (emphasis in the original)

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They make for fawed conduct models, especially since the need to defend one’s love is no longer relevant, because the post-revolutionary society “creates no obstacles to the development of powerful feelings.” Popov concluded that “The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is not our tragedy; it is a tragedy of a class alien to us,” although he still invited Soviet subjects to learn from the “full-bloodedness” [polnokrovie] of Renaissance feelings.29 After the congress of 1934, Romeo and Juliet were absorbed into socialist realist ideology as lovers whose feeling modelled the liberated, revolutionary humanism of the Renaissance and could enable the Soviet audience to rise above the petty concerns of everyday life and the temptations of capitalism.30 Popov published a piece in Pravda, quietly revising his former views and now calling Romeo and Juliet “the typical people of the Renaissance, whose feeling in its depth and scale can be infuenced neither by the brute force of feudal power nor by the spirit of bourgeois mercantilism.”31 Treating the protagonists as an affective model for reforming the self for the new classless society, Popov’s codirector, Ilia Shlepianov, suggested that an urgent need for their production of Romeo and Juliet was created by “the struggle with birthmarks of the old order, which have not yet fully disappeared from the consciousness of today’s builders of socialism, [by] the struggle for the depth of feelings, for the purity of human relationships.”32 Shlepianov’s wording betrays a nagging worry about whether the October Revolution had been as successful in creating the new moral and emotional subject as the 1934 congress claimed. Still, the cathartic effect of emulating Romeo and Juliet’s feeling could serve to wash away all personal impurities, bringing each individual member of the audience into the collective socialist fold. After mid 1930s, theatre reviewers and scholars unanimously agreed on what the audience should be learning while reading Romeo and Juliet or watching it in theatre: the play belonged to that peculiar Soviet subgenre of optimistic tragedy, offering, through the protagonists’ personal sacrifce, a message of communal happiness to Soviet citizens. An essay written for internal use by the Russian Theatre Organization’s Council of Shakespeare and Western Literature in 1938 carefully explains that Romeo’s and Juliet’s feelings enable them to evolve, disentangling themselves from the cold and inhuman feudal world of their families and moving towards the world of socialist future. They achieve full humanity, paradoxically, by being unmoored from their historical context and from personal death and despair. The lovers are seen as having sacrifced themselves not for one another or for the sake of their passion but for a chance to become, if only metaphorically, members of the socialist body: “Romeo’s dying gaze is directed to the bright future, to which he is bringing the great truth of his feeling; this reveals the enormous optimistic note of his entire image.”33 Emulating Romeo and Juliet, then, means experiencing intense personal love always already intertwined with an

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ecstatic willingness to sacrifce oneself to resolidify the seamless socialist realist community.

True Love in Post-Stalinist Russia While Stalin’s death in 1953 was followed by the so-called Khrushchev’s Thaw – a period of relatively relaxed ideological censorship that lasted into the 1960s, socialist realism remained the offcial cultural policy. However, the shift in social norms and interpersonal relationships set in motion by the changes in power brought on a re-evaluation of Shakespearean drama. Romeo and Juliet, as a symbol of ideologically correct love, came to signify in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it continued to be used didactically, in an attempt to hold onto the exceptionality of Soviet love in the unstable post-Stalinist times. On the other hand, the protagonists’ rebellion against the power of their parents and the state enabled some liberal-minded writers to use the authority of the play in arguing for individual agency, informed by personal feeling. The continued didactic use of Romeo and Juliet is amply demonstrated in Vladimir Poliakov’s highly successful take on the play performed in the early 1960s at the New Moscow Theatre of Mini-Drama [Novyi moskovskii teatr miniatiury].34 In this allegorical mini-play with an onstage narrator, young Soviet Romeo and Juliet, embodying Shakespeare’s characters’ “pure, untainted love,” are challenged by the allegorical chorus and an actor planted in the audience. The chorus harangues the couple with its cynicism and prudery, and the audience plant stands up to assert provocatively that “Shakespearean love does not happen in our time.” Like Shakespeare’s lovers, the protagonists are not invincible. One of the chorus members insults Juliet and lethally stabs Romeo, who is attempting to defend her honour. The moral of the story is delivered by the narrator, urging the audience to “rise against cynicism and bourgeois vulgarity that kill true feeling.”35 The explicit meta-theatricality of this performance aligns it with medieval morality plays, with the characters re-enacting a Soviet subject’s internal struggle of self-reformation. The narrator unpacks the allegorical meaning: Shakespearean love, of course, is perfectly possible in post-Stalinist Russia as long as the audience members are ever vigilant in their fght against the lingering remains of bourgeois feeling. And conversely, in turning to Shakespeare’s “sticky” play and internalizing the protagonists’ self-sacrifcial dedication, the Soviet subjects will be able to achieve the “true feeling” that distinguishes them from their Western counterparts. The same argument is reproduced on a greater scale more than a decade later, in the novella Characters and Actors [Deistvuiushchie litsa i ispolniteli] by Anatolii Aleksin, a prominent author of Soviet young adult prose. His didactic novellas explicitly criticize excessive individualism, which is inevitably revealed as self-aggrandizement, and

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praise self-sacrifce and earnest bluntness. In Characters and Actors, frst published in 1972, a small-town young-viewer theatre is preparing a production of Romeo and Juliet that will be directed by Andrei, a recent university graduate. Andrei’s work is overseen (and occasionally disrupted) by the much older managing director Nikolai Nikolaevich, whose approach to drama is based on largely academic knowledge rather than on his ability to grasp the characters’ emotions. To demonstrate his competence to Andrei, Nikolai Nikolaevich embarks on a three-page description of the play’s possible sources and explains, self-importantly and conventionally, that this is “a tale of a brave and proud individual breaking the chains of rigid medieval norms.”36 But this impressive knowledge is revealed to be useless in staging the play, and the “historical transition” approach is dismissed as too rigid and useless in reaching a younger audience. Clearly, through this caricature fgure, Aleksin is having a small snigger at the canonical socialist realist reading of the play, with its obsessive attention to sources and desire to prove that Shakespeare altered earlier versions of Romeo and Juliet with the specifc goal of looking forward to a more liberal future. And yet having rejected the stultifying ideological approaches to drama, the novella ultimately embraces the vision of Romeo and Juliet as an affect-saturated literary object engaging with which produces personal and social reformation. Writing about Romeo and Juliet in the early 1970s, Aleksin is negotiating two contradictory sets of literary expectations. On the one hand, he clearly continues to be attentive to the demands of socialist realism, even if he does spoof its more egregious manifestations. But on the other hand, he is aware that with the waning of ideological control, Soviet literature and flm developed a close focus on the experience of intense love, working to disentangle and balance the public and the private.37 Aleksin acknowledges this focus, specifying that the small theatre is staging Romeo and Juliet in response to a series of requests from high school students who yearn to see a play about love.38 At the same time, he is quick to insist that the theatre is not simply pandering to its viewers’ appetite for romantic narratives: the primary purpose of this production lies in presenting the audience with an affective model that they cannot help but reproduce. While the theatre’s pedagogical guidance councillor prudently acknowledges that “it is impossible to teach [the students] how to love” and “impossible to force them to imitate others’ feelings,” she also insists that they are “simply obliged to admire the strength and beauty of these feelings.”39 This mimetic obligation to experience feeling in response to the feelings of Romeo and Juliet mitigates the high school students’ ideologically suspect desire to learn about romantic love and resituates the play in the overarching narrative of reforming the Soviet subject. Indeed, the play is never delivered to its young adult audience, neatly skirting the uncomfortable question of what teenage viewers eager to learn about love might take away from this particular production.

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As the title of the novella suggests, the experience of rehearsing the play blurs the boundary between the characters and the actors, who are expected to develop, through their exposure to Romeo and Juliet, a clarity of social perception that befts the Soviet subject. In language strongly evocative of Poliakov’s mini-drama, Andrei sees Romeo and Juliet as a guide in “the battle between the real and the feigned” and the “struggle of love and goodness against hatred, prudery, and hypocrisy.”40 Having taken on the role of Romeo, Andrei plays the role of an exemplary socialist worker by insisting on continuing rehearsals through a grave illness. His sudden death emphasizes the collectiveoriented, self-sacrifcial love modelled by the play. Despite Aleksin’s small challenges to the socialist realist interpretation of the play, his Romeo reaffrms and re-enacts this interpretation by dying for the noble cause of building a better Soviet future. His Juliet is played by Zina, the blunt spinster heroine of the novel, who does not translate her public performance into personal emotion at all. While “feeling” Juliet onstage to great acclaim of the whole theatre, the actor is not inspired by this feeling to conceive romantic desires of her own or to work towards building a private life; rather, she grows to be an even-more-exemplary Soviet woman, urging others towards greater transparency and work ethic. Some fve years later, Galina Shcherbakova’s Things Undreamt Of [Vam i ne snilos’] responded to the late Soviet interest in intense love by loosely adapting Romeo and Juliet as a tale of Soviet teenagers resisting the restraints of socialist society that seeks to control personal desire.41 Unlike Aleksin, Shcherbakova had little interest in producing an exemplary Soviet subject. In a later account, she explains the publication of her novel as a lapse on the part of those responsible for ideological control.42 Instead, her novel positions the inherited socialist realist reading of Romeo and Juliet as part of the social norm that must be transgressed in the struggle for private love. Shcherbakova reimagines Shakespeare’s protagonists as Roman and Iulia – two 1970s teenagers in love, kept apart by their relatives’ mutual animosity and by the Soviet suspicion of desire and sexuality. Engaging the socialist realist insistence on the purity of Romeo and Juliet’s love, the novel detaches this purity from its associations with historical change and collective labour. Early in the novel, Roman pointedly criticizes the socialist realist vision of love, which he compares to hodgepodge, or “vinegret” (literally, an assorted salad, with specifcally Soviet connotations), and complains that “Today love is always mixed up with wood-felling, meeting work quotas, socially benefcial action.”43 Echoing Roman’s complaint, Tania – Roman and Iulia’s unmarried literature teacher and the novel’s quasi-narrator – sadly asks herself whether it is true that “Love that is pure and distanced from life does not survive in our times.”44 In the messy Soviet world on the cusp of perestroika, Shcherbakova’s characters are searching for a sense

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of personal agency – for some unadulterated meaning to their existence that can free them from the confning web of ideologies. Shcherbakova identifes Romeo and Juliet, the authoritative intertext for her novel, as a source of such meaning. As such, it enables a reaching back to Shakespeare that bypasses socialist realism. Interpreting the love in Romeo and Juliet as a powerful force that rejects the social world and rebuilds reality through intense dreaming,45 Shcherbakova argues that the emotion modelled by the play can empower yet another reformation – from a Soviet citizen to an independent liberal subject. Roman foregrounds the signifcance of the intertext when, after watching a performance of West Side Story, he announces his concern “with discovering the truth about Shakespeare.”46 West Side Story was much admired by socialist realism for its focus on the contemporary social problems, and indeed, in the novel, the production earns a glowing review titled “A Hymn to Love.” Yet it is patently clear to the audience of high school students that the emotion delivered to them by the theatre, “love mixed with racism,” is a lesson in falsehood.47 Roman’s experience of pure love that frees him from ideological falsehoods is enabled by his dedication to Shakespeare, while his mother, bent on undermining this love, attempts to introduce an impassable gap between the events of the play and her son’s life. In a parody of “historical” readings favoured by socialist realism, she interprets Romeo and Juliet as a depiction of the bored leisure class, admonishing her son in the following way: “And don’t tell me . . . about Romeo and Juliet! They had abso-freaking-lutely nothing to do! Abso-freaking-lutely! And you still have grade ten – incidentally, was Romeo literate or not? – then university.”48 She is, however, impotent in her attempts to undermine Romeo and Juliet as an affective model. Reenacting Romeo and Juliet’s vows, their single act of sexual congress, and forced separation, the young protagonists are empowered to fght against their parents’ prejudices and prudery and against the hypocrisy, cynicism, and grotesqueness of the world around them. Informed by Shakespeare’s play, Roman and Iulia experience a love so pure and complete that a life without it is no longer worth living:49 this intense emotion unmoors them from the Soviet ideals still propagated by their elders. Despite the novel’s tragic conclusion,50 the protagonists’ rejection of Soviet reality leads their classmates, teachers, and some of the parents involved to recognize the force of individual emotion and its capacity for shattering dusty state ideologies. Post-Stalinist Russia inherited a Romeo and Juliet read insistently through the lens of socialist realism, as a play modelling the strength and purity of emotion necessary for destroying the old world and building a new, freer one. With the loosening of ideological control after Stalin’s death, this affective saturation of Romeo and Juliet, redirected against the monumental construct of socialist realism itself, instead supported the revolution of feeling anticipated by Olesha and pointed towards the

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radical individualism ushered in by the perestroika. Once again, the play promised Soviet audiences a new, better, freer world.51

Notes 1 Iurii Olesha, Zagovor chuvstv: Romany: Rasskazy: P’esy: Stat’i: Vospominaniia: Ni dnia bez strochki (St Petersburg: Kristall, 1999), 358, frst appears in slightly different wording on 357. 2 I am here drawing on Ute Frevert’s discussion of the constantly remapped social and political landscape of emotion in Emotions in History: Lost and Found (Budapest and New York, NY: Central European University Press, 2011). 3 Olesha, Zagovor chuvstv, 357, 359. 4 See, for example, Catriona Kelly on schoolchildren reading Shakespeare, “ ‘Ein Kämpfer für das Recht auf Glück und Freiheit’: Shakespeare für den sowjetischen Schüler und das breite Lesepublikum der 1920er und 1930er Jahre,” in Schrift und Macht: Zur sowjetischen Literatur der 1920er und 30er Jahre, eds. Tomáš Lipták and Jurij Murašov (Wien and Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2012), 135–158. 5 All references are to Romeo and Juliet, ed. Jill L. Levenson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 6 For some of the recent work on Soviet emotion, see the essays in Petrifed Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style, eds. Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (London: Anthem Press, 2009); Boris Wolfson, “Fear on Stage: Afnogenov, Stanislavsky, and the Making of Stalinist Theater,” in Everyday Life in Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, eds. Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 92–118; Serhy Yekelchyk, “The Civic Duty to Hate: Stalinist Citizenship as Political Practice and Civic Emotion (Kiev, 1943–53),” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (2006): 529–556; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Happiness and ‘Toska’: An Essay in the History of Emotions in Pre-war Soviet Russia,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 50, no. 3 (2004): 357–371; and Jan Plamper, Schamma Schahadat, and Mark Eli, eds., Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv: Podkhody k kul’turnoi istorii emotsii (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010). 7 Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2015), 11. 8 P. M. Kerzhentsev, “Chto na ocheredi” [What’s Next], Vestnik teatra [Theatre Newsletter] 45 (December 9–14, 1919): 4. 9 V. Tikhonovich, “Proletarskii teatr,” in O teatre, ed. I. Aksenov (Tver: Tverskoe izdatel’stvo, 1922), 90–91. G. Gorbachev makes the same point in “Literaturnoe zatish’e i ego prichiny” [Literary Hiatus and Its Causes], in Golosa protiv: Kriticheskii almanac, eds. G. Gorbachev, G. Efmov, M. Maizel,’ E. Mustangova, and Zel Shteiman (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei, 1928), 13–42. 10 The list of recommendations was reproduced in its entirety in the periodical Vestnik teatra 20 (April 13–15, 1919): 9–10. 11 Futurus, “Dnevnik teatral’nogo cheloveka,” Ekran [Screen] 1 (October 29–30, 1921): 5. 12 Vladimir Mayakovsky, “Prikaz #2 armii iskusstv,” Sovetskii teatr 3–4 (1930): 9. 13 “Krizis zapadno-evropeiskogo burzhuaznogo teatra” [The Crisis of the West European Bourgeois Theatre], Sovetskii teatr 5–6 (1930): 14–15.

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14 Glennys Young identifes the NEP period as the roots of the “Bolshevik emotion management,” later implemented in the Great Purges of the 1930s. See “Bolsheviks and Emotional Hermeneutics: The Great Purges, Bukharin, and the February–March Plenum of 1937,” in Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011), 128–151. 15 See Eric Naiman, Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 16 Robin Headlam Wells, “Neo-Petrarchan Kitsch in ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ” The Modern Language Review 93, no. 4 (1998): 913–933. 17 Julia Reinhard Lupton, “ ‘Cut Him out in Little Stars’: Juliet’s Cute Classicism,” Shakespeare Survey 70 (2017): 240–248. 18 “Liubov’ i naslazhdenie (Romeo i Dzhul’etta),” 1927, RGALI (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), fond 656, opis’ 1, item 2063. 19 Eva Illouz, Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997). 20 Dmitrii Smolin, Ivan Kozyr’ i Tatiana Russkikh (Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928). This edition was altered from the original script on the basis of the theatre run. The title can be loosely rendered into English as “Ivan Ace and Tatiana von Russian.” 21 Smolin, Act 3, scene 15, 91–92. 22 This, however, is true only of the play’s post-production version (reproduced the 1928 edition, which I use in this chapter). An earlier review, summarizing the plot, states that the lovers perish in the ocean. See Nesterov, “ ‘Ivan Kozyr’ i Tatiana Russkikh’ (Mosk. Ak. Gos. Malyi Teatr),” Zhizn’ iskusstva no. 6 (February 10, 1925): 10. This conclusion, of course, aligns the plot more closely with intertext but also increases the pitch of the melodrama, which might have contributed to the general dissatisfaction with the play. 23 Pevyi vsesoiuznyi s’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei: 1934: Stenografcheskii otchet [The First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers: 1934: Transcript] (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1934, rpt. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990), 17. 24 Anna Krylova discusses the uneasy discussions of love in the 1930s, shifting from a wholehearted endorsement to a dark suspicion that personal intimacy might lead to a betrayal of socialism; see Soviet Modernity in Life and Fiction: The Generation of the “New Soviet Person” in the 1930s (Ph.D. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2000), chapter 4, “In Defense of Those Who Love,” 115–164. 25 Pevyi, 204. 26 Ibid, 412–413. 27 On the post-1934 Soviet cult of Shakespeare, see Arkady Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 56–83; and my article “The Cult of Shakespeare in Soviet Russia and the Vilifed Ophelia,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 9, no. 1 (2014). www.borrowers.uga. edu/1360/show. 28 Pevyi, 449–450. 29 Aleksei Popov, “Estafeta Shekspira: ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ Teatra Revoliutsii” [Shakespeare’s Relay Race: “Romeo and Juliet” at the Theatre of Revolution], Sovetskoe iskusstvo no. 46 (October 8, 1935): 3. Emphasis in the original. 30 The point made by Dympna Callaghan about the role of Romeo and Juliet in “instigating and perpetuating the production of socially necessary formations and desire” has perhaps never been so relevant; see “The Ideology

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31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50

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of Romantic Love: The Case of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ ” in The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics, eds. Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, and Jyotsna Singh (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 88. Aleksei Popov, “ ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ v Teatre Revoliutsii,” Pravda (April 8, 1935): 3. Il’ia Shlepianov, “Segodnia ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta,’ ” Vecherniaia Krasnaia Gazeta 221 (September 25, 1935): 3. V. D. Tisengausen, “Stat’ia po p’ese ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’: Dlia vnutrennego potrebleniia Kabineta Shekspira i zap. klassiki VTO,” 1938, RGALI, fond 970, opis’ 11, item 293, 31. The play (apparently infuenced by West Side Story, whose emphasis on class and racial barriers was of great interest to Soviet ideologues) was directed by Andrei Tutyshkin and used music by Nikita Bogoslovskii. The description of the mini-play is taken from Vladimir Poliakov’s memoir, Tovarishch Smekh [Our Comrade Laughter] (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1976), 164–165. Anatolii Aleksin, “Deistvuiushchie litsa i ispolniteli,” in Izbrannoe: v dvukh tomakh: Tom 1 (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1989), 193 and 201–203. See Konstantin Bogdanov’s “Liubit’ po-sovetski: fgurae sententiarum,” in SSSR: Territoriia liubvi [USSR: The Territory of Love], eds. Natalia Borisova, Konstantin Bogdanov, and Yuri Murashov (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2008), 27–39; and Natalia Borisova, “ ‘Liubliu – i nichego bol’she’: sovetskaia liubov’ 1960–1980-kh godov,” idem, 40–60, for the discussion of late Soviet treatments of love. Borisova, in particular, suggests that the focus on personal love inevitably generated ideological tension, requiring a constant renegotiation of social priorities. Aleksin, “Deistvuiushchie litsa,” 188–189. Ibid, 203. Ibid, 204. Completed in 1977, the novel was not accepted for publication until 1979, at which point it was also picked up by a flm director and became the basis for a cult flm, making its way to American screens under the title Love and Lies. Shcherbakova’s original title, Roman i Iul’ka, was a direct allusion to Shakespeare’s play. Galina Shcherbakova, Vam i ne snilos’ (Moscow: Eksmo, 2009). Galina Shcherbakova, “ ‘Vam i ne snilos’: ‘Budu pisat’ tol’ko pro liubov’,” in I vsia ostal’naia zhizn’: Stat’i: Interview: Zametki (Moscow: Eksmo, 2012), 204. Shcherbakova, Vam, 12–13. Ibid, 30. In Shcherbakova’s focus on world-changing dreaming (emphasized in the title of the novel), she comes close to some of the Western readings of Romeo and Juliet. See, for example, Matthew Spellberg’s analysis in “Feeling Dreams in Romeo and Juliet,” English Literary Renaissance 43, no. 1 (2013): 62–85. Shcherbakova, Vam, 13. Ibid, 12. Ibid, 89. Ibid, 115, 120. One of the conditions for publication was to make the last sentences of the novel slightly more ambiguous so as not to put off the readers. Shcherbakova’s intention, however, was to suggest Roman’s death in the last paragraphs of the novel. The research and writing of this chapter were made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Insight Development Grant (2016–2019) and York University’s CUPE Research Grant (2016).

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Works Cited Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge, 2015. Aleksin, Anatolii. “Deistvuiushchie litsa i ispolniteli.” In Izbrannoe v dvukh tomakh: Tom 1. 175–235. Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1989. Balina, Marina, and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds. Petrifed Utopia: Happiness Soviet Style. London: Anthem Press, 2009. Borisova, Natalia, Konstantin Bogdanov, and Yuri Murashov, eds. SSSR: Territoriia liubvi. Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2008. Callaghan, Dympna C. “The Ideology of Romantic Love: The Case of ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ” In The Weyward Sisters: Shakespeare and Feminist Politics, edited by Dympna Callaghan, Lorraine Helms, and Jyotsna Singh. 59–101. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “Happiness and ‘Toska’: An Essay in the History of Emotions in Pre-war Soviet Russia.” Australian Journal of Politics and History 50, no. 3 (2004): 357–371. Frevert, Ute. Emotions in History: Lost and Found. Budapest and New York, NY: Central European University Press, 2011. Futurus. “Dnevnik teatral’nogo cheloveka.” Ekran no. 1 (October 29–30, 1921): 5–6. Gorbachev, G. “Literaturnoe zatish’e i ego prichiny.” In Golosa protiv: Kriticheskii almanac, edited by G. Gorbachev, G. Efmov, M. Maizel’, E. Mustangova, and Zel Shteiman. 13–42. Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo pisatelei, 1928. Illouz, Eva. Consuming the Romantic Utopia: Love and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Kelly, Catriona. “ ‘Ein Kämpfer für das Recht auf Glück und Freiheit’: Shakespeare für den sowjetischen Schüler und das breite Lesepublikum der 1920er und 1930er Jahre.” In Schrift und Macht: Zur sowjetischen Literatur der 1920er und 30er Jahre, edited by Tomáš Lipták and Jurij Murašov. 135–158. Wien and Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2012. Kerzhentsev, P. M. “Chto na ocheredi.” Vestnik teatra no. 45 (December 9–14, 1919): 4. Khomenko, Natalia. “The Cult of Shakespeare in Soviet Russia and the Vilifed Ophelia.” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 9, no. 1 (2014). www.borrowers.uga.edu/1360/show. “Krizis zapadno-evropeiskogo burzhuaznogo teatra.” Sovetskii teatr nos. 5–6 (1930): 14–15. Krylova, Anna. Soviet Modernity in Life and Fiction: The Generation of the “New Soviet Person” in the 1930s. Ph.D. Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2000. Lupton, Julia Reinhard. “ ‘Cut Him out in Little Stars’: Juliet’s Cute Classicism.” Shakespeare Survey no. 70 (2017): 240–248. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. “Prikaz #2 armii iskusstv.” Sovetskii teatr nos. 3–4 (1930): 9. Naiman, Eric. Sex in Public: The Incarnation of Early Soviet Ideology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Neelov, V. Liubov’ i naslazhdenie (Romeo i Dzhul’etta). 1927. RGALI, fond 656, opis’ 1, item 2063.

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Nesterov. “ ‘Ivan Kozyr’ i Tatiana Russkikh’ (Mosk. Ak. Gos. Malyi Teatr).” Zhizn’ iskusstva no. 6 (February 10, 1925): 10. Olesha, Iurii. Zagovor chuvstv: Romany: Rasskazy: P’esy: Stat’i: Vospominaniia: Ni dnia bez strochki. St Petersburg: Kristall, 1999. Ostrovsky, Arkady. “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 56–83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Pevyi vsesoiuznyi s’ezd sovetskikh pisatelei: 1934: Stenografcheskii otchet. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1934. Rpt. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990. Plamper, Jan, Schamma Schahadat, and Mark Eli, eds. Rossiiskaia imperiia chuvstv: Podkhody k kul’turnoi istorii emotsii. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2010. Poliakov, Vladimir. Tovarishch Smekh. Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1976. Popov, Aleksei. “Estafeta Shekspira: ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ Teatra Revoliutsii.” Sovetskoe iskusstvo no. 46 (October 8, 1935): 3. ———. “ ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’ v Teatre Revoliutsii.” Pravda (April 8, 1935). Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet, edited by Jill L. Levenson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Shcherbakova, Galina. Vam i ne snilos.’ Moscow: Eksmo, 2009. ———. “ ‘Vam i ne snilos’: ‘Budu pisat’ tol’ko pro liubov’.” In I vsia ostal’naia zhizn’: Stat’i: Interview: Zametki. 196–214. Moscow: Eksmo, 2012. Shlepianov, Il’ia. “Segodnia ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta.’ ” Vecherniaia Krasnaia Gazeta no. 221 (September 25, 1935): 3. Smolin, Dmitrii. Ivan Kozyr’ i Tatiana Russkikh. Moscow and Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1928. Spellberg, Matthew. “Feeling Dreams in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ” English Literary Renaissance 43, no. 1 (2013): 62–85. Tikhonovich, V. “Proletarskii teatr.” In O teatre, edited by I. Aksenov. 88–101. Tver: Tverskoe izdatel’stvo, 1922. Tisengausen, V. D. “Stat’ia po p’ese ‘Romeo i Dzhul’etta’: Dlia vnutrennego potrebleniia Kabineta Shekspira i zap. klassiki VTO.” 1938. RGALI, fond 970, opis’ 11, item 293. Wells, Robin Headlam. “Neo-Petrarchan Kitsch in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ” The Modern Language Review 93, no. 4 (1998): 913–933. Wolfson, Boris. “Fear on Stage: Afnogenov, Stanislavsky, and the Making of Stalinist Theater.” In Everyday Life in Soviet Russia: Taking the Revolution Inside, edited by Christina Kiaer and Eric Naiman. 92–118. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006. Yekelchyk, Serhy. “The Civic Duty to Hate: Stalinist Citizenship as Political Practice and Civic Emotion (Kiev, 1943–53).” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 7, no. 3 (2006): 529–556. Young, Glenys. “Bolsheviks and Emotional Hermeneutics: The Great Purges, Bukharin, and the February-March Plenum of 1937.” In Interpreting Emotions in Russia and Eastern Europe, edited by Mark D. Steinberg and Valeria Sobol. 128–151. Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2011.

6

Hamlet’s Soviet Operatic Afterlife Between Individuality and Allegory1 Michelle Assay Shakespeare has had a greater infuence on music than on painting or sculpture; in their quality too the musical works far surpass the pictures painted on Shakespearean themes. – César Cui, 1864.2

Russia’s most prominent living Shakespearologist, Alexei Bartoshevich has suggested that “to conceive the essence of any period of Russian history [since the arrival of Hamlet] you should just fnd out how people of that time interpreted [the] tragedy of Hamlet: then you’ll touch the nerve of the moment.”3 It follows not only that Russian productions and adaptations of Hamlet may be better understood through knowledge of their sociopolitical contexts but also, less obviously, that those contexts may themselves be more subtly appreciated through knowledge of their respective Hamlets. Furthermore, in this latter, admittedly less tangible, sense, music – whether incidental (as in the theatre or cinema) or central (as in song, ballet, and opera) – may make an especially decisive contribution, by virtue of its connection via style, language, and tone of voice to the intersubjective atmosphere of its times. It is with these considerations in mind that I shall examine the phenomenon of Soviet operatic Hamlets. From their frst engagement with Hamlet in the mid eighteenth century, Russians and their neighbours in Soviet satellite states have constantly reinvented the play according to contemporary contexts. As with so many of their artistic endeavours, in the rich range of social, political, and (more rarely) psychological meanings that they have read into it, their Hamlet has always been “more than Hamlet.” Several of their most iconic productions, such as Lucien Guitry’s at the Mikhailovskii Theatre (St Petersburg, 1891), Nikolai Akimov’s at the Vakhtangov Theatre (Moscow, 1932), and Sergei Radlov’s at the Radlov Theatre (Leningrad, 1938), were enhanced by musical scores from the most prominent composers of the time (Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, and Prokofev respectively). Incidental music of this kind, through its creation of atmosphere, makes the audience

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particularly receptive to the theatrical event. It also provides an additional layer of semantic commentary, usually guided by the producer/director but often additionally imprinted with the independent personality of the composer. As an abstract and “non-referential ‘language’ music takes theatre beyond the text as a primary guarantor of structure, narrative and sense and beyond the spoken word as the dominant materiality.”4 This is even more the case when it comes to opera, where the composer, generally in partnership with an independent librettist, is in charge of the overall pacing and moment-to-moment characterization. Relatively and generally speaking, an opera aims more at endurance and universality (or at least potentially achieves these, despite more modest aims), whereas theatre productions have to be content with ephemerality and local, or at most national, impact. A consideration of the role of music in the two operatic versions of Hamlet in the late Soviet era – both of which certainly had aspirations to communicate beyond national borders and immanent time frames – will illumine how Shakespeare’s text operates in friction against the demands of operatic genre. That both works relate to their respective evolving ideological climates need not be doubted, but this, I shall argue, provides no more (or less) than the frame; the picture within is another matter altogether. As Winton Dean observed in a seminal essay of 1964, one of the reasons why so few of the nearly 300 extant Shakespearean operas (by now probably around 400) have joined the canonical repertoire is that “Shakespeare’s characters constitute a more formidable obstacle to a composer than his plots.”5 Accordingly, the job of an operatic setting of Shakespeare plays can be done “only by a composer who is not afraid to impose his own personality on the text.”6 For Hamlet, that task was addressed head on by just two composers in the Soviet era: the Georgian Alexi Machavariani (1913–1995, opera completed in vocal score 1967, in full score 1977) and the Leningrad/Petersburg-based Sergei Slonimsky (1932–2020, opera completed 1991, premiered 1993). They did so in part through subtle character delineation and text manipulation, in the manner of all successful Shakespearean operas worldwide. But they also incorporated elements of meta-musical sociopolitical commentary, embodied both in their libretti and in their musical scores, and featuring a nationalist subtext and an allegory of society in decline respectively. Each opera dates from a political-cultural turning point. Machavariani started work on his towards the end of the post-Stalin Thaw and completed it at the height of the Brezhnev Stagnation;7 the change of cultural atmosphere would play a decisive role in the fate of the opera, whose much-delayed frst performance is reportedly to take place in Tbilisi in 2021.8 Slonimsky’s Hamlet was completed and premiered against the backdrop of the decline and fall of the Soviet regime.9 Each composer and librettist faced the challenge of mapping Shakespeare’s work onto the conventions of the genre, which had long

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been a problematic issue in the Soviet Union.10 But apart from these local contextual factors, Machavariani’s and Slonimsky’s operas stand or fall on the basis of how convincingly they go beyond a mere sung version of the play and instead present a new autonomous “reading,” founded on musical integrity and using musical-expressive tools. This creative transformation is comparable in some ways to the work of a radical director but more far-reaching by virtue of the primacy of music in the fnished product. And it takes up a challenge that has absorbed composers for centuries. When it comes to Shakespeare in opera, the question of generic compatibility has provoked diverse reactions. Gary Schmidgall bases his studies on the “conviction that Shakespearean and operatic drama are profoundly alike.”11 However, the more commonly argued contrary position is that Shakespearean and operatic conventions tend to place the accent on quite different moments of the drama; the awesome strangeness of Shakespeare’s patterns and dismemberings of patterns, his fgures of speech that tilt the universe of discourse – all may vanish into smooth familiar opera.12 William Germano fnds common ground, viewing Shakespeare tragedy and opera as “complementary forms,” where opera provides “extralinguistic” relationships among the components of the drama and between these and the audience.13 This observation will prove the most helpful when it comes to placing the works of Machavariani and Slonimsky.

Russians and Shakespearean Opera: A Superiority Complex The “synonymy”14 and dramaturgical links are arguably not so much between Shakespeare’s plays and opera in general as between the plays and the specifc operatic traditions of the Romantic era.15 Almost all studies agree that at least one composer (and his librettist) found the magic formula that resulted in the most canonical Shakespeare-themed operas: Verdi. A pioneering Soviet article identifed “three great composer‘shakespearologists’ [kompozitor-‘shekspirolog’]: Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Verdi.”16 It found in Verdi the one who managed to understand the essence of Shakespeare.17 Composer, Slavophile, and outspoken critic, César Cui had not been so generous, however, at least as regards Verdi’s Macbeth: “the bloodthirsty Verdi made Macbeth and his witches into pure Punch and Judy fgures.”18 Cui was not the only contemporary critic of Verdi’s Macbeth to refute the latter’s claim to have “an especially intimate relation” to Shakespeare.19 Nor was he the only Russian composer-commentator to criticize operatic

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treatments of Shakespearean drama in general. In Tchaikovsky’s negative review of Ambroise Thomas’s 1868 operatic Hamlet, he questioned the composer’s and the librettist’s respect for “the sacredness of Shakespeare’s art.” He went on to praise German composers who, according to him, had realized the inability of music to convey the irony that pervades Hamlet’s speeches and his intellectual processes and who had therefore avoided the temptation to turn Hamlet into an opera.20 Both Tchaikovsky’s and Cui’s remarks are symptomatic of a broader feature of Russian and later Soviet Shakespeareana: the Russian sense of superiority over other Europeans when it comes to understanding Shakespeare and his art. Ivan Turgenev’s 1864 statement sums up this sense of entitlement most overtly: “Shakespeare has become our fesh and blood. . . . Is not the picture of Hamlet closer and more understandable to us than to the French, let us say [even] more than to the English?”21 A hundred years later, the Shakespeare quatercentenary became the Soviet Union’s “own special occasion, a red-letter day in the calendar of a country in which Shakespeare had truly found a second home.”22 By far the best-known product of the celebrations, at least in the West, is Grigory Kozintsev’s cinema adaptation of Hamlet with Shostakovich’s music. But the Soviet Union’s celebrations went much further. They were, in fact, on an unprecedented grandiose scale, marked by an outpouring of conferences, books, articles, theatre productions, and other forms of adaptation, as well as commissions for new ones.23 The “broad spectrum” of the anniversary activities not only showcased the Soviet “reverence and enthusiasm” for Shakespeare but also refected the continuing Soviet view of culture as a primary “sphere of power and contestation.”24 With “multivalent internal purposes,” these jubilee events, as Irena R. Makaryk observes, contained three strategies: “double-voicing, or the expression of admiration [of Shakespeare] coupled with castigation [of the Western approach to him], claims of ownership and superiority [note the echo of Turgenev], and the Stakhanovite idea of exceeding all norms of adulation.”25 The essay collection Shekspir i muzyka [Shakespeare and music] is symptomatic of this trend, with half of its articles dedicated to Russian and Soviet composers and music.26 Other celebratory publications included an entire section of the journal Sovetskaia muzyka [Soviet music] dedicated to the theme of Shakespeare and music.27 This section contained contributions by such prominent Shakespeare scholars as Aleksandr Anikst, presenting an overview of the “musicality of Shakespeare,”28 as well as from musicologist/composer Adolf Gotlib, reporting from international concerts performing music from Shakespeare’s time.29 Prompted perhaps by the 1964 anniversary celebrations and commissioned works for it, there was from the mid 1960s a distinct rise in the number of non-theatrical adaptations of Hamlet. The play and/or its heroes and themes were used as subject matter for opera, ballet, flm

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ballet, and songs (both art song and popular/estrada ditties), a trend which continued all the way to the collapse of the Soviet Union and beyond. The frst issue of Sovetskaia muzyka from the anniversary year includes a (non-exhaustive) list of Shakespeare-inspired operas. The same page also contains an announcement from Machavariani regarding his forthcoming opera, Hamlet, which had been commissioned for the Tbilisi Opera.30 Nevertheless, as will soon become apparent, while the anniversary may have provided Machavariani with a pretext, it was his self-confdence as a composer for the musical stage – including his affnities with illustrious predecessors, possibly buoyed up by the Soviet superiority complex with regard to Hamlet – that emboldened him to compose the frst-ever Soviet Hamlet opera and resulted in a work with strong prospects of universality and endurance.

Machavariani’s Hamlet: Fate and Nationalism By the time Machavariani started working on his Hamlet opera, he had already established a solid Shakespearean reputation, one that was based not least on the national and international success of his 1957 ballet on Othello, in collaboration with the famous choreographer/dancer, Vakhtang Chabukiani.31 Whereas Chabukiani had provided the scenario for Othello, Machavariani prepared his own libretto for Hamlet, with additional contributions by the stage director Gouram Meliva. Musically, Othello’s accessible style is different from the more abrasive tone of Hamlet. Nevertheless, the composer’s retrospective notes on the ballet provide useful insight into his work on the opera, including the emphasis he wished to place on the “tense psychology” of the tragedy rather than any “monumental solution” for key events.32 Machavariani considered Othello to be “full of human emotions and the power of love,” whereas “Hamlet is a problem of existence, and a feast of life and mind over the mediators of death and darkness”; in other words, he saw Hamlet as a more philosophical statement.33 What united the two projects, in the composer’s view, was their national quality. Having been elected as chairman of the Composers’ Union of Georgia in 1962 (he resigned in 1968) Machavariani launched initiatives for the dissemination of Georgian music. In line with this, he stressed that his Othello and Hamlet “introduce a small but distinctive national [Georgian] touch in the infnite space of the Shakespearean infuence over the nations of the universe.”34 It is, however, less in terms of musical specifcs than in the general concept and text of Hamlet that the “Georgian national features” are incorporated. Having selected Ivan Machabeli’s translation, Machavariani insisted that his opera be frst performed in the Georgian language.35 Along with circumstances such as more than once turning down membership in the Communist Party, his insistence on his Georgian (rather than Soviet) identity while abroad,

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and the jealousy among his fellow composers aroused by the great international success of his Othello, this condition placed Machavariani in disfavour among his colleagues and in the eyes of offcials. Despite receiving positive comments in offcial and theatre hearings, his Hamlet did not attract any serious offer for staging in Georgia. Performance in Russian at the Bolshoi or Kirov, in spite of their expressed interest, was out of question for the composer. Consequently, Machavariani’s Hamlet remained unstaged.36 The process of mapping the tragedy onto opera was furthered by the analogy that Machavariani drew between Hamlet and the character of Mindia. Mindia is the hero of the epic poem “The Snake-Eater” (Gvelismč’ameli, 1901) by Vazha Pshavela (real name Luka Razikashvili, 1861– 1915), a national poet of Georgia. After eating the fesh of a snake while in captivity, Mindia gains an understanding of the language of Nature. This new knowledge brings him healing powers but also ultimately contributes to his downfall. Both “The Snake-Eater” and Hamlet are built around the axis of fate, destiny, and the necessity of sacrifce.37 Apart from sharing a tragic fate as a result of the superhuman dimensions thrust upon them (in Hamlet’s case, the admonitions of his father’s ghost), for Machavariani, Hamlet and Mindia are both people of the future who share “high morals” and “the amazingly poetic ability to perceive the beauty, pure soul and inner-contradiction and not compromise with injustice.”38 Despite removing most of the political dimensions of the tragedy (notably the Fortinbras subplot), the composer insisted that Shakespeare would always remain contemporary. He regarded Hamlet’s main themes as symbolic of the war between new and old ideas: truth and justice versus falsehood and treason. And he saw “common features in the fate of Hamlet and Georgia,” though precisely what those features might be, he did not specify,39 and though tempting, it would be reckless to speculate. Whether the forthcoming frst production will choose to bring out a political element remains to be seen. What facilitated Machavariani’s aim to portray the contemporary relevance of Shakespeare was a pronounced musical affnity with Alban Berg. Berg’s opera Wozzeck (composed 1914–1921) – the story of the downtrodden soldier who kills his mistress and then himself, set to music of graphic emotional extremes tempered by ferce technical control – shares with Hamlet such key elements as the protagonist’s resentment of oppression from above, his implication in the death of his beloved, his descent into madness, and his ultimate death. All this, and Machavariani’s Bergian soundscape, whose elements will be described in detail later, goes against Ivan Sollertinskii’s conviction back in 1939 that “Composers of impressionist, constructivist, and expressionist styles are not compatible with Shakespeare. Shakespeare cannot be translated into the musical language of Debussy’s Pelléas, Stravinsky’s Oedipus or Berg’s Wozzeck.”40

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Casting his opera in two acts, of four and fve scenes respectively, and with six main characters only, Machavariani eliminated or drastically reduced the non-title roles, creating a tautly paced narrative dominated by Hamlet’s gradually disintegrating psyche. Apart from Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, and Polonius (and Laertes in the fnal scenes), other characters appear only occasionally and have little or no effect on the events or on Hamlet’s state of mind as revealed through his music. Machavariani’s task, then, was to balance three ideals: his personal understanding of the drama, the contemporaneity of his musical language, and the integrity of Shakespeare’s text. Since the opera has not yet been described in the literature, and since the musical setting transcends rather than reinforces all contextual issues, it is worth elaborating in some detail on its synopsis and musical particularities, concentrating on salient, recurrent ideas (or leitmotifs in the broad sense), on stylistic references to Berg and others, and on deviations from Shakespeare. All observations in the following commentary are my own and based on the unpublished vocal score kindly supplied to me by the composer’s son, composer-conductor Vakhtang Machavariani, endorsed by the latter’s testimony in private communications. While Machavariani stays close to Shakespeare’s words, he feels free to put them in the mouths of other characters and to delete, condense, or reorder scenes or parts of scenes. This is generally done to highlight the role of fate as the principal catalyst of the tragedy. Thus, instead of opening on the battlements, with the frst appearance of the Ghost to the soldiers and then Horatio, Act 1 begins with a short orchestral introduction dominated by the rhythmic tattoo of the “King’s theme; theme of Fate” (identifed as such later in the score, during Claudius’s prayer scene). In scene 1, Hamlet appears on the dark stage, reciting Sonnet 64 (“When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’d”) over a stalking, rising triad that becomes a leitmotif associated with the march of Time. The opera’s principal obsessions are thus highlighted from the outset and independently of the Hamlet text. Scene 2 is headed by a “Funereal-triumphal procession.” It introduces Claudius and Gertrude, Polonius, Laertes, and Ophelia, while the stalking theme of Time’s ineluctability continues beneath the chorus’s alleluias. Ophelia’s frst appearance, initially to wordless melismas on “Ah,” is set in an unsullied F-sharp major tonality, at the most consonant extreme of Machavariani’s harmonic language, which continues under Gertrude’s frst address to Hamlet. The chorus re-acclaims the couple with its incantations, which serve to tie together disparate strands of lament and celebration in a calculated ambiguity. Scene 3 begins with a monologue for Hamlet (“O that this too too sullied fesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself”), underpinned by a skeletal version of the march of Time motif. The offstage chorus recapitulates its glorifcation in blaring tones over the march of Time motif.

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Machavariani adds a 24-voice semi-chorus, identifed in the vocal score as “Ghosts,” anticipating the appearance of a “Diktor,” who voices an abbreviated version of the Ghost’s words to Hamlet, amplifed by loudspeakers. According to the composer’s son, this spoken role was another strategy to highlight “the sound” of Georgia, not so much through folk tunes as through the verbal language itself. The text of the duet between Hamlet and Ophelia that opens scene 4 is taken from Hamlet’s letter to her, read out by Polonius in the Shakespeare original. This is a fne example of Machavariani’s ability to devise effective operatic diversions from Shakespeare while remaining faithful to the play’s text. So too is his boosting of the presence of Laertes, to highlight the cruelty of Fate when Hamlet eventually meets his death at the hands of his friend. Ophelia’s despairing monologue turns into a trio as Polonius and Laertes (who according to Shakespeare’s play should be absent from Elsinore at this point) join in, commenting on Hamlet’s madness (“mad for love”). Hamlet’s sarcastic dialogue with Polonius (“Excellent well, you are a fshmonger”) reintroduces yet another variant on the march of Time motif. As a darkly comic episode, it anticipates and structurally mirrors the scene from Act 2 of the opera where Hamlet is confronting Polonius, Osric, and Lords and Ladies of the court. The following majestic chorus, glorifying the King and the Queen with accompanying bells, reintroduces Claudius’s Fate motif and the Gloria acclamations. The ever-darkening tone reinforces the point that any moment of happiness in the opera is likely to succumb to the workings of Fate. Hamlet is left alone for his “To be or not to be” monologue, which the composer’s son considers to be one of the two culminating points (the other being the duel at the end). Dramaturgically and musically, this is completely set off from its surroundings. For the frst time in the opera, 12-note rows are introduced (i.e. ordered successions of all 12 notes of the chromatic scale). Since Berg’s Wozzeck, such rows have almost always carried symbolic force, representing mental abnormality: be it scientifc obsession (the Doctor in Wozzeck), a haunting unseen presence (Britten’s The Turn of the Screw), or inhuman violence (Mieczysław Weinberg’s The Passenger). Here they appear at a moment of confessional but rational intimacy, expressing a real psychological dilemma rather than a feigned madness. Thus, musical stylistic means serve to intensify the psychological atmosphere, in conjunction with the text. A drumroll announces the arrival of the actors, and the highly contrasting orchestral episode that follows is musically one of the most immediately effective of the opera. Here, according to Vakhtang Machavariani, the composer incorporates Georgian folk infections for the frst time, in a progressively more threatening, ultimately march-like texture. However, this eventually dies away, and the actual conclusion to the act is a quiet Andantino that anticipates the exchanges between Hamlet and Gertrude in Act 2.

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Claudius’s Fate motif frames the frst scene of the second act and intervenes at crucial moments to remind us of the opera’s central psychological thrust. Rows of 12 notes gradually become more ubiquitous, playing their part in the accumulation of the drama towards its crisis point. Scene 1 itself is the “stage within the stage,” in which the actors and ballet dancers are joined by a small onstage ensemble. Hamlet’s “For o the hobby horse is forgot” (in the play, words spoken to Ophelia before the dumb show) recapitulates the march-like theme from the Entrance of the Actors, which then transforms into the main theme for the “Mousetrap” itself. A satirical march, on percussion only, announces the arrival, on tiptoe, of Polonius, Osric, and other court “types” (tipazhi). This march is then followed by a highly fragmented quasi-scherzo rendering of Hamlet’s teasing of Polonius and the evergrowing number of courtiers who cravenly accept the abuse, as the music gradually crystallizes into a macabre fast waltz. In “The prayer of Claudius” in Act 2, scene 2, Claudius’s repentance culminates in a stacked chord that strongly recalls Act 3, scene 4, from Wozzeck (the Invention on a Six-Note Chord) and will spread its lurid colours over much of the rest of the act. Soon the Claudius-Fate theme is set into motion as Claudius remembers his sins. Finally, Hamlet joins in, adding his doubts as to whether or not killing Claudius during his prayers would send him to heaven, during which he unexpectedly returns to “To be or not to be” (in the 1970s, Yury Lyubimov would take an even more drastic approach, directing his Hamlet, Vladimir Vysotsky, to repeat the whole section three times in a crescendo from internal monologue to overt protest). Scene 3, set in the Queen’s closet, is initiated by a 12-note cluster harmony, pointing towards the disturbed nature of the encounter between Hamlet and his mother and its tragic outcome. At frst this scene seems to be closely following Shakespeare’s text. But even here, Machavariani reveals his own reading of the play through musical means and some reshuffing of text. For example, Hamlet and Gertrude’s initial conversation is set to a slow, atonal quasi-waltz, as if betraying the artifcial politeness of the discourse. Machavariani delays the stabbing of Polonius considerably so that Polonius witnesses Hamlet’s description of Claudius’s deed and Gertrude’s moment of self-awareness (“Thou turn’st my eyes into my very soul”). Jagged chords accompany the stabbing itself. The vision of the Ghost in his nightgown, signposted by timpani, puts a hold on the ever-accelerating tempo and brings a temporary moment of romanticism and tenderness to the vocal line of Gertrude, who cannot see the Ghost. The conversation between Hamlet and his mother fnally culminates in a 12-note chord. But mother and son seem fnally in harmony as they join in an operatic unison episode, one of rather few Romantic effusions in this act. If this episode recalls Berg at his most tonal, the transition to Gertrude’s monologue even more unmistakably evokes

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Wozzeck (Act III, transition from scene 2 to scene 3) through a crescendo on the single note B and a crushing rhythmic tattoo, as Hamlet carries away Polonius’s dead body. In both Berg’s and Machavariani’s operas, the concatenation of leitmotifs follows a fateful murder. Gertrude’s monologue itself is one of the most conventionally operatic moments of the opera: a fne vehicle for a lead mezzo-soprano. This lyricism jars against the following declamatory recitative performed in front of the curtain, depicting Hamlet’s interrogation by Rosencrantz and concluded by the rhythmic tattoo. The mixing of styles brings some relief to the sense of single-minded dramatic accumulation; that relief will continue through scene 4 and the frst part of scene 5 until Machavariani is ready to pull the threads ever tighter towards the conclusion. Scene 4 is again set in the Queen’s closet and begins with Ophelia’s madness. After another Wozzeck-derived crescendo on a single note, for a substantial portion of the scene, Ophelia cannot fnd words to express her suffering and sings only on the syllable “La.” The most surprising element of her mad scene comes when she moves into the song, “He is dead and gone” and quotes the opening theme from the third movement of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony – an intriguing but inscrutable reference.41 As the menacing atmosphere associated with Laertes’s revolt intensifes, he enters, claiming blood revenge for his father’s murder. Claudius’s manipulation of Laertes’s thirst for revenge is effectively conveyed by the general atonal abrasiveness and specifcally by a return of the Bergian sixnote chord and elaborations thereon. Scene 5 comprises both the graveyard scene and the fatal fght. The conversation of the gravediggers is accompanied by a folk-like episode on mandolins and guitars, each verse twisting round eventually to C major, in harmonies reminiscent of the squeeze-box evocations of the crowd scenes from Stravinsky’s Petrushka. The entrance of Hamlet and Horatio marks the latter’s frst and only substantial vocal contribution. As with the other secondary characters, he is mainly a soundboard for Hamlet’s thoughts, which here focus on death and decay. From this point the workings of Fate start to take over and drive the opera towards its conclusion. Accordingly, the conversation with the gravediggers is interrupted by the start of a funeral procession, in which Laertes, the King, the Queen, a priest, and the courtiers all follow Ophelia’s corpse. Against an F-sharp pedal (Ophelia’s key from the outset), the chorus sings alleluias in an ever-darkening atmosphere. A brief arioso for the Priest is followed by Laertes’s lament for his sister’s death, making Hamlet realize that the dead body is indeed that of Ophelia. Claudius and Gertrude expand the ensemble to a quartet, in which Shakespeare’s text is cut, shuffed and superimposed to create a steadily increasing dramatic tension, leading to the fnal fght between Hamlet and Laertes. In unison, the two former friends ask for foils and swear to fght with honour. Osric (a non-singing role) brings the rapiers, and Claudius

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chooses one for each party, thus continuing his role as an agent of Fate by enabling the tragic outcome of the duel. The actual duel is percussion dominated, with accumulating ostinati that recall the “Procession of the Sage” from Part One of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Claudius puts a pearl in the poisoned cup that he offers Hamlet but that is then drunk by Gertrude. Disregarding Gertrude’s fnal prayer, Hamlet and Laertes fght until the latter is wounded and dies. Only at this point does Hamlet notice his mother’s death and turn his attention to Claudius, offering him his own poison and then stabbing him, prompting a return of various Wozzeck-derived leitmotifs. The words addressed by Hamlet to Horatio in the play are now expressed in the plural, as though to the audience of courtiers or, more broadly, to humanity in general. By all these various means, it is the content of Machavariani’s score that communicates: self-suffciently and independently of its cultural context. Like the greatest work of his contemporary, Shostakovich, its power resides in symbolizing musically how to escape from the grip of context and from the specifcs of time and place. Again like Shostakovich, whose musical mentors were Beethoven, Mahler, and Stravinsky, he could not do this on his own. The numerous references to Wozzeck in Machavariani’s score are his principal enablers, constituting far more than an artistic tribute. They are crucial both to the opera’s moment-to-moment psychological temperature and to its larger-scale pacing. By the same token, how each work refects its context should not be conceived mono-dimensionally. Wozzeck was certainly composed as a consequence of Berg’s wartime service in the Austrian army, and it was received as a comment on the enormity of the Great War. However, its message has just as much to do with the timeless, universal plight of the small person and the abuses of militarism in general, as it does with how outrage and compassion may be fused at a psychological level, this being symbolized musically by the integration of tonal, atonal, and 12-note languages. Just so, Machavariani lived through the transitions from Stalinism to the Thaw and on to what we now call the Era of Stagnation; and his music does refect the conditional freedoms that artists working in those transitions were carving out for themselves. However, the messages of his opera have less to do with refecting or commenting on that context than with articulating the psychology of loyalty and betrayal, injustice and revenge, and the eternal Hamletian polarities of action/inaction, sanity/insanity, and submission/ resistance to fate. This, rather than any sociopolitical agenda, dictates the appropriateness of a musical language that draws not only directly and frequently on Berg but also occasionally on Stravinsky and Shostakovich.

Slonimsky’s Hamlet: Vox Populi For Machavariani, then, as he himself put it, “in the character of Hamlet . . . most important is tragedy as an outcome of fate, rather than tragedy

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caused by the vicissitudes of life.”42 By contrast, Sergey Slonimsky, whose Hamlet premiered at Samara’s Academic Theatre for Opera and Ballet on October 1, 1993, regarded the uneducated and corrupt crowd as the root of all miseries. Whether the “crowd” should be taken as symbolizing the doomed Soviet system, the external forces contributing to its demise, or neither of these is left to the audience to ponder. Compared to Machavariani, Slonimsky stays closer to Shakespeare’s plotlines. A major departure, however, is that he removes Horatio altogether – for conscious socio-dramatic reasons, as will be seen. He centred his “dramma per musica”43 on the theme of the faceless crowd (tolpa), who are ready to salute any ruling dictator so long as they are safe, representing this crowd in the fgures of two gravediggers of old and new generations, who feature in the prologue and postlude added to Shakespeare’s text. Slonimsky has explained that “the idea was to prove that the slogan ‘vox populi vox dei’ (glas naroda glas bozhii) is not true.” Accordingly, he gave his gravediggers a long prologue in “the lowest possible genre of bardovskie pesni” (bardic songs).44 To demonstrate the illiteracy and ignorance of the people, Slonimsky made them sing even the name of Hamlet with the wrong accentuation (gamLET). This is not only added in the text but also emphasized musically. As Slonimsky comments, “Hamlet is afraid of such people. And in my opinion that is why Shakespeare gave Hamlet Horatio, whom Hamlet calls his friend and asks to tell the truth.” Taking the view that only pure instrumental music would be capable of “telling the truth,” Slonimsky allotted the role of Horatio to the orchestra. On the stage, his Hamlet “was left to be even lonelier and more tragic than Shakespeare had intended.” As with the reference to the bardic songs this could be seen as a resonance from Vysotsky’s notorious Hamlet performance (frst seen in 1971 at Lyubimov’s Taganka Theatre). The instrumental overture that follows the gravediggers’ song (prologue) introduces all the major themes of the opera and, in Slonimsky’s words “tells the truth about the story of Hamlet.” The composer prefers the term “thematic system (tematizm)” to “leitmotif in the Wagnerian manner,” since each character has several themes related to their emotional and active state. Most of these themes appear in one form or another during the overture – for example, the theme of the Ghost of the father, the theme of Hamlet’s duel, the theme of the prophecy of death, themes of Ophelia “in natural tones” (i.e. “pure” white-note modes), the theme of “To be or not to be,” and the theme of Ophelia’s madness and death. The musical medium enabled Slonimsky’s treatment of “the Mousetrap” scene to remain closer to the instructions in Shakespeare’s text than is the case in most theatrical productions. The presence of a pantomime version of “the murder of Gonzago” before its theatrical (mise-enabîme) performance has often confounded producers, and few theatrical productions have striven to retain the double play within a play. Slonimsky uses music most resourcefully to create a twofold “mousetrap”

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scene: “a ballet within the opera, followed by opera within the opera.” Both episodes, however, are constructed from similar musical material. The ballet starts as an ordinary court presentation in antique modes and style; the music then turns into an “infernal dance” with extensive use of tritones pointing to the poisoning of the sleeping King. This is followed by a funeral march for the deceased King-actor, during which the Queen expresses her sorrow. A similar pattern of events develops in the “opera within the opera” section, with the addition of vocal lines. Not only did Slonimsky use Boris Pasternak’s translation for his libretto, but he also followed many aspects of Pasternak’s reading of the tragedy. The composer has described the essence of the tragedy as residing in the prince’s loneliness caused by his debt to his father, which stops him from being himself and forces him to follow the will of his father and accomplish the duty that has been entrusted to him. Apart from this, Slonimsky has referred to the importance of religious and moral values to Hamlet and even to his surroundings, an example of which appears in Claudius’s confession scene and Hamlet’s unwillingness to kill a praying man: “This is the religious conscience that reigned back then, the same that Boris Godunov shows when repenting his crimes.” Such a reading echoes Pasternak’s “perception of a hidden strength and religious motivation in the character and the role of Hamlet.”45 Pasternak similarly believed that “From the moment of the ghost’s appearance, Hamlet renounces himself in order to ‘do the will of him who sent him.’ ”46 Also in line with Pasternak, Slonimsky conceives of Ophelia as an ethereal, luminous (svetlaia, literally bright) innocent fgure, who is indeed “the true victim” and “the most tragic image” of the play. Pasternak’s treatment of Ophelia, in line with his 1917 poem “English lesson,” featuring the Shakespearean heroine, has been described as a “serious distortion of Shakespeare’s tragic vision.”47 Pasternak, and hence Slonimsky, strives to convey “a sense of sorrow at the destruction of a fragile precious beauty.”48 This straightforwardly romantic understanding of Ophelia resonates with Berlioz’s depiction of the heroine in his cantata “La mort d’Ophélie” (1848), and it follows her idealization as a part of Russian literary tradition of the nineteenth century.49 In line with his reading of the play, Slonimsky gave his Ophelia some of his most tender melodies, including songs imbued with the spirit of English traditional music. Slonimsky had little faith in Fortinbras’s legitimacy as successor to the throne and regarded him as yet another “tyrant.” Consequently, he transferred the triumphant fnal march of the Norwegian prince, which musically alludes to the famous Triumphal March from Verdi’s Aida, to the second act. As a result, the fnal scene – “the culmination of the opera” according to Slonimsky – ends with Hamlet’s “the rest is silence,” followed by an orchestral postlude. Both Machavariani’s and Slonimsky’s operas were conceived at political turning points – the former at the outset of the post-Thaw era,

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the latter as the Soviet Union was collapsing. However, the manifestation of political context in the respective artworks is different in each case. At the front of Machavariani’s mind was the reaffrmation of Georgian national identity, and his interpretation speaks through the expanded role allocated to the chorus. For Slonimsky, working with meticulous character study and oppositions such as purity/corruption, it was fear for a future in which the vox populi would constitute a threat to civilized values (though of course audiences might also detect a fear of the abuses of power in the Soviet past). His chorus is an embodiment of untruth; truth-telling is assigned to the orchestra. Slonimsky’s admonitory ending and his sceptical view of Fortinbras are far removed from Sergei Radlov’s production of Hamlet during the Stalin era (1938), with its Norwegian prince appearing on a white horse and Prokofev’s positive, if complex, accompanying music leading towards a sunny fnal C major – the acme of a socialist realist conclusion. By comparison, Slonimsky returns the play to the emphasis on doubt, guilt, and scepticism that it had in less interventionist pre-Stalin productions, such as Mikhail Chekhov’s at the Moscow Arts Theatre, second studio, in 1924. Although Slonimsky was composing during a liminal period (the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union), his Hamlet has little in common with the post-Soviet tendency for “neo-Shakespearization” and its subcategory, “neo-Hamletization,” which is a complex process of the adaptation of existing Shakespearean adaptations and/or appropriation of Shakespeare according to current tendencies and popular culture.50 An example of this latter process is the Yekaterinburg-born Vladimir Kobekin’s opera, Gamlet (Datskii) (Rossiiskaia) Komediia (Hamlet (Danish) (A Russian) Comedy), based on Arkadii Zastyrets’s comedy. This opera was composed in 2001, when Russia was beginning to recover its superpower status under Vladimir Putin, and premiered seven years later, at Moscow’s Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre.51 The adaptation was widely praised (albeit not so much by Shakespeare scholars) and received the prize of Golden Mask, the Russian equivalent of the Olivier awards. Yet for all its up-to-dateness, this show was political only in the general sense of making a mockery of politics.

Conclusion It seems that the correlation between political context and artistic text in Soviet Hamlet operas may not be as direct as might be assumed. This is true at least in the sense that the freedom of expression gained in the Thaw years might not have gone hand-in-hand with overtly messagebased communication. In fact, Aesopian language or scenic metaphors, once required to avoid offcial censorship and so powerfully deployed by Shostakovich, lost their suggestive power once the controls had been removed. The natural antagonistic relationship between artist and

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political system, often assumed to be especially sharply characteristic of totalitarian regimes, worked in subtler ways in the late years of the USSR, being articulated at a meta-textual level, where intention is frequently impossible to disentangle from reception. Although we have inherited a rather monochrome view of the Soviet sociopolitical climate, guided by such blunt terms as “Thaw,” “Stagnation” and “glasnost,” it is in the nature of the arts to paint things in variegated colours. Those colours are in turn determined in large measure by the personality of the creative artist, itself formed by the zeitgeist but not forced to comment on it. Hence, artistic creation may articulate the context as much as the context determines the creation. So far as the Soviet Union was concerned, it was by no means the case that Shakespeare adaptations gradually took on a more nonconformist complexion over the years; indeed, one of the earliest instances (such as the Akimov/Shostakovich production in 1932) was in many ways the most iconoclastic. This overview of Soviet operatic responses to Hamlet shows how Shakespeare’s text continued to be reinterpreted and reshaped against the background of changing ideological climates as the regime approached its twilight. It demonstrates that the well-established image of the tragedy as a mirror that reveals or even distorts the social context indeed remains a useful one. However, it has also shown that individual creative artists operated at levels beyond passive acceptance of such contexts. They brought their own stylistic, nationalistic, and intellectual/philosophical agendas to bear, which in turn played an important role in determining what we might call the surface of the mirror. In other words, the mirror that had already been signifcantly shaped by the conditions and political climate of the Soviet system was further slanted and faceted by artists who sought to fnd refections of themselves and their individual ideologies in it. The Russian (or Georgian) Hamlet may always have sought to remain, as in the title of Jan Kott’s much-referenced study, “our contemporary”;52 but it turns out that both “our” and “contemporary” are notions jointly shaped by society and artists themselves. Crucially, the added dimension of music – abstract and undefnable, yet powerfully semantically charged – served as a mediating force between the social and the personal, the political and the individual, negotiating with the constraints of the post-Thaw era in brave attempts to produce art that would speak to, yet also transcend, its times.

Notes 1 I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for its support. I would also like to thank Vakhtang Machavariani, the late Sergei Slonimsky and David Fanning for their generosity with their time and interest. 2 César Cui, “A St Petersburg Musical Chronicle,” in Russians on Russian Music: 1830–1880: An Anthology, trans. and ed. Stuart Campbell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 178. Originally published in St Petersburg Bulletin no. 103 (May 10, 1864): 28–31.

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3 Alexei Bartoshevich, “ ‘Hamlet’ for Russia and the Russian Hamlets Now” (Unpublished paper, ISA Annual Conference, Stratford-upon-Avon, August 2014). 4 David Roesner, “The Politics of the Polyphony of Performance: Musicalization in Contemporary German Theatre,” Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 1 (2008): 46. 5 Winton Dean, “Shakespeare and Opera,” in Shakespeare in Music, ed. Phyllis Hartnoll (London: MacMillan, 1964), 96. 6 Ibid, 95. 7 The political end of the Thaw is generally considered to be marked by the resolution of the October plenary session of the Central Committee (CPSU) in 1964, which toppled Nikita Khrushchev and handed power to Leonid Brezhnev. In other respects, however, such as the economy, the Thaw continued for a few more years – see Evgeny Dobrenko and Ilya Kalinin, “Literary Criticism During the Thaw,” in A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism, eds. Dobrenko and Galin Tihanov (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 2011), 184–185. Later, Mikhail Gorbachev would refer to this period of re-Stalinization as the Era of Stagnation (zastoi) – see Edwin Bacon and Mark Sandle, Brezhnev Reconsidered (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 1. 8 According to my latest exchange with the composer’s on April 10, 2020. 9 The premiere took place at the Samara Academic Theatre for Opera and Ballet on October 1, 1993. For further information, see Anna Lazanchina’s review, “Opera S.M. Slonimskogo ‘Gamlet’ na stsene Samarskogo tetra opery i baleta,” Izvestiia Samarskogo nauchnogo tstentra RAN 13, no 2 (40) (2) (2011): 481–483. 10 See Marina Frolova-Walker, “The Soviet Opera Project: Ivan Dzerzhinsky vs. Ivan Susanin,” Cambridge Opera Journal 18, no. 2 (2006): 181–216. 11 Gary Schmidgall, Shakespeare and Opera (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990), XI. 12 Daniel Albright, “Introduction,” in Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Britten: Great Shakespeareans, ed. Daniel Albright (London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2012), 1. 13 William Germano, “Shakespeare’s Tragedies on the Operatic Stage,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy, eds. Michael Neill and David Schalkwyk (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 688. 14 Schmidgal, Shakespeare, 3, and passim. 15 Winton Dean argues this point convincingly in his review of Schmidgall’s book (Music and Letter 73, no. 1 (1992): 120–121) and in his earlier-cited “Shakespeare and Opera” article. 16 Ivan Sollertinskii, “Shekspir i mirovaia muzyka,” in “Muzykal’no-istoricheskie etiudy,” ed. M. Druskin (Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1956), 331, frst published in 1939. 17 Ibid, 334. 18 Campbell, Russians, 179. Cui’s article predated Verdi’s other two Shakespearean operas, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1894). 19 See Albright, Berlioz, Verdi, 77 for Verdi’s response to criticisms of his opera. 20 B. L. (pseud. for P. Tchaikovsky), “Ital’ianskaia opera – ‘Gamlet’ opera Ambruaza Toma,” Russkie vedomosti 16 (December 28, 1872), also at http:// en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/The_Italian_Opera._Ambroise_Thomas”_ Opera_%22Hamlet%22#ref5, accessed 15 May 2020. 21 Ivan Turgenev, “ ‘Rech’ o Shekspire,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem v dvadtsati vos’mi tomakh: Sochineniia v piatnadtsati tomakh, Vol. 15 (Moscow: Akademiia Nauka, 1968), 50. Originally published in SPB

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vedemosti no. 89 (April 24, 1864), quoted and translated in Eleanor Rowe, Hamlet: A Window on Russia (New York, NY: New York University Press, 1976), 65. Roman Samarin, “Preface,” in Shakespeare in the Soviet Union: A Collection of Articles, eds. Roman Samarin and Aleksandr Nikoliukin (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), 14. For a video of the jubilee celebration at the Bolshoi Theatre, see www. britishpathe.com/video/shakespeare-anniversary-in-russia/query/Shakespeare, accessed 15 May 2020. Irena Makaryk, “ ‘Here Is My Space’: The 1964 Shakespeare Celebrations in the USSR,” in Celebrating Shakespeare in Cold War Europe, eds. Erica Sheen and Isabel Karremann (London: Palgrave Pivot, 2016), 51–62. Ibid. I. Golubovskii, ed., Shekspir i muzyka (Leningrad: Muzyka, 1964). See Sovetskaia muzyka no. 4 (1964): 75–91. Aleksander Anikst, “Shekspir i muzyka,” Sovetskaia muzyka no. 4 (1964): 76–78. Adolf Gotlib, “Eto zvuchalo v Shekspirovskom teatre,” Sovetskaia muzyka no. 4 (1964): 79–81. Alexi Machavariani, “Opera ‘Gamlet,’ ” Sovetskaia muzyka no. 1 (1964): 152. A recording of this ballet was released in 1960 under the title The Moor of Venice – Othello. Excerpts may be viewed here: www.youtube.com/view_ play_list?p=DF9B5F16F39B3E2A, accessed August 3, 2018. Manana Kordzaia, Alexi Matchavariani: Creator and Time (Tbilisi: n.p., 2013), 47. Kordzaia provides several quotes from the composer’s memoirs, published in Georgian, without providing page references or dates. Ibid, 63. Ibid. Machavariani, “Opera ‘Gamlet,’ ” 152. As reported by the composer’s son, conductor and composer Vakhtang Machavariani – email exchange with the author, November 2015. Kordzaia, Alexi Matchavariani, 65. Ibid, 63. Ibid, 64. Sollertinskii, “Shekspir,” 336. The contour of Shostakovich’s melody has a close affnity with the variant of the Walsingham song that has been traditionally used for this mad song (and was so in the 1964 Kozintsev flm). This curious coincidence has not been noted by Shostakovich scholars, but it may well be the basis for Machavariani’s choice. Kordzaia, Alexi Matchavariani, 63–64. According to the composer, this classifcation had to do with his desire to distinguish his work from the traditional generic demands of opera. The remarks quoted in this and the following two paragraphs are derived from an interview with Sergei Slonimsky at his apartment in St Petersburg, March 28, 2013. Referring to the ancient troubadour tradition as revived in the 1960s and 1970s in the Soviet Union by the likes of Bulat Okudzhava and Vladimir Vysotsky. Christopher Barnes, Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 171. Ibid, 171. See also Anna France, “Boris Pasternak’s Interpretations of Hamlet,” Russian Literature Triquarterly 7 (1972): 219–222. Rowe, Hamlet, 149.

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48 Ibid, 150. 49 For more on various Russian readings of Ophelia, see Natalia Khomenko, “The Cult of Shakespeare in Soviet Russia and the Vilifed Ophelia,” Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 9, no. 2 (2015). www.borrowers.uga.edu/1360/show. Accessed 15 May 2020. 50 For a detailed description of the process of neo-Shakespearization, see Boris Gaidin, “Neoshekspirizatsia,” Znanie: Ponimanie: Umenie 4 (2014): 345–354, www.zpu-journal.ru/zpu/contents/2014/4/Gaydin_Neo-Shakespearisation/ 37_2014_4.pdf, accessed 15 May 2020. 51 For a cluster of production reviews, see “Gamlet (datskii) (rosskiiskaia) komediia. Muzykal’nyi teatr im. Stanislavskogo i Nemirovicha-Danchenko. Pressa o spektakle,” project coordinator Irina Vinogradova, last updated February 10, 2009, www.smotr.ru/2008/2008_stnd_hamlet.htm, accessed 15 May 2020. 52 Jan Kott, Shakespeare Our Contemporary (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1964).

Works Cited Albright, Daniel, ed. Berlioz, Verdi, Wagner, Britten: Great Shakespeareans, Vol. 11. London and New York, NY: Continuum, 2012. Anikst, Aleksander. “Shekspir i muzyka.” Sovetskaia muzyka no. 4 (1964): 76–78. B. L. (pseud. for Pyotr Tchaikovsky). “Ital’ianskaia opera—‘Gamlet’ opera Ambruaza Toma.” Russkie vedomosti no. 16 (December 28, 1872). Web. 15 May 2020. http://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/The_Italian_Opera._Ambroise_ Thomas”_Opera_%22Hamlet%22#ref5. Barnes, Christopher. Boris Pasternak: A Literary Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Bartoshevich, Alexei. “Gamlety nashikh dnei.” In Shekspirovskie chteniia, edited by Alexei Bartoshevich. 209–216. Moscow: Moskovskii Gumanitarnii Universitet, 2010. ———. “ ‘Hamlet’ for Russia and the Russian Hamlets Now.” ISA Annual Conference. Unpublished paper, Stratford-upon-Avon, August 2014. Campbell, Stuart, ed. Russians on Russian Music: 1830–1880: An Anthology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Dean, Winton. “Shakespeare and Opera.” In Shakespeare in Music, edited by Phyllis Hartnoll. 89–175. London: MacMillan, 1964. Germano, William. “Shakespeare’s Tragedies on the Operatic Stage.” In The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Tragedy, edited by Michael Neill and David Schalkwyk. 673–688. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Golubovskii, I., ed. Shekspir i muzyka. Leningrad: Muzyka, 1964. Kordzaia, Manana. Alexi Matchavariani: Creator and Time. Tbilisi: n.p., 2013. Kott, Jan. Shakespeare Our Contemporary. New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 1964. Lazanchina, Anna. “Opera S.M. Slonimskogo ‘Gamlet’ na stsene Samarskogo tetra opery i baleta.” Izvestiia Samarskogo nauchnogo tstentra RAN 13, no 2 (40) (2) (2011): 481–483. Machavariani, Alexi. “Opera ‘Gamlet.’ ” Sovetskaia muzyka no. 1 (1964): 152. Makaryk, Irena. “Russia and the Former Soviet Union.” In The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells. 474–476. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

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———. “ ‘Here Is My Space’: The 1964 Shakespeare Celebrations in the USSR.” In Celebrating Shakespeare in Cold War Europe, edited by Erica Sheen and Isabel Karremann. 51–62. London: Palgrave Pivot, 2016. Roesner, David. “The Politics of the Polyphony of Performance: Musicalization in Contemporary German Theatre.” Contemporary Theatre Review 18, no. 1 (2008): 44–55. Rowe, Eleanor. Hamlet: A Window on Russia. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1976. Schmidgall, Gary. Shakespeare and Opera. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1990. Sollertinskii, Ivan. “Muzykal’no-istoricheskie etiudy,” edited by M. Druskin. Leningrad: Muzgiz, 1956.

Soviet but Not Russian Language and National Identity

Stephen Lovell calls the USSR’s position on multinationalism a “paradox”: the state acknowledged and even prided itself on the existence of over a hundred nations within itself, yet its striving for a collective identity functioned in direct opposition to national impulse.1 The USSR used its ethnically and linguistically diverse population as the foundation for an argument about its own tolerance and inclusivity and, especially in the frst decades, demonstrations of this diversity were actively encouraged. However, those who became too invested in such demonstrations risked coming to a sticky end. For instance, the King Lear staged by the State Jewish Theatre (directed by Sergei Radlov, with Solomon Mikhöels playing the protagonist) was performed across Soviet stages entirely in Yiddish with much public accolade directed at the liberating function of the revolution. But Radlov was able to step in only because Les Kurbas, the Ukrainian director earlier active in Kiev, and originally invited by Mikhöels to direct the production, had been arrested, sent to the north of Russia, and later executed.2 Moreover, in 1948, Mikhöels was assassinated by the secret police while he was visiting Minsk, with his death triggering a series of anti-Semitic repressions.3 Ultimately, despite all claims to the contrary, the cultural ideology of socialist realism assumed a future where the entire Soviet population would share the Russian language and culture. Throughout the existence of the USSR, Soviet Russia implemented administrative policies to regulate linguistic and cultural practices across its territories, often making an effort to suppress national languages other than Russian. In the early decades, the explanations for this control varied. The state saw itself as a civilizing force, especially when it came to non-Slavic ethnic groups whose social structure seemed to be in need of reorganization in order to move towards socialism. It also posited a need for a state-wide lingua franca. But from the political point of view, the eventual unifcation of language and culture was necessary for buttressing the USSR’s position as a superpower.4 Upon annexing the Baltic states in 1940, the USSR immediately made the frst moves towards Sovietizing the territories, implementing a programme of forced language acquisition

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at schools after the offcial absorption of the states in 1944–1945. While the same level of control was not possible when it came to the countries in the postwar Eastern Bloc, the USSR still made continuous efforts to export the Russian language (along with the Cyrillic alphabet) and cultural policies created by Russian-speaking scholars and administrators, to the satellite states. In the Eastern Bloc, decisions related to the language of representation and translation selection, as well as local references introduced into theatrical performance, were inevitably entangled with issues of ideological authority and state power.

Notes 1 Stephen Lovell, The Soviet Union: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 96. 2 Irena R. Makaryk, “Performance and Ideology: Shakespeare in 1920s Ukraine,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 33. 3 See the discussion in Alexander Etkind, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 136 and 146, with a link to Grigori Kozintsev’s later King Lear (1971). 4 See Lenore A. Grenoble, Language Policy in the Soviet Union (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 26.

7

Negotiating With the Socialist Realist Discourse The Case of Romanian Shakespeare Scholarship Madalina Nicolaescu

“Why is William Shakespeare of our times, why is he one of us, the people who are struggling for progress and peace so as to build a new life?” asks the anonymous author of the general introduction to the translation of Antony and Cleopatra published in Romania in 1951.1 The answer offered by the introduction includes a series of socialist realist clichés taken from Soviet newspapers or textbooks that the Romanian audience of the time was supposed to absorb. The public had to learn to accept apparently illogical sentences that were syntactically diffcult and that advanced strange-sounding ideas. For example, Shakespeare is our contemporary because he represents the struggle of man liberated from the prejudices of the obscurantist medieval clergy, fghting against the feudal age and its crimes and corruption. His plays represent the triumph of the realist method over idealist and allegorical feudal literature.2 Anyone reluctant to approve of the soundness of these arguments is indirectly reminded that this reading of Shakespeare is mandatory in the new, postwar political situation in which Romania has Soviet troops on its territory. The political and cultural subordination to the Soviet Union is invoked in the unexpected reference to the Soviet Revolution. Shakespeare is the Romanian audience’s contemporary, the author insists, largely because of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The author goes on to say that the revolution put an end to the heinous capitalist exploitation that started in Shakespeare’s time and has sown “seeds” to set free one-sixth of the globe’s population, including the Romanian society.3 The diffcult syntax of this opening paragraph is suggestive of the enormous pressure – ideological, philosophical, and even linguistic – that was exerted on Romanian criticism in the 1950s as part of the larger policy of the “Sovietization” of the political and cultural system.4 In addition to being indicative of the crude socialist realist discourse that was imposed in postwar Romania, this opening paragraph gives the clear political message that all cultural references to Shakespeare and the Renaissance, with which the Romanian

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audience had been previously familiar, must be obliterated. The homage paid to the October Revolution, aggressive in its glaring lack of relevance to the subject of Shakespeare, was part of a ritual that was ubiquitous in education and in cultural events and was designed to remind the Romanian audience of the need to conform to the newly established power. Given the overwhelming sway of the political, this heavy-handed instrumentalization of Shakespeare should come as no surprise. Propaganda ruled in all cultural and educational felds and displaced scholarly pursuits. Scholars were obliged to engage less in the pursuit of their studies and research than in learning the new language of propaganda.5 How could any space for a more autonomous Shakespeare scholarship be carved in this repressive environment? The translator’s preface to Antony and Cleopatra, which followed the general introduction, proposes an answer to this question by initiating a pattern of negotiation with power which made possible an engagement of alternative perspectives in areas that was less subject to ideological pressure than Shakespeare studies was.6 The translator was Tudor Vianu, one of the most important scholars of interwar Romania, a professor of aesthetics and philosophy of culture at the University of Bucharest, who after 1946 had lost his chair and was not allowed to publish anything but his translation of three Shakespeare plays. Still, Vianu’s story in the socialist period was eventually one of success given that he managed to regain his scholarly authority and prestige. This chapter will look at the pursuit of Shakespeare studies at the time of the harshest political and ideological oppression in Romania’s history, focusing on Tudor Vianu’s essays and on their impact on the work of younger scholars. The frst part of the chapter will examine Vianu’s negotiations with discursive and institutional power structures in the Stalinist 1950s. The aim is to uncover for present-day readers the independent positions and areas of research that Vianu’s strategy was trying to safeguard. The chapter will further focus on Shakespeare’s quatercentenary and examine the anthology of Shakespeare criticism that Vianu organized and oversaw for the 1964 Shakespeare celebrations. The last part will briefy discuss the attempts of younger critics to carry on Vianu’s line of indirect opposition and to go beyond Vianu’s limitations while still negotiating with conservative positions. The period that the chapter covers extends from 1951, one of the darkest moments of the cultural revolution undertaken during the Stalinist regime, to 1964, which is generally thought of as the acme of liberalization in Romania’s “Stalinist post-Stalinism” period.7

I The ideologically aggressive foreword to the 1951 edition of Antony and Cleopatra was designed to stabilize the socialist realist discourse on

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Shakespeare.8 The ideological grip had grown tighter as the situation had deteriorated in comparison with that of 1948, the year of radical changes in the process of the Stalinization of Romania. Romania became a republic, all means of production and all educational and cultural institutions were nationalized, and there were radical monetary and fscal reforms. Ideological and political control was maintained by exerting violence and terror, with a number of “gulags” instituted across the country. Although in the 1948 foreword the editors still dared approach Hamlet from the perspective of comparative literature and established comparisons with Dante, Paracelsus, or Agrippa von Nettesheim, these names would no longer be mentioned in scholarly texts over the following 20 years. The 1948 foreword to Hamlet even included a quotation from Spinoza’s Ethics, a work that, along with other 8,500 titles, would soon be banned from all public or private libraries and bookshops as part of a policy to obliterate the cultural memory of the Romanian public. Among the books banned were Dragoş Protopopescu’s interwar translations of Shakespeare’s plays and his scholarly works on Shakespeare and English literature.9 Thus, an important moment in the history of the reception of Shakespeare in Romania, including both translations and criticism, was erased. The goal of this large-scale action of cultural violence was to deprive the Romanian public of an important part of its cultural memory and to force it to rely exclusively on discourse and points of reference offered or accepted by Soviet scholarship. With respect to literary criticism, all artistic and critical approaches other than Soviet socialist realism were suppressed as decadent and cosmopolitan.10 By 1951, when the translation of Antony and Cleopatra was published, the cultural revolution “under the luminous leadership of the Party,” as the communist leadership was referred to at the time, had made progress, and no loopholes for independent positions in the discourse on Shakespeare seemed to be available. The great purges in the academia during the 1948–1949 period had managed to silence oppositional voices and to impose a consistently conformist discourse.11 The foreword to Antony and Cleopatra published in 1951 relentlessly hammered home the major concepts of socialist realist Shakespeare: his popular character and humanism, the Manichean opposition between the “reactionary” forces of the old feudal form of government and the Protestant, progressive bourgeoisie. Excerpts from Soviet criticism (Smirnov and Morozov) were mandatory bibliography.12 Western “bourgeois” readings were castigated for modernizing the Shakespearean text. Most reprehensible were Freudian approaches, which were commonly branded as grotesquely inappropriate and even decadent positions. Given the increased ideological pressure demanding strict adherence to offcial guidelines, the translator’s rather unorthodox preface, appended to the editors’ introduction, comes as a surprise. Apart from a few socialist realist clichéd phrases,13 Vianu’s preface reads like a comparative

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literature discussion of Shakespeare that could have been produced in the interwar period. The preface includes discussions of Cervantes and Molière and expands the narrow socialist realist template of Shakespeare surveys with an outline of Shakespeare’s critical reception in England, France, and Germany in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Vianu also supplies brief comments on the contributions of David Garrick and Samuel Johnson; La Place and Diderot; and Lessing, Herder, and Goethe. To an audience who could no longer access this bibliographical material, because it had largely been banned, the novelty and scope of Vianu’s scholarly discussion felt like a window into a forbidden world. The intellectual sophistication of his arguments further enabled him to make iconoclastic moves that could not be detected by his censors. For example, Vianu wins their approval by calling Prospero’s and Hamlet’s mindset indicative of “the rationalist spirit of the Renaissance,”14 yet he concludes his discussion by using the much-maligned Freudian approach. Vianu advances the idea that the education of the two characters enables them to subdue their “drives” (he uses the Freudian term in Romanian translation) and to delay the gratifcation of the desire for revenge. Vianu adopted a similar strategy of indirectness in his university courses, which the authorities considered to be “dangerous” from a political and ideological perspective. According to the archived reports of informants planted among his students, Vianu’s scholarship had a mesmerizing effect on his audience. His success caused Iorgu Iordan, the rector of the University of Bucharest who commissioned these reports, to warn the authorities that Vianu might have corrupting infuence on students since “his lectures lacked the necessary militant party-mindedness and still relied on bourgeois theories.”15 The informants singled out Vianu’s lectures on Shakespeare as particularly attractive to student audiences and added that none of the students were aware of his “idealist” and “objectivist” readings.16 The authorities branded Vianu’s approach cosmopolitan and repeatedly proposed his removal from the University of Bucharest (in 1952, 1954, and 1958). However, he managed to “survive” and retain his position as professor at the University of Bucharest. In 1955, he was re-elected in the academy, one of the merits for his reelection being the translation of three Shakespearean plays. In the subsequent years, Vianu had a brilliant career and was appointed director of the prestigious Library of the Romanian Academy and as head of the national commission for UNESCO. Vianu’s negotiations with the authorities proved to be a successful strategy. Although the censors saw through his tactical compromises and complained that he never truly revised his philosophical “idealistic” positions, he was appreciated for “the willingness to be of use to the government and the party.”17 Was Vianu’s “willingness to be of use” a mere opportunist move to survive under the new regime? Vianu was a philosopher of leftist convictions, initially convinced that he could contribute to the new

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socialist culture, provided that he did not have to make unacceptable compromises. One can identify an area of convergence between the ideals and values held up by the socialist doctrine on one hand and his own position on the other. In the troubled years of 1943 and 1944, the period of the Romanian alignment with the fascist forces, he had cut a singularly audacious fgure, publishing a democratically oriented course on the philosophies of culture. The book included a discussion of Marxist theories, pointing out their determinism, and ended with the exhortation for activist intervention to save “humanist” leftist values. As his own ideal was of “classical humanism,”18 Vianu subscribed to the socialist realist interest in classical culture. His address to the comparative literature association in Budapest in 1955 indicates that he could easily accommodate Lukacs’s conservative position that did not approve of modernist culture.19 What Vianu could not take on board were the crude simplifcations and the harsh propaganda that were enforced on any pursuit of literary scholarship. Vianu sought areas of research where he could preserve a signifcant degree of independence without openly confronting the dominant doctrine. Most notably, Vianu launched a new interdisciplinary scientifc inquiry, bringing together linguistics, philosophy, and literary criticism. His stylistic theories and analytical methods came close to those of the Prague school, notably Ingarden and Mukarovsky, and built on Leo Spitzer’s type of close readings. In his comparative literature pursuits, he coupled these methods with the investigation of the transhistorical and transnational circulation of themes, values, and cultural goods. Sorin Alexandrescu, a former student of his, confessed that Vianu had saved his generation of students by teaching them a “de-ideologized” approach, invulnerable to doctrinaire attacks due to its “objectivity” and “scientifc rigour.” According to Alexandrescu, Vianu’s readings uncovered a subtext in the texts that he researched while also creating a subtext of unorthodox meanings for his readers. The implicit meanings that he thus created provided the “message of survival” to his students and younger collaborators. Alexandrescu concluded that Vianu gave his students a lesson of dignity as well as of effciency – teaching them that to resist did not mean merely to oppose, not to accept, but also to invent a new language by means of which you can change your approach, not in the sense imposed by power, but in the sense desired by yourself.20 In 1955, during the minimal thaw that Romanian society experienced after Stalin’s death, Vianu published two important essays on Shakespeare. Because of the purges and of the radical reorganization of universities in the late 1940s, there was no longer a proper English department, nor were there any Shakespearean scholars left. Until 1958, there was no scholarly work produced from the English studies departments. One of

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the reasons for this situation was the ferce purge of the academics during the 1947–1948 period. The head of the English Department in the Bucharest University and famous Shakespearean Dragoş Protopopescu was arrested and eventually died by suicide; the department itself almost disappeared for lack of staff and became an insignifcant chair in the Faculty of Foreign Languages. Consequently, research work on Shakespeare was not conducted in the English department but in that of comparative literature. This offered new opportunities to elude the strictures imposed by socialist realist criticism on Shakespeare. Vianu’s important essay, “The Pathos of Truth in Oedipus and Hamlet” (Patosul adevărului în Oedip si Hamlet), successfully ignores almost all the key words of the socialist realist approach, such as Shakespeare’s popular character, his realism and humanism, and the confict between the feudal and bourgeois forces.21 Vianu is silent on three major key concepts of socialist realism that had to be addressed and repeated ritualistically – narodnost, pravdinost, and partinost.22 Given the relentless pressure exerted on all critics and scholars to conform to the prescribed discourse and not to alter nor miss any of the concepts or formulas, the omissions in Vianu’s text smack of opposition.23 He further embeds his reading of Hamlet in the approach of philosophy of culture and both extends the scope of the analysis and narrows it in ways that an English literature scholar could not have done. In his essay, Hamlet is read in conjunction with the issue of the passion for fnding out the truth (factual, moral, scientifc). Vianu is concerned with the cultural transfer involved in the circulation of this topic, which he traces in texts belonging to distinct cultural paradigms.24 The multiple approaches to truth (from the ancient Greeks to Ibsen) that the essay investigates are carefully contextualized and historicized, albeit not according to the template prescribed by the socialist realist doctrine. Talking about Hamlet, Vianu ignores the ideologically relevant issue of Hamlet’s “revolutionary mission” to set the world right; instead, Vianu shifts the focus to the psychological experiment that Hamlet devises to verify the truth. Hamlet’s endeavour is placed in relation with the new experimental science that Bacon was setting up and with the interests of the emerging category of merchants. Vianu thus adopts a historicizing approach, as was required by the socialist realist critical norm, while expanding it and giving up its schematic, citational ballast. At the same time, he foregrounds his own research agenda, along with an independent critical vocabulary. The second essay, “Shakespeare and the Anthropology of the Renaissance,” which was then republished two years later in the frst issue of the new journal on theatre (Teatrul), concedes more ground to the dominant discourse. Here Vianu attaches more importance to the opposition that the offcial discourse set up between the baroque culture, described as reactionary, and the Renaissance, valorized as progressive and “modern.” By making this political and ideological concession, he disavows

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the very theoretical and critical traditions that he had embraced in the interwar period, namely Walzel’s The Form of Art and Schücking’s analysis of Shakespeare’s characters. In contradistinction to the critical position that had previously informed his work, Vianu emphatically acknowledges “the Renaissance character of Shakespeare’s work”: Shakespeare is to be related to the age of the Renaissance and not to that of the baroque, a period of regression in the scientifc understanding of the world, an age of mysticism and obscurantism. The representative of the baroque was . . . Calderon, a poet of the Spanish Inquisition. . . . Shakespeare enables the Renaissance to extend itself into the 17th century.25 Viana thus publicly disavowed the position that he had taken towards Shakespeare and baroque poetry in his previous work published before the communist takeover after World War II. However, having made the due compromises with the dominant discourse, he ventures into less-canonized areas of the Renaissance and touches on “forbidden” subjects, such as the Dance of Death or Giordano Bruno’s philosophy on the continuous transformation in nature, which Vianu links to Hamlet’s dialogue with the gravediggers. Medieval views on the embodiment of passions are also resurrected, albeit under the cover of ideologically acceptable labels. The theory of humours is thus repackaged as a “materialistic” concept. This chapter concludes with a stylistic investigation employing a Leo Spitzer type of combination of linguistics and literary history. Thus, Vianu tries to appease the offcial power by mouthing some of the formulas that had to be repeated like a mantra and at the same time opens a new area of “de-ideologized” study of Shakespeare. Both the censors and the public made up of students and young critics were, at least partially, aware of this negotiation with power. What later generations of critics reproached Vianu for was that he indirectly taught his younger collaborators to make concessions. Dissident Romanian writers have charged Vianu with duplicity. Unlike other scholars who had the courage to engage in straightforward opposition and were jailed for it, Vianu was reproached for negotiating with the authorities and taught the young generation how to practise duplicity. According to the dissident writers, he may have taught aesthetics, but he did not give life lessons in ethics.26 Norman Manea, an important novelist established in the US, was critical of the whole strategy of “negotiation,” including the Aesopic language that was used to convey hidden meanings that otherwise would not have passed censorship. According to Manea, this strategy involved the “duplicity of the author, duplicity of the reader and duplicity of the editor.”27 These reproaches, painful and truthful as they are, ignore the political reality of the time, when all attempts to liberalize critical discourse had to be couched in the terms of

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socialist realist vocabulary and had to be “negotiated” as part of a giveand-take strategy with the authorities. Unlike in Poland and Hungary, the Romanian “post-Stalinist Stalinist” repressive regime left intellectuals no other option.28

II Tudor Vianu’s major contribution to Shakespeare scholarship was the impressive anthology of Shakespearean critical work across the world, Shakespeare şi opera sa – culegere de texte critice (Shakespeare and his work – a collection of critical texts), which he organized and oversaw for the 1964 quatercentenary. The anthology had a global spread, with critical texts coming from 18 countries – China and South American countries included. The entries also provided a historical, in-depth view of Shakespeare studies in the respective countries and included excerpts from the most important scholarly works produced over a period of over 150 years. The alphabetical organization of the entries by country, which meant that England (Anglia in Romanian) came frst and the USSR last, after the US, made it possible to abandon the Manichean dichotomy between East and West. This was a politically innovative move, since the Zdhanov doctrine of the two camps was invoked as late as 1961, when Mihai Novicov demanded that literary criticism continue the political and ideological warfare against the imperialist West.29 Vianu’s anthology took advantage of the move towards the West that the Romanian government had initiated in the early 1960s, with Shakespeare studies spearheading the new cultural opening,30 and made available a range of Western critics who had been hitherto inaccessible to Romanian readers. The Romanian public could further engage in the critical exercise of comparing the positions of Wilson Knight, Gundolf, and Croce, previously deemed reactionary, with those of Soviet canonical fgures such as Lunacharsky, Smirnov, and Anikst. In addition to recuperating Western critical positions, the anthology introduced iconoclastic pieces, such as the fragment from Jan Kott’s hugely controversial book Shakespeare Our Contemporary, and an essay by Henri Fluchère on the relationship between Shakespeare and Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd in Peter Brook’s productions.31 There were, however, some important limitations on the range that the anthology covered: recent English scholars, excepting the Marxist Arnold Kettle, were not included; nor was any West German scholar (for example, Wolfgang Clemens) mentioned. Another major omission was Dragoş Protopopescu, the most important Shakespeare critic of the prewar period, who had singlehandedly translated almost all of Shakespeare’s plays. In 1964, more than 15 years after his arrest and eventual suicide, Protopopescu’s work continued to be banned and erased from all bibliographical records. By reproducing this

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omission, Vianu’s anthology thus reinforced the gap in the Romanian cultural memory produced by socialist censorship. Vianu’s own essay in the anthology had a title that rang problematic from the offcial perspective: “Umanitatea lui Shakespeare” (Shakespeare’s humaneness/humanity). In this title, Vianu avoids the socialist realist term “humanism” and uses the term “humaneness,” which indirectly subverts the established discourse on “humanism” and “titanism.”32 While apparently complying with the dominant view, Vianu subtly contests the notion of “titanism” introduced by Marx and Engels and circulated in the offcial socialist realist discourse on Shakespeare. Vianu points out that the defnition of “titanism,” which was attached by Soviet critics to Renaissance characters and constituted part of a propaganda campaign designed to glorify the new socialist man and his project, presupposes the amoral glorifcation of force and will power. His own take on Richard III differs radically from the readings by Lunacharsky and Anikst provided in the anthology. The Soviet critics openly endorse the Machiavellian approach to power that Richard III embodies and maintain that Shakespeare could not help but admire it. Anikst insists that it is the will for power that makes Richard a magnifcent hero.33 According to Lunacharsky’s essay, published in this anthology, Richard “is a formidable historical and cultural fgure, a towering character who behaves like the perfect statesman.”34 Lunacharsky is convinced that Shakespeare did not object to the Machiavellian principle of “rational ambition,” the ambition of a politician who pursues a goal by using whatever scientifc or other resources. He explains, “To Richard murder is not a murder, if it helps him attain his goal.”35 Anikst, in his turn, voices the Stalinist view, according to which doubts, remorse, and scruples are signs of weakness and rejects the possibility that Shakespeare’s characters might display such weaknesses. Consequently, Richard’s moment of doubt is glossed over. Vianu, on the other hand, centres his entire argument on Richard’s weakness before the battle which is indicative of the hero’s unsuspected “humaneness.” It is this feature that makes Richard much more than a titan, argues Vianu; he becomes a “man,” exhibiting the limitations traditionally associated with this position but which Vianu valorizes from an ethical angle. Vianu’s reading carried powerful political overtones in the 1960s in that it covertly introduced the moral perspective on which East European revisionist thinkers insisted. They contested the Stalinist and post-Stalinist cynical “realpolitik” and attempted to reintroduce a moral dimension into political thinking.36 Furthermore, in his role as editor of the anthology, Vianu was careful to soften the impact of his essay by counterbalancing it with two highly “orthodox” papers by Mihnea Gheorghiu, the spokesperson of socialist realism, and Dan Badarau, an equally faithful champion of the party line. All in all, the different compromises and negotiations that struck at the

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level of the entire anthology ensured that the novelty of the book could bypass censorship and thus reach a wide audience.

III Vianu’s massive contribution to Shakespeare studies was augmented by his creation of the possibility for independent research under the conditions of ideological coercion imposed by the Stalinist regime. As early as the late 1950s, two prominent young scholars, Matei Călinescu and Leon Leviţchi, adopted Vianu’s give-and-take strategy of negotiating with the dominant discourse and further developed the directions that he had opened in the felds of comparative literature and stylistics. The outlet for their work was the Journal of Studies in Romance and Germanic Languages, which was launched as a result of Vianu’s infuence and under the auspices of the Romanian Academy in 1957. Matei Călinescu’s essay on the comedies, “Semnifcaţia umorului in comediile lui Shakespeare” (The Signifcance of Humour in Shakespeare’s Comedies), is noteworthy for its use of critical categories and perspectives, which posited an alternative to the offcial discourse.37 First, Călinescu used unauthorized concepts, such as Vianu’s category of humour, extracted from the latter’s banned book on aesthetics. Second, unlike the hard-line scholar Mihnea Gheorghiu, who would limit his study to Shakespeare’s plays popular with Soviet critics,38 Călinescu took up the controversial Troilus and Cressida and identifed meanings that clashed with the offcial defnition of the optimistic and humanistic values of the Renaissance. In his reading, Troilus and Cressida represents a moment of crisis in the Renaissance in that it voices a lack of confdence in humankind’s capacity to embody ethical values. The essay did not risk a straightforward engagement with these issues; instead, Matei Călinescu, like Vianu, encouraged an indirect selective reading. He targeted two kinds of audiences: the offcial readers (censors), who would appreciate the clichéd phrases interspersed in the essay, and the unoffcial, sympathetic readers, who were experts at “reading between the lines” and at decoding the “subtext.” These readers would skip the citational, doctrinaire phrases and look for the covert information interspersed in the gaps between the clichéd phrases. Leon Leviţchi, the second young scholar following in Vianu’s footsteps, later to become a major translator of Shakespeare, adopted the stylistic strategy as a way to “de-ideologize” his readings. His approach examined hard, verifable data and pursued a positivist investigation in the direction of linguistic stylistics. Leviţchi sought to ward off possible attacks on his exclusive focus on “form” and his neglect of the “content” of the plays by defning his work as merely “linguistic” and publishing it in the linguistic section of the Journal of Romance and Germanic Languages.39 At the same time, Leviţchi was anxious to comply with the demands of

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the authorities and frequently quoted Soviet critical texts, often in the original, with the intention of lending ideological weight to his research. We can conclude that socialist realist Shakespeare criticism in Romania, either in its historically darkest hour in 1951 or at the moment of greatest liberalization in 1964, just before the discourse was completely abandoned, always presupposed a heterogeneity of perspectives and critical concerns. Given the ferce repressions exerted on intellectuals, worse than in the Soviet Union or other satellite countries, a constant negotiation with the socialist doctrine was always necessary. Straightforward opposition was not considered a viable option. Yet negotiation with the vigilant guardians of ideological correctness and the creation of subtexts did offer successive generations of readers the possibility of expanding their understanding of Shakespeare, overcoming their political and cultural isolation, and keeping up the effort to push against ideological boundaries. Later generations of critics further developed Vianu’s two avenues for productive engagement in Shakespeare studies – a comparative literature approach and a linguistic (structuralist) one. Academic research conducted in English departments tended to follow the linguistic/structuralist line of approach and was less innovative than the Shakespeare criticism produced either in comparative studies or in the theatre community. The blame for the absence of cooperation with the theatre professionals, which in other countries, such as the GDR, had both innovative and oppositional results, can be partly laid on the line of Shakespeare criticism initiated by Tudor Vianu. This limitation was inherent in Vianu’s intellectual inclinations as a philosopher of culture who advocated for more conservative (he would call them “classical”) artistic positions. Many of his students and young collaborators would soon embrace avant-garde positions in the theatre and in literary criticism and transgress courageously against the norms of socialist realism. This, however, was part of a new chapter in Romanian history and in the Romanian reception of Shakespeare.

Notes 1 “Cuvîntul editurii,” in Antoniu şi Cleopatra: Tragedie în cinci acte, translated and preface by Tudor Vianu (Bucuresti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură si Artă, 1951), 1–8. 2 Ibid, 5. 3 Ibid. 4 On the ferce Sovietization in Romania as compared with the other socialist countries of the Eastern bloc, see Cristian Vasile, “Propaganda and Culture in Romania at the Beginning of the Communist Regime,” in Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc, ed. Vladimir Tismăneanu (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2010), 373; Dragoş Petrescu, “Conficting Perceptions of (Western) Europe: The Case of Communist Romania, 1958–1989,”

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in Europa im Ostblock: Vorstellungen und Diskurse (1945–1991), eds. José M Faraldo, Paulina Gulińska-Jurgiel, and Christian Domnitz (Köln and Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), 204–205; Bernd Stöver, “Eastern Europe,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Cold War, eds. Richard H. Immerman and Petra Goedde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 175. Svetlana Boym, “Paradoxes of a Unifed Culture,” in Socialist Realism Without Shores, eds. Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko (Durham, NC: Duke University, 1997), 126. Tudor Vianu, “Prefaţă” [Preface], in Antoniu şi Cleopatra: Tragedie în cinci acte, translated and preface by Tudor Vianu (Bucureşti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă, 1951), 9–34. See Agnes Heller for the term “Stalinist post-Stalinism,” referring to the protracted dictatorial regime after 1953 (the year of Stalin’s death). Agnes Heller, “Legitimation Defcit and Legitimation Crisis in East European Societies,” in Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc, ed. Vladimir Tismăneanu (Budapest: CEU, 2009), 156. The frst time this discourse was introduced was the preface to the translation of Hamlet in 1948. For a comprehensive discussion of the 1948 translation and of its foreword, see Nicoleta Cinpoeş, Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Romania, 1778–2008: A Study in Translation, Performance and Cultural Adaptation (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010), 99–105. On the 1948 ban, see Liliana Corobca, Controlul Cărţii – Cenzura literaturii în regimul comunist din România (Bucuresti: Editura Cartea Românească, 2014); and Paul Coravia, Gândirea interzisă: Scrieri cenzurate: România 1845–1989 (Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2000). The year 1948 was one of radical changes in the process of the Stalinization of Romania. Romania became a republic, all means of production as well as all educational and cultural institutions were nationalized, there were radical monetary and fscal reforms, and ideological and political control was maintained by exerting violence and terror, with a number of “gulags” instituted across the country. On the great purges in Romanian universities which led to the exclusion of most of the Romanian prominent scholars, who had either been ousted from the universities or were in jail, see Cristian Vasile, Literatura și arta în România 1948–1953 (Bucuresti: Humanitas, 2010), 53–54; and Vasile, “Propaganda and Culture,” 378–379. For an analysis of the imposition of socialist realism in Romanian criticism and the ensuing uniformity, see Alex Goldiș, Critica în tranşee: De la realismul socialist la autonomia esteticului (Iasi: Polirom, 2011), 16–28. Translations of excerpts from these authors were provided mostly by the host of Soviet assistants working in the Romanian agitprop institutions and were consequently either not published or published late. This was the case of A. Anikst’s History of English Literature, widely read throughout the 1950s but published only in 1960. See A. Anikst, Istoria literaturii engleze, trans. Leon Levitchi and Ion Preda (Bucureşti: Editura stiintifcă, 1960). Typical clichés of the time which the editors of the book introduced into Vianu’s text referred to Shakespeare’s peasant, hence “healthy,” extraction, as well as to his closeness to the people and to nature. See Vasile Lungu, Viaţa și personalitatea lui Tudor Vianu (Bucuresti: Editura Minerva, 2016), 199. Vianu, “Preface,” 30. Lungu, Viaţa şi personalitatea, 223. Vasile, Literatura și arta, 277. The most important representative of Romanian socialist realism, Mihail Novicov insisted on Vianu’s efforts to make himself useful so that, if properly

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“guided” (read monitored), he could indeed prove an asset to the socialist cultural policy. See Lungu, Viața și personalitatea, 185. His former student, professor Dan Grigorescu, called him “a modern humanist” and considered that his work “was erected under the sign of the classical ideal.” See Dan Grigorescu, “Tudor Vianu – un umanist modern,” Revista 22 8, no. 52 (1997): 15. The reviewer of Vianu’s book The Philosophy of Culture, published in 1944 and republished after Vianu’s death, in 1979, insisted on the classicist, humanist ideal behind Vianu’s book. Tudor Vianu, Opere, Vol. 8 (Bucuresti: Editura Minerva, 1979), 458. Tudor Vianu, “Literatură universală si literatură naţională,” in Literatură universală și literatură naţională (Bucuresti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatura si Arta/ESPLA, 1955), 281. Sorin Alexandrescu, “Atitudinea stilistica, sau despre Tudor Vianu: text si subtext,” Revista 22 9, no. 1 (1998): 13. Emphasis in the original. Tudor Vianu, “Patosul adevărului in ‘Oedip’ si ‘Hamlet’ ” (The Pathos of Truth in ‘Oedipus’ and ‘Hamlet’), in Literatura universală și literatura naţională (Bucureşti: ESPLA, 1955). The terms mean roughly popular spirit, truthfulness (often interpreted as realism), and party-mindedness. These three key concepts became the offcial vocabulary of socialist realism after the Union of Writers Congress in 1934, which laid down the new guidelines for literary and artistic work in the Soviet Union. After the war, they were imported to and imposed on all the Soviet satellite states, and in Romania and the GDR, they still controlled all forms of artistic expression in the post-Stalinist period as well. On the citational and ritualistic aspect of socialist realism, see Katherina Clark, “Socialist Realism Without Shores – The Conventions of the Positive Hero,” in Socialist Realism Without Shores, 28–29. On the anxiety experienced by both Romanian authorities and writers/critics to preserve this citational character and reproduce the formulas tale quale, as the slightest change would be considered a slippage and would be immediately sanctioned, see Goldiș, Critica în tranşee, 16–17. Dan Grigorescu and Mircea Martin singled out Vianu’s capacity to establish complex relationships between various cultural periods and trace the way cultural templates were transferred and changed at various moments in time. See Grigorescu, “Tudor Vianu,” 16. Tudor Vianu, “Shakespeare și antropologia renaşterii,” in Literatura universală și literatura naţională (Bucuresti: ESPLA, 1955), 24. Monica Lovinescu, an outstanding critic of the regime living in Paris, could not forgive Vianu’s concessions as he indirectly taught the young generation not only literature but also how to practise duplicity and ignore ethical issues. Her critique is quoted in Lungu, 245. Norman Manea, Despre clowni: Dictatorul şi artistul (Iasi: Polirom, 2013), 78. Dennis Deletant points out that the condition of Romania as one of the harshest dictatorships in Eastern Europe and the large-scale repression of intellectuals made a more straightforward opposition impossible. Dennis Deletant quoted in Tismăneanu, Stalinism Revisited, 384. This was an innovative move because as late as 1961, Novicov demanded that literary criticism pursue the Zhdanov doctrine of the two camps and continue the political and ideological warfare against the imperialist West. See Mihail Novicov, “Realismul socialist si lupta pentru adevăr în literature,” in Studii de literatură universală (Bucureşti: Editura Stiintifcă, 1960), 8–23. See Viviana Iacob, “Shakespeare as Détente: Cultural Diplomacy During the Cold War (1955–1964),” Revista istorică 26, nos. 3–4 (2015): 323–332.

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31 The association of Shakespeare with Beckett in Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary and in Peter Brook’s productions was unacceptable to socialist critics. Alexander Abusch fulminated against it in his opening speech at the quatercentenary in Weimar. See Alexander Abusch, Shakespeare, Realist und Humanist, Genius der Weltliteratur (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1964), 38. Hard-line Romanian critics also took exception to Brook’s performance of King Lear that reached Bucharest in April 1964. See Radu Popescu, “Royal Shakespeare Company,” România liberă no. 6034 (1964): 2; and Mihnea Gheorghiu, “Teatrul Shakespeare la Bucureşti,” Scînteia no. 6194 (1964): 2. 32 On the titans that Shakespeare’s era produced and which were matched by the titans in the socialist society, see Arkady Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 59–60. 33 A. A. Anikst, “Shakespeare scriitor al poporului” [Shakespeare Writer of the People], in Shakespeare şi opera lui: Culegere de texte critice [Shakespeare and His Work: A Collection of Critical Texts], eds. Tudor Vianu et al. (Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură Universală, 1964), 755. 34 A. V. Lunacearski, “Despre literatură” [On Literature], in Shakespeare și opera lui: Culegere de texte critice [Shakespeare and His Work: A Collection of Critical Texts], eds. Tudor Vianu et al. (Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatura Universala, 1964), 706. 35 Ibid. 36 On the embracement of Machiavellian views in Stalinist regimes across the Eastern Bloc, see Vladimir Tismăneanu, The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism and Some Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012). Tismăneanu insists that the revisionist intellectual movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s targeted the Machiavellian real politics of (post)Stalinist regimes. 37 Matei Călinescu, “Semnifcaţia umorului în comediile lui Shakespeare,” Revista de flologie romanică şi germanică nos. 1–2 (1958): 33–49. 38 Mihnea Gheorghiu, a former student of Dragos Protopopescu, was the spokesperson of doctrinaire socialist realist Shakespeare in Romania. Gheorghiu could well be viewed as a foil to Vianu and his followers. In 1955, the year that Vianu published his two essays, Gheorghiu also wrote an extensive survey of Shakespeare that ticked off all the required items on the list for an ideologically correct approach. According to Gheorghiu, Shakespeare is unarguably “a man of the people and close to the people”: his historical plays plead for the love of one’s home country and champion the cause of the state and its unity, his tragedies are “optimistic,” and so on. The tragedy that Gheorghiu most focuses on is Othello, a play that was praised for its ideologically correct promotion of equality and had a large number of performances in the USSR and in the other socialist countries, Romania included. 39 Leon Leviţchi, “Antonimia, procedeu semnifcativ in opera lui Shakespeare,” Revista de flologie romanică şi germanică nos. 1–2 (1958).

Works Cited Abusch, Alexander. Shakespeare, Realist und Humanist, Genius der Weltliteratur. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1964. Alexandrescu, Sorin. “Atitudinea stilistică, sau despre Tudor Vianu: text și subtext.” Revista 22 9, no. 1 (1998): 13.

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Anikst, A. A. Istoria literaturii engleze, translated by Leon Leviţchi and Ion Preda. Bucureşti: Editura stiintifcă, 1960. ———. “Shakespeare scriitor al poporului” [Shakespeare Writer of the People]. In Shakespeare şi opera lui: Culegere de texte critice [Shakespeare and His Work: A Collection of Critical Texts], edited by Tudor Vianu et al. 750–763. Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatură Universală, 1964. Boym, Svetlana. “Paradoxes of a Unifed Culture.” In Socialist Realism Without Shores, edited by Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko. 120–135. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1997. Călinescu, Matei. “Semnifcaţia umorului în comediile lui Shakespeare.” Revista de flologie romanică şi germanică nos. 1–2 (1958): 33–49. Cinpoeş, Nicoleta. Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Romania, 1778–2008: A Study in Translation, Performance and Cultural Adaptation. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. Clark, Katherina. “Socialist Realism Without Shores – The Conventions of the Positive Hero.” In Socialist Realism Without Shores, edited by Thomas Lahusen and Evgeny Dobrenko. 27–51. Durham, NC: Duke University, 1997. Coravia, Paul. Gândirea interzisă: Scrieri cenzurate: România 1845–1989. Bucureşti: Editura Enciclopedică, 2000. Corobca, Liliana. Controlul Cărţii – Cenzura literaturii în regimul comunist din România. Bucuresti: Editura Cartea Românească, 2014. “Cuvîntul editurii.” In Antoniu şi Cleopatra: Tragedie în cinci acte, translated and preface by Tudor Vianu. 1–8. Bucuresti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură si Artă, 1951. Gheorghiu, Mihnea. “Teatrul Shakespeare la Bucureşti.” Scînteia no. 6194 (1964): 2. Goldiș, Alex. Critica în tranşee: De la realismul socialist la autonomia esteticului. Iasi: Polirom, 2011. Grigorescu, Dan. “Tudor Vianu – un umanist modern.” Revista 22 no. 52 (1997): 15. Heller, Agnes. “Legitimation Defcit and Legitimation Crisis in East European Societies.” In Stalinism Revisited: The Establishment of Communist Regimes in East-Central Europe and the Dynamics of the Soviet Bloc, edited by Vladimir Tismăneanu. 143–161. Budapest: CEU, 2009. Iacob, Viviana. “Shakespeare as Détente: Cultural Diplomacy During the Cold War (1955–1964).” Revista istorică 26, nos. 3–4 (2015): 323–332. Leviţchi, Leon. “Antonimia, procedeu semnifcativ in opera lui Shakespeare.” Revista de flologie romanică şi germanică nos. 1–2 (1958): 705–717. Lunacearski, A. V. “Despre literatură” [On Literature]. In Shakespeare și opera lui: Culegere de texte critice, edited by Tudor Vianu et al. 705–716. Bucureşti: Editura pentru Literatura Universală, 1964. Lungu, Vasile. Viaţa și personalitatea lui Tudor Vianu. Bucuresti: Editura Minerva, 2016. Norman, Manea. Despre clowni: Dictatorul şi artistul. Iasi: Polirom, 2013. Novicov, Mihail. “Realismul socialist și lupta pentru adevăr în literatură.” In Studii de literatură universală. 8–23. Bucureşti: Editura Stiintifcă, 1960. Ostrovsky, Arkady. “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 56–84. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.

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Popescu, Radu. “Royal Shakespeare Company.” România liberă no. 6034 (1964): 2. Tismăneanu, Vladimir. The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism and Some Lessons from the Twentieth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012. Vasile, Cristian. Literatura și arta în România 1948–1953. Bucuresti: Humanitas, 2010. Vianu, Tudor. “Prefaţă” [Preface]. In Antoniu şi Cleopatra: Tragedie în cinci acte, translated and preface by Tudor Vianu. 9–34. Bucureşti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatură şi Artă, 1951. ———. “ Literatură universală și literatură naţională.” In Literatură universală și literatură naţională. 279–297. Bucuresti: Editura de Stat pentru Literatura si Arta/ESPLA, 1955. ———. “Patosul adevărului in ‘Oedip’ si ‘Hamlet’ ” [The Pathos of Truth in ‘Oedipus’ and ‘Hamlet’]. In Literatura universală și literatura naţională. 9–21. Bucureşti: ESPLA, 1955. ———. “Shakespeare si antropologia renaşterii.” In Literatura universală și literatura naţională. 21–33. Bucuresti: ESPLA, 1955. ———. “Umanitatea lui Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare şi opera lui: Culegere texte critice, edited by Tudor Vianu et al. 567–579. Bucuresti: Editura pentru literature universală, 1964.

8

WHO IZ HOO ΣND WHAT IZ WATT? Between ΣFΣZ, CCCP and USSR Jana B. Wild

The Comedy of Errors was staged in the Slovak National Theatre (NT) in Bratislava, in 1971. In those days, NT had an excellent reputation. The company was equipped with top actors; the director of the production, Jozef Budský, was the leading personality of modern theatre staging in Czechoslovakia; and a huge part of the NT credit of European signifcance was due to the then literary adviser of the theatre, Margita Mayerová.1 According to the contemporary press reviews, the production was hilarious entertainment, arousing vivid laughter: “relaxing,”2 “dynamic and frolicking,”3 “merry and a real balm for the nerves of today’s audience,”4 “delightful, go-as-you-please funny,”5 “120 minutes of laughter”6 with “Faun-like frivolous carnality.”7 Ten out of 12 critics were enthusiastic about it, mainly because of its comic energy. Their descriptions sound credible. A couple of contemporary witnesses whom I have asked about the production attested to the same impression. Yet verbal testimonies must be read against the backdrop of their time. In the history of Czechoslovakia, the early 1970s stand for political “normalization.” While the previous decade of 1960s brought a political liberalization and cultural opening-up of the country, culminating in the “Prague Spring” of 1968 and its call for a “socialism with human face,” the Soviet military invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 put an end to all those movements. For Czechoslovakia, the turbulent year of 1968 signifes a caesura, and a cultural and historical shift, as – for different reasons – it does in many other countries in East and West.8 After the invasion, the Communist and Soviet control over the country was re-established, repressing any opposition and criticism. For the next two decades, this state of affairs was offcially labelled “normalization” and the 1968 military invasion referred to as “brotherly help.” The censorship over media and all cultural activities, abolished only in June 1968, was re-established again.9 Many open-minded intellectuals were silenced; those who had not emigrated were not allowed to publish or even lost their jobs. In the public discourse, the invasion became a major taboo. Thus, analyzing materials from early 1970s theatre productions and later, one might wonder who the involved artists and critics were and to

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what extent they took the liberty to express what they really meant. To understand the agenda of The Comedy of Errors of 1971 in Bratislava, it is necessary to be aware of several contexts. The frst one points to theatres’ strategies in forming their repertories during the Cold War in Czechoslovakia (and actually in the whole Soviet bloc): “When speech in censored, Muses play the classics.”10 Shakespeare productions in the countries of the Eastern bloc have always invited double-coding: during the totalitarian regimes, the Bard was the indisputable constant and at the same time a smokescreen to express political observations which were taboo in the public space. Whenever approaching the Cold War theatre of the Eastern bloc, we must take into account this strong tendency to Aesopian language, to topical political allusions.11 All theatre historians who looked back to Shakespeare performed in that era had to be aware of the dynamics or even complicity between the players and spectators: “Audiences . . . took away what message they found, imagined or wished for, since . . . censorship breeds sophisticated interpreters.”12 The scope of how far Shakespeare “has been used to produce social, political and cultural meaning”13 varied depending, among other factors, on the people involved. In the case of The Comedy of Errors, the personalities of the director and literary adviser, especially in the light of their respective backgrounds, do arouse expectations of something more than a simple comedic performance. The second framework concerns the contemporaneous records. Examining the critical reviews published in the press raises a range of questions: Who were the people allowed to publish at all (after 1970, many critics were silenced)? What were their expectations, their preoccupations, their values, their aims? What did they withhold? Where in their reviews was the (self-)censorship at work? Are there any visual records to support, to undermine, or to supplement their opinions? Is there any reliable production discourse in director’s notes or memoirs? Does this discourse use Aesopian language too? The third relevant factor to bear in mind is the broader political and cultural context, now relatively distant from us. The theatre production was prepared during the interim between two major events that cemented the Soviet hegemony in Czechoslovakia. In December 1970, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) approved and published the document titled “The lesson from the crisis development in the party and society from the 13th congress of the KSČ” (Poučenie z krízového vývoja v strane a spoločnosti od XIII. zjazdu KSČ) as the offcial interpretation of the events of the 1968. Shortly after the opening of the production, in May 1971, the frst secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Gustáv Husák reported at the 14th Party Congress that the process of political normalization had been completed. A highly praised National Theatre production staged on the verge of a renewed totalitarian regime, and undoubtedly under close political

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surveillance, might arouse questions. Bearing in mind that the director Jozef Budský (1911–January 1989) and the literary adviser Margita Mayerová (1930–2013) were known as artists committed to a critical approach, one must start to read the performance against the grain. Did Budský and Mayerová, both people sensitive to sociopolitical upheavals, who had always grasped and openly addressed the conficts raging around them, really stage a “merry balm for the nerves of the audience,” some 20 months after the military invasion? The idea that they desired to produce a mere “120 minutes of laughter,” aiming at no more than comic relief in that gloomy political situation, does not sound credible. After all, Budský was highly acclaimed for his Romeo and Juliet (1957) and Macbeth (1959), with their subtle references to the Stalinist era of the 1950s14 and veiled references to its offenders and victims, and for an audacious staging of Rolf Hochhuth’s The Deputy (1966). Thus, he was not an artist to disconnect his political attitude from his stage work – and the same could be said about his literary adviser, Mayerová. They must have known that, with the communist “normalization,” their intellectual prospects for the future would collapse, and their careers would be over.15 Were they genuinely in the mood, there and then, to stage a slapstick Shakespeare calling up “innocent” laughter? All of these questions occurred to me while I was looking at archival materials pertaining to this production. When I was considering all of these historical contexts, I caught myself – gradually and rather unexpectedly – invoking my memory of that time in Czechoslovakia.16 Although I have not seen the original production, in the course of research, it unfolded in front of me in a new way, other than the historical records testify. Memory studies have already become part of historical scholarship, and it has been widely acknowledged that individual memory can bring surprising insights to the understanding of the past.17 In my case, the production photographs acted as the trigger for my memories. The awareness of how limited the public narrative most likely was, having been created during the highly censored period of 1971, enhanced my expectation from the visual materials. In many ways, this study emerges from a productive meeting between my own recollections of being a child in Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia and archival documents that serve as evidence and as mementoes of staging Shakespeare in the politically charged atmosphere of the time. As I was growing more and more involved in the project, the photographs brought back visual memories of the past; and the fashbacks of buried images, even of idioms and jokes, coming back to my mind started to generate a different reading of the production. Susan Crane notes that documentary photographs might have a “distinctive capacity to illustrate historical context”18 more authentically than other media. It is thus often worthwhile to “make a special case for the power of the visual.”19 In photography, argues Joan Tumblety, “each viewer will

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see the image through a personal lens pregnant with multiple memories, knowledge and experience,”20 and “memory is often lodged in objects.”21 This chapter takes the reader on a journey through time, by juxtaposing the production images from the 1971 The Comedy of Errors with my individual memory and drawing on historical documents for verifcation.22 Refracted in the lens of my personal memories, staging images, as well as the printed materials accompanying the production, allowed me to hypothesize about the director’s intentions and the audience’s reception of the play in Czechoslovakia that in 1971 was part of the Sovietized Eastern Bloc. In this reading, the allegedly hilarious comedy takes on a distinct shade of bitter sarcasm, speaking to its contemporaries in a sophisticated code that concealed a deeper meaning. Shakespeare’s comedy, set in ancient Greek Ephesus, turns around mistaken identities of two pairs of twins separated in two different towns after a shipwrecking. Their accidental meeting in Ephesus many years later is full of misunderstandings and frivolous confusions – offering a magnifying glass to a world where there is nothing what it seems. At a frst glance the director Jozef Budský had decided on grotesque exaggeration in approaching this play: the actors wore huge noses, and the cook Luce was played by a male actor. The production pictures show a world full of dynamical action, stressing the actors’ bodies and a carnivalesque atmosphere. Using face masks was not a new idea: there was a production of The Comedy of Errors staged some years earlier in Martin (central Slovakia), in 1963, where the servant twins Dromios were given huge noses: their masks and vertically divided mi-parti costumes mirroring each other, referred to medieval and Renaissance fools and to commedia dell’arte. These and other references situated that 1963 production in the tradition of popular entertainment and theatricality close to commedia dell’arte or circus. But in the NT Shakespeare of 1971, not only servants but rather all of the characters wore big noses, regardless of their social status. Their chiton-style costumes in natural sandy colours made of rough tow linen were stripped of all historical and social references. One could not tell a master from a servant unless by the amount of fabric: the rich would show off their higher status by wearing heavier cloth with more layers (although, regardless of their social status, all characters exhibited rude behaviour and loose manners). On the whole, the costume design by Stanislava Vaníčková seemed to aim at a certain uniformity and bulky shapelessness. Only the female haircuts, such as the beehive hairstyle (á la Audrey Hepburn) or “high-volume bob” with scarf or ribbon (á la Doris Day), referred to the 1960s fashion. Whereas the haircuts were period-specifc and generally recognizable from flms and other visual media, the next object that struck me as somehow familiar invoked something more personal. It was the signpost “ΣFΣZ” (“Ephesus” in Slovak) in the long-shot picture of Ephesus (see

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Figure 8.1 The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

Figure 8.1). The spelling made me feel a sense of déjà vu, vividly bringing back the linguistically confused world of my childhood. The inscription on the signpost shows what seems to be an incorrectly spelled location name: the word “ΣFΣZ” mingles the letters of Greek alphabet (Σ) with Latin (F, Z). In the Greek script, the letter Σ (sigma) is to be read as an “S.” Some of the contemporary theatre audience would have probably known that. Despite mixing up two scripts, the message might have been clear: the letter Σ (sigma) should be understood as sort of stylized letter and read as E, not as S – because the town where the play unfolds is called EFEZ, not SFSZ. A usual theatregoer would accept this (as we do accept and understand the label “GRΣΣK YOGHURT”). After all, Shakespeare’s story itself was set in ancient Greece, which could be used to justify this mix of scripts provided. But there was also the context of Czechoslovakia of 1971 where mingling alphabets referred to a different reality that in no way concerned Greece: for the citizens of the Eastern bloc, Greece as a “capitalist” country was unreachable, and ancient Greek was not taught in schools any longer. And this was exactly the point where my memory intervened, bringing to mind the signs that appeared in Czechoslovakia when I was a child.

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The signpost “ΣFΣZ” reminded me of the confusion and uncertainty of myself as a young schoolgirl in front of the words and letters in the public space of my communist country. After the Soviet military invasion of 1968, in addition to the usual signs in Czech and Slovak, inscriptions in Russian also appeared everywhere. The Russian with its Cyrillic script was often misleading, because many of the Cyrillic letters are the same as our Latin and also read the same (A, K, T), but some look the same (C, P, Y, B) but are read differently (C as S; P as R; Y as U; B as V). This was the case with the omnipresent propaganda inscription “CCCP,” the Russian abbreviation of the USSR – Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (Soiuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik or, in Cyrillic, Союз Советских Социалистических Республик). To the Czechoslovak citizens, the letters seemed familiar, but their familiarity was deceptive, challenging our grasp of multiple alphabets: should the abbreviation be read in Latin letters as “CCCP” or in Cyrillic letters as “SSSR”? The communist Czechoslovakia was full of banners pointing to our “big brother” Soviet Union, be it in Russian (CCCP), in Czech (SSSR: Svaz sovětských socialistických republík), or in Slovak (ZSSR: Zväz sovietskych socialistických republík), so the challenge repeated itself throughout each day. To someone who has lived through the experience, the word “ΣFΣZ” on the stage immediately invokes the omnipresent CCCP/SSSR/ZSSR words in public spaces. Furthermore, the Slovak word for “union” is “zväz,” suggesting that the words “Efez” and “zväz” might have sounded suspiciously similar too. As I was looking at the image in 2018, there was no doubt that the stage resembled a real comedy of errors that was unfolding in the early 1970s. My recollections were buttressed by another production photograph that showed chalk graffti on the wall of ΣFΣZ (see Figure 8.2). In the 1970s, there was hardly any graffti on the public walls in Czechoslovakia. The only kind of graffti I remember clearly, though, was created in the months following the military invasion of August 1968: countless white protest inscriptions everywhere, also mixing up Latin and Cyrillic letters, symbols, and languages (in Czech, Slovak, Russian, IANS go home”).23 Over the course and also in English, such as “RU of the “normalization” taking place in the early 1970s, presumably all the protest graffti have been painted over – but the images continued to linger in people’s minds. However, here, on the theatre stage, the chalky scratches seem to be made by a child’s hand: they show clumsy letters and fgures (even, cruelly, a hanged man) and state simple sentences (“Long live he who drinks”) or curses (“The merchants of Syracuse are [drawing of a camel],” “Efesus is a town of tricksters, bandits and good-for-nothings”). If read in the context of the visual world of invaded Czechoslovakia, this graffti offers a disillusioned sarcastic grin at the childishness and ludicrousness of any feud or protest. Among the materials in the theatre archive, there is a leafet that was once attached to the production brochure. Creating an additional leafet

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Figure 8.2 Leopold Haverl as Dromio of Ephesus, The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

Figure 8.3 Efezský neomilník, the title of the newspaper to The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava, 1971 Source: Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

was an inventive idea of the producers, a sort of exciting bonus not often seen in Slovak professional theatres. The leafet is an imitation newspaper called ΣFΣZSKÝ NΣOMILNÍK (“The Unerryng [Newspaper] of Ephesus”) (see Figure 8.3). Clearly, it was meant as a hoax. The name of this newspaper in itself not only punned on the title of the play but also mocked the major national newspaper, the Sovietized “Pravda,” a mouthpiece of the communist propaganda.

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The gag worked on several layers. Already at a frst glance, there was an obvious error in the very word insisting on the impossibility of errors, with the letter i substituted for y in the word that should have been properly spelled “neomylník” (the equivalent of this, in English, would be writing “unerryng” instead of “unerring”). This intentional misprint, along with how the words were arranged on the sign, played with the sexual elements of the plot: “neo-milník” could suggest a “new lover” or even a “fornicator” (“Σ-milník”). The leafet itself might have also reminded the audience of the leafets produced during the Soviet invasion of 1968: promptly printed and distributed, they kept the public informed. After the “normalization,” the Communist regime had no need and the opposition no means to print separate leafets (and, at that time, there were no commercial leafets whatsoever). The other level of the gag concerns a major political issue: the whole idea of an unerring newspaper plays with the name of the communist paper Pravda, which literally means “truth.” The communist authoritarian Pravda of those years was perforce ideologically unerring. But as the title of the leafet suggests, a small error – i instead of y – could subvert the entire construct of ideological truthfulness: the name of the paper states its infallibility, but the misprint in its title disclaims it. In other words, for the Slovak audience of the time, the leafet might have functioned as a grotesque subversion of the sacrosanct communist periodical and as a reminder of the 1968 propaganda war. As with the chalk graffti on the walls, the hoax newspaper examined the reliability and value of public media in the state of “ΣFΣZ” – and also the state of Sovietized Czechoslovakia. In the brochure accompanying the production, there is another remarkable picture showing the “City map of ΣFΣZ” (“Plán mesta ΣFΣZu,” see Figure 8.4). Again, this is a pure carnivalesque invention, designed by the dramaturg Margita Mayerová and scenographer Čestmír Pechr, with only a loose relation to the stage design of the production. The locations marked on this fake map continue to play with sexual and with communist vocabulary, idioms, and metaphors. For example, there is “Monastery of burnt out sex” (“Kláštor u vyhasnutého sexu”), “Corner of pleasures and leisure” (“Kút rozkoší a oddychu”), “Wall of permanent construction” (“Múr stálej výstavby”), “Scaffolding of perspectives” (“Lešenie perspektív”), “Temporarily walled-up walls” (“Provizórne zamurované múry”), “The wall of creativity” (“Múr tvorivosti”), “Planned city ZOO” (“Plánovaná mestská ZOO”), and so on. Besides sexual connotations, some of these names cite the contemporaneous common ideological terms suggesting progress and a delineated socialist way of life (“perspective,” “construction,” “planned,” “permanent,” “leisure”).24 Yet there is a subversive aspect in creating new phrases such as “permanent construction” (suggesting never-ending unproductive work) and “scaffolding of perspectives” (an unstable

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Figure 8.4 City map of ΣFΣZ, drawing by Čestmír Pechr, 1971, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

labile framework). The term “temporarily walled-up walls” mocks the well-known “provisional solutions” of the Communist regime that are never taken up again and remain forever: despite planned economy, the incapacity to face trivial problems led to a disorganization of the country that was commonly referred to as the “perpetual state of makeshift.” The “temporarily walled-up walls” also invoke the most popular joke of the time related to the 1968 Soviet military invasion, which was offcially claimed to be “temporary.” The joke went as follows: “What is the unit to measure the temporality? Answer: One ‘forever.’ ” The factual point of reference for the “temporarily walled-up walls” was, of course, the blocked border to the West – the infamous Iron Curtain. Moreover, at least in Slovak, the pleonasm “walled-up walls” is nonsense (there cannot be a wall which is not walled up). The whole “City of ΣFΣZ” on this picture is surrounded by walls. And once one starts asking what this city map of imagination of 1971 was fed by, one may fnd a striking similarity with the centre of East Berlin: the wall line of “ΣFΣZ” roughly repeats the Berlin Wall in the north, west, and south.

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In the Western wall of “ΣFΣZ,” there is an opening named “The main city gate called Desire” (“Hlavná mestská brána zvaná Túžba”). The designers marked it with an explicit sexual image, a penis clearly visible in the bottom left corner, and yet, verbally and geographically, this allusion might invoke other associations too: with the gate located in the West, not only does this map of “ΣFΣZ” resemble the city map of “Berlin Hauptstadt der DDR” (the capital of the German Democratic Republic, i.e. of the Eastern part of Germany under the Soviet control), but also the main gate of “ΣFΣZ” might evoke the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin – which was literally a “gate of desire” for people within the wall during the era of the Cold War. The Brandenburg Gate (itself a neoclassical monument from the eighteenth century) became part of the Berlin Wall built in 1961 and thus the strongest symbol of the divided postwar Germany and of the Iron Curtain between East and West during the Cold War. For 28 years, the Berlin Wall was closed for crossing. For the people in the Sovietized German Democratic Republic, the Brandenburg Gate symbolized the desirable yet unachievable gate to freedom and democracy. The potential association with East Berlin “walled up” by a wall is created not only by the strictly observed national borders of Shakespeare’s play but also by the suggestion, in the Slovak translation used by theatre, of a physical obstruction. In The Comedy of Errors, there are two towns at enmity: Ephesus and Syracuse. Separating Ephesus (located at the continent, now in Turkey) from Syracuse (on the island of Sicily) by a wall would be geographical nonsense (admittedly, not rare in Shakespeare). The play mentions only a traffc ban and a possible commerce embargo between them (both Greek once), reinforced by a harsh law for visitors with an impending death penalty or ransom: For since the mortal and intestine jars ’Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us It hath in solemn synods been decreed Both by the Syracusians and ourselves To admit no traffc to our adverse towns Nay, more: If any born at Ephesus be seen At any Syracusian marts and fairs; Again, if any Syracusian born Come to the bay of Ephesus – he dies, His goods confscate to the Duke’s dispose, Unless a thousand marks be levièd To quit the penalty and ransom him. (Comedy of Errors, 1.1.11–23, emphasis mine)

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Yet the Slovak translation suggests a wall between Ephesus and Syracuse: Odkedy krutý, neľútostný spor postavil hrádzu medzi naše mestá, vydali naše slávne synody, tak v Syrakúzach, ako v Efeze vzájomný zákaz obchodne sa stýkať. (Komédia omylov, 1.1 emphasis mine) The second line, “postavil hrádzu medzi naše mestá,” translates back into English as follows: “[the dispute] built up a dam between our towns.” The “no traffc,” and the ban to appear at “marts and fairs,” became in Slovak an explicit “business embargo” (“zákaz obchodne sa stýkať”). Read against the backdrop of the time, the translation indeed suggests a similarity between Ephesus and the divided city of Berlin, and it invites the audience to read themselves into the play.25 The production photographs show further elements of the stage design with strong political connotations that could not be voiced openly in the contemporaneous critical discourse. On the revolving stage stand some crouched housings made of straw. Above and in front of this shapeless mishmash appear some sort of white torsi or ruins (see Figure 8.5 and 8.6). What do these white circular torsi invoke? It is neither the ancient Greece of Shakespeare’s story nor Central Europe and its local architecture: churches in Central Europe do not have circular piers like these. These torsi rather seem to bring to mind Russian orthodox churches: here the golden domes are absent (probably long stolen), and some of the piers are being used as chairs or tables. This stage design offers a spectacle of desacralization – offering a picture of a world blithely neglecting and destroying cultural traditions, a world without faith and sublimity. This is, after all, precisely how the Communists treated Christian religious heritage; in an act of grotesque profanation, church piers could be (and routinely were) repurposed as a piece of furniture. Not only Christian orthodox tradition but also ancient Greek tradition are desecrated in this scene: the upside-down Corinthian capitals in the front of the stage (see Figure 8.7), maybe even made of straw, serve here as execution blocks of those who entered “ΣFΣZ” illegally from Syracuse. Here the epitomes of religious (piers from churches) and cultural traditions (Corinthian column heads) are degraded to serve pragmatic purposes (to sit on or to execute on). This is a grim sneer at the decay and fall of the foundations of the Western culture.26 Other strong visual references to Russia include the outer decoration of the “Centaur inn” (see Figure 8.6 and 8.8), which looks like a joking reference to the abacus, a counting frame still widely used in the Soviet

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Figure 8.5 Eva Krížiková as Adriana, The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

Russia in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember this from my past: for us, the abacus used in the USSR seemed a sign of backwardness, terribly out of date and ridiculous. Here the beads hanging in front of the tavern suggest a mockery of business transactions where counting is a mere decoration. The next photograph, baffing at frst glance, shows the character of Doctor Pinch – schoolmaster, physician, and exorcist (see Figure 8.9). Yet following the line of possible Russian connotations, the most probable model for this character was Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, widely

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Figure 8.6 The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

Figure 8.7 The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

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Figure 8.8 The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

renowned for his autocracy and brutality. Pinch’s whole appearance (mask, long garment, expression) resembles the fgure of Ivan the Terrible on the portrait of Victor Vasnetsov (1897). The people around him – his servants? – may recall the image of the “Oprichniki,” the members of the

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Figure 8.9 František Zvarík as Doctor Pinch, The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, © Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

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Tsar’s loyal personal forces, who terrorized the civil population and committed extreme atrocities. In Shakespeare’s play, Pinch appears only once and has no more than 12 lines of text. But his physical methods, as well as some of his recipes for curing lunacy – through restraint and isolation (4.4.92), easily justify this visual association. Although in the photograph, Pinch holds a huge book, it can hardly be an intellectual piece: in the hands of such a tyrant, it rather might suggest a criminal code. Linking Pinch to such a disreputable person from Russian history might have occurred as a sudden idea during the rehearsals27; nevertheless, along with the other cultural references in the design, it added to the sense of oppressive power and social policing associated specifcally with Russia. On the stage, there is a turmoil of crouched shabby buildings – as if under permanent, never-ending, disorganized construction, using provisional, unsuitable materials of low quality and as if creating a haphazard patchwork to plug holes rather than to build a house (see Figure 8.10). Blocks to build the walls are made of straw or natural ropes. Straw, immediately invoking images of the harvest, was used in the communist propaganda promoting “the state of workers and peasants.” In the Slovak language, there are idioms connecting straw with backwardness and cultural defciency, as well as occasionally with fimsily constructed illusions, as with the famous Potemkin villages in Russia, back in 1787, purportedly constructed of straw to create an illusion of sturdy buildings for Catherine the Great’s visit. For contemporary reviewer Ján Jaborník, the turmoil and housings of “ΣFΣZ” evoked a sort of Oriental bazaar, “mixing up Orient with Europe”28 (and the director’s preparatory notes confrm this idea29) – a legitimate reading of the geography of Shakespeare’s story. Today, in the light of all factors discussed earlier, another similarity suggests itself, namely to the architectural havoc produced by the communist restructuring. In the context of the production, these two metaphors are not necessarily contradictory. They ft seamlessly into the director’s grim vision of what was happening with Czechoslovakia “after the Russians came”: the downfall of the civilization – social, cultural, and material. The attempt to revise the East–West divide was grounded in a philosophical controversy challenging the widespread stereotype of binary opposition between East (Orient) and West, with Eastern Europe belonging to the “other,” to Orient, as suggested by Larry Wolff’s concept of demi-Orientalization.30 Contradicting the binary, there were – and still are – strong tendencies for reconceptualizing the position of Czechoslovakia in this model. This was achieved either by placing Czechoslovakia culturally in the West category, as opposed to Russia, seen to belong to the culturally other East (Orient), or by conceptualizing it as Central Europe, an “in-between” country, a sort of junction between East and

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Figure 8.10 The Comedy of Errors, Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava Source: Photo by Anton Šmotlák, 1971, Jana B. Wild, courtesy of the Theatre Institute Bratislava

West. This dilemma is heavily shaped by the political circumstances: all opponents of the 1968 invasion were certainly more likely to stress the affliation of Czechoslovakia to the West. One of the most prominent texts pronouncing this idea expressis verbis is the essay “The Tragedy

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of Central Europe,” written much later, in the Orwellian year 1984, by the well-known Czech writer Milan Kundera, and published in the US.31 Kundera explains the present “tragic” situation of the Central European countries (Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary), subjugated after 1945 to Russian communist hegemony yet situated “culturally in the West” (33). These countries were “kidnapped, displaced, and brainwashed” (33); from their point of view – that is, from “the Eastern border of the West” (34) – “Russia is seen . . . as a singular civilization, an other civilization” (34); the “totalitarian Russian civilization,” concludes Kundera, “is the radical negation of the modern West” (37). Though with a much greater sense of complexity, Václav Havel also drew connections between the late socialism and the “East,” stating that “several of its long-established structural features are derived from Czarist absolutism”32 and practices similar to those of the Byzantine Empire. The production seems to have dwelt heavily on this controversy, suggesting that imposing Communist rule and cultural practices from Russia would move the country towards the ferocious Orient, dragging it down to a semi-civilized level. Therefore, the stage image resembling an Oriental bazaar with so many visual references to Russia and to devastated cultural heritage is likely to have expressed a fear of where the communist hegemony (coming from the Russian “Orient”) may lead. One of the epitomes of the communist achievements of that period were standardized blocks of fats built of prefabricated panels to provide unifed homes for members of the classless society. The propaganda used them to promote the workers’ attainment. The housings on the NT stage point to the architectural practice of those days; however, blocks made of straw also amplify a poor quality of material and a chaotic disorder. Thus, these elements, blending industry with agriculture, panels with straw, grotesquely mock the worshipped happy union of workers and peasants.33 And fnally, in the set design of Čestmír Pechr, there is another visual element downgrading the communist ideology: in an open jeer, the fags (see Figure 8.1, on the left), a proud symbol of collective identity, are hardly more than dirty laundry obscenely hanging out of windows. The photographs, unfortunately, shed little light on the ending of the play. Shakespeare’s play – ironically – “ends with a verbal and visual emphasis on brotherly love”34 based on egality between twin brothers. For the citizens in Czechoslovakia, the events of and after August 1968 brought a different lesson of “brotherly” love. Although George Orwell was a taboo and hardly known there in those times, everybody knew that the “brotherly help” rendered by the Soviet Big Brother was far from egality. There was another common joke idiom in circulation through the 1970s and 1980s. “Question: ‘Should we share it as brothers?’ Answer: ‘No, I would prefer 50-50.’ ”

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Summing Up Visually, the production suggested and grotesquely exaggerated the state of the country and the impending “Eastern” infuences after the intervention of the Soviet military troops in 1968. A potpourri of visual references (ancient Greek architecture, Russian orthodox churches, the Berlin Wall, protest graffti, the Russian Tsar, the Russian counting frame, communist newspapers, communist architecture, and so on) offered a dystopian picture of a profane, rude world deprived of dignity and cultural memory. The hurly-burly society of mistaken identities where nobody is what they seem clearly held a mirror up to the nature of the “normalized” society after the Prague Spring had been stifed: an everyday messy world of common people, full of embarrassment, silly insults, permanent improvisation, double life,35 and “dissemination of philistine values.”36 It does not come as a surprise that none of the allusions just mentioned have been picked up by the contemporary critics: discoveries like this would have put the whole production at risk. Some of the reviewers noted the “mocking grimace”37 and “the wrinkled face of scepticism”38 and described the production as showing “a small world out of joint . . . with no paint of civilisation anymore.”39 And yet after the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the ban of the “fgure 1968” had been lifted,40 there was nobody who would remember the “spikes and arrows” of this version of The Comedy of Errors, not even of those who recalled its farcical vitality.41 Thus, there is still doubt as to who had actually noticed the subversive visual references. Perhaps, for the contemporary audience, the overdetermination of the production was less visible than it is now. Perhaps it needs to be read as a palimpsest: when viewed from a distance of nearly half a century, it prompts the observer to load the material evidence with one’s own memory of the period, albeit fragmented. In helping to understand the value of visual objects for communicating cultural memory, as well as the possible value of individual memory, this chapter also points to the defciency of written mainstream narratives and to the value of individual memories that “can also act as case studies.”42 In public opinion, farce or comedy have little signifcance, because they lack historical weight and the revolutionary pathos of a tragedy: this might be part of a reason why The Comedy of Errors is not remembered as a landmark production. And yet it predicted a political shift to the era after 1968 which Alexei Yurchak calls late socialism. That period of time in Czechoslovakia, as endorsed by some other recent historians,43 should not be viewed from the point of binary oppositions (victims/offenders, regime/society, state/inhabitants, power/public44). Instead, as the term “normalization” suggests, it should rather be conceptualized as the consolidation of authority based on everyday negotiations between people,45 groups, and institutions, within the given totalitarian structure. The Comedy of Errors as farcical implicitly showed the functioning of the

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regime from the perspective of everydayness, where there are no heroes, victims, or mindboggling crimes: not a grand narrative but rather a broken mirror.46

The Production Data William Shakespeare: Komédia omylov (The Comedy of Errors). Translation: Jozef Kot. Director: Jozef Budský. Scenography: Čestmír Pechr. Costumes and masks: Stanislava Vaníčková. Music: Juraj Beneš. Dramaturg: Margita Mayerová. Cast: Karol Skovay (Solinus), Juraj Sarvaš (Egeon), Michal Dočolomanský (Antifolus efezský), Ivan Mistrík (Antifolus syrakúzsky), Leopold Haverl (Dromio efezský), Anton Mrvečka (Dromio syrakúzsky), Ondrej Jariabek (Baltazár), Juraj Paška (Angelo), Marián Gallo (1. kupec), Juraj Šebok (2. kupec), František Zvarík (Doktor Trieska), Juraj Slezáček (Strážnik), Alojz Kramár (Posol), Jozef Šimonovič (Žalárnik), Eva Krížiková (Adriana), Emília Vášáryová (Luciana), Vladimír Durdík (Lucia), Eva Kristínová (Kurtizána), Oľga Budská (Emília) and others. Premiere: March 20, 1971, Bratislava. Part of the repertory and performed to March 1976.

Notes 1 Štefan Šugár, “Nezabudnuteľná a predsa zabudnutá: Margita Mayerová,” Slovenské divadlo 61, no. 4 (2013): 447. The theatre historian Ján Jaborník called Mayerová “the main architect of the artistic profle of the National Theatre of the 1960s”: see Ján Jaborník, “Vášeň, telo, hlas” (Unpublished Manuscript, Divadelný ústav Bratislava, 2004), 148. 2 G. R. [Gabriel Rapoš], “Shakespearova Komédia omylov v DPOH,” Práca 30, no. 3 (1971): 6. 3 F.-A. [Leopold Fiala], “120 minút smiechu: V znamení otázky ‘Kto to je?’ ” Hlas ľudu 5, no. 4 (1971): 6. 4 B.-K. [Jozef Bobok], “Nosatá komédia,” Život 14, no. 4 (1971): 16. 5 Ladislav Obuch, “Veselé Shakespearove omyly,” Večerník 22, no. 3 (1971): 8. 6 F.-A., “120 minút smiechu,” 6. 7 AGO, “Budský v znamení Blížencov . . . Režíroval Shakespeare?” Ľud 24, no. 3 (1971): 6. 8 For example, the students’ revolts in Germany and France, Martin Luther King’s assassination in the US, and so on. As for the Eastern bloc, Alexei Yurchak notes that “The Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia . . . 1968 is often considered the symbolic divide between the two [shorter periods of late socialism],” Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 31. 9 For the complexity of censorship and self-censorship, see Tomáš Pavlíček, Petr Píša, and Michael Wögerbauer, eds., Nebezpečná literatura? Antologie z myšlení o literární cenzuře (Brno: Host, 2012); or Peter Zajac, Slovenské kargo (Bratislava: Kalligram, 2016), 184–190; or Michael Wögerbauer, Petr Píša, Petr Šámal, and Pavel Janáček a kol., eds., V obecném zájmu: Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře 1749–2014, Vol. 2,

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1938–2014 (Praha: Academia, Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2015), 1155–1233. Anna Cetera, “ ‘Be Patient Till the Last’: The Censor’s Lesson on Shakespeare,” in “In Double Trust”: Shakespeare in Central Europe, ed. Jana Bžochová-Wild (Bratislava: VŠMU, 2014), 129. Dirk Delabastita, Jozef de Vos, and Paul Franssen, eds., Shakespeare and European Politics (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 22. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price, “Introduction: When Worlds Collide: Shakespeare and Communisms,” in Shakespeare in the World of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 6. Alexander Shurbanov and Boika Sokolova, Painting Shakespeare Red: An East-European Appropriation (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, and London: Associated University Presses, 2001), 28. See, for example, Jana Bžochová-Wild, “Budského objavovanie Shakespeara,” in Poetika a politika: Umenie a päťdesiate roky, ed. Jelena Paštéková (Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press, 2004), 155–180. Mayerová probably knew that The Comedy of Errors would be her last work, because due to the “normalization” sanctions, her employment contract was terminated a couple months later, and she was never allowed to work in the theatre again. As for the director Jozef Budský, he stayed in the NT until 1976, staging fve more productions and fnally taking his farewell with a sarcastic autobiographical interpretation of The Clown’s Comedy (Šašovská komédia – a Russian play based on the story of Till Eulenspiegel by Grigori Gorin). Diving into my memory, it is necessary to outline my story too. The events of August 1968 (I was six years old then) brought a radical change into the life of our family. As a consequence of his political stand, my father, Jozef Bžoch, the leading literary critic and translator of German and French literature, was arrested for two weeks. Afterwards, he lost his job in the Academy of Sciences, had to take on a manual labour job in a building lot, and was lucky enough then to fnd employment in a construction offce until 1977. Both he and my mother, Perla Bžochová, translator of German literature, were not allowed to publish their works or translations until the late 1970s. During that time, many of their former friends turned away from them or left the country. More than often, I witnessed my mother astounded when meeting former friends/colleagues who pretended not to see or to know her or my father reading about his colleagues who committed themselves to socialist realism and values that they had despised previously. To keep themselves above water, my parents produced translations under their friends’ names (who were not connected to the opposition, at least not publicly). The overall dismal experience of that time suggested that nobody was who they had been before and that one’s public face had to differ from the private one. See Joan Tumblety, ed., Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2013). Susan A. Crane, “The Pictures in the Background: History, Memory and Photography in the Museum,” in ed. Tumblety, Memory and History, 123. Joan Tumblety, “Introduction: Working With Memory and Source and Object,” in ed. Tumblety, Memory and History, 11. Ibid, 13. Ibid, 11. Available at the website of the public law institution Nation’s Memory Institute (Ústav pamäti národa). www.upn.gov.sk/en.

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23 See, for example, the Photogallery for August 1968 of the Ústav pamäti národa (Nation’s Memory Institute) under www.upn.gov.sk/august-68/ fotogaleria.html. 24 For a detailed analysis of common metaphors or block writing, see Vladimír Macura, Šťastný věk (a jiné studie o socialistické kultuře) (Praha: Academia, 2008); and Yurchak, 2005. 25 The NT used a new translation, by Jozef Kot, offcially published later, in 1975. Kot, who was active in the 1970s and 1980s with 19 new translations from Shakespeare, is not highly regarded, due to his too unwieldy and reductive language. During the Communist regime, he established a Shakespeare monopoly for himself through his strong political position. The association to the divided Berlin which his translation suggests must have happened fully unintentionally. It is a true irony of fate that at least two of his translations served as stage texts for politically highly subversive productions (The Comedy of Errors, 1971, and Hamlet, 1974). 26 Much later, after the last revisions of this chapter, I discovered striking similarities to The Comedy of Errors staged in Bulgaria by Lyuben Grois in 1976. The following is how Alexander Shurbanov and Boika Sokolova describe it: His Comedy of Errors (1976) was an especially astute study of the [Brezhnev era] situation. Even the set was a surprise to the . . . audience. The stage was flled with classical architectural ruins rising amidst objects of everyday life: A broken pillar was crowned with a chopping board, the chopper stuck into it, the ground was strewn with corncobs and pumpkins. All this was enclosed with a screen of rushes. . . . the unlikely combination of disparate elements created a sense of a ruined civilization on whose remains there thrived much less dignifed forms of existence. Degradation and profanation, the abandonment of lofty emotion for objects of daily comfort was the central metaphor of the production. At a time of complete disillusionment with the stale socialist ideal and a general conviction that it had been turned to a sham, the image was unequivocal. (220–221) 27 A quarter century earlier, in 1947, Jozef Budský staged the historical drama Ivan the Terrible of Aleksey K. Tolstoy at the NT. This play was also known from an earlier staging by Stanislavski in Moscow (1899). There is no doubt that the costume for Doctor Pinch in The Comedy of Errors designed by Stanislava Vaníčková was inspired by the well-known portrait of Ivan the Terrible by Victor Vasnetsov (1897). Yet it is not clear who came up with that idea. There is also the intriguing (but unsupported) possibility that the 1971 Shakespeare production used the same piece of garment as Ivan the Terrible staged in 1947. Interestingly enough, in The Comedy of Errors, there was a substantial change in cast. According to the frst director’s draft, the character of Doctor Pinch had been allocated to the actor Ivan Mistrík (age 36). This, however, had been changed during the rehearsals, and Pinch was cast by František Zvarík, who was older (50) and a well- known actor and opera singer with an impressive bass voice and an exceptionally tall stature. This fact may suggest that the idea of visual references to Russian culture evolved during the process of actual work and rehearsals. 28 J.-K. [Ján Jaborník], “Javisko plné zmätkov,” Večerník 15, no. 3 (1971): 8. 29 “As if the whole set of the play was a sort of present-day Oriental bazaar where a huge variety of goods is sold”: see Jozef Budský, “Komédia omylov” (Unpublished introduction to the staging, dated October 1, 1970), 1. 30 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).

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31 Milan Kundera, “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” trans. Edmund White, New York Review of Books 31, no. 7 (April 26, 1984): 33–37. Available also https://nyuskirball.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Kundera_1984.pdf. 32 Václav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless,” written in October 1978, trans. Paul Wilson, par. II. Available at Havel’s offcial website www.vaclavhavel.cz/ showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html&typ=HTML. 33 In the communist heraldry, the most typical and widely used symbols representing workers and peasantry were hammer and sickle. 34 Stanley Wells, “Introduction,” in The New Penguin Shakespeare, the Comedy of Errors (London: Penguin, 1972, rpt. 1981), 38. 35 Pavel Kolář and Michal Pullmann, Co byla normalizace? Studie o pozdním socialismu (Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny a Ústav pro studium totalitních režimu, 2016), 50. 36 Shurbanov and Sokolova, Painting Shakespeare Red, 115. 37 Zoltán Rampák, “Shakespeare vzdialený aj sprítomnený,” Film a divadlo 15, no. 11 (1971): 24–25. 38 Alexander Reis, “Jubilantské extempore,” Bojovník 17, no. 4 (1971): 5. 39 Katarína Hrabovská, “Efez náš špatnokrásny,” Nové slovo 18, no. 4 (1971): 12. 40 Through the 1970s and 1980s, even the number or fgure “1968” was suspicious. 41 Unfortunately, in 2016, when I started my research on the 1971 The Comedy of Errors, it was no longer possible to interview any of the reviewers. In 2001, in the collection of essays commemorating Jozef Budský (edited by Podmaková), none of the critics indicated any subversive potential for the production. Possibly the actors’ farcical vitality in a way overshadowed the poignancy of the images. None of the actors even mentioned the production in their reminiscences. They all assigned importance to Budský’s “moreserious” productions. See Dagmar Podmaková, ed., Jozef Budský, herec, režisér, pedagóg (Bratislava: Kabinet divadla a flmu SAV, 2001). 42 Lindsey Dodd, “Small Fish, Big Pond: Using a Single Oral History Narrative to Reveal Broader Social Change,” in ed. Tumblety, Memory and History, 40. 43 Kolář and Pullmann, Co byla normalizace? 44 Ibid, 21. 45 Ibid, 40. 46 Ibid, 24.

Works Cited AGO. “Budský v znamení Blížencov . . . Režíroval Shakespeare?” Ľud 24, no. 3 (1971): 6. B.-K. [Bobok, Jozef]. “Nosatá komédia.” Život 14, no. 4 (1971): 16. Budský, Jozef. “Komédia omylov.” From the estate of Jozef Budský. Unpublished introduction to the staging, dated October 1, 1970. Bžochová-Wild, Jana. “Budského objavovanie Shakespeara.” In Poetika a politika: Umenie a päťdesiate roky, edited by Jelena Paštéková. 155–180. Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press, 2004. Cetera, Anna. “ ‘Be Patient Till the Last’: The Censor’s Lesson on Shakespeare.” In “In Double Trust”: Shakespeare in Central Europe, edited by Jana BžochováWild. 129–150. Bratislava: VŠMU, 2014. Delabastita, Dirk, Jozef de Vos, and Paul Franssen, eds. Shakespeare and European Politics. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008.

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Fiala, Leopolod. “120 minút smiechu: V znamení otázky ‘Kto to je?’ ” Hlas ľudu 5, no. 4 (1971): 6. Havel, Václav. “The Power of the Powerless,” translated by Paul Wilson. www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html& typ=HTML. Hrabovská, Katarína. “Efez náš špatnokrásny.” Nové slovo 18, no. 4 (1971): 12. J.-K. [Jaborník, Ján]. “Javisko plné zmätkov.” Večerník 15, no. 3 (1971): 8. Jaborník, Ján. “Vášeň, telo, hlas.” From the estate of Ján Jaborník. Unpublished manuscript, 2004. Kolář, Pavel, and Michal Pullmann. Co byla normalizace? Studie o pozdním socialismu. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny a Ústav pro studium totalitních režimu, 2016. Kundera, Milan. “The Tragedy of Central Europe,” translated by Edmund White. New York Review of Books 31, no. 7 (April 26, 1984): 33–37. Macura, Vladimír. Šťastný věk (a jiné studie o socialistické kultuře). Praha: Academia, 2008. Makaryk, Irene, and Joseph G. Price, eds. Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Obuch, Ladislav. “Veselé Shakespearove omyly.” Večerník 22, no. 3 (1971): 8. Paštéková, Jelena, ed. Poetika a politika: Umenie a päťdesiate roky. Bratislava: Slovak Academic Press, 2004. Pavlíček, Tomáš, Petr Píša, and Michael Wögerbauer, eds. Nebezpečná literatura? Antologie z myšlení o literární cenzuře. Brno: Host, 2012. Podmaková, Dagmar, ed. Jozef Budský, herec, režisér, pedagóg. Bratislava: Kabinet divadla a flmu SAV, 2001. Rampák, Zoltán. “Shakespeare vzdialený aj sprítomnený.” Film a divadlo 15, no. 11 (1971): 24–25. Rapoš, Gabriel. “Shakespearova Komédia omylov v DPOH.” Práca 30, no. 3 (1971): 6. Reis, Alexander. “Jubilantské extempore.” Bojovník 17, no. 4 (1971): 5. Shurbanov, Alexander, and Boika Sokolova. Painting Shakespeare Red: An EastEuropean Appropriation. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2001. Šugár, Štefan. “Nezabudnuteľná a predsa zabudnutá: Margita Mayerová.” Slovenské divadlo 61, no. 4 (2013): 447–450. Tumblety, Joan, ed. Memory and History: Understanding Memory as Source and Subject. London and New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Wells, Stanley. “Introduction.” In The New Penguin Shakespeare, the Comedy of Errors. 7–38. London: Penguin, 1972; rpt. 1981. Wögerbauer, Michael, Petr Píša, Petr Šámal, and Janáček Pavel, eds. V obecném zájmu: Cenzura a sociální regulace literatury v moderní české kultuře 1749–2014, Vols. 1–2. Praha: Academia, Ústav pro českou literaturu AV ČR, 2015. Wolff, Larry. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005. Zajac, Peter. Slovenské kargo. Bratislava: Kalligram, 2016.

The Soviet Past After the Collapse

The collapse of the USSR plunged the republics, utterly unprepared for the return of private property and enterprise, into social, cultural, and economic chaos. What ensued throughout the 1990s was, in Stephen Kotkin’s evocative phrase, “a cannibalization of the Soviet era,” with the rapid privatization of state property and with an infux of ineffectual economic reforms intended as a move towards stability.1 The frst president of postSoviet Russia, Boris Yeltsin, active in the dissolution of the USSR, has been accused of mismanagement and corruption. He resigned from power at the end of 1999, appointing Vladimir Putin, a former KGB offcial, as his successor. Putin remains a controversial president. He is credited with having stabilized the Russian economy, but having circumvented the constitutional two-term limit by stepping down from the position of prime minister during 2008–2012, with Dmitry Medvedev as the president, he is now nearing the end of his third term. There are, as a result, understandable concerns about Russia becoming, yet again, a totalitarian state. Present-day Russia has a vexed relationship with its Soviet past. Especially in recent years, following a series of economic crises and a palpable worsening in its relationships with the West, there is a sense of nostalgia for what is perceived as a time of global prominence and internal cohesion. Public polls show that over the past several years, Russian citizens have begun to express increased respect for Stalin, opining that his role in the history of Russia has been benefcial for the country and its people.2 At the same time, there are few families in Russia today that have not been affected by one or another repressive Soviet policy, and memories of ideological pressure in arts and humanities are still vivid. A hundred years after the October Revolution, the USSR is very much on everybody’s mind, and post-collapse scholarly, literary, and theatrical engagements with Shakespeare continue to grapple with the echoes of Soviet interpretative strategies.

Notes 1 Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 117.

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2 See the poll published electronically on April 19, 2019, by the Levada Center, an independent, not-for-proft research institution in Moscow, with strong links to Western academia. The English version of the poll results, translated by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (formerly Monterey Institute of International Studies), can be accessed at www.levada. ru/en/2019/04/19/dynamic-of-stalin-s-perception/.

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Laughing at Tragedy Elena Chizhova’s Critique of Popular Shakespeare Sabina Amanbayeva

How was Shakespeare staged during the Soviet period, specifcally the 1960s, the period of “thaw” and relative political liberation that occurred after the death of Stalin? What did Soviet Shakespeare – as performed, debated, or written about in Soviet contexts – contribute to our understanding of Shakespeare? Elena Chizhova’s post-Soviet novel Kroshki Zaches (2000) presents the case of a post-Soviet writer who remembers her childhood experience of acting in Shakespeare’s plays in a Leningrad high school in the 1960s. Her memories of Soviet Shakespeare are fltered through her adult perspective as someone who lived through the collapse of the USSR while feeling alienated from the Soviet reality. Still, the story she tells of Soviet Shakespeare and of what it meant to her as a young high school student is neither simply anti-Soviet nor fervently prodemocratic. The novel serves as an indictment of Soviet Shakespeare, but it also resists the Western democratic idea of Shakespeare for all. A contemporary Russian writer who is famous for her critique of offcial Soviet history, Chizhova is adamant in her rejection of popular Shakespeare in any form. Her novel mocks Soviet audiences who reveal their ignorance by laughing not only at farcical renditions of Shakespeare’s plays but also at Western visitors who allegedly fnd these degrading adaptations equally appealing. For Chizhova, the Soviet Shakespeare explores a problem common to Western democracies as well as to the Soviet effort to make Shakespeare a poet of the working class: Is it possible to make Shakespeare popular without sacrifcing such as qualities as linguistic complexity and historical nuance? Is it still “Shakespeare” if we try to make his plays comprehensible to all and relevant to distinctively modern problems? Is Shakespeare really for “all time,” as Ben Jonson once said? The narrator’s performance of Richard III is a case in point: for the teenage narrator playing Anne in the seduction scene with the Duke of Gloucester, the experience is transformative. It teaches the young narrator what it is like to fall in love with an evil man, a murderer of her own husband and father-in-law. However, this dark message is completely misinterpreted by Soviet audiences. On one hand, the English teacher (F.) explains to the young actor that “There is nothing sweeter than the

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loyalty of a villain when that villain is devoted to you. Against the whole world.”1 The girl is captivated by her teacher’s explanation of the psychological complexity of evil and Lady Anne’s seduction by it. She imagines Anne’s gradual breaking of resistance under the force of Richard, and as she does so, her voice becomes Anne’s voice. The narrator continues in frst person: “Horror is my last drop of innocence. I will shout my horror out to his face, right into his ironic, deferential look.” Anne, of course, later succumbs to Richard’s courtship, and the narrator continues imagining what it is like to love a villain, “Love in the black body, in the black glove, squeezing my hand into a fst. My hands – in his hands, in the hands of a killer taking a bouquet of fowers.” The dark story of a woman falling in love with a murderer makes the audience in the narrator’s Soviet school uncomfortable, but only for a moment. The offcial Soviet dogma, in its Marxist foundation, insisted on external causes of all internal problems, and offcials generally preferred positive stories in accord with the socialist realist framework. Therefore, the English teacher’s insistence on Richard’s evil and, moreover, on Anne’s seduction by this man, poses a potential problem for the socialist realist framework. Luckily for the English teacher and her student, the school offcials fail to react to the performance appropriately. For a moment, the school principal is troubled, but the next performance is a dance – “Slow harpsicord sounds. Two couples, hand in hand, dancing with ease and grace. Two pink dresses, two pink gowns” – and the principal “calmed down, was consoled by it, and started to smile at the ease and beauty of the performance.”2 The harmony implied in the next performance revives the spirits of the school principal, and she stops thinking about the narrator’s disruptive enactment of Anne from Richard III. The rest of the public receives a different message: the parents of the boy who plays Richard think that “Anne,” or the narrator, is in love with their son. They intervene after the performance and call the teacher, making sure to say that “whatever happens, the man is always the one at fault.”3 The parents’ assumption that “Anne” acted out of the love for the actor and not for the evil Richard III confrms the narrator’s belief in the superfciality of audience response. While she relates to the predicament of Anne as a problem of existential evil, others simply speculate about her crush on the lead actor. In turn, others, like the school principal, brush any unpleasant moments away in order to celebrate the harmony onstage and supposedly in life. This scene illustrates the tension between “offcial” and “undercover” Shakespeare throughout the book: the meanings that Shakespeare delivers to the young girl remain secret and not understood by the majority of viewers. Where she sees drama and existential confict in Shakespeare’s plays, the rest of the audience sees two teenagers falling in love, a depressing performance, or simply an incomprehensible scene. Being continuously misunderstood, the young narrator despairs of ever fnding a common

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language with her peers and teachers (except her English teacher), and she immerses herself deeper into the English language and Shakespeare as a way to separate herself from what she perceives as superfcial Soviet audiences. The story of Kroshki Zaches argues that Soviet Shakespeare deserves critique not because the Soviet project of Shakespeare for all does not work but because it works too well. The novel shows that Soviet audiences love the reduced and simplifed Shakespeare, while the young narrator is the only one who sees something bigger in Shakespeare than pure entertainment. In an interview published in the collection S glazu na glaz [Tête-à-tête], Chizhova explained that Kroshki Zaches was based on her personal experience in a Leningrad school and that it refects her formative experiences as a writer: This novel [Kroshki Zaches] had several goals. . . . You know, after so many years of bad Soviet jargon, each generation comes to its Russian language in its own way. The Brodsky generation had a chance to touch, over the heads of several generations, the Silver Age of Russian literature. My generation came to our own Russian language to a large degree through Westerns writers and translated Western writers. Because by the time that is being portrayed [in the novel], the way Russian literature was taught in Soviet school was greatly polluted. In any case, strangely, I really started reading Russian classics only when I was over thirty.4 In this statement, Chizhova portrays the Soviet period as an aberration that interrupted the course of the Russian literary tradition, and she argues that she needed to reach out to the Western canon to develop as a writer. Just like the narrator of Kroshki Zaches, Chizhova asserts that English was her frst language, at least for a while, and that, as an artist, she embraced the Russian language only later. This striking assertion mirrors the experience of the young narrator in Kroshki Zaches who uses Shakespeare as a shield from the mockery of her Soviet classmates and fnds her artistic voice through her performances of Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s texts offer the young narrator a refuge in the Soviet school, where she feels different and ostracized from her surroundings. Moreover, Shakespeare gives her a language to express herself: the young actor is able to fnd her identity and express her love for F., the English teacher, through Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. She lives through her fctive heroines: her performance of Maria is so brilliant because the role – as Olivia’s gentlewoman, sly and giggling on the side – appealed “to something that was already in me. F. only needs to set the tone, augment a gesture, polish a turn, or a look, and it comes out, acquires a life.”5 Disregarding national and linguistic boundaries, the narrator asserts that acting in Shakespeare’s plays and speaking English is in some sense more

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native and congenial to her very being than the Russian language and the Soviet environment. The deep relationship to her roles allows the young actor to live through her heroines more than she lives in “real life.” Even though her roles are not real in a physical sense, they are more meaningful to her than anything she experiences elsewhere. Silent and alienated from the most of her classmates, the narrator is able to “speak” through the English language and her roles as Shakespeare’s heroines. In this regard, Elena Pogorelova makes an insightful remark: “the process of the birth of a word out of muteness” is a problem that concerns all Chizhova’s novels. Contrasting Chizhova’s earlier Lavra with her later novel Vremia Zhenshchin, Pogorelova suggests that Chizhova in Lavra, with her deliberate deafness and accentuated “broken consciousness,” is not Chizhova in Vremia Zhenshchin (2009), a novel where the process of the birth of a word out of muteness – painful for the characters of all the previous stories – is fnally happily realized.6 Organizing all of Chizhova’s novels as centred on the problem of fnding one’s voice, Pogorelova sees Kroshki Zaches at the beginning of this journey. But the novel reverses the distinction between foreign and native languages: for the narrator, English is the language in which she is most herself, and her love of Shakespeare – foreign to Soviet reality and thus most her own – is crucial to the narrator’s critique of the Soviet emphasis on collectivity. Aligning herself with Shakespeare allows the girl to imagine herself as an artist and boldly proclaim to her working-class parents, “I want to apply to theater school.”7 Thus, the novel gives voice to a “private” Shakespeare that existed on the margins of Soviet ideology and allegedly enabled dissident Soviet citizens (such as the narrator) to fnd their identity. Chizhova’s Shakespeare is a critique of the Soviet system, which turned Shakespeare into a political weapon for socialism. Moreover, resisting the Soviet attempts to abolish “high culture” as a category, Chizhova offers a forceful expression of cultural elitism, asserting that only a small number of works that are written are worthy of being preserved. It is no coincidence, for example, that the English teacher’s favourite curse word is “janitor” (“dvornik”), a contemptuous label with explicitly low-class connotations, which “she awarded indiscriminately to anyone,” including guests from the regional department of education (“raiono”), Communist Party representatives (“raikom”), education professionals, and occasional Western visitors.8 In an ironic reversal of the Soviet ideal of the international proletariat, Chizova’s Kroshki Zaches advocates for an international body of cultural elite that may or may not include members of the local intelligentsia. The critical tendency has often been to discuss Soviet Shakespeare in binary terms, as either supporting the Soviet dogma of socialist realism

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or transgressing against it, using translation, allegory, and other methods of evading the authorities. The case of Boris Pasternak, perhaps the bestknown translator of the Russian translators of Shakespeare in the West, and Grigori Kozintsev, the director of the acclaimed flm adaptations of Hamlet and King Lear, are especially instructive: these two iconic fgures have been read as voices of the opposition that subtly criticize the Soviet government in their translations and adaptations of Shakespeare’s work.9 But the split between Soviet socialism and the Western ideal of democracy, of course, need not be so stark. Instead of being directed at Soviet ideology per se, Chizhova’s critique of Soviet Shakespeare questions the very idea of making Shakespeare available for all. Projecting deep scepticism about the ability of common people to appreciate “high” art, Kroshki Zaches makes Shakespeare into a sort of secret language, which is accessible only to the elite. If modern Western democracies and Soviet socialism have any belief in common, it is perhaps their faith in the “common people” as the foundation of national cultural life. In this respect, Chizhova’s perspective is strikingly different, because it registers disappointment not only with the Soviet experiment of making Shakespeare available to all but also with the ability of ordinary people to appreciate masterpieces of world literature and art. Chizhova’s rejection of popular Shakespeare mirrors many Western scholars’ unease with Shakespeare in twentieth-century and twenty-frstcentury American culture. Guided by Theodor Adorno’s critique of the “culture industry,” many Western critics similarly reject different forms of popular Shakespeare as reductive and explicitly commercial. Douglas Lanier states in his survey of the critical scholarship on popular Shakespeare that In reviewing the feld, I’m struck by a certain prevailing disenchantment with popular Shakespearean adaptations, the sense that our professional critical authority over Shakespeare has slipped away in the past ffteen years and it can best be wrested back through the unmasking of ideological shortcomings of popular appropriations. . . . From my perspective, what seems lacking is suffcient attention to the liberatory or progressive potentialities . . . the experience of semantic complexity or mobility, or the pleasures of aesthetic or emotional intensity, the qualities, in other words, of entertainment.10 Lanier’s review notes that although “Shakespeareana,” or the study of popular Shakespeare (in flm, comic books, video games, etc.), has been validated as a serious feld of scholarly study, the academic unease with popular Shakespeare has not fully gone away. Surprisingly, the debate about the viability of popular Shakespeare in the West has many parallels with Slavic studies scholars’ discussion of popular or mass Shakespeare in the Soviet Union. For example, Irena R. Makaryk, the editor (together

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with Joseph G. Price) of Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism (2006), comes to a conclusion similar to Chizhova’s critique of Soviet Shakespeare in Kroshki Zaches: Its basic ethos [of the Soviet approach to Shakespeare] – give the masses what they want, or should want, comprehensible theatre – meant that, in a fashion, the revolution in the theatre gave way to the equivalent of what in the West was “the market” – the demands of the box offce, as well as the demands of the party. Makaryk draws a parallel between Soviet Shakespeare and mass-market Shakespeare in the West, arguing that both of them simplify and reduce Shakespeare’s complexity and limit experimental approaches on the part of directors and actors. The goal of Makaryk’s essay is to debunk what she sees as the generally held belief “that the October Revolution was responsible for enfranchising the theatre, and more generally, cultural life.”11 Makaryk’s aim in her opening essay is to show how the prerevolutionary staging of Shakespeare in Ukraine far surpassed, culturally and aesthetically, Soviet Shakespeare. Focusing on a prominent Ukrainian theatre director, Les Kurbas, and the repression of his experimental staging of Shakespeare’s plays, Makaryk defends the sophistication of the Ukrainian national theatre before the Soviet revolution. Similarly, Chizhova’s Kroshki Zaches sees Russian Shakespeare as “broken” by the aberration of Soviet Shakespeare. Like Theodor Adorno’s critique of popular culture in the West and Makaryk’s denigration of Soviet efforts to popularize Shakespeare in Ukraine, Chizhova’s novel makes clear that Soviet Shakespeare is something the post-Soviet writer abhors. The narrator’s aim is to demonstrate what might be called “samizdat” or “undercover Shakespeare,” as it was surreptitiously staged by the lonely experimental theatre director (the narrator’s English teacher F.) in direct contradiction to the Soviet efforts to make Shakespeare “comprehensible” to the people and appealing to the Soviet working class. In Chizhova’s eyes, the Bolsheviks were the force that destroyed authentic high culture in Russia and degraded high art, including Shakespeare, by attempting to cheapen it and make it available to all. In this respect, Chizhova’s stance on Soviet Shakespeare represents a form of cultural resistance to the homogenizing infuence of the socialist realist framework.

Soviet Shakespeare and Chizhova’s Resistance The story of Shakespeare in the Soviet Union is the story of making Shakespeare into a writer of the people. According to the offcial Soviet line on Shakespeare in the 1960s, Shakespeare was a thinker ahead of his time, a Marxist at heart who cared for the poor and the oppressed. So Mikhail Morozov, one of the prominent Soviet Shakespeareans, gives a

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classic picture of Shakespeare as a “great humanist” who “was opposed to the medieval period with its feudal oppression” but who “could not and would not fnd fulfllment of his high humanist ideals in the emerging capitalist relations.”12 Portrayed as a progressive thinker stuck between the feudal forces of the medieval period and the emerging forces of capitalist exploitation of the Renaissance, the “Soviet” Shakespeare was made into a Marxist hero and fghter for the common people. Beginning with the 1934 First Congress of Soviet Writers, socialist realism was proclaimed as the dominant and, indeed, the only acceptable mode of artistic representation, and Shakespeare was gradually assimilated into the socialist realist framework as a “Soviet writer.” Sergei Radlov, a prominent theatre director in the 1930 and 1940s, is representative in the very conventionality of his remarks on Hamlet as an optimistic socialist. Writing in the preface to his 1938 stage version of Hamlet (the play was translated into Russian by his wife, Anna Radlova), Sergei Radlov summarizes the offcial Soviet view on Hamlet: One is surprised at the persistence with which present-day bourgeois Englishman sees in Shakespeare’s tragedies only the dark shades of hopeless despair, completely failing to notice that the portrayal of these sad events is permeated by an internal energy and by the passionate desire to fght for sincere, honest, pure human relationships – indeed, saturated by irreducible optimism.13 In the manner characteristic of “humanist Shakespeare” school of Soviet criticism, Radlov presents Shakespeare’s tragedy as a largely optimistic play, because according to the offcial Soviet line, Shakespeare’s plays look towards the bright future of communism and are “saturated by irreducible optimism.” According to this line of thinking, the Soviet Union was the most direct heir to the progressive vision of Shakespeare, who went far ahead of his early modern peers. Radlov explains that even a play as dark and otherworldly as Hamlet is in fact a piece of Soviet realist fction: Shakespeare is not mysterious, neither is Hamlet. In fact, Hamlet is more of a fghter than a pitiful pessimist, and he does not hate the world, but a very specifc social environment. . . . He is far from being lonely – on the contrary, he is capable of passionate love and pointed hatred. Poor student Horatio, honest poor actors, talented fool Yorick, even simple and brave pirates. . . . He knows how to get along with these people, how to appreciate their artistry and laugh at their jokes – it is not a coincidence that he is so popular among his people.14 Reacting against the tradition of nineteenth-century German Romanticism that largely infuenced Russian interpretations of Hamlet up to

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the October Revolution, Radlov asserts that, on the contrary, Hamlet is “more of a fghter” and then aligns him with the “common” people in the play – students, actors, and even “simple and brave” pirates. Writing Shakespeare into the Marxist vision of history as dominated by class struggle and leading to the eventual victory of the proletariat, Soviet writers conventionally (though not always sincerely) reimagined Shakespeare’s tragedies as latent comedies and presented Shakespeare’s heroes as fghting for the ideals of the Soviet Socialist Revolution. In the article aptly named “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism,” Arkady Ostrovsky asserts, “By 1944 Shakespeare had become part of Soviet mythology. In the strict literary hierarchy of the 1930s, Shakespeare was on the top of Olympus – along with Pushkin and Gorkii.”15 Given this importance of Shakespeare to the Soviet project of appropriating world heritage for the people, Chizhova’s skepticism about popular Shakespeare is certainly anti-Soviet, but it also throws a shadow of doubt on the idea of “popular Shakespeare” as a whole. After all, rather than being primarily a critique of the Soviet government and its efforts at handling Shakespeare, the novel directs its criticism at audiences who fnd Soviet Shakespeare all too satisfying. It questions the cost of collectivity, the very project of making Shakespeare accessible to all.

Whose Shakespeare? Collective Art vs Elite Audiences Chizhova borrows the title “Kroshki Zaches” from E. T. A. Hoffman’s 1819 German fairy tale “Klein Zaches gennant Zinnober” or “Little Zaches called Zinnober.” The title serves as the proclamation of the novel’s core message: the USSR is a show-off, a false image of power and super-achievement which hides an ugly monster (the lack of education, crowds, farcical Shakespeare) behind the offcial narrative of greatness and world culture. In Hoffmann’s fairy tale, a peasant woman gives birth to an ugly child who looks more like a mandrake root than a child, but with the help of the fairy Rosabelverde, the ugly child gains the power to charm everyone around him. Moreover, no matter how bad his actions are, everybody thinks that little Zaches – who changes his name to Zinnober – is completely admirable. In Chizhova’s novel, “little Zaches” can symbolically refer to the Soviet spectator whose “looks” are beautifed by a superfcial acquaintance with Shakespeare.16 Kroshki Zaches recollects Soviet Shakespeare as a series of “show-off” demonstrations in front of important Soviet delegations and specially invited guests from abroad. In contrast, the real Shakespeare, the one for whom the young narrator would die and forget her Soviet roots, remains understood only by a few. Shakespeare thus has a double life in Kroski Zaches. On one hand, the narrator’s English school is “the pride of the school district and a blissful island of show off.”17 Delegation after delegation come to their school to

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observe Soviet children in “natural conditions.”18 The narrator ironically describes these visits: Natural conditions were presented simply, but artistically. Good students raised their hands in unison, while the bad ones did not – from the shame at their wrong-doings. I guess they also performed “good students,” but those who were a bit idle. The teacher’s voice rang clearer. . . . In ten minutes, having already grasped the situation, smiling guests would walk away on tip-toes, leaving gifts behind: our desks would be covered, as if with manna from heaven, with chewing gum, pens, and necklaces.19 The whole thing was pure propaganda for Western visitors and also an effort to impress local Soviet offcials so as to get more funding for the school. These visitors were easily impressed and most thoroughly enjoyed “easy,” fun adaptations of Shakespeare, where they could feel themselves part of the performance. On the other hand, the novel shows how select audiences move beyond the Soviet propaganda and appreciate Shakespeare at a higher level than mere farce. Thus, in contrast to the rest of the Western audience, one English-speaking audience member remains unimpressed with student performance of Hamlet as a comic farce and with the school principal’s assertion that “in the U.S.S.R. children learn ballet from an early age.”20 The narrator observes that this woman “is indifferent whether it is Fedia [the comic actor performing Hamlet] or Soviet ballet.” But the woman does respond to the young narrator’s accomplished performance: she cries and tears her handkerchief in pain when she hears the narrator recite Shakespeare’s sonnet 71 to the music of the classical German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.21 This moment of understanding is cherished by the narrator, and she tells her teacher about the crying English woman. The novel’s larger strategy is to focus on Shakespearean tragedy and moments of linguistic nuance that evade the majority of Soviet and Western audiences alike. In its critique of popular Shakespeare, it especially focuses on scenes of misreading: audience indifference to the narrator’s masterful recitation of Shakespeare’s bittersweet sonnets about farewell and untimely death in sonnets 71 and 73; audience’s failure to appreciate the superb acting of Anne in the complex scene, where she is courted by the Duke of Gloucester in Richard III; Maria’s superb trickery being disregarded in the face of deafening laughter at Malvolio; and a complete misreading of the delicate love scene between Romeo and Juliet as incomprehensible farce. The incidents of ignorance abound, as the narrator claims that mass audiences, both Soviet and English speaking, are unable to understand moments of linguistic and emotional nuance in Shakespeare and are roused only by moments of crude comedy.

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The difference in audience attitudes is also marked as a difference in clothing styles. The one audience member suffciently receptive to cry at the performance of Shakespeare’s sonnets wears a lace collar and wipes her eyes with a white lace handkerchief. Her accessories – a lace collar and a fne white handkerchief – point to her sophistication and aristocratic manner. She is the only one who comes and personally thanks the narrator for pairing Shakespeare’s sonnets with the classical music of Gluck. The “lace handkerchief,” a recurrent motif in Chizhova’s novels, makes Shakespeare a symbolic property of pre-revolutionary Russian culture and Western aristocracy.22 In contrast, the other, “more ordinary” Americans are wearing jeans and turtlenecks and are represented as a mass audience comparable to Soviet masses in their lack of cultural sophistication.23 The ordinary Americans enjoy “An Ideal Interview with the Greatest Actor,” where Hamlet is played by a comically arrogant actor Fedia: An explosion of laughter. . . . In his hands Fedia [“the greatest actor” playing Hamlet] holds a skull, a real one, from the biology classroom. The audience giggles. He gets up from the stool, throws himself on the foor and crawls on his belly, convulsively jerking his legs. “I crawl slowly; my legs and belly move along, expressing the sad story of Yorick.”24 The comic farce with Hamlet delights the majority of the Soviet audience, and the narrator caustically sums up: “here is the terrible grief of Hamlet, who lost his friend. Mishka [the interviewer] is like a dog on its hind legs. The great actor is as humble as he can be.” Taking this comic farce of Shakespeare as symbolic of the mass appropriation of Shakespeare, the narrator implicitly argues that what mass audiences see in these performances is just themselves – their own debased refection. Barely hiding her disgust, the narrator continues her description: “Already giving in to the admiration, the actor reports that he is in fact going to show the public something greater than Shakespeare. ‘How can I put it – something . . . in a word, I am going to perform myself.’ ”25 The scene with the horrible laughter functions as a leitmotif that signifes the utter degradation of Shakespeare by a mass audience: it utterly domesticates Shakespeare to the needs of the unsophisticated public. Moreover, when the scene with Hamlet as a clown is performed for the second time – before an audience that this time includes both Soviet and Western members – the scene enjoys an even greater success: “Everybody is laughing like crazy. The teachers who do not understand a word [in English], high-ranking parents who are laughing like simple mortals. They understood why they came here.”26 The laughter in the school hall is so loud that one can hardly distinguish the “ordinary” Americans from the “ordinary” Soviets: they have all been blended into one laughing crowd. For Chizhova, this popular Shakespeare is “Soviet

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Shakespeare” at its worst: it allegedly unites unsophisticated audiences across the political spectrum, from a lowly cook in a Soviet cafeteria to an American visitor in jeans and a turtleneck laughing at Hamlet. “Soviet Shakespeare” is thus a shorthand for “debased Shakespeare,” regardless of cultural or political affliation. The narrator is as disgusted by ordinary American tourists as she is by snobby students in a Soviet school. Their laughter at comic Hamlet and ridiculous Malvolio allegedly unites them all, and only the extreme Soviet effort to popularize Shakespeare – to make Shakespeare known and accessible to the masses – makes “Soviet Shakespeare” truly Soviet. Interestingly, Chizhova’s distinction between “elite” audiences and “ordinary” audiences is not based simply on the level of education or social class. The narrator of Kroshki Zaches equally makes fun of educated people who pretend to “know everything” and consider themselves members of the Soviet intelligentsia. The case in point is the narrator’s classmate, Fedia, a student who comes from a family representative of Soviet intelligentsia (his father is a theatre director, and his house is full of books). Once, during a heated debate on what to read for their fve-minute poetry sessions in a literature class (“piatiminutki”), Fedia and other children of the Soviet intelligentsia want to read progressive poets persecuted by the Soviet government, namely Osip Mandelshtam, Boris Pasternak, and Anna Akhmatova. But the narrator dismisses Fedia’s request as mere pretence, a show-off of erudition that signals no real commitment to the poets. When the literature teacher does cave in to the students’ demands and assigns Pasternak’s poetry, Fedia comes to school unprepared and can hardly make his way through the poems. He reads for too long and mumbles, and in the end, the whole class ends up laughing at him. A son of “the Soviet intelligentsia” proves himself a mere snob. The narrator explicitly dismisses the class debate on whether to read accepted or avant-garde Soviet poets as merely a choice between a “French fur coat” [frantsuzskaia shuba] or a “sheepskin coat” [dublionka].27 She ridicules children of the Soviet intelligentsia and says they were arrogant and snobbish and frequently had to ask children of working-class parents for their help on the tests. The class hierarchy dividing children of humanist intelligentsia from the rest of the class has to do more with the importance of their economic status than their intellect or hard work. The children of the humanist intelligentsia happened to be in the highest group, the children of technical intelligentsia – in the second, and in the bottom – those, whose socioeconomic origin did not matter because everyone understood that they are complete fools and dumbasses.28 However, despite the fact that children of the “humanist intelligentsia” occupy the highest spot, the entry into “the highest group” is determined

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primarily by one’s economic status. The narrator, a child of workingclass parents, once gets a chance to move up to the highest group when her father brings her colorful tights from Czechoslovakia. But one of the members of “humanist intelligentsia” asks the narrator whether she prefers a “French coat” or “a sheepskin coat” – the narrator does not know what to answer and thus fails the “test” for the highest group. The novel shows that the tastes of the Soviet intelligentsia are superfcial and determined more by fashion and social prestige than by genuine concern for dissident poets like Pasternak or Shakespeare. The “true” nature of the children of humanist intelligentsia is revealed at the end of the novel, in the chapter titled “Werewolves” [“Oborotni”]. Their betrayal consists in the fact that they decide to stage “a play written by a certain American, a real, contemporary play.”29 The title “Werewolves” refers to the duplicitous nature of the children of the Soviet intelligentsia who exchange Shakespeare’s plays for a contemporary American play, which their English teacher considers unworthy. The teacher says, I saw it [the unnamed contemporary American play]. While I am still at this school, they will not stage this. If they consider this the real life, if this excites them – let them be excited at the nearest dumpster [“na blizhaishei pomoike”]. Real life – she looked around the room – is more revolting than he [Fedia] can imagine. . . . If he were an adult . . . I would slap him on the face.30 The evident disgust of the English teacher with the contemporary American play (we never fnd out its title) is then corroborated by her most faithful student, the narrator. She reports on her classmates to the school principal, and because they were also smoking cigarettes in the auditorium, their disobedient self-expression – as symbolized by the contemporary American playwright – gets cancelled. There are a number of ironies in this episode. It is ironic that Shakespeare is opposed to a contemporary American playwright, a fact that complicates the division between the Soviet Union and the West and turns it instead into a battle about the canon. It is also signifcant that the children of the “humanist intelligentsia” are identifed with smoking, school disobedience, forbidden luxury goods (French coat vs sheepskin coat), and dissident poets represented by Akhmatova, Mandelshtam, and Pasternak. While valorizing the cultural value of Shakespeare, the novel also rejects anything popular and contemporary. It portrays contemporary Soviet and American literature as superfcial and ideologically determined, concerned with “this” play – which, one can assume, is something popularly appealing but intellectually unworthy, at least in the eyes of the English teacher. The extent to which Kroshki Zaches is opposed to popular art and not just popular Shakespeare is demonstrated by its denigration of the

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generally popular and successful actor and singer Vladimir Vysotsky, who performed Hamlet in 1971. The English teacher says that “Vysotsky’s stretched-out sweater, his hoarse contemporary voice, his shouting out ‘to be or not to be,’ were repulsive to her.”31 Vladimir Vysotsky, a cult Soviet fgure of the 1960s, a bard, and an actor, played the role of Hamlet in Teatr na Taganke, a popular Moscow theatre, with Yuri Ljubimov as the theatre director. Vysotsky’s Hamlet was the kind of Hamlet that Kroshki Zaches rejects as a modern debasement of Shakespeare. In the words of Alexei Bartoshevich, a prominent Russian Shakespeare scholar, Vysotsky’s Hamlet was a distinctively modern character: This is Hamlet with a guitar, a contemporary student in a sweatshirt and jeans; it is a soldier and a representative of intelligentsia; a poet and a trouble-maker who gave people of the 1971, stunned and amazed by his performance, inner strength and hope – in those hard, confusing, and depressing times.32 Vysotsky’s raspy singing voice, his guitar, and the outft of a contemporary free-thinking university student make him especially offensive to the narrator’s English teacher. The central confict of the novel is thus not between Soviet realist fction and Western Shakespeare, but between Shakespeare and Vysotsky, or between Shakespeare and the unnamed contemporary American playwright – high art versus popular art. In contrast to Vysotsky’s Hamlet, the narrator prefers Innokenty Smoktunovsky’s portrayal of Hamlet in the 1964 flm Gamlet, directed by Grigori Kosintsev, as she sees in it “the trace of a true, that is, permanent and not ephemeral, past.”33 In the Kosintsev’s flm, Smoktunovsky plays Hamlet as a quiet intellectual, withdrawn and ironic but refned in his cold disdain and superior disgust. Elegant, dressed in black, and simple in his righteous, Christlike manner, Smoktunovsky’s Hamlet is a far cry from Vysotsky’s streetwise character. The flm received the 1965 Order of Lenin and was a popular success both in the Soviet Union and in the West. Although it is possible to see Vysotsky’s and Smoktunovsky’s respective performances as on the same side of political spectrum, Smoktunovsky’s Hamlet is more in line with the vision of cultural elitism and the canon of great masters propagated in Kroshki Zaches. Relying on such terms as “timeless truths,” “universal values,” and “human nature” – which were, ironically, common both to the critical vocabulary of the 1950s American liberal humanism and to Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare in the Soviet Union – Chizhova portrays Shakespeare as a great artist whose works supply a timeless, human “truth” to the ideologically motivated “Soviet” Shakespeare. Along similar lines, Chizhova’s 2009 novel, Vremia Zhenshchin, a far more famous cousin to her frst novel, Kroshki Zaches, redeems Russian pre-revolutionary “high” culture, as it also lays open the crimes

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committed during the Soviet period. Ultimately, both novels show disappointment with the “commoner,” the pillar of Marxist ideology and Western liberalism alike. Because Vremia Zhenshchin does not engage with Shakespeare directly, I will examine only one relevant aspect here – Chizhova’s disenchantment with Soviet collectivity and her critique of the idealistic (but practically state-sanctioned) belief in the simple goodness of ordinary people. What starts out as a critique of Soviet Shakespeare in Kroshki Zaches morphs into the representation of ethnic purges and political repression in Vremia Zhenshchin. Seen in the context of Vremia Zhenshchin, Kroshki Zaches argues that Soviet Shakespeare is a just prelude to the Soviet dictatorship and political repression.

Kroshki Zaches and Vremia Zhenshchin: From Soviet Shakespeare to Soviet Dictatorship Popular laughter, which serves as the mark of audience conformity in Kroshki Zaches, also signifes the terrors associated with the Soviet regime. Rather than dismissing audience laughter as merely naïve and foolish, Kroshki Zaches links it to something more sinister. The narrator claims that after the phenomenally successful farce “An Ideal Interview with the Greatest Actor,” the English teacher never dared to elicit that kind of laughter again. The narrator-student comments: Giggles, smiles, fun. Anything else, except that laughter. Now I will never fnd out for sure, from her lips, if she [F.], who was grew pale at the sound of this foreign laughter, understood where things were going; if she understood what will grow from it. Can it be the case that she always knew what will grow out of that kind of laughter? And if she knew, why did she let it happen?34 In these lines, the adult narrator thinks back on her time in the Leningrad school and wonders whether her English teacher already knew then that the senseless laughter in the school auditorium prefgures something more sinister on the part of Soviet audiences. In fact, the narrator claims that audience laughter at a Shakespearean tragedy was a clear indication that “there are forces in the world that are stronger than the force of enlightenment.”35 She portrays the degrading audience laughter as an entry point into adulthood, the moment when the young student actors, still childlike and innocent, are introduced to the “ordinary evil” of their lives. The narrator says that If somebody asked me right now: “when did this start, that which happened afterwards with all of us,” I would say – long time ago, earlier, before. . . . But if they would press me again and again: “no, but still when, when did it become irreversible?” I would say to them:

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“then and there, in that nasty hall, in that very moment, when that came out – that vile, senseless laughter, their fshlike undulation.”36 Strikingly, the unnamed “this” originates in the audience’s misplaced laughter at a Shakespearean tragedy, and as the narrator’s words suggest, “this” is directly connected to acts of evil. In that respect, Vremia Zhenshchin is a sequel to Kroshki Zaches: the two novels measure the distance from reducing a world classic to the most comprehensible level to betraying a colleague to go along with the Soviet collective. Kroshki Zaches and Vremia Zhenshchin are united in their critique of collective “paradise” – the utopian society that the Soviet state proposes to build – and the forms of collectivity that it fosters. In Kroshki Zaches, mass Soviet audiences – from high-ranking school offcials to the cook in the narrator’s cafeteria – enjoy Shakespeare only when it has been thoroughly domesticated or, as the narrator sarcastically put it in another context, when it has been made into a “bone” for the audiences to enjoy.37 The more degrading the performance, the more audiences fnd it enjoyable, erupting in laughter. The grotesque image of the audience turned into a beast – through its pig squeal and “fshlike undulation” – pervades the narrator’s critique of the Soviet engagement with Shakespeare. The “it” of Kroshki Zaches is fully realized in the later novel. Thus, in Vremia Zhenshchin, Antonina, a single mother of a mute girl, fears what may happen to her disabled daughter if she is taken away to Soviet kindergarten or school. She keeps the mute six-year old at home and does not want to send her to state kindergarten. In a conversation with Nikolai, the man she dates at the factory, Antonina explains, “It is OK – I mean – if they talk. But I am afraid of another thing: they will drag her from hospital to hospital and ruin the girl.”38 Antonina, a Soviet mother, does not expect the other children or the Soviet institutions to be understanding of her daughter’s muteness. Meanwhile, the staff of the factory pressures Antonina to sign up her daughter for a Soviet summer camp and kindergarten and be like everyone else. Collective meetings happen several times in the novel, and each time, the collective voice is shown as interfering and oppressive. The second time that the female collective at the factory meets, they pressure Nikolai to marry Antonina – the two have been dating “too long” without legitimizing their relationship. Here, the informal communal court (“tovarishcheskii sud”) again serves as the guardian of social norms. Moreover, the communal court has the power to enforce its rules: if Nikolai does not marry Antonina, he will not get the government apartment for which he has been waiting for years. Another story shows that one cannot rely on “ordinary” people not only to appreciate Shakespeare but even to uphold basic human norms. Ariadna, one of the three grandmothers who cares for Antonina’s six-year-old girl, tells a story of how her brother volunteered for World War I and placed absolute trust in the goodness of

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ordinary people. “ ‘A fool!’ – cried his father. ‘You studied too much in your universities. You found yourself a toy – an ordinary man! Your ordinary man will sell himself for a penny, and you – not even for a snuff!”39 Ariadna then recounts the tragic end of her brother during the events of the October Revolution: as the Bolsheviks took power, there was “commotion in the barracks. Offcers were hiding and were afraid to be seen. But he [her brother] said, “I will go and talk to my soldiers. I am not a stranger to them.’ He climbed a barrel. “Brothers! Brothers!” – he cried. And they pulled him down by the legs. . . . We did not fnd out what happened until later.”40 Similar to Kroshki Zaches, Vremia Zhenshchin shows that placing trust in the goodness of a collective is a terrible mistake. A disabled child, a young student performing Shakespeare in English, a Jewish doctor, and an offcer who paradoxically sympathizes with “the people” all have their hopes dashed when they trust that the audience will understand and look past their radical differences (disability, Jewishness, the English language, and social differences). The novels show how differences are squashed by popular insistence on conformity, and Shakespeare is no exception in this regard. Rather than criticizing the government, Chizhova’s novels direct their gaze towards the particular and the mundane – the “ordinary” betrayal of friends and colleagues, the ridicule of classmates, the cruelty of children. They argue that the socialist ideal of the “dawn of communism” is a pipe dream because of the everyday failings of ordinary people – not because of the grand evil of a few privileged people in power. The nightmarish vision of the communist “paradise” in Kroshki Zaches is amplifed by the refections of the mute girl in Vremia Zhenshchin. The six-year-old Sophia (whose thoughts are written in cursive throughout the book) tells a story of Snegurochka, a snow girl from a popular Russian fairy tale, which perhaps encapsulates Chizhova’s vision of “popular” movements: She few into the sky, when she played with other children. They gather in the forest and sing their songs. About a little ship, about blue nights. You always hear them on the radio. But in the pit a big fre is burning, the heat is rising. Snegurochka was afraid at frst: I will not jump, she thinks. But the pioneers [the young members of the communist organization] shout: Jump, jump! And so she jumped.41 The images of melting Snegurochka, egged on by the young pioneers, and of the deafening laughter at Shakespeare’s Hamlet are terrifying images of collectivity, which form the key points of critique in Kroshki Zaches and Vremia Zhenshchin. If popular Shakespeare enjoys a critical resurgence today in the West, Chizhova’s post-Soviet perspective warns of the dangers of collectivity, arguing that there is indeed such a thing as “too popular” Shakespeare.

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Notes 1 Elena Chizhova, Kroshki Zaches: Drama iz shkol’noi zhizni (Moscow: AST Astrel’, 2010), 102. Subsequent references to the novel will be to Kroshki Zaches. 2 Ibid, 120. 3 Ibid, 122. 4 Nikolai Alexandrov, ed., S glazu na glaz: besedy s rossiiskimi pisateliami [Tete-a-tete: Conversations With Russian Writers] (Moscow: B. S. G. Press, 2012), 320. 5 Chizhova, Kroshki Zaches, 74. 6 Elena Pogorelova, “V poiskakh ozvuchennogo vremeni” [“In Search of Voiced Time”], Voprosy Literatury [Literary Questions] no. 3 (2010). http:// magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2010/3/po11.html. 7 Chizhova, Kroshki Zaches, 140. 8 Ibid, 65. 9 For instance, Tiffany Moore’s Kosintsev’s Shakespeare Films (2012) and Anna France’s Boris Pasternak’s Translations of Shakespeare (1978) have argued that Pasternak makes Hamlet both into a Christlike fgure and into a political dissident. See also Alexander Etkind’s article, “Mourning the Soviet Victims in a Cosmopolitan Way: Hamlet from Kozintsev to Riazanov,” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 5, no. 3 (2011): 389–409. 10 Douglas Lanier, “Shakespeare and Cultural Studies: An Overview,” Shakespeare 2, no. 2 (2006): 228–248. 11 Irena R. Makaryk, “Performance and Ideology: Shakespeare in the 1920s Ukraine,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 16. 12 Mikhail Morozov, “Section 10: ‘Dramaturgicheskoe nasledie: Periody tvorchestva’ [Dramaturgical Legacy: Creative Stages],” in Shakespeare, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1956). 13 S. E. Radlov, “O spektakle” [About the Production], in Gamlet [Hamlet], trans. Anna Radlova (Leningrad: Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi teatr, 1938), 10. 14 Ibid. 15 Arkady Ostrovsky, “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare,” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, eds. Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 59. 16 Since Hoffmann’s story, the term “little Zaches” became synonymous with pretending to be what you are not. In 2000, the satirical TV show Kukly (Dolls) aired an episode titled “Kroshka Zaches,” where a “democrat,” the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, gives birth to the ugly monster child Vladimir Putin. 17 Chizhova, Kroshki Zaches, 57. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid, 58–59. 20 Ibid, 59. 21 Ibid, 60. 22 Even the three grandmothers in Vremia Zhenshchin, women who are so poor that they have to boil nails to preserve the four from spoiling, hold on to their fne linen that they have saved from the pre-revolutionary culture. 23 Chizhova, Kroshi Zaches, 58–59. 24 Ibid, 60.

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Ibid. Ibid, 81. Ibid, 37. Ibid, 30. Ibid, 171. Ibid, 174. Emphasis in the original. Ibid, 66. Emphasis in the original. Alexei Bartoshevich, “Russkii Gamlet: XX vek” [Russian Hamlet: 20th Century], Teatr no. 2 (2011). http://oteatre.info/author/bartoshevich/. Chizhova, Kroshki Zaches, 66. Ibid, 84. Italics in the original. Ibid. Ibid, 168. Ibid, 87. Elena Chizhova, Vremia Zhenshchin (Moscow: AST, 2015), 161. Ibid, 257. Ibid, 258. Ibid, 80.

Works Cited Alexandrov, Nikolai, ed. S glazu na glaz: besedy s rossiiskimi pisateliami. Moscow: B. S. G. Press, 2012. Bartoshevich, Alexei. “Russkii Gamlet: XX vek.” Teatr 2 (2011). http://oteatre. info/author/bartoshevich/. Chizhova, Elena. Kroshki Zaches: Drama iz shkol’noi zhizni. Moscow: AST Astrel,’ 2010. ———. Vremia Zhenshchin. Moscow: AST, 2015. Etkind, Alexander. “Mourning the Soviet Victims in a Cosmopolitan Way: Hamlet from Kozintsev to Riazanov.” Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 5, no. 3 (2011): 389–409. France, Anna. Boris Pasternak’s Translations of Shakespeare. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978. Lanier, Douglas. “Shakespeare and Cultural Studies: An Overview.” Shakespeare 2, no. 2 (2006): 228–248. Makaryk, Irena R. “Performance and Ideology: Shakespeare in the 1920s Ukraine.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 15–37. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Moore, Tiffany. Kosintsev’s Shakespeare Films: Russian Political Protest in Hamlet and King Lear. New York, NY: MacFarland, 2012. Morozov, Mikhail. Shakespeare, 2nd ed. Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 1956. Ostrovsky, Arkady. “Shakespeare as a Founding Father of Socialist Realism: The Soviet Affair With Shakespeare.” In Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism, edited by Irena R. Makaryk and Joseph G. Price. 56–83. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Pogorelova, Elena. “V poiskakh ozvuchennogo vremeni.” Voprosy Literatury no. 3 (2010). http://magazines.russ.ru/voplit/2010/3/po11.html. Radlov, Sergei. “O spektakle.” In Gamlet: Tragediia Vil’iama Shekspira, translated by Anna Radlova. 5–13. Leningrad: Leningradskii gosudarstvennyi teatr, 1938.

10 Anti-Stratfordianism in Twentieth-Century Russia Post-Soviet Melancholy and the Haunted Imagination1 Vladimir Makarov By the start of the new millennium, anti-Stratfordianism had enjoyed almost a century of popularity in Russia. It came in waves, generating a series of feverish exchanges, and then exited the page and stage for a protracted period of time, only to be resurrected by a new coterie of its supporters. Unlike the Anglophone world, however, the Russian anti-Stratfordianism was never confned to the marginal spheres of anti-establishment conspiracy theorists. Leading periodicals gave it space on its pages, and top academic researchers publicly took arms against it. The heyday of the early Soviet anti-Stratfordianism came in the 1920s, when it was promoted, albeit rather reluctantly, by the two dons of literary criticism – the People’s Commissar for Public Education, Anatoly Lunacharsky, and the head of the Institute of Language and Literature at the USSR Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Friche.2 Their support of the idea that Shakespeare’s works were written by an aristocrat, quite likely by Roger Manners, the ffth earl of Rutland, was voiced by the numerous articles in national newspapers and journals, such as the ones by flm researcher, actor, and critic Feofan Shipulinskii. The idea seems to have even briefy swayed the mind of the renowned theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold in 1921.3 By the early 1930s, the debate was over, and it did not reignite until the 1980s. Rutland’s new champion was Ilya Gililov, who published his book on what he called the “Great Game” of Shakespeare in 1997.4 This publication brought him popular acclaim and a number of supporters, including some from academic circles. Anti-Stratfordians began to appear on federal television and were interviewed for newspapers and magazines. Generally, they followed Gililov’s line, maintaining that Rutland wrote the body of works traditionally attributed to Shakespeare with the help of his wife, Elizabeth (the daughter of Sir Philip Sidney), although Marina Litvinova, a professor at Moscow Linguistic University, added Francis Bacon to the team. Some old translations of Shakespeare were reprinted with a new introduction and commentaries, and new ones were produced. On the whole, the return of Russian Rutlandianism generated a

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steady public interest between the late 1990s and mid 2010s, especially among those affliated with theatre.5 This article will examine post-Soviet anti-Stratfordianism, closely attending to its Soviet roots and suggesting a continuity in how this strand of thought deploys cultural fantasies about Shakespeare in pondering the fashioning of individual intellectuals in the context of social rupture. The English playwright has always had a special place in Russian culture.6 For over two centuries, his works were seen as a hallmark of high culture and a symbol of Russia’s striving to become (and then remain) a major cultural power. The role of Shakespeare as a universal genius who represented global, or at least European, culture has never been seriously challenged or questioned in Russia – neither by zealots of proletarian culture, by highbrow Marxist philosophers, nor, for that matter, by contemporary conservative isolationists. In that sense, the Russian brand of anti-Stratfordianism adheres to James Shapiro’s broader description; it is born out of the Romanticist cult of Shakespeare and exaggerates its features beyond recognition.7 While indebted to the 1920s intellectual debates and often linked to the key fgures of that decade, post-Soviet anti-Stratfordianism is distinguished by a sense of longing for a pre-revolutionary, undisrupted past and a yearning for cultural authority.

Shakespeare, Melancholia, and Looking to the West The late Soviet condition of the 1980s, when Rutlandianism started its new rise to prominence, has been analyzed by many scholars, but most ftting here seems the aptly titled Alexei Yurchak’s Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More.8 To lead a relatively normal life under the Soviet regime, many self-segregated into small groups of the “svoi” (“those who belong to our circle”).9 Intellectually, this would often involve revisionist rereadings of classical texts and authors. The perceived “foreverness” of the Soviet society and state, which declared itself the ultimate form of freedom for the whole world, led intellectuals to suspect that all formally sanctioned speech and text were produced as a result of some compromise and thus could never deliver the whole truth. Yurchak’s concept of “outside” experience, what he calls living “vnie,” can explain how this set of assumptions urged intellectuals to look beyond the offcial, petrifed stance and seek out the hidden truth – in this case, “the real Shakespeare.” This quest, however, not only was an attempt to rescue Shakespeare from the Soviet authorities but also functioned as a form of dialogue with European culture. The early post-revolutionary anti-Stratfordians, with the Essex uprising in mind, used the authorship debate as proof that even an aristocrat could support the cause of justice and liberty. But their counterparts of the 1980s came to see “the real Shakespeare” as a symbol of creative freedom, excellent education, and wide travels – everything they

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had been denied under the Soviet regime. It can be seen as an extreme and unrefexive form of what Osip Mandelshtam famously termed “the longing for world culture” (toska po mirovoi kulture)10 – the desire to maintain a vibrant conversation with Europe, perceived simultaneously as a rival and a potential ally. But Russia, a great cultural power in its own right, had yet to earn a position of equality in this dialogue. A stunning discovery of the “true Shakespeare” would have fnally brought Russian intellectuals to the limelight that they have always deserved: the West would accept them as equals, and “true” scholars on both sides would fnally converge. In an explicit foregrounding of this fantasy, Gililov’s and Litvinova’s respective books feature a subplot of a Russian intellectual’s exploration and quest for recognition in the West. Upon his arrival in the US in the early 1990s, Gililov is pleased to discover that, unlike the USSR, where the debate was impossible, “the West” still had a space for dialogical encounters. One such space turns out to be the basement of the Folger Library, where the narrator fnds and gleefully reads the “heretical” books of the anti-Stratfordians; there is, after all, a place where one can fnd “authentic truth,” albeit “so cunningly hidden.”11 Litvinova transforms the story of her and Gililov’s journey to Belvoir castle into a pilgrimage tale full of magic: her lost passport is returned “not without the otherworldly intercession of Bacon or Rutland.”12 In her narrative, Belvoir becomes a space of radical transformation: just for a moment, Gililov is once again the gallant WWII offcer, while the plainly dressed man in the castle room proves to be the current Duke. The most profound experience takes place at Rutland’s grave, where Litvinova allegedly sees the apparitions of Richard III and of Jacques from As You Like It.13 Having made her pilgrimage to the West, the narrator is supported by the spirits working to reveal long-hidden secrets and is able to receive the truth, medium-like, through her ghostly visions. Moreover, Gililov’s and Litvinova’s respective narratives feature a moment of recognition: Gililov describes a letter from Park Honan praising his work on “Love’s Martyr,”14 and Litvinova reports having a chat with none other than James Shapiro, who, having listened to her version of the “two left-arm sleeves” argument,15 recommends that she write an article titled “Up My Sleeve.” Their hopes, however, were soon dashed. Gililov’s article was rejected by a reviewer for Shakespeare Quarterly, whom he accuses of ignorance,16 and the dialogue petered out. In his book, Gililov sounded moderately hopeful, calling for a “deep and objective discussion,” though fully aware that it would be diffcult to “entice my Western colleagues” to participate. He was nevertheless proud that “the Great Dispute now rages in Moscow almost as energetically as it does in the West.”17 Litvinova, writing her own monograph through the late 1990s and the early 2000s, opened by declaring that her talk with Shapiro proved the possibility of a dialogue. But as her narrative progresses, she grows wistful and

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admits that the future holds nothing but the endless battle between the two camps, as nobody wants to leave behind the “beautiful fairy tale” and have the “lovely fower plucked from their heart.”18 Whence this sadness? This is a key question for understanding the post-Soviet condition in Rutlandianism of the 1990s. I suggest that it can be seen as a manifestation of melancholia in the sense that Freud famously attached to it in his 1910s essay, later applied to the cultural condition of Germany by Walter Benjamin and to Russia by Alexander Etkind. Contrasting melancholia with a healthier reaction of “mourning,” Freud explains that those suffering from melancholia often “cannot see clearly what it is that has been lost” and/or “cannot consciously perceive what has been lost.”19 Mourning, however deep, takes the mourner back on the way to “respecting reality,” while the work of melancholia can put them on course to ego-loss. Etkind sees the collective Russian mind as in many ways melancholic, grieving for the terrible losses in the years of the revolution and the USSR but failing to see what exactly is to be mourned. The loss, remaining unrecognized, triggers what Etkind describes as “an incomplete and never-to-be-completed mourning,”20 such as when post-Soviet Russia fails to fully grasp the dire psychological consequences of the Purges, as both the dream of imperial grandeur and the “petromachismo” – oil dollar–induced cult of brute force – stand in its way. The “Shakespeare authorship question” looks an unlikely venue to apply these theories – and yet it is where this post-Soviet melancholia plays out to the full. Anti-Stratfordian discourse in Russia is always about something other than Shakespeare proper: lost opportunities of fnding the truth, the story of imaginary persecutions, a longing for the West, or lamenting that a large part of the author’s life has been spent in error. Ultimately, this discourse seems to offer a possibility of remedy, individual or global, through an intense connection to an aristocrat, a fgurehead for intellectual elites. In an interview, Litvinova muses that Rutland “might have set the history of Europe on a different course.”21 Even the Oxfordian Igor Peshkov, sarcastically critical of both Gililov and Litvinova, explicitly reaches for “a noble chivalrous aristocrat,” who could remain an observer standing outside the entanglements of petty theatre politics.22

Rutland the Decemberist: Anti-Stratfordianism in Early Soviet Russia Until the late 1910s, Russia was a passive spectator in the Shakespeare authorship debates, which at the time were not politicized and presented more of a literary scandal. Things changed with the revolution, when discussing authorship became a convenient shorthand for an important issue in the rising new society: the unstable position of the intellectuals

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who served the revolution but belonged, by birth and by education, to the social strata perceived as hostile to the proletariat. The rise of new candidates for Shakespearean authorship in the 1920s came when the cultural distance between Russia and the West was growing year by year. Public and academic libraries after the October Revolution suffered from a severe lack of funds; only a few new Western books reached their shelves; and cross-border mobility plunged. This prevented early Soviet intellectuals from developing familiarity with the Marlowe and Oxford authorship theories. J. T. Looney’s “Shakespeare” Identifed did not appear until 1920, and the case for Marlowe remained largely unknown until Calvin Hoffman’s book came out in the 1950s. Under these circumstances, only a theory dating to the late 1900s or early 1910s had a chance of success in Soviet Russia. The works of Karl Bleibtreu, Louis Bostelmann, and Célestin Demblon ushered in a new candidate, the one who would have unexpected success in early Soviet Russia – Roger Manners, the ffth earl of Rutland.23 While Bleibtreu and Bostelmann were too obnoxiously anti-Semitic, Demblon, in contrast, was a Socialist politician, an anti-clerical professor at the Université nouvelle de Bruxelles – a short-lived independent left-leaning university. In 1912, Demblon published the frst of his two books on Shakespeare,24 followed by his second in 1914;25 in Russia, both became the main source of countless arguments for Rutlandian authorship. Long-rejected “fndings,” such as his erroneous statement that two Danish nobles named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were Rutland’s college friends at Padua, regularly appear in Gililov’s book.26 In twentieth-century Russia, the waves of anti-Stratfordianism rose as the universities experienced fnancial deprivation, as they did in the 1990s, or experienced both fnancial and ideological turbulence, as they did in 1920s. Soon after the October Revolution, universities went through a series of purges which mainly hit the schools of history, philosophy, and philology: many old-timers were removed from teaching positions, departments were put under the control of Communist administrators, and admission was barred for school graduates with the wrong social background. De-ideologized, fact-based approaches were declared “petty bourgeois” and viewed as politically undesirable. The voices of Mikhail Morozov and Alexander Smirnov, who would become the leaders of the 1930s–1940s Shakespearean studies in Russia, were almost inaudible in the 1920s. Both were teaching in that frst decade but initially made their name by collaborating with theatres, in Morozov’s case, and working for publishing houses, in Smirnov’s. Rutlandians, on the contrary, found strong support among people who, while having some academic credentials, threw themselves eagerly into the service of the Party. In the 1920s, they followed in the wake of the “sociopsychological” argument advanced by Friche and Lunacharsky. In 1926, Friche published a small book on Shakespeare where,

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combining Gervinus’ psychological method and the “vulgar sociological” reduction of art to an expression of class psychology, he concluded that Shakespeare must have been an aristocrat. Lunacharsky, too, had his own reasons to see the melancholy aristocrat as an appealing fgure. In the spring of 1914, as a political emigrant, he arrived in Liège, where Demblon had lived for many years and served as a member of the Chambre des représentants for the city. There is no proof that the two had ever met, but their contributions appeared in the same weekly – La Semaine Politique. Issue 29 of July 19, 1914, featured both a long article summarizing the conclusions that Demblon made in L’auteur d’Hamlet et son monde and a piece on political disagreements among Russian social democrats. What must have most appealed to Friche, Lunacharsky, and their followers was how boldly Demblon mythologized Rutland – a born aristocrat who nevertheless stood up to and against the tyranny of Elizabeth Tudor, shoulder to shoulder with other aristocratic rebels led by the earl of Essex. Demblon’s Russian followers spoke of Rutland’s “party status” (partiinoie polozhenie), identifying him as a supporter of the progressives lead by the earl of Essex – which they saw as a party of sorts, albeit an aristocratic one. Quite conspicuous here is an attempt to extricate themselves from the simplistic, entrapping logic of class affliation, which positioned educated intellectuals as alien well-wishers in a proletariat-oriented society. The imaginary Rutland stands as a symbol of non-proletarian revolutionaries, including Friche, the son of a well-off accountant, or Lunacharsky, an extramarital child of a high-ranking dignitary. Accordingly, Shakespearean characters were seen as embodying the same kind of proto-revolutionary rebellion. Shakespeare’s Brutus “is closer to us [than the Russian third-estate weaklings (meschanishki)], and so is Shakespeare the aristocrat,” writes Lunacharsky.27 Russian history, of course, offered another obvious example of rebellious aristocrats: the Decemberists of 1825, a group of military offcers who staged a failed uprising after the death of Alexander I, hoping to establish a constitutional monarchy, and then spent years in penal servitude followed by an exile to Siberia. The conceptual link between Rutland and the Decemberists was vividly expressed by Shipulinskii, who reached the highest level of mythologization in his series of articles for the Vestnik teatra. “Comrade Rutland,” as Shipulinskii referred to him, was ready to sacrifce his life for the masses. Ushering in this theory was possible only by reimagining early modern London as Russia on the eve of the revolution, with Rutland as a quasi-Bolshevik conspirator. In Shipulinskii’s revision of history, “Shakespeare” is Rutland’s “party code name,” and the Tower looms as “London’s Petropavlovka” – the St Peter and Paul’s Fortress in St Petersburg, which was used as a political prison for the Decemberists. Essex’s uprising appears as a carbon copy of the Decemberists’: the mutineers retreat under “a hail of bullets”

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to the Essex House, which they try to turn into “a kind of Romanovka our Yakut comrades made in 1904.”28 This point was further developed in his book Shakespeare-Rutland: A 300-year-old Conspiracy Mystery, where Shipulinskii, for instance, argues that Rutland hated Jack Cade in the same way as Pushkin had his reservations about Russian peasant rebellions.29 In the last line of the epilogue, the author of Shakespeare’s plays is still the “Comrade Rutland” who deserves a monument in Russia – perhaps among other famous revolutionaries, such as Danton and Robespierre. Not unsurprisingly, both Gililov and Litvinova would pay homage to Shipulinskii’s book, describing it as a wake-up call that would lead to their own “transformation.”30 It has become a commonplace of post-Soviet Rutlandianism to complain that in the early 1930s, the authorship debate was forcibly shut down by the party. In fact, without access to Western archives and libraries, Rutlandians starved themselves of new arguments and lost support among high-profle Communists. In 1929, Friche died, and Lunacharsky lost his offce. With the revival of departments of philology in Moscow and Petersburg in the early 1930s, traditional scholarship based on fundamental knowledge of literature and history was partly rehabilitated. Academic scholars – such as A. A. Smirnov in Leningrad and M. M. Morozov in Moscow – learned to blend the languages of class struggle with scholarly debate. The historical Shakespeare, unlike the imaginary Rutland, was more fexible and thus more feasible in the ruthless realities of Stalinist Russia. The problem of class background was giving way to the vision of a unifed Soviet nation.

The Return of the Aristocrat: The Earl of Rutland and the Great Game It is with the attack against this unifcation that Rutlandianism resumes decades later. The new generation of anti-Stratfordians seemed to believe that considering alternative authorship was an act of defance against the Party line. As Gililov himself put it, “Ideological taboos dominated Russian Shakespeare Studies for some sixty years. . . . Even relatively recently . . . zealots were still trying to enlist the support of the Communist Party organs to protect the purity of Soviet Shakespeare scholarship.”31 The use of anti-totalitarian vocabulary here is certainly an exaggeration: nobody was jailed or prosecuted for being a Rutlandian. But the position of Soviet academia as the gatekeeping force that decided who Shakespeare was and which theories had no factual ground could indeed create an illusion that anti-Stratfordianism was a repressed alternative opinion. Between the early 1930s and the late 1980s, Soviet media would not have given voice to an offcially discredited doctrine – although Lunacharsky’s lectures were included in his 1964 Collected Works. However, when the Soviet Union started to crumble, the new Rutlandianism emerged out of

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the academic world: from the Shakespeare Committee at the Soviet (later, Russian) Academy of Sciences (RAS). Since its foundation in 1975, the Shakespeare Committee was open to non-academic members, especially artists, actors, theatre directors, and amateur “Shakespeare lovers.”32 Gililov, though lacking any academic credentials, was also a member since the early 1980s. After the death of the Shakespeare Committee’s founder, Professor Alexander Abramovich Anikst, Gililov acted as the Shakespeare Committee’s offcial secretary (a pro bono job) for another decade, when the Shakespeare Committee was largely inactive and met rarely until it was re-established in 2000. This academic affliation provided some gravity to anti-Stratfordians, who during Anikst’s lifetime took the precaution of not speaking openly in support of Rutland. As Gililov’s book fnally took shape and was published in 1997, his use of the Shakespeare Committee affliation as a self-propaganda tool alienated him from the Shakespeare Committee’s academic members and the wider community of scholars.33 The main reason for the success of The Shakespeare Game lay in the general distrust towards established scholarship, which had gripped the society since the last years of the Soviet Union. When the full power of the ideological control over the humanities began to be recognized, it was hard to respect the scholars who were trying to preserve academic integrity under the near full absence of freedom of speech. Everyone working in the Soviet academia had to compromise on some points of ideology, and Gililov and his adherents capitalized on this expectation of compromise, declaring that the authorship discussion had been under an “ideological taboo” during the Soviet period. They attempted to create a narrative of methodical persecution34 – which was hard to believe given that Anikst invited him to join the Shakespeare Committee and entrusted him with organizational work at conferences and events. Indeed, the attempts to make the case for a body of anti-Stratfordian believers in Soviet Russia, living in constant fear of ideological persecution, produced the argument that Anikst was himself a secret convert. This argument, in a rather bizarre turn of events, has been preserved for posterity in a dissertation written at a British university by a follower of Gililov, in the following anecdotal form: Dr. Guililov [sic] worked with the leading Soviet authority on Shakespeare, Professor Anikst. Anikst told Guililov that he had had his own doubts about Shakespeare’s authorship and had urged for the open discussion. Anikst was invited to the party representative and was reminded that he had come from the family of old Bolsheviks and had been born in Paris. In the Russia of the period this was suffcient to become a subject to Stalin’s repression. Anikst understood the hint, and kept his doubts on Shakespeare’s Authorship to himself.35

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Anikst was in fact a son of a committed Bolshevik who had perished in the purges of the 1930s but was never known for anti-Stratfordian sympathies. Moreover, Gililov was invited to the Committee in the 1980s, long after the Stalinist era. In this legend, however, he assumes the features of a John the Baptist or a Joseph of Arimathea preparing the way for the only true doctrine. Gililov, as the bearer of the true doctrine, is introduced as a “Dr.”, even though in reality he only had two bachelorequivalent degrees, and neither of them in literature. The main lesson which Gililov learned from Shipulinskii was the need to produce a vision of authorship corresponding to the cultural fantasies of its potential supporters. In Gililov’s monograph, Shakespeare’s plays were coauthored by Rutland and his wife, and their concealment of authorship was in itself an assertion of independence from public opinion. Gone were the class consciousness and service of the people; in came the absolute freedom, unlimited resources, royal patronage and infnite trust. The book aimed to explore the Great Game played by the real authors of Shakespeare, and unlike Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, an immensely popular text in late 1980s USSR, this game had no rules except the will of its masters. In the context of this unlimited freedom, the personal faws – of Rutland and his wife, as imagined by Gililov, and of Gililov’s own method – meant little. Critics are often shocked by how unattractive Rutland and his wife seem in this narrative: he is an effete and permanently ill aristocrat, rendered impotent by syphilis, irritable and histrionic, who fnally enters into something resembling a suicide pact with his wife. Nothing of it matters as long as he is free to build the greatest mystifcation in the history of literature.36 Similarly, Gililov’s poor English and lack of analytical skill did not destroy his reputation until the novelty of the book wore off. He made the most outlandish connections, interpreting, for instance, the phrase “subtle feet” in Ben Jonson’s poem “My Picture Left in Scotland” as human limbs rather than a meta-poetic reference to verse. This reading enabled Gililov to link the poem to the famous painting of a young man seated under a tree by Isaac Oliver and to conclude, triumphantly, that both the poem and the painting depicted a young, melancholy Rutland.37 The vision produced by Gililov was that of an aristocrat who was absolutely free and loomed large, casting a discernible shadow over all, or most, other art produced during his lifetime. His most important quality was the ability to involve readers in the Great Game and force them to follow its rules. The post-Soviet fantasy of nobility, after the trauma of revolution and the decades of relentless (and largely fctitious) insistence on classlessness, imagined aristocracy as a primordial and natural state. One was an aristocrat simultaneously through land possession and through the state of one’s spirit and was thus invincible. Frustrated with the rigorous Soviet ideological control, post-Soviet Rutlandians dream of escape, but they do not want to see Shakespeare as a successful

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businessperson and money-lender. Rather, they return to a modernist-age vision of a poetic genius who foats free of all social constraints. In Gililov’s vision, the Rutlands are supported by other gamemasters – the “Grand Possessors,” born out of reading the preface to the 1609 edition of Troilus and Cressida literally.38 They are merciless to all those whom they see as dangerous to their secrets – reminiscent, more than anything, of mafa bosses in late Soviet crime movies. These shadowy fgures order to have Ben Jonson’s library burnt as a warning sign “so that he would not be tempted to publish” his “most secret manuscripts,”39 while Master of Revels Sir George Buc is “pronounced mad” because “probably the poor man lost his way in the intricate phantasmagoria of the ‘Grand Possessors.’ ”40 Also true to the crime-focused public mind of the 1990s is Gililov’s reliance on what he calls “putting in place” (“pogovorili,” literally “had a talk”). Henry Chettle is “put in his place” after publishing Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, with its famous “upstart crow” fragment.41 Printers, compositors and ultimately Shakespeare of Stratford are all in turn “put into their places,” and they always comply, bending to the combined power of money, nobility, and talent. Rutland appears in Gililov’s fantasy as both an outsider and an insider. One cannot imagine another fgure who cares so little for what happens around him, except for his friends and wife. It is only to help his friend the earl of Essex that Rutland, his “faithful shadow,” joins the rebellion,42 and since imprisonment helped improve relations between him and his wife, it is judged an ultimately benefcial event for the Phoenix and the Turtle. The genius himself is insurmountably narcissistic. Everybody else, except his wife, is reduced to the role of a mere sidekick, while Rutland satirizes himself, glorifes himself, and fnds himself in every major character – the doubting Hamlet, the jealous Othello, and many more. This absolute freedom of the two protagonists comes at the cost of everybody else reduced to a static chorus praising the genius. Gililov makes much of the Latin phrase “Vatum Chorus” in Chester’s collection, treating it as a disguised reference to reality. In his vision of Rutland, all other poets seem happy to be involved in any way possible: they fock to Belvoir Castle, admire the Phoenix and the Turtle, write poems for them, and grieve for their deaths. Despite having his reservations, Ben Jonson also always has Rutland and his wife on his mind. As if to illustrate their static position, Gililov resorts to appropriating for his argument every text that he thinks can strengthen the Rutland case. Admiringly quoting from Donne’s “The Canonization,” he frst says that it “could have become a part of Chester’s Love’s Martyr,”43 then opines that its heroes “are the heroes of the Chester collection,” and fnally hints that this “stunning revelation” could have been “ante mortem lines by the Turtle in person.”44 The merest hint of content parallels leads to lightning-fast identifcation. The title page of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, featuring an image of Democritus under a tree, “apparently was especially

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intended to remind the well-informed reader of the person portrayed by Oliver,” and furthermore “the similarity is not incidental, any more than is the similarity of Burton’s philosophical and artistic ideas and those of Shakespeare – including the many textual coincidences and polemics.”45 The aristocrat we see in Gililov’s The Shakespeare Game is thus a complex fgure. On the one hand, Rutland is a somewhat improved version of Yurchak’s svoi, the in-group member, recognized as such by both the educated society and the two monarchs. At the same time, he is a literary Superman, a timeless genius to whom human measurements do not apply. Even the suicide pact with his wife, imagined by Gililov out of two lines on the gossip about Lady Rutland’s suicide as reported by John Chamberlain, turns out to be an action of utmost mercy rather than callousness: the two coauthors must leave the world together into the “desired oblivion”46 and never compromise the Great Game or their marriage. Gililov’s admiring readers were thus invited to reject the stringent rules imposed by the Communist regime and welcome a Shakespeare who is free to travel, write, and stage plays, even transgress the law, since his genius is above it all. At the same time, the anti-commercial spirit of Gililov’s book, revealing itself in the vituperative treatment of “Shaksper” the usurer, ran counter to the libertarian views generally seen as the path to success after the collapse of the USSR. The anti-Stratfordian movement stood, in a sense, for all intellectuals trapped between unrealized dreams of power and importance, on the one hand, and the reality where they are marginalized, on the other. “Shakspers,” the money-minded dealers, won in 1990s Russia, and this added to the melancholic imagination of the Great Game, doomed in the “environment where books were not read and nobody cared who had written what,” as Gililov says of Shakespeare’s Stratford.47 The Shakespeare Game reached the peak of its popularity when the social power of the intelligentsia hit rock bottom, in the 1990s Russia of economic near collapse, education and housing crises, and spikes in crime and alcoholism rates. With the dream of escape from the Soviet rule rapidly turning sour, a fantasy world that offered complete freedom of intellectual and creative exploration was perhaps more necessary than ever. Marina Litvinova extends this fantasy in her book Shakespeare Justifed (Opravdanie Shekspira, 2008), by inventing additional exciting details of the Rutland family story and projecting them onto a broader idea of an intellectual’s destiny to act against commercialization. The Rutlands receive a third coauthor – their tutor, Francis Bacon – while the “choir of poets” are now involved in the Great Game even at the level of their personal lives. In Litvinova’s version of the Rutlands’ life together, the family problems are caused by the intervention of John Donne, who attempts to seduce the Countess; having troubled “the marital bliss of a peaceful family,”48 escapes abroad; and does penance for the rest of his life. The Earl then dies of jealousy while the grief-stricken

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Countess starves herself – a plot worthy of a Jacobean domestic tragedy. Not surprisingly, Litvinova borrows from Gililov his method of ascribing additional texts to Rutland-Shakespeare to support her assertions and attributes John Ford’s The Broken Heart and Thomas Heywood’s The Woman Killed by Kindness to the Rutlands. Litvinova’s self-conscious directness in mingling our time with Shakespeare’s begins with her intense interest in psychologization as an attempt to break through the quotidian “to the roots of one’s calamities.”49 This truncated psychoanalysis reduces creative confict to fat and sick Rutland’s self-loathing when comparing himself to the “mysteriously attractive” and “slim” John Donne, who totally ignores the suffering of his own wife in his attempted adultery.50 Jonson’s principal motive, according to Litvinova, is also a sort of envy directed at Rutland, who is “noble and rich, and did not have to care about earning his daily bread.”51 Instead of something which at least attempts to pass as scholarship, Litvinova’s book offers a loose essay heavily infuenced by both Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and late Soviet psychological novellas and their cinematographic adaptations, without an effort to distinguish between the two. Beyond this naïve psychologizing lies what Litvinova sees as an argument for “experiencing the world in a mystical way” rather than through the mediation of television and the Internet.52 Her imaginary world of literary early modern England is populated by people whose life is an endless intellectual adventure, “and they are all connected by bonds of kinship,”53 in obvious contrast to the atomized society personifed by the fgure of the hated usurer – the Shakespeare of Stratford, that fgurehead of self-interest. In her version, the Rutlands are even more of a svoi, a couple from the late Soviet intellectual coterie, painfully feeling the capitalist atomization of the world around them, and thus weak and waning. The whole enterprise of making the Rutland narrative is plagued by melancholia and contradiction, especially when it comes to the thorny issue of funding. In an interview, Litvinova voices her dream of “a rich person who would like to have [their] name enter the history of Shakespeare studies”54 by funding her research, and yet she continues to renounce the power of money over people. Gililov himself, for all of his invectives against usury and fnancial capital, closes his short introduction by thanking a Moscow bank “that made possible my travel to Great Britain, to work in the wonderful libraries and museums there.”55 For Shakespeare of Stratford, using fnancial capital for improving his position would have been a mortal sin against talent, but for a Moscow anti-Stratfordian, a little help from bankers is most welcome when it promotes the right cause. It was probably this post-Soviet ressentiment which spurred on the utopian dream of a poetic couple that had torn itself out of the grips of the everyday. Revered and respected by both aristocrats and poor poets, Lord and Lady Rutland could retreat to the depths of the Great Game and

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achieve near-absolute freedom – something that all Russian admirers of poetic genius have come to value. The late Soviet cult of Mikhailovskoye, Yasnaya Polyana,56 and other places where a landlord’s life mixed with that of a poet, shines through the pages describing the visit to Belvoir Castle. The Belvoir is a noble and dignifed alternative to thoroughly commercialized Stratford, the hometown of the impostor, where the guides are often misleading, Shakespeare’s monument is pompous, the epitaph is stupid, the streets are hot, souvenirs are tasteless, and Schoenbaum’s feeling of Shakespeare’s presence is totally erroneous.57 For both early Soviet and post-Soviet anti-Stratfordians, early modern England becomes a space of temporary respite from the relentless encroachment of capitalism. Shipulinskii and his comrades saw early modern England as a place where a class identity could have been modifed to become more “progressive.” In a curious contrast, Gililov and Litvinova lament the unchanging (and imaginary) stability of the early modern space of the Great Game, now lost to the bourgeoisie and to scholars supporting bland orthodoxy. Castigating Stratfordians as myth makers, in a moment of melancholic frankness, Litvinova admits on the fnal pages of part one of her book that she is afraid that her dreams may at some point be shattered by the ultimate piece of proof that Rutland was not the true author.58 Ultimately, both the 1920s version and the 1990s version of Rutlandianism are inextricably intertwined with the dream of Russia’s messianic role – as a country which was the frst to hail “Comrade Rutland” by his true name and as a people with a mission, as Litvinova puts it, “to remove” the Stratfordian delusion “from the history of culture.”59 Shipulinskii and Litvinova seem to detest capitalism with an equal passion while dreaming of an ideal society that can be achieved through an accurate grasp of Shakespeare’s identity. For Shipulinskii, the new society is something never seen before, a world of socialist equality and happiness; for Litvinova, it is marked by the victory achieved by the aristocracy of the spirit over the powers of chaos. Litvinova shares her dream of a small island that she names “The world of kind people” (Mir dobrykh lyudei) – an island that a sympathetic millionaire might purchase and share with his friends as a retreat from “the egoistical race for personal prosperity” the modern world has become.60 At present, however, she sees such islands only in possession of landed aristocracy – for instance, the Belvoir Castle that she and Gililov admired during their pilgrimage to the West. In both early Soviet and post-Soviet versions of anti-Stratfordianism, as we have seen, the enduringly unique position of Shakespeare in Russian culture made it easy to use his persona and his works to think through social change and carve out a space for one’s own group. For early Soviet anti-Stratfordians, it was important to present an aristocrat who subscribed to the cause of the proletariat, whereas their post-Soviet successors were fascinated by the very nobility with which the frst wave had been so uncomfortable. Both theories culminate in a melancholic

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dystopia: the early Soviet anti-Stratfordians subjected individual creativity to the logic of helping the progress of history, while their postSoviet counterparts are lost in their world of a disguised but all-powerful author, with “the Grand Possessors of plays” ready to punish anyone who reveals the secret of authorship. A Postscript This chapter had been almost completed when the Shakespeare Committee of the RAS was rocked by a scandal. Igor Peshkov, an Oxfordian briefy mentioned earlier, published a scathing review of a biographical dictionary entry on Alexander Anikst, attacking the Soviet scholar as an “excellent organizer and communicator” but a fundamentally fawed researcher, particularly because of his criticism of “anti-Shakespearean” theories of authorship.61 The publication of this review sparked a vigorous e-mail debate on the rules of engagement in Shakespeare research and the ethics of the Shakespeare Committee membership. A sizeable majority of those involved publicly or privately expressed their dismay of what they thought was a vilifcation of the Shakespeare Committee’s founder and a treacherous act against the same wide and tolerant space that he helped establish.62 A related issue, emerging from the discussion, was whether anti-Stratfordian ideas as such were to be treated as incompatible with the academic body of the Shakespeare Committee. Here, again, a (slim) majority was ready to accept the more stringent rules. Of interest here is the gradual realignment within the Shakespeare Committee, as we are moving futher away from the post-Soviet period with its aversion of any collective action against a dissenting individual. The scholars in the Shakespeare Committee are hopefully coming closer to overcoming the melancholia of seeing themselves as inferior disciples of long-gone greats and recognizing the necessity of redrawing the boundaries of membership. Paradoxically, it took a perceived assault against a fgure of Soviet scholarly authority to trigger this reaction.

Notes 1 The chapter was prepared under the aegis of the project “Genesis of Literary Texts in the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: Interaction of Styles and Genres,” supported by PSTGU Development Foundation. I thank Nikolai Zakharov, Boris Gaydin, and Natalia Khomenko for fruitful discussions. 2 I will be using the standard ALA-LC transliteration, except where an alternative spelling has become more conventional in English (as with Meyerhold’s name in the next footnote, for instance). 3 Applying for state funds in June 1921, Meyerhold submitted a memo which listed as an upcoming production “Hamlet, by Lord Rutland, a musical action surrounded by new forms of kinetic and spatial constructions” (see N. N. Panflova and O. M. Fel’dman, eds., “Pravda nashego bytiia”: Iz arkhivov Teatra Vs. Meierkhol'da (Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2014), 156. This

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early attempt at Meyerhold’s never-realized grand project of staging Hamlet failed because the theatre did not get the desired funds. However, on January 14, 1922, Meyerhold sent to the Narkompros (People’s Commissariat of Education, headed by Lunacharsky) a letter which has a similar list of projects, including Hamlet – now attributed to Shakespeare. I will be quoting mainly from the English translation: Ilya M. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix (New York, NY: Algora Publishing, 2003). When inconvenient, I will turn to the Russian original, using the last edition to come out in the author’s lifetime: Ilya M. Gililov, Igra o Uil'iame Shekspire, ili Taina Velikogo Feniksa, 3rd ed. (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2007). There is a small number of proponents of other candidates, such as the earl of Oxford, but since their ideas have not gained suffcient traction, I will not address them in this chapter. See, for example, Mikhail P. Alekseev, Shekspir i russkaia kultura (Moscow: Nauka, 1965); and Nikolai V. Zakharov and Vladimir A. Lukov, Genii na veka: Shekspir v evropeiskoi kulture (Moscow: GITR, 2012), chapter 4. James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? (New York, NY: Faber & Faber, 2011). Alexei Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). Ibid, 103. On the genesis of the formula, see Pavel Nerler’s note in Osip Mandelshtam, Slovo i kultura (Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel, 1987), 298. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 462. Marina Litvinova, Opravdaniie Shekspira (Moscow: Vagrius, 2008), 294. Ibid, 304. Transcribed in full: Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 463. The conjecture that the Droeshout engraving shows, judging by the cut of the doublet, two left sleeves, goes back at least to the early twentieth century, when it was actively propagated by Baconians, who saw this as a deliberate sign pointing to two separate authors. Ibid, 464–465. Both of his reviewers are described as adherents of the traditional view of Loves Martyr. Nevertheless, the author fnds it crucial to explore this channel of communicating his ideas, hopeless as it might be: “Unfortunately, there was no other chance to reach wider circles of American (and English) scholars then” (464). Ibid, 205. In almost the same language, she had been describing Bacon’s “idols.” Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia,” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV, ed. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press, 1964), 245. Alexander M. Etkind, Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 165. Tat’iana Shabaeva, “Poseiiavshii ‘Buriu’ ” [An Interview With Marina Litvinova], Rossiiskaia Gazeta no. 18 (January 3, 2011): para 26. https:// rg.ru/2011/01/30/shakespear-poln.html. Igor V. Peshkov, F1 ili kniga dokazatel’stv (Moscow: Ripol-Klassik, 2015), 166. Starting with Shipulinsky (see what follows), Russian Rutlandians would typically spell his name “Рэтленд” (Ratland) without attaching any special meaning to the change. Célestin Demblon, Lord Rutland est Shakespeare: Le plus grand des mystères dévoilé: Shaxper de Stratford hors cause (Paris: Paul Ferdinando, 1912).

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25 Célestin Demblon, L'auteur d'Hamlet et son monde (Paris: Librarie des bibliophiles parisiens, 1914). 26 Gililov repeats this “fact” no fewer than ten times throughout his book – see pp. 86, 87, 88, 189, 240, 287, and 467. 27 Anatoly V. Lunacharsky, “Istoria zapadnoevropeiskoi literatury v ieio vazhneishikh momentakh: Lektsia 6,” in Sobraniie sochinenii, Vol. 4, ed. Anatoly V. Lunacharsky (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964), 161. 28 Feofan P. Shipulinskii, “Retlend-Shekspir (Zhizn’ poeta – miatezhnika),” Vestnik teatra no. 61 (1920): 5. The Romanovka was a seizure of a merchant’s house in Yakutsk by several dozen exiled social democrats and social revolutionaries, who barricaded inside the house and shot a number of soldiers and police offcers attempting to storm the house. According to a memoir by Pinkhus Rosental, Feofan Shipulinsky and his wife lived in Yakutsk at the time and witnessed the event – a splendid illustration of how personal experience blends with and informs a sociopsychological narrative. See Pinkhus I. Rosental, “Romanovka”: Iakutskii protest 1904 goda: Iz vospominanii uchastnika (Moscow: Kniga, 1924), 5, 8. 29 Feofan P. Shipulinskii, Shekspir – Retlend: Trekhvekovaia konspirativnaia taina istorii (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel’stvo, 1924), 175. 30 Litvinova, Opravdaniie, 341; Gililov, Igra o Uil’iame Shekspire, 237–238. 31 Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 205. 32 For more details, see Irina S. Prikhod’ko, “Iz istorii Shekspirovskoi komissii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk,” Znanie: Ponimanie: Umenie no. 2 (2014): 208–223. 33 Some of the academic refutation included, for example, Aleksandr Gorfunkel, “Igra bez pravil,” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie no. 30 (1998): 355–383; and Nikolai Balashov, “Slovo v zashchitu avtorstva Shekspira,” Akademicheskie tetradi no. 5, special issue (1998). 34 For example, Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 201–205. 35 Anna V. Danyushevskaya, Ideal and Practice: Aspects of Noble Life in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hull, 2001), 18. 36 It is telling that Gililov never even uses the words “freedom” or “liberty,” focusing instead on the word “Game” alone. 37 Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 247. 38 The preface instructs the reader that “by the grand possessors wills I beleeue you should haue prayd for them rather then beene prayd” (see William Shakespeare, The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid [London: imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, 1609, Sig. A1v]). Gililov version of this phrase reads “by the grand possessors of plays” in Russian, while in the English translation of his monograph, the words “of plays” appear in parentheses but are still capitalized (152). 39 Gililov, Igra o Uil’iame Shekspire, 454. The English translation changes this wording to the less-ambitious “the contents” (Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 417). 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid, 123. 42 Ibid, 277, 283. 43 Ibid, 430. 44 Ibid, 432. 45 Ibid, 247. 46 Ibid, 405. 47 Ibid, 444. 48 Litvinova, Opravdaniie, 209.

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Ibid, 219. Ibid, 224. Ibid, 347. Ibid, 162. Ibid, 15–16. Shabaeva, “Poseiiavshii ‘Buriu,’ ” para 23. Gililov, The Shakespeare Game, 6. These country estates (of Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy respectively) in the USSR were turned into museums and were a popular destination for school feld trips and intellectual tourism. Litvinova, Opravdaniie, 295. Ibid, 304–305. Ibid, 173. In the frst article on Gililov’s theory published in the Soviet media, his then ardent supporter Inna Shulzhenko suggests that such a discovery could only be made in the country where “the walls, foor and ceiling were all soundproofed” and a man had to “turn all ears” to focus on his object. See her article, “Logodedal, ili Taina zamka Bel'vuar,” Ogoniok no. 8 (1992): 19). Litvinova, Opravdaniie, 287. Igor V. Peshkov, “Vperiod v XX vek, ili velichie nesopostavimogo,” Novyi Filologicheskii Vestnik 48 no. 3 (2018): 285–293. Disclaimer: I was the author of the entry. Unfortunately, I am not at liberty to disclose the names of those involved in this private e-mail exchange.

Works Cited Alekseev, Mikhail P. Shekspir i russkaia kultura. Moscow: Nauka, 1965. Balashov, Nikolai I. “Slovo v zashchitu avtorstva Shekspira.” Akademicheskie tetradi no. 5, special issue (1998): 1–144. Danyushevskaya, Anna V. Ideal and Practice: Aspects of Noble Life in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Hull, 2001. Demblon, Célestin. Lord Rutland est Shakespeare: Le plus grand des mystères dévoilé: Shaxper de Stratford hors cause. Paris: Paul Ferdinando, 1912. ———. L’auteur d’Hamlet et son monde. Paris: Librarie des bibliophiles parisiens, 1914. Etkind, Alexander M. Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV, edited by James Strachey. 243–258. London: The Hogarth Press, 1964. Gililov, Ilya M. The Shakespeare Game: The Mystery of the Great Phoenix. New York, NY: Algora Publishing, 2003. ———. Igra o Uil’iame Shekspire, ili taina velikogo feniksa, 3rd ed. Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 2007. Gorfunkel, A. “Igra bez pravil.” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie no. 30 (1998): 355–383. Litvinova, Marina. Opravdaniie Shekspira. Moscow: Vagrius, 2008. Lunacharsky, Anatoly V. “Istoria zapadnoevropeiskoi literatury v ieio vazhneishikh momentakh: Lektsia 6.” In Sobraniie sochinenii, Vol. 4. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1964. Mandelshtam, Osip. Slovo i kultura. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel,’ 1987.

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Panflova, N. N., and O. M. Fel’dman, eds. “Pravda nashego bytiia”: Iz arkhivov Teatra Vs. Meierkhol’da. Moscow: Novoe izdatel’stvo, 2014. Peshkov, Igor V. F1 ili kniga dokazatel’stv. Moscow: Ripol-Klassik, 2015. ———. “Vpered v XX vek, ili velichie nesopostavimogo.” Novyi Filologicheskii Vestnik 48, no. 3 (2018): 285–293. Prikhod’ko, Irina S. “Iz istorii Shekspirovskoi komissii Rossiiskoi akademii nauk.” Znanie: Ponimanie: Umenie no. 2 (2014): 208–223. Rosental, Pinkhus I. “Romanovka”: Iakutskii protest 1904 goda: Iz vospominanii uchastnika. Moscow: Kniga, 1924. Shabaeva, Tat’iana. “Poseiiavshii ‘Buriu’ ” [An Interview With Marina Litvinova]. Rossiiskaia Gazeta no. 18 (January 3, 2011). https://rg.ru/2011/01/30/ shakespear-poln.html. Shakespeare, William. The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. London: imprinted by G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley, 1609. Shapiro, James. Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? New York, NY: Faber & Faber, 2011. Shipulinskii, Feofan P. “Retlend-Shekspir (Zhizn’ poeta – miatezhnika).” Vestnik teatra no. 60 (1920): 11–13, continued in no. 61 (1920): 4–7. ———. Shekspir – Retlend: Trekhvekovaia konspirativnaia taina istorii. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo, 1924. Shul’zhenko, Inna G. “Logodedal, ili Taina zamka Bel’vuar.” Ogonek no. 8 (1992): 19–21, continued in no. 9 (1992): 20–22. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Zakharov, Nikolai V., and Vladimir A. Lukov. Genii na veka: Shekspir v evropeiskoi culture. Moscow: GITR, 2012.

Part II

11 Madness and Metaphor in Lisa Klein’s and Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia Tom Ue

Lisa Klein’s 2006 young adult novel Ophelia opens with a prologue set in St. Emilion, France, in November 1601. In it, the eponymous heroine learns, through a letter from Horatio, of the happenings in Demark after her departure: The royal court of Denmark is in ruins. The fnal fruits of evil have spilled their deadly seeds. At last, King Claudius is dead, justly served his own poison. Hamlet slew him with a sword envenomed by the king himself. Queen Gertrude lies cold, poisoned by a cup the king intended for Hamlet. It was the sight of his dying mother that spurred Hamlet’s revenge at last.1 (1) Hamlet and Laertes, he goes on to relate, have killed each other, though the messenger commends the prince: “Believe me, before the lust for revenge seized his mind, he loved you deeply” (1). Here, Klein riffs off of familiar material. Readers of the play will recall how the poisoned Hamlet charges his friend to repair some of the damage wrought to his reputation: O God, Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity a while, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story.2 (5.2.296–301) Horatio duly reports his friend’s story. Nevertheless, in Shakespeare’s play, Gertrude reveals Ophelia’s death to Laertes and Claudius in Act 4, scene 7, and Laertes and Hamlet leap into her grave in Act 5, scene 1: how has Ophelia come to survive? Why does Horatio write to her? In

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the pages that follow, Ophelia answers some of these questions by telling her side of the story. Her narrative offers particular insights into her relationship with Polonius and explores why she is pressured into leaving behind both Hamlet – they are married in this version – and Elsinore. As she reasons to Horatio, “I tried and failed to change his bloody course. There can be no peace or good in being yoked to a husband who is intent upon revenge. Therefore I go” (230–231). Klein’s novel is now the source material for Claire McCarthy’s flm of the same title (2018). Where Klein concentrates on Ophelia’s story, McCarthy goes even further in exploring the lives of women. In the flm, we learn that Gertrude (Naomi Watts) has a sister, a healer named Mechtild (also Watts), who, at 19, became pregnant, lost her child, was accused of being a witch, and was set upon by the village. The child’s father is Claudius (Clive Owen). The sisters’ plights are similar in their dissimilarity: Gertrude is emotionally estranged from her husband and physically so from Hamlet (George MacKay), who is away at school in Wittenberg; meanwhile, Mechtild lives in exile in the woods beneath the castle. The example of these women frames and informs the choices that Ophelia (Daisy Ridley) makes, and the flm explores how she copes with her increasingly one-sided romance with Hamlet and the larger conficts in Elsinore. In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet identifes in Fortinbras, the prince of Norway, a continuation of himself: “He has my dying voice./So tell him, with th’occurrents, more and less,/Which have solicited” (5.2.308–310). In Klein’s novel, Fortinbras is as much a tyrant as Claudius. Klein continues Shakespeare’s narrative thread by having Horatio reveal the following to Ophelia: “Very soon we felt the heavy arm of his oppression as he took revenge against Denmark for seizing his father’s land” (325–326). McCarthy’s flm goes further still by showing the violence in the court. In what follows, I discuss Ophelia with Klein and with McCarthy. In the frst half of this chapter, Klein and I explore how the novel came to be; her project, particularly in terms of her intended audiences, and the inner lives that she gives her characters; and her thoughts about the flm adaptation. In the second half, McCarthy and I examine her world building with Ophelia, the complex female characters that inhibit the flm, and the timeliness of her project.

A Conversation With Lisa Klein What encouraged you to tell Ophelia’s story? When I decided to try to write a novel, after being turned down for tenure at Ohio State University, I turned to a subject I knew well – Shakespeare. The question just came to me: “How would Hamlet be different if told from Ophelia’s point of view?” And I started writing.

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Did you think of writing a novel for young adults from the start? Initially, I was thinking of the novel as something for English professors to assign alongside Hamlet. So, not young adult, which is ages 12–17. But my agent, noting that the protagonist (Ophelia) was 15, determined that the book was really young adult, and so pitched it to young adult editors. At that point, I purposely did not change any of the language or write “down” to teens. They are good at “reading up.” In what ways did your research and teaching enrich and/or limit your creative project? Aspiring writers are told to “write what you know.” My area of focus for my PhD and research was Renaissance England, specifcally women’s writings and material culture, and I’d taught a lot of Shakespeare, so rewriting Hamlet as Ophelia’s story seemed a natural choice for me. Let’s talk more about this novel. So many of the characters are readers. Is there something problematic about how these characters import what they read into their everyday lives? I don’t think so. Gertrude, Ophelia, and Hamlet (and Horatio and Laertes) are all literate. I gave Ophelia a kind of knowledge – of plants and herbs – that would be available to a young court lady of her time, one who has learned to read from her brother and who would use knowledge to a practical end. The queen’s enjoyment of romance writings is an outlet for her dissatisfaction and an incentive to act out herself by carrying on with Claudius. And of course, Hamlet’s speech in Shakespeare’s play is full of allusions and displays of his learning. I see my habit of characterization, giving characters rich, allusive inner lives, as an homage to or an imitation of Shakespeare’s own style. Ophelia and Hamlet are married prior to his meeting his father’s ghost. Tell us about your construction of the play’s chronology. I actually followed the play’s chronology very closely, careful not to change or shift events around. (Although it is diffcult to fgure out exactly how much time the play covers and how much time elapses between scenes.) I chose to have Hamlet and Ophelia marry prior to Hamlet seeing the ghost, because I wanted his vow to love Ophelia to precede his vow of revenge, so that the two are in confict. If they are married, the stakes are also higher for Ophelia once Claudius realizes Hamlet knows of his guilt and is a threat to him. If Hamlet is a threat, so is Ophelia. Also, if they are married, then Ophelia’s child is legitimate and therefore a potential threat to Claudius’s rule. Many of the court’s characters remain opaque to Ophelia. She is emotionally distanced from Polonius; she cannot quite decide whether

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Gertrude’s marriage was moved by her own free will or whether she was compelled; and it seems as if Hamlet values his throne much more than he claims. Why leave these mysteries for Ophelia and for us? Of course, the question about Gertrude’s agency and complicity is one that Shakespeare sets for us. I didn’t want to fully resolve it, because Ophelia, who is my main character, doesn’t have full access to Gertrude’s motivations and possibly neither does Gertrude. But she does help Ophelia escape at the end out of a desire to atone, suggesting she acknowledges wrong in the matter of King Hamlet’s death and marrying Claudius. As for my Hamlet, he is torn between loving Ophelia and the duty that he owes his father. Yes, ambition sparks in him too. I think a writer has to resist resolving all contradictions within characters. Mysteries make characters more realistic, and they give readers material to puzzle over. In the novel, Ophelia fnds concrete evidence of Claudius’s having murdered Hamlet. This incident forcibly reminds us of how little Shakespeare’s Hamlet has to go by: the play that he stages only reveals Claudius’s guilt. Was this your intention? How little Hamlet has to go on – that’s a really good point. Finding the poison vial is, of course, circumstantial evidence, but it strengthens the case against Claudius. I also wanted to suggest that Polonius might be doing Claudius’s bidding, so that Ophelia really has no one to turn to – even her father is involved. Ophelia sees much, but there is little that she can do to avert the story’s outcomes. Is this consistent with how you see the other characters? As I didn’t want to change the outcome of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, I didn’t give any of the characters that power. The only outcome Ophelia could control was saving her own life vs. taking it. What are your thoughts about the flm adaptation? After having some reservations about the script – the oversimplifed language in particular – I have to say that I really love the movie. It’s gorgeous and well acted. It’s not completely faithful to my book, but that’s OK – the movie is its own interpretation of prior texts, as my novel was. The novel is quite different from the flm: you open and end with Horatio and thus offer partial explanation for his devotion to Hamlet. What is gained and lost with this subplot’s removal? I do regret Horatio not playing a larger role in helping Ophelia escape and then coming to the convent, but I understand the intent of the

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flmmakers: to prolong the Hamlet–Ophelia romance until the very end in order to satisfy flmgoers and to make Hamlet a more appealing character and a better role for the young actor playing him. Another major difference is that the flm makes Gertrude and Mechtild sisters and creates a subplot with Claudius and Mechtild. How do you feel about these changes? I think the subplot is clever, though it does take away some focus from Ophelia’s drama. The intent of making Gertrude and Mechtild sisters was to entice Naomi Watts by giving her a dual role. What it adds to the flm is evident in the fnal scene. Note who kills Claudius! It’s not Hamlet. The flm is a revenge play for the Me Too moment. It is the wronged women who fnally give Claudius his due. I love this. The novel ends with a lengthy fnal act that relates Ophelia’s post-Elsinore adventures. It’s interesting how incurious she becomes regarding the kingdom. What are your infuences for this episode? I’ve read a lot about nuns in medieval convents and always wanted to write a novel set in a convent! What this episode in my book does is allow Ophelia to heal from the trauma inficted on her in Elsinore, have her baby, and discover her calling as a healer. She takes refuge there in order to hide but ends up fnding herself and learning to trust people anew. It’s also a place of female power, in contrast to the toxic masculinity of Elsinore. Yet it’s also a kind of court with its own hierarchy and women backstabbing one another. I wanted readers to think about the similarities and differences between Elsinore and the convent. Ophelia is determined that she will not return to Elsinore, but the choice of whether or not to claim Hamlet’s throne is ultimately the young Hamlet’s. Are you optimistic for him? People often ask me if Hamlet Jr goes back to retake the throne and if Ophelia and Horatio marry. I ask them, “What do you think?” I like leaving endings open. More work for the reader!

A Conversation With Claire McCarthy What attracted you to this project? Semi Chella’s wonderful screenplay Ophelia is a deft retelling of Hamlet that preserves much of the sharpness and gravitas of the original beloved play, while cleverly endowing new meaning and ideas into this richly layered and beloved story. Fundamentally, this new narrative focus is a compelling, timely insight into Ophelia’s journey to

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“self” – an exploration of her sexual awakening, the moral and ethical framework of the world around her, and the turbulence surrounding her frst love. This is still the story of Prince Hamlet’s grappling with court politics and his vacillation regarding avenging his father’s murder. But the story is now experienced through the prism of Ophelia’s point of view, and it is complicated by her own dilemmas. The flm attempts to give greater complexity to her as a three-dimensional character, formerly only limited, subordinate, and tragic. Additionally, I could see the potential that this mythic, contemporary reimagining had to be much more than just a period drama set in a medieval castle. I was attracted to a beautifully written but slightly subversive piece that raises important questions about morality, gender, and self-determinism – and ideally could be of interest to a younger audience. The flm faces two important and sometimes irreconcilable precursors: Shakespeare’s play and Lisa Klein’s novel. Where do your loyalties lie? My loyalties are with both texts – the intention is for this retelling to give much more dimension and gravitas to Ophelia than she was afforded in Shakespeare’s original story. It is my hope that an audience can reexperience the Hamlet that they know and love with added delight and whimsy due to the shift of the narrative axis. The flm retains a period setting, and it is a riff on arguably one of Shakespeare’s most beloved and sublime masterworks – so many things could land wrong, be misunderstood, or feel too lofty or “highbrow.” My aim has always been to set up the best circumstances for the audience to feel for these complex characters, to relate to their struggles, and to be emotionally moved. To me, this is a story about humans across culture and time, dealing with jealousy, loneliness, shame, selfloathing, and depression. To land these big themes and emotional states, the tone was incredibly important: it was crucial not to isolate a younger audience, and this needed to feel like it had a contemporary touchstone. The flm touches on complex family dynamics, the slippery slope of class and entitlement, the limitations and edges of freedom, relationships, and power. But it can’t feel like we’re taking our vitamins. Overcoming the inevitable challenges of this kind of adaptation has been assisted greatly by the language being updated. There had to be a bounce to the interactions – and at times humour and big, tense epic set pieces too. Modulating this has been a delicate stylistic and tonal balancing act in concert with my absolutely stellar cast, my wonderful triumvirate with cinematographer Denson Baker and production designer Dave Warren, and our incredible creative and industrious team on the ground in Prague.

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The flm’s visual design is quite distinctive. How did you arrive at this colourful mix? Thank you! Baker, Warren, and I always talked about Ophelia being an anamorphic, big screen epic that also allowed the audience moments of tenderness, intimacy, and emotional intensity. It was so important for the audience to be intimately inside the world of this story, led by Ophelia’s point of view. To achieve this, the world and the relationships between the characters needed to be believably and naturalistically acted, and the way the camera captured these performances had to provide another layer of subtext and dramatic imperative to the storytelling. We wanted texture. We wanted to experience the emotions of these characters up close and personal, and at other times we wanted to be like a fy on the wall. There is a lot of fuid camera work – and some really intimate and intense exchanges between the characters. The intention was for atmospheric, soft lighting, predominantly back lit. The flm is set during the medieval period as the world shifts into the Renaissance. We wanted a textured, shadowy, velvety quality that we spent a long time exploring, discussing, and honing in terms of aesthetic and formal approach. Ultimately, this look meant that the only light sources in the flm are daylight, moonlight, and fame (Figure 11.1). We shot a lot with actual fame, ranging from candle, oil lamp, fame torches, and fame bars. We also worked on a sound stage for several of our bigger set pieces, which enabled us to work fast and be in control of the image. It brought into our sets much of the natural light play and design details we observed from location scouts, as well as the light and design that we gleaned from classic paintings, particularly those by the pre-Raphaelites and Romantics. This was largely an on-location shoot with some studio build and some digital augmentation in the form of additional architectural add-ons to the castle location, sky replacement, and some background enhancement. We wanted the castle’s world to feel complex and overwhelming – like a citadel. But we did not want to draw attention to the VFX. Ultimately, we wanted this world to feel textured, real, and lived in by people from many different classes. My instinct has always been that we needed to have an architecture and an aesthetic that suggest the medieval period or earlier, but there is no imperative to be slavish to a timeframe, nor to Shakespeare’s original setting of Denmark for this story to feel authentic. Shakespeare always used his time and culture as a jumping-off point for his stories, but he had never actually travelled to Verona or to Denmark. This story is by turns naturalistic and expressionistic, and it is driven by a cohesive visual aesthetic and an intentional approach to design and cinematography.

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Figure 11.1 Daisy Ridley as Ophelia and George MacKay as Hamlet in Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia Source: Courtesy of IFC Films, an IFC Films release

Ophelia features quite a wonderful cast, with Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts, George MacKay, and Clive Owen. How did you bring this team together? Yes, the cast is delightful – such an honour and joy to work with so many fantastic artists. This ensemble was achieved via countless meetings, through listening and trying to interpret the needs of the many voices and stakeholders in the flm; through taking risks on cast; and in turn through some really incredible actors taking risks both on this material and on me. We also had the strong support of the industry: talent agents were extremely receptive to this material and really stood behind the project. Ridley has an innate emotional strength and sense of self. There is a rare ability here with Ridley as our star to present to an audience a contemporary view of Ophelia that can hopefully speak to young people in a dynamic and relevant way. Watts is an incredible artist and collaborator, and in some ways, her role is the most demanding because she plays both Gertrude and Mechtild. Gertrude and Ophelia form the strategic core of the narrative. They have quite a problematic relationship, though they are not so different.

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They aren’t, for instance, of noble birth. What do you think prevents them from becoming closer? One key to this is what Ophelia means to Queen Gertrude (Figure 11.2). In some ways, she would see herself in the young woman: there is innocence, strength, and nobility to her; and she is also low born, so brings baggage and public projection onto her character. Gertrude and Ophelia experience a kind of subtle transference between them, particularly when Gertrude chooses Ophelia as her handmaiden. Ophelia becomes an intimate conduit for her desires and longings, and her secret interactions with Claudius. The two women spark off each other. There is a frisson, a development of trust, and a deep connection that Gertrude would never have experienced in any other context. When King Hamlet dies, Gertrude loses her intimate friend, her surrogate daughter, her drug mule, and signifcantly too, her potential daughter-in-law. Ophelia isn’t mad here. Indeed, a succession of adaptations (including the recent one at Shakespeare’s Globe) is moving away from this. Why do you think that is? The intention of the flm is to explore a more complex representation of both Gertrude’s and Ophelia’s characters. They are not weak, nor should their femininity be seen as a faw or liability.

Figure 11.2 Daisy Ridley as Ophelia and Naomi Watts as Gertrude in Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia Source: Courtesy of IFC Films, an IFC Films release

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The idea of a victim recast as a different kind of hero is where we see the balance of power shift to the female, where strength and power fourish in different ways. Ophelia and Gertrude safeguard the feminine heritage of Shakespeare’s plays. Hopefully, by shifting the narrative axis, we offer much deeper insight into a feminine perspective that feels more relevant, balanced, and contemporary. Why do you think Ophelia’s feigned madness wins over Gertrude? I see Gertrude and Ophelia as very different women and at different points in their lives. Gertrude is unfulflled. The disappointment and hollowness that she feels are directly connected to her being undervalued, underutilized, undernourished, and ornamental in the world of Elsinore. She wants to fnd the stronger parts of herself but fnds so much slipping from her grasp. History tells us that a woman’s intellect, empathy, sexuality, and sexual needs were of little concern in the fourteenth century. In the original Hamlet, Gertrude’s character seems to rest on an inbuilt idea that women are weak and “frail,” their apparently largely sensual nature rendering them untrustworthy, manipulative, and superfcial. They were prone to being unreliable, to indecisiveness, and to madness. Our approach to the female characters and their relationships was through their complexities; their failings; their quests for meaning; their passionate, mercurial natures as expressions of their humanities; and their desires for connection, meaning, and love. Gertrude relates to Ophelia and has empathy for her in a way that no one has had for her. Gertrude is sensitive to her ageing in ways that Claudius and everyone else aren’t. What is behind her doubts? Are the men in her life responsible, or is she too selfshly inclined? Gertrude is in a privileged but diffcult position as queen. She would have been married off at 16 or younger to a much older king, and it would be unlikely to have been a love match, even though love and respect are suggested between herself and the king. Prince Hamlet would have been born when Gertrude was still most likely a teenager. Her primary purposes as a woman and as a queen have been as mother, wife, and icon of propriety for the realm. High expectations would have been placed on her to be chaste, religious, and morally beyond reproach. Gertrude would not have been directly involved in any decision-making or court machinations. Increasingly, Prince Hamlet spends considerable time away from home, exposing to her

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an absence and a sense of redundancy. This is hard to bear for any mother, particularly one who has not been encouraged to cultivate her own pursuits. In many ways, Gertrude is adrift or entrapped: she has produced an heir, and her husband is preoccupied with mulling war. What can her function be now aside from being decorative? When we frst meet Gertrude, her relationship with King Hamlet lacks spark: she seems depressed and bored; she seeks out sensual delights via the erotic Heptaméron chronicles (the medieval equivalent of Mills and Boon); and she uses mind-altering drugs to distract herself from the banality of court life, to give herself perhaps something to grasp onto, to occupy herself with, and to enable her to deal with everything that is happening to and around her. Is this her innate weakness? Or is it caused by the world around her? These are questions we want the audience to ponder. Tell us about the doubling of Watts as Gertrude and Mechtild. What is the larger commentary about the relationships between women here? Gertrude’s role throughout is as a mother who is trying to reconfgure her family around her new husband. But she is also a woman who has her own needs and desires that are continually jettisoned. Her entrapment and suppression are visual and emotional drivers that should be keenly felt in the drama. Mechtild, her twin, lives banished from the kingdom, is feared and vilifed, is given no voice or true agency, and is forced to survive on her own terms – which she does. She is arguably freer living in the wilds of the dark forest than Gertrude, who is entrapped in the gilded cage of the castle. But Mechtild also lacks true currency and representation even though she at least has created her own reality and is trying to heal herself and others. We felt this was a timely, contemporary touchstone about the nature of women’s voices, and about agency, an opportunity to explore how systems of power work and what needs to be discarded or reviewed. Ultimately, Ophelia leaves the entire kingdom for the sake of herself and her baby, to begin life in an entirely new world. It is our hope that Ophelia and her girl child will shape the future for the better. Gertrude and Mechtild are distanced for so much of the flm, though they follow each other fairly closely. Why do think that is? They are distanced because they have been driven apart: one sister is embraced by the court but trapped, the other is banished to the dark forest but free. They have not reconciled even though they are feetingly aware of each other through the exchange of the drugs and the court grapevine.

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You make very effective use of the fshing metaphor, realizing Hamlet’s allusion to Polonius’s fshmongering. In what ways is it problematic that Hamlet sees his courtship in terms of fshing? Hamlet is presented, in our interpretation, as a man formed by a particular version of masculinity that he has inherited from his father and the men before him. Armed with a certain amount of knowledge and also a questing mind, he ruminates and yearns to quest beyond the limitations of the world around him, particularly after his father’s death. Hamlet is complicated but also still a boy-man and a product of his time and culture. This is the great tragedy of the flm: Hamlet is unable to evolve beyond internalized notions of love, sacrifce, and true freedom, which is his ultimate undoing. Hamlet and Ophelia hardly know each other. To what extent is this important for the flm’s understanding of the characters? We need to feel their chemistry and understand that this is young love – untested and largely born from their assumptions about each other. What do you think attracts Ophelia to Hamlet nevertheless? His masculinity and also his femininity, his playful irreverence – all attractive but also dangerous and later prove to be liabilities (Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3 George MacKay as Hamlet in Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia Source: Courtesy of IFC Films, an IFC Films release

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Tell us about the shadow play. What led you to create it rather than a more realized inner play? The importance of the play within the play is to have an active demonstration of Hamlet’s need to catch the conscience of the king. Our intention was to present a projection of Hamlet’s conjecture – a medieval shadow play through a primitive magic lantern. This operates as another kind of lens: a projection of Hamlet’s fears; a silhouetted biblical allegory; and in the fickering of these images, a precursor to the projected imagery of cinema. Throughout the flm, we wanted to feel like the medieval was on the cusp of the Renaissance. Hamlet and Ophelia are questing for answers to emotional and scientifc questions, empirical proof versus instinct and emotional logic. Hamlet’s deliberation is the essence of our play within the play, but the intention was for this to speak as a set piece that was integrated into the thematic underpinnings of this retelling of the Bard’s play. Polonius and Laertes don’t fgure very importantly in Ophelia’s story: the former, in particular, is more interested in his own career. How troubled is Ophelia about Polonius’s death and Laertes’s safety? Polonius is often depicted as being a sycophant in the original Hamlet, with little care or concern for anything except his ambition. Our intention was to show the diffculty of ascension within the class structure of the court for Polonius; but in spite of this, he is a loving father to both his children. Laertes is teaching Ophelia to read. The familial interaction is warm, though we have the impression that Ophelia has the raw end of the stick as a girl child in the world of this time. Ophelia is marked and changed by her father’s death and even more so when she realizes that Hamlet will fght with her brother to the death. In our version, these changes spur her to rethink her reality and allegiances entirely. What do you think makes Ophelia walk away (fguratively and literally) from the court? It is Ophelia who foresees the potential of the kingdom being lost: she tries to prevent Hamlet from fghting her brother and to encourage Hamlet to leave with her. She is unable to stop the inevitable, but she is able to forge her own path on her own terms. We are denied the (relatively) smooth handover between Hamlet and Fortinbras that we see in Shakespeare’s play. What led you to make this a violent event rather than a more peaceful one? By the end of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Elsinore is sacked and Fortinbras seizes the Kingdom of Denmark. All our main players are dead on

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the stage. This is a tragedy and a demonstration of the failings of human ambition and corruption. In the prism of this violence, order is restored. But a kingdom, a legacy, a lover, a brother, a queen, and a bloodline are lost. Our climax delivers the weight of this original moral complexity to understand the signifcance of what would happen for a kingdom to fall. By the end of the flm, we identify only with Ophelia. What is so important about discovering and telling her story and the story of women at this historical moment? In this narrative retelling, Hamlet’s tragedy is Ophelia’s triumph. This reimagining challenges the idea that victory is based on another’s fall. Bloodshed and “an eye for an eye” will render us all lost. Ultimately, my hope with Ophelia is that an audience can re-experience the Hamlet that they know and love with added delight, complexity, and whimsy. To an audience who is not an expert in Shakespeare or who is unfamiliar with the brilliance of his masterpiece, my hope is that this reimagining of Ophelia’s story and the characters around her has new currency and invites a younger audience to experience or reexperience this timeless story.

Notes 1 Lisa Klein, Ophelia (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2008), 1. Future citations of the novel will be given parenthetically in the text. 2 William Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” in The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Wells et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 681–718. Future citations of the play will be given parenthetically in the text.

Works Cited Klein, Lisa. Ophelia. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2008. McCarthy, Claire, dir. Ophelia. 2018. Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” In The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd ed., edited by Stanley Wells et al. 681–718. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

12 Innovation and Retrospection Some Books About Shakespeare and His Times, 2015–2016 John Mucciolo

Putting Shakespeare’s Texts to the Question Paul Werstine, Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; paperback, 2015). William R. Streitberger, The Masters of the Revels and Elizabeth I’s Court Theatre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Richard Dutton, Shakespeare, Court Dramatist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Sir Brian Vickers, The One King Lear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). Zachary Lesser, Hamlet After Q1 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). Although the publication of Paul Werstine’s Early Modern Play Manuscripts (Cambridge 2012) falls outside the purview of this chapter – though its paperback edition did come out in 2016 – its seminal importance to other books reviewed here requires me to mention it. In his rereading of W. W. Greg’s infuential work on Shakespearean textual matters, Werstine dismantles Greg’s “prompt book” and “foul papers” constructs: the former, as an anachronism and the latter as a mere inference. Werstine discredits the “warm reception” Greg’s “foul papers” idea received from prominent editions of Shakespeare’s plays “that include extensive discussions of the nature of the manuscripts from which the plays were printed.” Such editions include The Arden Shakespeare (Second Series), the New Variorum Shakespeare, The Complete Works, edited by Taylor, Jowett, and Montgomery (especially in their Textual Companion), the Oxford Shakespeare, The New Cambridge Shakespeare, The Arden Shakespeare (third series), and G. B. Evans’s Riverside Shakespeare. About editions like the Oxford Shakespeare that offer readers “the text closer to the prompt-book of Shakespeare’s company” (Wells et al.), Werstine concludes that “they have erected a second story on either Greg’s guesswork

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or on their own guesses arrived at by following Greg’s methods, rather than documentary evidence” (141). Even worse, Werstine observes, just as Greg’s ideas about “foul papers” drifted from his original defnition, so some recent editors have markedly expanded the number of early printed texts regarded as based on transcripts of “foul papers.” That so many prominent editions of Shakespeare’s plays continue to embrace some form of Greg’s idea of “foul papers” is scandalous. Instead of the usual speculation based on imaginary “foul papers,” Werstine offers exciting possibilities for scholars interested in Elizabethan and Jacobean performance practice based on actual play texts. If Werstine discredits Greg’s “foul papers” and “prompt book” theories, William Streitberger in his The Masters of the Revels and Elizabeth I’s Court Theatre (Oxford 2016) disputes E. K. Chambers’s widely accepted views of the structure and activity of the Revels Offce, mainly as constituted during Elizabeth’s reign. Usefully highlighting how McMillin, Gurr, and Barroll “imagine” a revision of Chambers into “a politicized concept of the court’s role in the development of Elizabethan theatre,” Streitberger has brought a great deal of evidence to bear to prove that there existed a “symbiotic relationship” between the Revels Offce, “certain privileged playing companies, and the commercial theatre.” Instead of infghting, collaboration “was the means by which these entertainments were created and produced.” About aspects of Revels entertainment, as outlined in his excellent “Introduction to Elizabeth I’s Revels Offce,” Streitberger fnds their cause in the “gift-exchange system”: to the master, “helping to produce revels was a duty of service owed to the sovereign, just as patronizing revels was an obligation owed by the sovereign to her servants and subjects” (31). Streitberger provides a thorough accounting of the Revels Offce Masters from 1558 to 1603, including Cawarden, Benger, Tilney (two chapters), and Buck. The details of “how each managed the fnances of the Offce and played a strong hand in the production of the revels” is the focus of most of the book. Especially valuable to Shakespeareans is Chapter 5, about Tilney’s transformation of the Revels Offce (1591– 1603). Here Streitberger sets the record straight about Edmund Tilney’s production activities. The highly useful and suggestive “Afterward: Regulating the Commercial Theatre” offers a nuanced analysis of Tilney’s “censorship” activities – which were not “a matter of applying a consistent, narrow, or rigid standard of what was acceptable” – and his effect on the relationship between the commercial theatre and court productions. Streitberger’s book, then, serves as a useful corrective and synthesis of an entire body of scholarship concerned with Elizabethan (and to a lesser extent Jacobean) theatrical production values and argues effectively on behalf of “the much underrated synergy” between court and commercial theatre productions. Given such striking revisions of Chambers, as well as of Wickham, Gurr, Astington, and other prominent theatre historians

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whom Shakespeareans rely on, it would have been useful to have included their names in the index. Richard Dutton’s Shakespeare, Court Dramatist (Oxford University Press, 2016) is a long overdue counterbalance to the focus of most Shakespearean criticism and scholarship on the commercial theatre. For whatever reason, perhaps a disapproval of the “elites,” Shakespeareans have, for the most part, privileged the commercial theatre and pushed the court theatre off the stage, affecting how the plays are read and staged. It is courageous of Dutton to challenge the long-standing critical bias that Shakespeare wrote primarily for the commercial theatre. To prove his argument “that the courts of Elizabeth and James were far more central to Shakespeare’s career than has been appreciated,” Dutton presents evidence that when taken as a whole is convincing, especially concerning the patronage system; the material conditions of court performance; the practice of contemporary playing companies; the revisions of Shakespeare’s plays as they appear in quarto, folio, and one manuscript; and the operation of the masters of the Revels. Dutton makes the strong case that “the length of a play is the best marker we have for a play’s performance at court.” For example, the Q1 Hamlet (1603) has 2,154 lines, while the Q2 Hamlet (1604/5) has 3,537 lines, making Q2 suitable for the court, where performance length was not restricted by the availability of sunlight. In addition, Dutton gathers evidence from Henslowe’s Diary and Heywood’s Apology for Actors to further his case that the Offce of the Revels “rehearsed, perfected, and corrected” plays for court performance. There are other, more controversial insights that Dutton’s research leads him to consider. Since, for example, his argument requires that Shakespeare revised his plays to suit the venue in which they were performed, Dutton naturally fnds himself on the side of the editors of the Oxford Shakespeare and their performance bias. But because of his emphasis on the decided infuence of court performance on Shakespeare’s writing, he necessarily fnds that each version of a Shakespeare’s play came together for a specifc purpose. And so Dutton was at once opposed to the Oxford Shakespeare for turning a blind eye to what he sees as the central place of court performance in Shakespeare’s career and in support of them when he asserts that “the habit of confating texts has to stop.” (The Oxford editors later regretted providing a confated Lear.) Dutton’s dismissal of confated texts puts him at odds with Sir Brian Vickers’s case for The One King Lear (Harvard University Press, 2016). Vickers exercises his wide knowledge of book production and his fearsome rhetorical prowess to argue that the 1608 quarto and the 1623 folio of King Lear are differently mangled versions of an authorial copy, the quarto damaged by a novice printer and the folio the result of two-stage alterations by hands other than Shakespeare’s. To Vickers, “some approximation of the original manuscript” can be restored “by combining the defciencies of the two abbreviated texts.” Whether one agrees or not

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with Vickers’s argument, the detailed information that he meticulously lays out about the two versions of Lear includes, as an added beneft, a primer on the cost of paper, the names and experience of the print shop workers, and a compendium of other scholarly views about the play’s two versions. Vickers’s incisive close readings of passages excised from either version in light of their excision are methodical models deserving of imitation. As The Times Literary Supplement’s “Letters to the Editor” can attest, Sir Brian is a formidable critical opponent. In this spirit, his diatribe against the editors of the Oxford Shakespeare – especially Sir Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor – marshals a legion of scholars who disagree with the Oxford two-version Lear, which holds that “the folio is nearer [than the quarto] to the theatre’s acting version as found in the prompt-book [on this see Werstine] and thus represents the more theatrical version of each play.” Against this view, Sir Brian devastatingly concludes that “No part of the Two Versions theory survived.” Sir Brian is particularly distressed at the political manoeuvring that he claims Sir Stanley and Gary Taylor resorted to, especially their “advocacy” in persuading Oxford Press to publish what he calls their “fawed idea.” Alas, the fact remains that no matter how well reasoned and persuasive Sir Brian’s or Sir Stanley’s arguments are, their edifces rest in many respects on the shaky foundation of conjecture. But Gabriel Egan’s charge that Sir Brian’s view is simply “old-fashioned” is not enough (TLS Letters); an old-fashioned view, even if this is one, is not therefore wrong. In the balance, Vickers’s erudite analysis presents a cogent case for one Lear. As the two versions of King Lear vex scholars almost to distraction, Zachary Lesser’s Hamlet After Q1: An Uncanny History of a Shakespearean Text (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) further complicates the confusion already surrounding the three versions of Hamlet that we have. While the book begins with the facts of the discovery of Q1 in 1823 (reprinted by Payne and Foss in 1825), it quickly becomes a meditation on the critical ramifcations of Q1’s discovery. One might think it odd to write a book-length study of an obviously inferior version of Hamlet, but Lesser quickly dispels such doubts, arguing that since its discovery, Q1 has had “profound effects on our understanding of Hamlet, of Shakespeare as an author, and of the nature of the Shakespearean text.” Lesser contends that a special combination of facts – that the 1603 Q1 predates the 1604 Q2 and that Q1 was discovered over two hundred years after Q2 – have led to inadequate scholarly attempts to historicize it by placing it in a “period” or determining its “afterlife.” To Lesser, the complicated past of Q1 is “less an afterlife than a past life” that “seems to ficker back and forth between 1603 and 1803.” Lesser fnds little comfort in even those recent critics who “call for a less hermeneutically periodized, less chronologically rigid sense of history.” But he does concede that the “contingent ‘truths’ about Hamlet have become true only through a long

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process of critical, editorial, and theatrical engagement with the uncanny historicity of Q1” (221). To “challenge our current historicist methods of reading and to prompt us to rethink our critical and editorial practices,” Lesser surveys the “genealogy of these pseudodoxia” (21). The results of Lesser’s project are fruitful, especially when he compares “these early texts of Hamlet to reexamine what they might tell us if we can ‘forget and part with much we know.’ ” Particularly rewarding are Lesser’s readings that elucidate three of Hamlet’s contested passages: “country matters,” “Enter the Ghost in his nightgown,” and the “To be or not to be” speech. To Lesser, the phrase “conscience doth make cowards of us all” is a religious commonplace that is coherently placed in Q1, whereas its placement in Q2/F seems “like a remainder, an errant line in search of its context, carried over from a version of the speech [Q1] in which it would have been more appropriate” (205). This apparent incongruity suggests to Lesser that Q2/F is a memorial reconstruction of Q1, lending support to his view that the discovery of Q1 Hamlet is consequential. We might hear, however, a dissonant note here: the Q1 speech is in so many other ways inferior to the Q2/F to be regarded as signifcantly consequential. But this caveat is a testament to the questions that Lesser raises about these two versions. Lesser, in addition, usefully clarifes how Q1 fts the theatrical frameworks of the New Bibliography, the Oxford Shakespeare, and the New Textualists. And his look forward is persuasive. New answers to old problems might indeed lie in the recent scholarship on the material textuality of play scripts, which brings together performance history, theatre history, and book history (see Werstine).

Correcting the Record John Guy, Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (New York, NY: Viking Press, 2016). Peter Lake, Bad Queen Bess? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Jane Rickard, Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). James Shapiro, The Year of Lear (New York, NY: Simon & Shuster, 2015). Lorna Hutson, Circumstantial Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Shakespeareans frequently look to adjacent disciplines such as history, philosophy, and theology to inform their readings of the poems and plays. The next set of books offer examples of recent developments in our understanding of early modern history of particular interest to Shakespeareans. John Guy’s Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (Viking 2016) is, as one would expect from this scholar, a model biography that sets its

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subject deeply within its historical context. Guy divides Elizabeth’s reign into two periods, providing a review of the frst 25 years of her reign and a close examination of the last two decades of her life, especially the postArmada Elizabeth. To do this, Guy returns to “the original, handwritten letters and documents in the archives” and challenges anecdotes “culled from unreliable memoirs” and questionable documents, such as Calendars of State Papers, which “omitted large chunks of material” and “were compiled, in some parts, to perpetuate the myths.” Lytton Strachey, in whose footsteps Guy says he follows, discovered that after 1580 there was an “exponential increase” in handwritten state papers, only a small number of which have ever been printed. Guy’s aim is to use these documents to shine a new light on the years 1588 to 1603 of Elizabeth’s reign. To Shakespeareans who pay considerable attention to those years, the volume’s title may seem paradoxical, but what Guy delivers will be eminently useful, especially since he is keen to debunk false assumptions and to identify unreliable sources that Shakespeareans have used to construct an image of Elizabeth. An example of such an assumption is that Elizabeth drafted all her own letters. As Guy reports, many were ghostwritten by Burghley, and even her favourite Dudley was observed dictating a letter in Elizabeth’s name. Guy further reports that of “the ffteen thousand or so surviving letters or warrants sent out in Elizabeth’s name . . . no more than 2,400 of them were hand-written by the Queen or dictated by her” (19). It is also Guy’s contention that Burghley, at times, took advantage of Elizabeth’s trust to suit his own ends. Guy emphasizes Burghley’s troubled loyalty to the queen, detailing the terms of the “Association” (1584), a group of Elizabeth’s trusted inner circle, who at once declared loyalty to the queen and, at the same time, to the Protestant cause. Elizabeth strained against such ambiguous loyalty. It was Elizabeth’s conviction, for example, that even though there was proof of a Catholic conspiracy (provided by Burghley and his party), Mary, an anointed queen, could not be deposed by her own subjects. Here we can see the seeds of the radical Protestant justifcation for regicide that presages the execution of Charles I. Guy also provides new evidence concerning Elizabeth’s religious and political convictions. In her 1591 summer tour, Elizabeth stopped at the Catholic Viscount Montague’s manor house at Cowdray in Sussex. About the queen’s motives, Guy argues that what her biographers take as a vote of confdence was in fact “a marginalization of Montague.” Since the Northern Uprising and the pope’s excommunication of Elizabeth in the 1570s, Elizabeth was wary of the Catholic nobility. This is the same Elizabeth who kept a crucifx and candlesticks in her private chapel (see the Idolatry Act) and who let the Protestant Dutch know that she was displeased with their republican tendencies, admonishing them to obey their princes. According to Guy, Elizabeth frst and foremost demanded from her subjects their allegiance, defending the traditional monarchical

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prerogatives (and her practice of a moderate Christianity) against both Burghley’s more strident Protestantism and the Catholics’ Marian agenda. Guy has also reinterpreted quite a few of the details that Shakespeareans will fnd useful concerning Elizabeth’s relationships with Leicester and Essex. Guy corrects the notion that Elizabeth was a “frustrated sexagenarian spinster” who “openly firted with Essex, a man less than half her age, kissing and caressing him.” Guy reinterprets the verb “to devise” in the original manuscript not to mean to kiss and caress, as other biographers have, but to mean “to look at attentively.” Another correction involves the anecdote that during a meeting with de Maisse, the French envoy of King Henry IV, Elizabeth “kept the front of her dress open, and one could see the whole of her bosom.” About this account, Guy points out the mistranslation of “la gorge,” which would mean the fesh between the neck and the bosom, as opposed to “le sein,” the word that would be used for bosom. Guy also points to the many inaccuracies found in Camden’s Annales perpetuated by many of Elizabeth’s biographers. One example is Camden’s account of Elizabeth’s supposed refusal to sign Essex’s death warrant – “she wavered in her mind” thanks to “her former affection and favour towards him.” According to Guy’s sources, Elizabeth signed the death warrant as soon as Cecil informed her that there was no more information to get from him. Guy exposes other errors that Elizabeth’s biographers keep alive: Southwell’s version of an argument between Elizabeth and Cecil; Sir Robert Collins’ “fction” about Elizabeth’s naming James as her successor; and, most importantly, Sir Robert Naunton’s often repeated 1620’s assessment of Elizabeth’s style of rule: “she ruled by faction and parties.” Guy instead epitomizes Elizabeth’s conservative rule: to preserve the ideal of Godappointed monarchy. Guy also illuminates James’s activities during the years immediately before his ascending the English throne, a period of great interest to the English but underappreciated by Shakespeareans. One curious titbit involves James’s apparently chivalrous and hasty sea voyage to claim his bride, Anna, from across the North Sea, an adventure which was meant to defect rumours that James’s proclivity for men made him impotent with women. Peter Lake’s Bad Queen Bess? (Oxford University Press, 2016) is another excellent reinterpretation of Elizabeth’s rule, this time from the point of view of the competing political tracts published in response to controversial issues arising during her reign. Like Guy, Lake characterizes Elizabeth as a conservative proponent of old-fashioned monarchy in the face of considerable opposition from many fronts, including her minister Burghley and his Protestant coterie. Because Elizabeth had no heir, she had many obstacles to navigate: a Catholic rival to the throne in Mary Queen of Scots, a formidable enemy in Spain, and Protestant and Catholic subjects on both sides of these and other issues. To sort out this complicated picture, Lake examines opposing Catholic and Protestant

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tracts. For the frst time, the Catholic viewpoint is presented as a serious element of the political climate. Indeed, Lake’s goal is “to recuperate, to animate and inhabit imaginatively and intellectually, certain sorts of Catholic political thought, political commentary, and pretty much contemporary political history” (4). And he is concerned to examine how the government’s “spread of rumor and uses of various parts of more or less choreographed performance, ranging from pulpit to stage, from parliamentary speech to show trial and public execution, were all central ways in which they sought to get their message across” (10). This examination involves a reappraisal of some key conceptions that Shakespeareans hold about Elizabeth’s reign. Even more important, this book serves as a model of discourse analysis or ideology critique and, as such, unveils a new “species of political history.” For Lake, the political history of the time, especially what he calls the “hot Protestant clique” (Burghley and his party), can best be understood through a “timely dialogic relationship with what certain Catholic ideologies and interest groups were doing and saying.” For Shakespeareans, Lake’s approach yields useful results. Bearing on the view that Shakespeare had classical republican sympathies, Lake challenges Patrick Collinson’s infuential notion of “monarchical republicanism.” Lake fnds evidence that it is “a fantasy created by Cecil and his faction to consolidate power”; better labelled Burghley’s Commonwealth, it was “a fction that suited the Catholic propaganda pamphlets to rail against and the queen to resent.” On another front, even though the queen resisted many of Burghley and his circle’s efforts to ensure a Protestant successor, preferably one of their choice, the Catholics persisted in labelling him “evil counsel.” Lake sees issues like the lack of a successor and the Bond of Association as indications that, pace Collinson, there was no such thing as a monarchical republic; rather, there were two rival views at odds about how the monarchy was structured and ought to work: “Elizabeth’s traditional monarchical impulse and Burghley’s attempt to perpetuate his and his relatively narrow clique’s hold on power.” It was “public politicking and rumor-mongering on the back of politick plot talk [that] played an intermittent, rather than regular role in the conduct and perception of policies” (480). This tendency, according to Lake, continued with more force into the Stuart period, with the focus not on the support of a regime but against abuses at court. Lake convincingly demonstrates that “how politics was thought and practiced comes to light in the polemical tracts sponsored by the Elizabethan regime and opposed by the English Catholics,” that these battles were occurring at least 20 years before the Stuarts, and that it is the Catholic tracts that give us “a better picture of just what was at stake in all of this.” In Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Jane Rickard claims that the work of Jonson, Donne, and Shakespeare engaged James’s writing, and James, in turn, was infuenced by them. This is a bold claim, especially given how currently

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unfashionable it is to link Shakespeare and James. It is Rickard’s aim “to analyze James’s writing as texts rather than as contexts,” an analysis that “provides a more balanced view of other writers too.” To support this claim, Rickard must frst address the widely held view that James was, when it came to the arts, uninterested. Rickard portrays a James who is attentive to the arts, enthusiastic for poetry (at least in his youth), shrewd about poetry that served his interests, keen to interpret biblical scripture, and an astute spectator of theatre. If Rickard is right about these claims, it is diffcult to understand where James’s bad reputation comes from. Rickard derives many of James’s positive characteristics from positing Jonson’s, Donne’s, and Shakespeare’s relationships to him. Jonson, for example, sees himself as poet-adviser to James (at least until 1616), especially in the Epigrams, Panegyric, and masques, encouraging James to emulate the qualities of a tolerant, listening ruler who leads by example, inspires love not fear, and recognizes wisdom and virtue in others. Rickard argues that Jonson refects onto James qualities he gleaned from James’s own writings. Rickard’s Donne is more amenable to James than has often been depicted. Basing her view on the reliable J. P. Sommerville’s contention that there is no question of Donne’s support of James, Rickard examines Donne’s comparison of the fundamental differences and superfcial similarities between the divine and kingly authority. Donne’s position on James is complicated, requiring much sorting out, especially the differences between Donne’s public and private thoughts. Regarding Shakespeare and James, Rickard ploughs the familiar felds of Measure for Measure and Basilikon Doron, the procession of kings in Macbeth, and the connection between Othello and James’s The Lepanto, basing this last linkage on the shared word “turbaned.” That Shakespeare’s use of the word indicates that he probably read The Lepanto and that it represents “an important moment of interaction” between Shakespeare and James seems a stretch. More congenial are Rickard’s conclusions that James’s publications, including his published speeches to Parliament, exposed him to criticism; that Jonson believed James to be his subject (in several senses); that Donne was in conversation with James; and that Shakespeare’s plays depict, more than attempt to participate in, “conversations” between ruler and subject. If this is what Rickard means when she argues that James’s writings played a signifcant part in the literary culture of the Jacobean age, there are many who already agree with that. She certainly is right to conclude that Shakespeare “seems to have been less concerned than Jonson or Donne to educate, counsel or challenge the king personally,” though any writer who would even covertly challenge the king took a mighty risk. Jonson was imprisoned for it. It is an institutional hazard of the Shakespeare biography industry that most of what is written is based on a molehill of evidence and a mountain of speculation. But to revisit the archives to locate even a shred of telling evidence, as John Guy has, is well worth the effort. And it is tempting

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every now and then to gather up all we know about Shakespeare into a ball and to roll it once again down the biographical alley. In The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606 (Simon & Shuster 2015), James Shapiro attempts to take what we know about Shakespeare’s life and times during the year 1606 and to use it to make better sense of the great works of art Shakespeare composed during and around that year. Shapiro took this same approach in 1599: A Year in the Life of Shakespeare (Faber & Faber 2005), and now he is back at it. For the general reader, this book’s linking of Shakespeare’s art and his times may offer uplift; for the Shakespearean, its fights of fancy can be frustrating. Shapiro believes that “to draw Shakespeare out of the shadows demands considerable effort and imaginative labor.” He immediately puts his prolifc imagination to work when he wonders why Shakespeare, “the most experienced dramatist in the land,” had not written a masque. He speculates that “had he been invited to do so,” he would have said no. Instead, Shapiro “suspects” that Shakespeare was “already back at his lodgings, doing what he had been doing well into the night for over ffteen years: writing.” We cannot possibly know whether he was invited to write a masque, whether he said no, or whether he wrote at night. And, as Shapiro well knows, Shakespeare did embed an abbreviated masque into The Tempest. Shapiro spends our time more productively on the intriguing subject of Shakespeare’s Catholic connections. Shakespeare, as Shapiro reports, was acquainted with the 21 parishioners of Stratford-upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity Church who refused communion on April 20, 1606, and who appeared on 6 May before the vicar to explain their refusal. Among the group who refused communion was Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna. While this Catholic connection, among others that Shapiro enumerates, points to Shakespeare’s intimate knowledge of recusant issues, it necessarily means that, as Shapiro would have it, “it’s likely that he would have still been in his hometown when the recusants were conferring.” This is the pattern. Shapiro makes a telling connection between Shakespeare and his times but cannot leave it as the suggestion that it is. Shapiro is adept at comparing Shakespeare’s plays to their sources, and the results are interesting. But his proclivity for speculation more often than not outweighs his reliable readings of the plays. A good example is his account of the tombs in Westminster Abbey. He tells a riveting story about King James’s disinterring Elizabeth to place her with her half-sister Mary; then exhuming his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, to place her opposite Elizabeth; and fnally assigning himself interment in the tomb of Henry VII, from whose line James established his claim to the throne. Shapiro then goes off the rails when he speculates about how this affected Shakespeare: “There’s a possibility that Shakespeare had heard of the restoration work being done at the Abbey . . . and it infuenced his own ‘show of eight kings’ in Act 4 of Macbeth.” Although Shapiro retreats from this claim – “More likely, James’s and Shakespeare’s ‘show of kings’ were

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fashioned independently at roughly the same time, and shared a common purpose: advertising the extent and legitimacy of James’s royal lineage” – he leaves the seed of his wilder speculation planted. This mixture of fact, conjecture, and wishful thinking creates the aura of excitement that surrounds an actual scholarly discovery, sans an actual scholarly discovery. The general reader, for whom this book was written (which may explain Shapiro’s penchant for contractions such as “There’s”), is better off being told what we know about Shakespeare’s life and times rather than that what we cannot possibly know, that Shakespeare worked well into the night or that Queen Elizabeth “could appear at court in outfts that were bare-breasted” (on this, see Guy). Lorna Hutson’s Circumstantial Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2015) is a historical analysis of a much different sort. Against a critical tradition that posits for Shakespeare a “permissive” style” (“wood notes wild”), Hutson’s book clarifes how Shakespeare in the 1590s created “a coherent imaginary world, employing direct mimesis, extra-mimetic representation (reported offstage action enabling imaginative inference), and rhetorical argumentation” (9). Originally delivered as an Oxford Wells Shakespeare lecture (2012), the book’s parts, as one would expect from a book based on a four-day lecture, do not quite cohere, but that does not matter. Hutson provides a brilliant analysis of selected Shakespeare plays and their use of “circumstance.” Her engaging introduction explains elements of Shakespeare’s innovative fction making, in the context of her argument about “how sixteenth-century neoclassical theory and English dramatic practice are concerned to enable audiences to infer psychology and imagine dramatic time and space by investigating topical, and, indeed, circumstantial arguments” (22). Shakespeare’s innovations in characterization, according to Hutson, come from “compositional techniques based in rhetorical argumentation that Shakespeare learned in grammar school and elsewhere” (17). What is “circumstance”? To simplify, it is the when, where, how, and so on that the playwright, by using rhetorical techniques, asks the audience to imagine what is not there. Accordingly, Hutson analyzes the when in Romeo and Juliet, “Opportunity” (Time) in Lucrece and King Lear, and the where and how in Two Gentlemen of Verona. From the perspective of circumstantial invention, Hutson argues, for example, that in Macbeth, Shakespeare “divorces forensic rhetoric from questions of law and justice, associating it instead with the depiction of a profound subjectivity.” Extrapolating a broad political message from her reading of motive in Macbeth, Hutson posits that Scotland’s “kin-based government,” implicitly compared to the English “monarchical republic,” explains Macbeth’s “radical political instability.” This is an intriguing argument and a model political reading of a play, but it leaves unanswered questions about what Shakespeare might understand the term “monarchical republic” to mean (for this, see Lake).

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Widening the Emotional Scope Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan, eds., The Renaissance of Emotion (England: Manchester University Press, 2015). R. S. White, Mark Houlahan, and Katrina O’Loughlin, eds., Shakespeare and Emotions (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015). Steven Mullaney, The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Recently, the meaning of the emotions – or passions, affects, or other of its cognates – has undergone a critical reassessment in Shakespeare studies. The three books under review expand the critically extant medical humoral model to include its social and political aspects, and the results are promising. Richard Meek and Erin Sullivan, editors of The Renaissance of Emotions (Manchester 2015), test the effcacy of this expanded view of the humours. In their introduction, they focus on Shakespeare’s use of “humours” in a speech from Richard II (5.5.6–11) to illustrate “Shakespeare’s awareness of natural philosophy and medical humoralism as a means of explaining mental and emotional processes.” This depiction of the humours argues that Shakespeare’s use of the word is dynamic: “It is metaphorical, layered within biblical quotations and proverbs.” Such an expanded sense of the word “humour” indicates “the diffculties of turning one’s emotions into language and suggests that all attempts to articulate inward feelings involve a certain degree of translation and metaphorical conceptualization” (2). Even further, they argue, such intellectual and creative frameworks as “religious and philosophical belief, political performance, or rhetorical and dramaturgical style also shaped cultural beliefs about emotional experience.” The authors conclude that the emotions in Renaissance England “did not follow a single template or social script.” This concept of script theory, important throughout the volume, posits that human behaviour falls largely into patterns called scripts, which provide “a program of action.” Many chapters in this volume use the idea of script theory to explain how adhering to or deviating from the social or cultural script can begin to explain a writer’s theory of the emotions or a character’s emotional state. It is appropriate that the frst chapter of The Renaissance of Emotions examines Thomas Wright’s The Passions of the Minde in generall, which is the cornerstone of much critical writing about the emotions as they were viewed in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Erin Sullivan’s useful essay sees Wright’s Passions as informed by his Catholic faith (Wright was a Jesuit and is thought to have travelled in Shakespeare’s circles) and as interested in the “emotionality of the soul.” Sullivan, the volume’s coeditor, places special emphasis on the “spiritual dimensions of Renaissance affect” in Wright’s Passions, an emphasis that complements “the body and humoral physio-psychology.” Sullivan admits that she has not

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attended to topics that most critics see as important to Wright, such as rhetoric and the emotions, but these areas have already been addressed in Thomas O. Sloan’s important introduction to his edition of Passions (Illinois University Press, 1971). In Nigel Wood’s expert explication of the word “spleen,” a word that seems to signify according to its particular context, he narrows its use to three categories: witty spleen, in which “a single orthographic existence belies semantic riches”; unmimetic spleen, including “some aspects of the emotional that could not be adequately represented in verbal terms”; and dramatic spleen, which involves “the disorientation of certain dramatis personae.” Wood’s point is that Shakespeare “does not use it [spleen] in any streamlined or predictable way.” This kind of analysis is a welcome complication of the splenetic function as depicted by the medical humoral model. Along these same lines, Richard Meek, the volume’s coeditor, makes a similar point about the words “pity” and “compassion” and their “intertwined rhetorical, emotional, and political concerns.” Focusing on whether we should feel pity for Richard in Richard II, Meek proposes that our responses involve political and ethical concerns and “bind the acts of pity and compassion in the play.” Meek’s conclusion is that Shakespeare’s idea of sympathy – fellow feeling – is “imitated, mediated, and relational.” Regarding pity in Richard II, Meek contrasts “emotional responses outside the play” to “various instances of sympathetic engagement and emotional correspondence within the text.” Frederika Bain asks the question that lies behind the study of Renaissance emotions: how do we know what Elizabethan or Jacobean audiences felt? Bain details how affect scripts work in, for example, the conventional but distinct emotional responses from each actor at an execution: the executioner, the condemned, and the spectator. Any deviation from the script raises questions about the appropriateness of an execution. These “genuinely felt responses create a sense of realism and, in effect, feel true.” R. S. White and Ciara Rawnsley aptly describe a character’s deviation from an affect script as mutating “in response to circumstances and to human interactions.” This “discrepant emotional awareness” makes Shakespearean “affective encounters still plausible as explanations of complex human behavior.” These cogent assessments of how “emotionality” humanizes a work of art and makes the action plausible signifcantly supplement the restrictive medical humoral model. R. S. White, Mark Houlahan, and Katrina O’Loughlin, editors of Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies (Palgrave 2015), offer a panoramic view of the feld of emotionality. Most of the contributors to this volume are based in Australia or New Zealand, and many of them are members of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of the Emotions, 1100–1800 (CHE). The chapters contained in this volume were originally papers delivered at the conference Shakespeare and Emotions held at the University of Western Australia in December 2012. Like Meek and Sullivan’s chapters, these

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depart from the medical humoral orthodoxy, instead focusing on three areas that expand the feld. “Emotional Inheritances” examines Shakespeare’s sources in the classical, medieval, and folk worlds. Ciara Rawnsley’s essay on Cymbeline, fairy tales, and the inner life argues that the literal play world involves an incredible tangle of loose ends that obtain coherence from the “improbable fairytale elements of the play,” which suggests, in Cymbeline, a deep emotional substructure of “insecurity, jealousy, and sexual fear involved in married life.” The second section, “Shakespearean Enactments,” analyzes “a range of emotional states and questions raised in the plays themselves.” Heather Kerr’s chapter on “sociable” tears in The Tempest centres on the play’s turning point, when Prospero, at Ariel’s behest, releases his prisoners. The “proliferation of on-stage audiences” – Gonzalo, Ariel, and Prospero – transfers the emotion of pity, “fellowly drops,” that are “copies of copies, in an early modern demonstration of the players’ passions as simulacra.” The fnal section, “Emotional Legacies and Re-Enactments,” charts Shakespeare’s infuence, from the seventeenth century to the British Museum’s 2012 exhibition “Shakespeare: Staging the World.” Simon Haines’s essay about “recognition” in Shakespeare and Hegel compares Aristotle’s Anagnorisis and Hegel’s Anerkennung. In short, Hegel’s formulation of recognition involves the “self” with an equal “other” – or, put another way, by knowing other minds, we come to know ourselves. Haines, in effect, uses recognition moments in Shakespeare’s Othello, King Lear, and Anthony and Cleopatra to measure Aristotle’s and Hegel’s versions of recognition and concludes, unsurprisingly, that they are “not adequate to capture all that recognition might increasingly have meant to Shakespeare.” Returning to Meek and Sullivan’s volume, I end with Peter Holbrook’s elegant summary of the current state of emotion studies. As a rejection of medical humoral psychology’s reductive downplaying of “the role of human agency,” it instead demonstrates how “Renaissance writers and thinkers, not least of all Shakespeare, imagined human life as capable of emotional freedom.” Steven Mullaney in his The Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare (University of Chicago Press, 2015) asks a bold question about early modern emotion: what did it feel like to be an Elizabethan? Mullaney begins his answer, as new historicists are wont to do, with an anecdote: a gruesome account found in John Stow of over one thousand cartloads of the remains of human bodies buried in the Pardon Churchyard of St Paul’s, disinterred, and dumped into a marsh outside of Moorgate. This anecdote illustrates in lurid detail an English Reformation attempt to make a break with the past. To imagine what it must have felt like to be an Elizabethan during a time of such upheaval, Mullaney “investigates the affective media and technologies, the arts as well as other means that were used by the period itself in an effort to understand itself” (4). Mullaney contends that the theatre is “deeply and complexly engaged with what is at risk in the historical moment” because it “provides public and performative cultures with a means of thinking about

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themselves.” Providing an overview of prior attempts to explicate early modern emotions, Mullaney concludes this section with a statement about his focus on “amphitheatre drama,” as one “affective technology” that is “an especially deep, sensitive, and probing instrument, that theatre tends to be in times of crisis.” Mullaney’s analysis is deeply indebted to Raymond Williams’s structures of feeling and Peter Womack’s constructed archaism. Mullaney eschews refective theory based on social mimesis; instead, the “media and practices” he favours are “refractive, unsettling, and creative or world-making; they are social productions, dialectical rather than refexive or didactic in their relation to their readers and their audiences and their worlds, both old and new” (47). I quote Mullaney at length because his sentences contain complex theoretical thinking that is diffcult to summarize and worth the effort to unsort. Like most recent scholars of the emotions, he challenges the medical humoral theory. But one still questions his notion that “affective mimesis,” which he fnds in Wright’s Passions, is inadequate and that “production without mimesis” is adequate. Mullaney puts his theories to the test by exploring Hieronimo’s tears in Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (3.2.1–4) and Marcus’s discovery of the maimed Lavinia in Titus (2.4.). His tour de force, however, is his reading of Talbot in 1 Henry VI as a “nostalgic archaism, a fgure without a future.” This thought-provoking book gains purchase in its notion of dynamic materialism: “theater and performance constitute an experience rather than an idea or an argument; the relation of art to society constitutes relation without refection, production without mimesis” (125). Mullaney has a rare gift for lucidly in employing theory to explicate works of art. At times, his use of theoretical terms, like “technology” instead of “theatre,” enhance his argument; at other times, his use of jargon like “imbricated” and “distantiated” distract from it. Mullaney cannot possibly answer the question he poses: how can we know what an Elizabethan audience felt? No one can. But he does provide us with a theoretically sound way to guess at it.

Shakespeare’s Interdisciplinary Art R. Malcolm Smuts, ed., The Oxford Handbook of The Age of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Stuart Sillars, Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). Most Shakespearean criticism uses different disciplines to make its case. For those Shakespeareans looking for an interdisciplinary mine to excavate, R. Malcolm Smuts’s The Oxford Handbook of The Age of Shakespeare (Oxford University Press, 2016) is a good place to begin digging. Smuts has gathered 40 essays by experts in their disciplines. These essays provide an up-to-date view of a topic that would be of interest to

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Shakespeareans; each essay a starting place for interdisciplinary study and, most valuably, a rich bibliography. The volume’s aim is “to explore new ways of connecting current research on English history during Shakespeare’s lifetime to investigate his drama and poetry” (2). Thankfully, these essays avoid “prescriptive discussion about applications of history to literary analysis”; instead, they seek “to inspire readers to wrestle with historicist problems independently”; the essays are meant to be “a fund of usable material.” Smuts’s “Refections on Interdisciplinary Frontiers” provides an excellent overview of current historicist thinking (1980 to roughly 2012), in the areas of history, intellectual culture, social practices and beliefs, architecture, visual culture, and music. Smuts is interested mainly in explicating what he calls a cultural turn in historical studies: political history “must properly involve not only the reconstruction of sequences of events but investigations of how those events were perceived, interpreted, and publicized, and therefore the media and rhetorical strategies through which information was disseminated and interpreted” (4). To accomplish this noble goal, Smuts has enlisted the aid of experts. Pauline Croft uses Cecil’s pamphlets and treatises to tease out nuances of Jacobean attitudes towards, say, Catholics or Parliament. Peter Lake demonstrates that the public theatre “had a prominent role to play in the workings of public politics and that the drama has a good deal to tell us about Elizabethan political culture.” Luke Morgan links the gardens and writings of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods so that they “illuminate each other”: he compares garden monstrosities to Shakespeare’s monster, Caliban. Elizabeth Goldring argues that the lowly status of the painter and other practitioners of the visual arts in England (and their aesthetic practices) changed with the rise of art collecting, and much earlier than has been realized, William Herbert, frst earl of Pembroke, for example, possessed nearly 60 paintings as early as 1562. Smuts’s hope that “the essays gathered together here show the abundance of opportunities awaiting scholars prepared to cross disciplinary boundaries in pursuit of new insights” concerning Shakespeare and early modern conditions has been admirably realized in this volume. While Stuart Sillars’s Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2015) is a book that builds its argument from chapter to chapter, its variety and complexity also allow us to treat it as if it were a compendium of individual essays about Shakespeare’s plays and the visual arts. Sillars’s aim is to explore ways in which the structures, allusive practices and concepts of the visual arts of Shakespeare’s time were appropriated and transformed into the forms and ideas of the poems and plays, and to argue that an awareness of these processes greatly enriches our knowledge of the canon. (1)

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Though I gained from reading this book from cover to cover, those with a special interest could limit their reading to a Shakespeare play or a visual technique, to great beneft. However, for Shakespeareans with an interest in the visual arts, Chapter 1, which serves as an indispensable introduction to the attendant issues concerning Shakespeare and the visual arts, and chapters 8 and 9, which provide an insightful overview of the feld, are mandatory reading. The body of the volume comprises chapters (that refer to each other) about the visual dimensions of a selection of Shakespeare’s poems and plays. An example of Sillars’s approach is in his discussion of the complementarity of the images of the pieta and Lear’s carrying the body of the dead Cordelia. While Sillars acknowledges that even a parody of the Catholic pieta imagery at a Protestant court performance would have been “dangerous territory,” he defends this juxtaposition as “an instance of the meditative trope associated with the pieta image.” This image and its haunting allusiveness suggest to Sillars that if the image were read into the play, it would allow a “refraction on the dreadful intensity of the body carried onstage . . . that can rarely not induce at least momentary, shocked stillness in early productions” (232). Creating such confuences of the visual arts and Shakespeare’s dramatic art is innovative and suggestive, pointing to new ways to think and write about Shakespeare’s visual imagination, fertile ground that all too often lies fallow.

Paying Due Homage Robert Ellrodt, Montaigne and Shakespeare (England: Manchester University Press, 2015). Angus Fletcher, The Topological Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). I end this review with two volumes published between 2015 and 2016 whose authors died during those years. During their lifetimes, these scholars made signifcant contributions to the feld of Shakespeare studies. Their lives – even at 90 – were too short, but their infuence deserves to be long. Robert Ellrodt (1922–2015) in his Montaigne and Shakespeare: The Emergence of Modern Self-Consciousness (Manchester University Press, 2017) offers Shakespeareans a comprehensive and useful way to think about Montaigne’s infuence on Shakespeare. This, Ellrodt’s fnal book of a long and distinguished career, is a revision and re-adaptation for an Anglophone audience of Montaigne et Shakespeare (José Corti, 2011). Aiming “to call attention to the phenomena of self-consciousness involved in particular moments of self-observation,” Ellrodt frst surveys “the undeniable progress of subjectivity” from the Greeks to the European Renaissance, concluding that “forms of self-consciousness observed in the Essays are absent or only dimly discernible in the literature of the

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western world before Montaigne” (18). Highlights of his analysis include intimations of self-consciousness in the Aeneid, in the lyric poetry of Catullus, in the Confessions of Augustine, and, a special bonus for Anglophone readers, in the medieval and Renaissance French poets. Ellrodt begins his discussion of Shakespeare’s self-consciousness with the Sonnets. He divides the Sonnets between the consistent “voice” and “ironical self-consciousness” of the Dark Lady sonnets on one hand and an “implied subjectivity” and a contrasting “real self” and “social self” in those sonnets addressed to the young man on the other. Ellrodt sees signifcance in the Sonnets’ having been written before Shakespeare wrote Hamlet or read Montaigne’s Essays. He next traces what he calls “the evolution of subjectivity” in England, where, he asserts, a “keener awareness of individual identity manifested itself in England than on the Continent.” About Shakespeare’s dramatic language, Ellrodt frst discusses the kinds of soliloquy that display a pensee pensante “in its spontaneous generation . . . or apparent premeditation.” If, as Ellrodt asks, “Interiority and the intervention of self-consciousness in his plays are more prominent from Julius Caesar to King Lear, how far was Shakespeare’s reading of Montaigne responsible for that?” The answer is the “balance between self-absorption and an interest in the outer world, noticeable to a lesser extent in Montaigne, was reinforced in Shakespeare” (93, 94). Ellrodt’s main point about Shakespeare’s characters is that in Hamlet, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and Lear, “fundamental features of their characters persist through their plays.” On the large subject of Montaigne’s and Shakespeare’s scepticism and humanistic values, Ellrodt makes a cogent case for their “playing with skeptical notions” but adhering to “values that may be called at once humanistic and modern”: they both display a “spontaneous aversion to cruelty.” Ellrodt’s work offers a signifcant reading of Montaigne and Shakespeare. This crowning achievement of a distinguished scholarly career we are fortunate to have in English. Angus Fletcher (1930–2016), a coeditor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook (Vol. 3) and best known for his recently reissued Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode (2014), spent his scholarly life studying “the shape of human making,” especially imaginative cognition. His last book, The Topological Imagination: Spheres, Edges, and Islands (Harvard University Press, 2016), a meditation on literature and mathematics, explores the “topological attitude” in his account of the imagination. What is topology? By applying the topologist’s permanencein-change principle to an object made of soft materials, a cube of putty, for example, can be reshaped into a small round ball with no change to its volume. What does topology have to do with Shakespeare? Fletcher relates the permanence-in-change topological principle to a “good play” that at once is “logic embodied” and “thrives on instability of situation.” To illustrate the parallel between Shakespearean drama and topology, Fletcher considers the character Hamlet. Hamlet the father is, in a

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topological sense, stretched into Hamlet the son: “Returned or rather escaped alive from his sea voyage, the young prince later cries out, ‘’Tis I, Hamlet the Dane!’ at which point he has become his own father.” Fletcher concludes that “Using the language of identity, the play studies the very idea of shape and its changing permanence” (27). According to Fletcher, “Poems give humans a metamorphic schooling into the range of imaginative freedom, for poetic making implies myriad inventive possibilities, whenever imaginative widening plunges our powers of reason into the sea of causes and empirical and emotional forces and drives” (60). As informed by topology, this is an extraordinary account of the cognitive imagination – as it is freely at work in the arts – and its effect on the observer. Why is it that after four hundred years we continue to fnd new things to say about Shakespeare’s poems and plays? That each generation reads them anew according to its own perspective is tribute to Shakespeare’s capacious mind as refected in his inexhaustible art. Or, it could be, as Angus Fletcher has said, Shakespeare reads us.

Notes on Contributors

Sabina Amanbayeva is an assistant professor of English and comparative literature at Oklahoma City University, US. Her dissertation focused on queer affect and the politics of emotions in early modern English drama. She published an article “Laughter in Twelfth Night and Beyond: Affect and Genre in Early Modern Comedy” in Early Modern Literary Studies and organized a roundtable on “Affect Theory and Early Modern Passions” at MLA in 2015. She now works in the feld of Slavic studies, specifcally Soviet Shakespeare and Soviet/Russian flm adaptations of Western literature, such as the Soviet adaptations of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Lilian Moore’s “Little Raccoon and the Thing in the Pool.” Michelle Assay is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Huddersfeld, UK, working on Shakespeare and Censorship in Soviet/ post-Soviet Music, Film and Theatre. Born in Tehran and trained in piano performance at the Tchaikovsky Academy in Kiev and at the Satie Conservatoire in Paris, she is currently working towards publication by Routledge of her PhD dissertation, received from the Sorbonne and University of Sheffeld, on Hamlet in the Stalin Era. Alongside several published articles, she is coordinator of an international research group on Shakespeare in Central and Eastern Europe and founder of the international ‘Shakespeare and Music’ Study Group. In addition to concert appearances as a solo and chamber pianist, for the past nine years she has been collaborating with David Fanning on a major new life-and-works study of Mieczysław Weinberg for Toccata Press. In April 2018 she joined the reviewing team for Gramophone. Tom Bishop is a professor of English at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder (Cambridge, 1996), the translator of Ovid’s Amores (Carcanet, 2003), the editor of Pericles, Prince of Tyre (Internet Shakespeare Editions), and a general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook. He has published articles on Elizabethan music, Shakespeare, Jonson,

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Australian literature, and other topics, and is currently writing a book on Shakespeare’s Theatre Games. Alexa Alice Joubin is a professor of English; women’s, gender and sexuality studies; theatre; and international affairs at George Washington University, in Washington, DC, US, where she serves as founding codirector of the Digital Humanities Institute. Her latest books include Race in Routledge’s New Critical Idiom series (with Martin Orkin, 2019), Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance (coedited, 2018), and Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (coedited, 2014). Alexa holds the Middlebury College John M. Kirk Jr chair in medieval and Renaissance literature at the Bread Loaf School of English. She is a general editor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook. Natalia Khomenko is a lecturer in English literature at York University (Toronto), Canada. Her dissertation traced the evolution of the virgin martyr vita from the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance in England. She has published articles in Early Theatre and Borrowers and Lenders and is a contributor to the MIT Global Shakespeares Video and Performance Archive. Her current research project, funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada Insight Development Grant, focuses on the reception and interpretation of Shakespearean drama in early Soviet Russia. Vladimir Makarov is an associate professor (docent) at the Department of Germanic philology, St Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, Russia. He has published articles on (among others) Donne, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Robert Burton. He was on the team who prepared new Russian academic editions of Donne’s poems, Shakespeare’s sonnets, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Herrick’s Hesperides and is a Co-Chair of the Shakespeare Committee, Russian Academy of Sciences. Irena R. Makaryk is Distinguished University Professor, Department of English, at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is the author, editor and coeditor of 16 books and numerous articles, many of which focus on Shakespeare in times of great social and political upheaval, including war, civil war, and revolution. Her most recent book is April in Paris: Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo (2018). Kim Axline Morgan is a professional director and freelance author/ editor, currently based in Dunedin, New Zealand. She retired early as an associate professor of theatre at the University of Denver, after helming the MA programme at SUNY-Binghamton. She regularly publishes, lectures, and produces contemporary works based on

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classical models: Greco-Roman, commedia dell’ arte, melodrama/ vaudeville, myth/ritual – and all things Shakespeare (especially the history of Hamlet in Russia). She is now co-founder and a director for the Dunedin Summer Shakespeare programme. John Mucciolo, PhD, is a founding editor, with W. R. Elton, of The Shakespearean International Yearbook. He has recently coedited Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with John Mahon for the New Kittredge Shakespeare, 2019, and Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare, with Sophie Chiari for Cambridge University Press, 2019. His abiding interest is Shakespeare’s late plays and early modern political, intellectual and theatrical backgrounds. Madalina Nicolaescu is a professor at the English Department, University of Bucharest, Romania. Her books on early modern theatre include Meanings of Violence in Shakespeare (2004) and Eccentric Mappings of the Renaissance (1999); she has edited collections of essays, including (In)hospitable Translations: Fidelities, Betrayals, Rewritings (2010), Shakespeare Translations and the European Dimension (2012) and Shakespeare 400 in Romania (2016). Her most recent work on Shakespeare was published in SEDERI (2017), Proceedings of the Ninth World Shakespeare Congress (2014), Great Shakespeareans (2012) and Visions of Shakespeare (2011). Aleksei Semenenko is an associate professor in Russian at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. He holds a PhD in Russian literature from Stockholm University. He is the author of Russian Translations of Hamlet and Literary Canon Formation (Stockholm University, 2007), The Texture of Culture: An Introduction to Yuri Lotman’s Semiotic Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and the editor of Aksenov and the Environs (with Lars Kleberg; Södertörns högskola, 2012). He has published works on translation, literature and semiotics and is currently working on a project on Russian satire and censorship. Tom Ue researches and teaches courses on nineteenth-century British literature, intellectual history, and cultural studies at Dalhousie University, Canada. He is the author of Gissing, Shakespeare, and the Life of Writing (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming) and George Gissing (Liverpool University Press, forthcoming) and the editor of George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). Ue has held the prestigious Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship and he is an honorary research associate at University College London. Jana B. Wild is a professor of theatre studies at the Academy of Performing Arts Bratislava, Slovakia. She is the author of An Enchanted Island?

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Shakespeare’s The Tempest Otherwise (2003), A Short Cultural History of Hamlet (2007), Shakespeare. Zooming (2017). She also edited three international collections, focused mainly on Central and Eastern Europe: In Double Trust (2014, in English), Mirrors for/of the Times (2015, in Slovak and Czech) and Shakespeare in Between (2018), all published in Bratislava. In 2017, she was elected board member of ESRA (European Shakespeare Research Association).

Index

Note: page numbers in italic indicate a fgure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Adorno, T. 169, 170 Akimov, N. 10, 61, 70–75, 102 Aksenov, I. 9–10; assessment of Hamlet 32; assessment of Romeo and Juliet 32; “The characters and types of Shakespeare” 35–36; describing Shakespeare as a realist 35; The Elizabethans 22, 23–24; essay on Othello 31–32; Hamlet and other essays 22, 24, 32, 34; historical context of the Elizabethan epoch 22, 27, 32–37; life of 21–23; Marxist direction of 33; method of literal translation 23–26; musicological analysis by 33; reconfrming Shakespeare’s relevance for the Soviet Union 35–36; Shakespeare 22; translation of Othello 22, 28–33, 30; “What Is the Question?” 24–27 Aksenov, V. 22 Aleksin, A. 93–94 Alexandrescu, S. 127 Anikst, A. 8, 190–191, 196 Anisimov, I. 29 Annales (Camden) 223 anthroposophy refected in Chekhov’s Hamlet 65–67 anti-Stratfordianism, post-Soviet 12, 183–196 Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare) translation published in Romania 123, 124, 125 Atheist’s Tragedy, The (Tourneur) 22 audience: differences in attitudes towards Hamlet 173–176;

elite 172–178; elite versus ordinary 175; laughter linked to dictatorship 178–180 Bacon, F. 183, 193 Badarau, D. 131 Bad Queen Bess? (Lake) 223–224 Bain, F. 229 Belvoir Castle 185, 192, 195 Berg, A. 107 Blazon of Jealousie, The (Varchi) 31 Bolshevik Party 19, 21 Brandenburg Gate 148 Bratislava and Comedy of Errors staging 11, 139, 140 Brezhnev, L. 83 Budsky, J. 139, 141, 142 Burghley, Lord 222 Călinescu, M. 132 Camden, W. 223 Cecil, W. see Burghley, Lord censorship 48, 50–51, 139–141 Chabukiani, V. 106 Chambers, E.K. 218 Characters and Actors (Aleksin) 93–94 “characters and types of Shakespeare, The” (Aksenov) 35–36 Chekhov, M. 10, 61, 65–70, 115 Chettle, H. 192 Chizhova, E. 12, 165–180; Kroshki Zaches 165–170; Lavra 168; rejection of popular Shakespeare 165–180; Vremia Zhenshchin 168, 177–178

Index Chukovskii, K. 27 Circumstantial Shakespeare (Hutson) 227 collectivity, disenchantment with 178–180 Collinson, P. 224 Comedy of Errors, The (Shakespeare): archival material relating to 144–148; stage design with political connotations 148–150; staged in Bratislava 11, 139, 140, 142–158, 143, 145, 150–153, 155; visual references to Russia 148–150, 154–156 Conspiracy of Feelings, The (Olesha) 85 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A (Marx) 33 Croft, P. 232 culture: creating a world culture in the Soviet Union 51–52; power of in the Soviet Union 43 Cymbeline (Shakespeare) 230 Czechoslovakia: Cold War in 139–140; in between East and West 154–155 Death of Stalin, The (Ianucchi) 54 Decemberists of 1825 188 Demblon, C. 187, 188 Doctor Pinch (character) 150, 152, 154 Donne, J. 225 Dutton, R. 219 Dzhugashvili, I. see Stalin, J. Earl of Rutland see Rutland Early Modern Play Manuscripts (Werstine) 217–218 Eastern Bloc 4, 84, 122, 140, 142, 143 Eisenstein, S. 22 Elisabedashvili, G. 46 Elizabeth: The Forgotten Years (Guy) 221–223 Elizabethans, The (Aksenov) 22, 23–24 Elizabeth I, queen of England 221–224 Ellrodt, R. 233–234 emotion: being politicized 90; in Shakespeare’s works 228–231; see also love

241

Etkind, A. 186 Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More (Yurchak) 184 Fair Maid of the West, The (Heywood) 22 fate in Machavariani’s Hamlet 106–112 Fletcher, A. 234–235 formalism 63–64, 74–75; Hamlet and 61 Freud, Sigmund 186 Friche, V. 183, 187–188 Frid, I. 9 First All-Union Soviet Writers’ Congress (1934) 10, 28, 49, 50, 64, 90–92, 171 Georgian national identity 106–107, 115 Gertrude character: in Klein’s novel Ophelia 207; in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 210, 211, 211–216 Gheorghiu, M. 131, 132 Gililov, I. 183, 185, 189–193, 195 glasnost 84 Goldring, E. 232 Gorbachev, M. 83–84 Gorky, M. 28, 48, 49, 50, 64, 90 “Great Game” (Gililov) 183 Great Terror 20, 53, 57n49 Greg, W.W. 217–218 Guitry, L. 102 Guy, J. 221–223 Haines, S. 230 Hamlet: analogy with character of Mindia 107; anthroposophic portrayal by Chekhov 65–70; in Klein’s novel Ophelia 203–205; in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 210, 214, 214–215; portrayal of by Smoktunovsky 177; portrayal of by Vysotsky 177; portrayed as an optimistic socialist 171 Hamlet After Q1 (Lesser) 220–221 Hamlet and other essays (Aksenov) 22, 24, 32, 34 Hamlet (Danish) (A Russian Comedy) (Kobekin) 115 Hamlet (Shakespeare) 4, 10, 44–45; Akimov’s production of 61, 70–75; Aksenov’s assessment 32; Ambroise

242

Index

Thomas’s operatic version 105; censured productions of 61–75; Chekhov’s production of 61, 65–70; formalism and 61; Kozintsev’s production of 9; Machavariani’s operatic version of 106–112; as a materialist tragicomedy 70–75; multiple texts of 220–221; operatic productions of 102–116; popularity among the intelligentsia 62–63, 65; Radlov’s staged version of 171–172; Slonimsky’s operatic version of 112–115; social realism and 61 Hawkes, Terence 7 Herbert, W. 232 Hoffman, E.T.A. 172 Holderness, Graham 3 Honan, P. 185 Honest Whore, The (Dekker) 22 Horatio character in L. Klein’s novel Ophelia 203–204, 206 Houlahan, M. 229–230 humanist intelligentsia 174–176 humours in Shakespeare’s works 228 Hutson, L. 227 Ianucchi, A. 54 intelligentsia 71, 175; humanist 174–176; relationship with Hamlet (Shakespeare) 62–63, 65 Iordan, I. 126 Iremaschwili, J. 46 Iron Curtain 147, 148 Iutkevich, S. 9 Ivan Kozyr and Tatiana Russkikh (Smolin) 88–90 James I, king of England 224–225 jealousy, defning 31 Jonson, B. 22, 27, 192, 225 Kaganovich, L. 49 Kerr, H. 230 Kerzhentsev, P. 86 Khruschev’s Thaw 83, 93 Khrushchev, N. 83 King Lear (Shakespeare) 219–220; Kozintsev production of 9; Radlov production of 121 Kirshon, V. 90 Klein, L. 203–207 “Klein Zaches gennant Zinnober” (Hoffman) 172 Kobekin, V. 115 Kozintsev, G. 9, 169

Kroshki Zaches (Chizhova) 12, 165–170, 172–180; collective art versus elite audiences 172–178; critique of Soviet collectivity 178–180; differences in audience attitudes towards Hamlet 173–176; opposition to popular art 176–177 Krzhizhanovskii, S. 31 Kundera, M. 156 Kurbas, L. 170 Laertes character: in Klein’s novel Ophelia 203; in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 215 Lake, P. 223–224, 232 Lanier, D. 169 Lavra (Chizhova) 168 Lenin, V. 48 Lesser, Z. 220–221 Leviţchi, L. 132–133 List of Blessings, The (Olesha) 8 literalist translation 24–26 Litvinova, M. 183, 185–186, 193–195 love: being reconceptualized 85; in post-Stalinist Russia 93–97; romantic 86–90; see also emotion Love and Delectation (Romeo and Juliet) (Neelov) 87–88 Lunacharsky, A. 5, 183, 188 Macbeth (Shakespeare), Verdi’s operatic version 104 Machavariani, A. 11, 103–104, 106–112 Makaryk, I.R. 169–170 Manea, N. 129 Manners, R. see Rutland Marx, Karl 48 Masters of the Revels and Elizabeth I’s Court Theatre (Streitberger) 218–219 materialist tragicomedy 70–75 Mayakovsky, V. 87 Mayerová, M. 139, 141 McCarthy, C. 204, 207–216 Mechtild character: in Klein’s novel Ophelia 207; in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 204, 213 Medvedev, D. 163 Meek, R. 228–229 Meilakh, M. 23 melancholia 184–186 Meyerhold, V. 183 Mikhöels, S. 44, 121

Index Mindia character from “The SnakeEater” 107 Molotov, V. 49 Montaigne and Shakespeare (Ellrodt) 233–234 Montefore, S. 45 Morgan, L. 232 Morozov, M. 170–171, 187, 189 Mullaney, S. 230–231 music’s role in operatic versions of Hamlet 102–116 nationalism: in Machavariani’s Hamlet 106–112; of USSR 121–122 Neelov, V. 87 New Economic Policy (NEP) 19, 66, 71, 87 normalization in Czechoslovakia 139, 140, 141, 144, 146, 157 October Revolution 3–4, 90, 91, 92, 123–124, 170, 187 Okhlopkov, N. 28–29 Olesha, I. 8, 85 O’Loughlin, K. 229–230 One King Lear, The (Vickers) 219–220 operatic versions of Hamlet 102–116; Machavariani’s version 106–112 Ophelia character: in Klein’s novel Ophelia 204–207; in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 207–216, 210, 211 Ophelia (Klein novel) 203–207 Ophelia (McCarthy flm) 204, 207–216, 210, 211 optimistic tragedy exemplifed by Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 90–93 Ostuzhev, A. 28, 29 Othello (Shakespeare): essay by Aksenov 31–32; Iutkevich production 9; Machavariani’s ballet on 106; preference of in the Soviet Union 28–29; translation by Aksenov 22, 28–33, 30; translation by Radlova 27, 29 Oxford Handbook of the Age of Shakespeare, The (Smuts) 231–232 Oxford Shakespeare, The (Wells) 219, 220 Passions of the Minde in generall, The (Wright) 228 Pasternak, B. 114, 169, 175–176

243

“Pathos of Truth in Oedipus and Hamlet, The” (Vianu) 128 perestroika 11, 84, 97 personal agency 93, 96 Peshkov, I. 196 Poliakov, V. 93 Polonius character in McCarthy’s flm Ophelia 214, 215 Popov, A. 91–92 Popular Front 52–53 popularizing Shakespeare 165–180 post-Soviet anti-Stratfordianism 183–196 Pravda (newspaper) 145–146 Prichard, K.S. 52–53 Protopopescu, D. 125, 128, 130 Putin, V. 163 Radlov, S. 5–6, 27, 28, 29, 102, 115, 121, 171–172 Radlova, A. 27, 29 Radomyslenskii, V. 31 Rawnsley, C. 229, 230 realism: dialectics of 33–36; see also socialist realism rebellious aristocrats embodied by Shakespeare’s characters 188–189 Reformation of Emotions in the Age of Shakespeare, The (Mullaney) 230–231 Renaissance of Emotion,The (Meek and Sullivan) 228–229 Revels Offce 218, 219 Richard III (Shakespeare) 131, 165–166 Rickard, J. 224–225 Robbers, The (Schiller) 49 Romania: Shakespeare scholarship in 11, 123–133; Stalinization of 123–124 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare): as an optimistic tragedy 90–93; assessment by Aksenov 32; being embraced as socialist realism in the 1930s 91–93; changing interpretative strategies of 10–11; inventing and mobilizing love 85–97; rejection of in the 1920s 86–90 Russia: ambivalent relationship to Shakespeare 62–65; antiStratfordianism in twentiethcentury 183–196; cultural infuence of 4, 54; culturally being accepted by the West 184–186; love as

244

Index

emotion in 85, 93–97; unifcation of language 121–122; see also Soviet Union; USSR Russian Rutlandianism 183–186 Rutland 12, 183, 187, 188, 191–193 Rutlandian authorship: in 1990s Soviet Union 189–196; in early Soviet Russia 186–189; perceived as previously being persecuted 190–191 Sayler, O. 19 Schiller, F. 49 self-consciousness 233–234 self-sacrifcial dedication versus individualism 93–97 Shakespearean drama 102–116; as cultural export 11; developing ideologically correct approaches to 7–8; didactic uses of 10–11; ideological reconfgurations 9–10; Russian sense of superiority about understanding opera 104–106; Soviet approaches to 4–6 Shakespeare, Court Dramatist (Dutton) 219 Shakespeare, William: assessing emotional scope of works 228–231; authorship debate 183–196; authors questioning texts of 218–221; books about Shakespeare and his times 217–235; collective art versus elite audiences 172–178; critique of popular Shakespeare by Elena Chizhova 165–180; generating ideologically appropriate version of 7; passions in his drama becoming obsolete 86; political uses of in the Soviet Union 50–54; portrayed as a father of socialist realism 171–172; post-Soviet antiStratfordianism and 183–196; private and offcial meaning of 166–168; in Romania from 1951 to 1964 123–133; seeking the “real Shakespeare” 183–196; selfsacrifcial dedication of Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 93–97; simplifed 165–167; socialist realism and 47–50, 123–133; Soviet Union writers encouraged to emulate 50; Stalin’s relationship to work of 43–54; texts about Shakespeare’s interdisciplinary art 231–233; texts understanding historical context

of 221–227; viewed being worthy to be staged in Russia 6; works being translated by Aksenov 28–33; works being translated into Soviet dialects 51–52 Shakespeare (Aksenov) 22 Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies (White, Houlahan, O’Loughlin) 229–230 “Shakespeare and His Work” anthology (Vianu) 130–132 “Shakespeare and the Anthropology of the Renaissance” (Vianu) 128–129 Shakespeare and the Visual Imagination (Sillars) 232–233 Shakespeare Committee at the Soviet Academy of Sciences 190, 196 Shakespeare Game, The (Gililov) 190, 193 Shakespeare in the Soviet Union 27–28 Shakespeare Justifed (Litvinova) 193–195 Shakespeare Cabinet 7, 51 Shakespeare-Rutland: A 300-year-old Conspiracy Mystery (Shipulinskii) 189 Shapiro, J. 185, 226–227 Shcherbakova, G. 95–96 Shipulinskii, F. 183, 188, 195 Shlepianov, I. 92 Sillars, S. 232–233 Slonimsky, S. 11, 103–104, 112–115 Slovak National Theatre (NK) 139, 140 Smirnov, A. 27, 187, 189 Smoktunovsky, I. 177 Smolin, D. 88 Smuts, R.M. 231–232 “Snake-Eater, The” (Pshavela) 107 Sobolev, L. 90 socialist heroism writing in the Soviet Union 50 socialist realism 10, 20, 28, 64, 70, 75, 85, 90, 121, 171; criticism of 168–169; discourse in Romanian Shakespeare scholarship 123–133; embracing Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare) 91–97; Hamlet and 61; Shakespeare and 47–50, 123–133 socialist realist art 6–7 Sovetskaia muzyka 105–106

Index Soviet Shakespeare 9; abbreviation for debased Shakespeare 175; as an cultural export 8; Chizhova’s memories and critique of 165–180; existence after dissolution of Soviet Union 12; terminology of 3–4 Soviet Union 4, 7, 9, 11–12; ambivalent relationship with Hamlet 62–65, 116, 170–172; appropriating William Shakespeare for political uses 50–54; creating a world culture 51–52; early postrevolutionary years 19–20; power of culture in 43; see also Russia; USSR Stalin, J. 19, 83; encouraging writers to promote socialism 49; mythologizing of 45; negative opinion of Hamlet 47; possibility of reading Shakespeare while growing up 45–47; relationship to the work of Shakespeare 10, 43–54; willingness to engage with the West 52–53 Stanislavsky, K. 66, 69 Streitberger, W. 218–219 Sullivan, E. 228–229 Sumarokov, A. 62 ƩFƩZ: city map of 147, 147–148; signpost in Czechoslovakia 142–144 Taganka Theatre 83 Tempest, The (Shakespeare) 230 theatre: being controlled by the Soviet government 50–51, 218–219; as tool to educate Soviet masses 4–5 Things Undreamt Of (Shcherbakova) 95–96 Tilney, E. 218 ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (Ford) 22 titanism 131 Topological Imagination: Spheres, Edges, and Islands (Fletcher) 234–235 topology and Shakespearean drama 234–235 “Tragedy of Central Europe, The” (Kundera) 155–156 Troilus and Cressida (Shakespeare) 132, 192 Trotsky, L. 48 Twelfth Night (Shakespeare): Frid production of 9; produced in Russia 4–5

245

Ukraine’s efforts to popularize Shakespeare 170 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics see USSR USSR: after collapse of 163; exposure to Western infuence 83–84; formation and cultural infuence of 3–4; paradoxical position on multinationalism 121–122; see also Russia; Soviet Union Varchi, B. 31 Verdi 104 Vianu, T. 11, 123, 125–133; accused of practising duplicity 129–130; critique of Richard III 131; “The Pathos of Truth in Oedipus and Hamlet” 128; “Shakespeare and His Work” anthology 130–132; “Shakespeare and the Anthropology of the Renaissance” 128–129 Vickers, B. 219–220 visual arts and Shakespeare’s plays 232–233 Voroshilov, K. 49 vox populi reference in Slonimsky’s operatic version of Hamlet 112–115 Vremia Zhenshchin (Chizhova) 168, 177–178 Vserossiiskaia Teatral’naia Organizatsiia 7, 14n16 Vysotsky, V. 177 Wells, H.G. 5, 19 Werstine, P. 217–218 West Side Story 96 “What Is the Question?” (Aksenov) 24–27 White, R.S. 229–230 White Devil, The (Webster) 22 Woman’s Prize or The Fair Maid of the West, The (Fletcher) 22 Wood, N. 229 Wozzeck (Berg) 107, 111, 112 Wright, T. 228 Writing the Monarch in Jacobean England (Rickard) 224–225 Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606, The (Shapiro) 226–227 Yeltsin, B. 163 Yurchak, A. 184 Zhdano, A. 50

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