Contents

S. Wells. Revision and Shakespeare

The article discusses the history of Shakespearian editing showing the difference between the conflationist position and the revisionist one. The latter's leading principles and advantages are illustrated by examples from the Complete Oxford Shakespeare which the author has edited.

J. Dollimore. The Case for a Political/Cultural Analysis of Shakespeare: The Instances of Displacement and Perversion

The analysis offered in the article concentrates on the complexity of political Issues — racism and colonialism — as they figure in social process and as dramatic representation (focusing on two passages, from «The Tempest» and from «Othello»).

A. Barton. «Othello»'s Fair Devils

The article explores the significance of the names of «Othello»'s central characters: in themselves and in their interaction with each other. Special attention is paid to the black/fair opposition which runs throughout the play.

A. Pasternak Slater. Boris Pasternak's Translations of Shakespeare

The article concentrates mainly on «Hamlet» illustrating Pasternak's approach to translation and some of the ways in which, in the author's opinion, Pasternak has improved on Shakespeare.

T. Hawkes. Lear's Maps

An evaluation of Granville-Barker's 1940 production of «King Lear» in the political context of the time leading to some general conclusions about Shakespeare's role in British culture.

P. Holland. The Resources of Characterization in «Othello»

The author shows how different Shakespearian characterization can be within a single play. Some minor figures and, most of all, Iago (on whom the article concentrates) prove the point.

A. Anikst. Evolution of Poetic Style in Shakespeare

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Shakespeare's poetics as occupying an intermediate position between petrarcism and the newly formed then metaphysical stylistics. The evolution is traced in both dramatic poetry and sonnets.

A Lipkov. Kozintzev Lessons

A discussion of in ways in which artists make use of Shakespearian scholarship. The author believes that Kozintsev's was the only artistically valid way: he made a study of Shakespeare exploring in depth the dramatist's works and their relevance for the present and, as author-director, put his ideas into practice in the theatre and cinema.

V. Ryapolova. Two «Henrys V»

A comparative analysis of the Olivier film (1944) and the RSC 1975 production focusing on the differences in approach and style.

Y. Levin. Hamlet and Opnelia in Russian Poetry

The paper is devoted to the history of interpretation of the Shakespeare's tragedy in Russian. The author traces the evolution of styles and concepts beginning with the first translation of «Hamlet» done by Alexander Sumarokov from French in 1748 and going down to the XXth century poetic tradition of appealing to the images of Hamlet and Ophelia.

A. Parfenov. The Tragedy of Shakespeare as an Artist

Shakespeare used freely the traditional art. This helped him to create a new, realistic art and at the same time broke the unity of truth, good and beauty, made the picture of the world enigmatic or «signifying nothing». Disappointment in art as an illusion only was the reason why Shakespeare left the theatre.

A Gorbunov. Pastoral Oasis (On Pastoral Motives in Shakespeare's Plays)

The article deals with pastoral motives in three plays by Shakespeare written in different genres and at different periods — «As You Like It», «King Lear», and «The Winter's Tale» — and tries to show the changes in the playwright's treatment of pastoral conventions as Shakespeare developed his art and reconsidered his ideas about the relations of man, nature and society. Already in «As You Like It» the traditional attitude of the Renaissance pastoral which considers life in the forest, close to nature, as being superior to «unnatural» and dangerous life at the court is subtly satirized and made to seem relative. In «King Lear» pastoral conventions are turned upside down but still continue to work. In this play life on the heath in the storm is even more dangerous than at the court, but staying close to nature next to «unacommodated man», as befits the convention, changes Lear's heart. In «The Winter's Tale» pastoral conventions are taken very seriously and treated in an entirely new way. They become part of a fantastic fable and. are put in an explicitely Christian context typical of the Baroque and its sensibilities. Here Shakespeare opens the way for later 17th century experiments with pastoral.

L. Gililov. To the History of the Shakespearean Question

The discussion of who was Shakespeare and who was the author of his works is nearly two centures old. In our country it was aborted of about 30-ies. The article is devoted to the genesis of the problem, the main aspect of which is the cleavage between the documentary facts about Shakespeare and how his life and personality come out from his works. The failure of numerous hypothesis — the Baconian, Oxfordian and other non-Stratfordian versions — the author attributes to their theoretical background being based on non-critical, non-scientific approach. The problem of such sophistication and delicasy may be solved only against a steadious accumulation of facts, objective data. How perspective it may be the author shows with the analysis of Shakepeare's poem «The Phoenix and the Turtle» which helped to find out unique watermarks on the pages of R. Chester's book where the poem was first published.

L. Makurenkova. «Macbett» Ionesco: Modern Interpretations of Shakespeare

The Ionesco play is regarded as a congenial piece compared to the original which nourished it with an initial impulse. The poetic analysis of the text shows «Macbett» as a thing in itself in spite of the Shakespearean context. As well as reveals its deepest roots within the great classical dramatic tradition.

I. Chekalov. The Shakespearian Ecoes in «Little Dorrit»

William Macready's staging of «King Lear» is known to have been admired by Dickens and the impress of the play upon the characterization in the novelist's Fiction has been pointed out. A strong case which can be made for the significance of «King Lear» in the writing of Dicken's noveis need not, however, overshadow the importance of some other Shakespearian plays, each having its own share in forming the Dickensian world.

Even though «Little Dorrit» might have been Dicken's «most deeply felt response» to «King Lear» no mention of the play is made in the novel, whereas such plays as «The Tempest», «Macbeth» and «Hamlet» are referred to. These cases are analyzed in their contextual detail to show that the language material of each reference is embedded in the text with an allusiveness which suggests that the Shakespearian echoes in «Little Dorrit» are as important a device of Dicken's craft as the recurrent themes, images and constantly changing modes of presentation.

V. Beryozkina. Shakespeare and the English Essay

The sphere of Shakespeare's influence Is broadened by including a new genre — the essay, a typical form of the English Literature. The seventeenth-century English essay is regarded as an aesthetically congeneric with Shakespeare's works. It was not imported from France, its roots are in the English literature. The exuberance of Shakepeare's genius was one of the important source of its origin.

The problem is examined from two standpoints. When direct influence of Shakespeare on J. Donne, R. Burton, T. Browne, T. Traherne is investigated, the main argument is verbal likeness and common imagery. Another aspect of the problem is the likeness of ideas, themes, images (glassy essence of man, man as the quintessence of dust, love, wisdom) as the dialogue in culture, as the impersonal exchange of ideas beyond the problem of direct influence.

The likeness of the English essayists to Shakespeare is viewed also in the light of the stylistic tendencies of culture. The English essay is treated as the genre moulded by mannerism. What makes the English essay manneristic would appear to be intellectual vividness, imaginative quality of style, experimental way of thinking — the poetological features of essay-genre as being analysed.

L. Skuratovskaya. Shakespeare and the English Children's Literature

Thes paper is a study of interaction between English adult literature and the children's literature, the process, in which Shakespearean impact played a central part. In the early stages of the «romantic revolution» Shakespeare's art had stimulated the establishment of a high aesthetic standard for the new children's literature (Lamb, Keats, Hawthorne). The cue for Lear's and Carroll's nonsense was probably given by the nonsensical trend of thought in Shakespeare's plays (language games and philosophy of language, a highly suggestive mating of words and ideas, mistaken identities, a blending of the tragic and the grotesque, the philosophical and the «clownish» view of life).

Shakespeare's sense of history seems to determine the development of the historical fiction fror children (Stevenson, Kipling). Thus the first romantics and Victorians had transformed Shakespeare's «negative capability» (Keats) into a new aesthetic category — «childishness», i. e. full freedom from certain mental and literary conventionalities; hence the «experimental» (J. Dusinberre) qualities in V. Woolf's, Kafka's, T.S. Eliot, S. Beckett's writings.

V. Zusman. Ludwig Tieck as a Translator of Shakespeare

There was written a lot about «Shakespearean fancies» of one of the great romantic poets of Germany. In the article they are regarded much more as an expression of inner tendencies than mere caprices.

Working over «The Tempest» Tieck reincarnates the original text against the German background. Very similar process takes place in his «translation» of «Pericles». However in both cases in the direction outlined by the English original. That is why Tieck's translations of Shakespeare serve an illustration of freedom than of arbitrariness of choice.