Summaries

G.A. Sokur

«Vremen sviazuyuschaya nit»... From the history of Russian Shakespeare studies

The paper presents the publication of fragments from the transcript of the jubilee Shakespeare conference which took place in 1939. It reproduces the speeches of the most prominent theatre directors of that day, Sergey Radlov and Alexey Popov, famous for their Shakespearean productions. It is a remarkable page in the history of perception of Shakespeare in Russia, the fundamental principle of which was to create a situation, in which people of the theatre were able to communicate effectively with literary critics. Of major importance in this achivement were the efforts of the Shakespeare Room, organized with the All-Union Theatre Society (VTO) in 1934, as well as the publication of «Shakespeare Almanacs», which published the proceedings of conferences, convened by the Shakespeare Committee.

A.V. Bartoshevich. The forest of Arden in Stalinist Russia: comedies in the Soviet theatre of the thirties

Paradoxical as it may seem, during the most harsh years of the Soviet regime Shakespeare's comedies became very popular with the theatres and the public. The state authorities didn't oppose the theatres» eagerness to stage the lively, optimistic, dynamic and bright life, which they derived from the classical comedies. It was a proof of Stalin's idea that life in Soviet Russia had become better and more joyful. For the public luminous theatre performances were a kind of refuge from the «Great Terror» which spread over the country at that time. And for the theatres and the actors it was a real breath of fresh air.

N.E. Mikeladze. Elizabethan theatre as communicator, or About the art to «look with the ears»

In the vertical hierarchical structure of the medieval universe we find three main horizontal streams in which everyone felt themselves Everyman: religious life, carnival and popular theatre. In the age of Shakespeare the system of English public theatres became a very influential means of communication even in comparison with the church itself (we remember the «battle» of church bells and theatre trumpets). Every important item of the outer (political, social) and inner life of Man and State was discussed on the stage. We suggest several parameters of the phenomenon of theatre as communicator. The audience of the Elizabethan theatre was very diverse, but all the spectators belonged still to those who «learned by ear». The Word was significant for man. The world was a stage, but the Theatre was also the World. The dimension of communication in Shakespearean theatre should not be underestimated in modem studies.

T.G. Tchesnokova. The problem of Tragic humanism. A return to Shakespeare and the Renaissance

The paper deals with global categories and trends, such as «Tragic Humanism», Renaissance, Baroque, Mannerism. The term Tragic Humanism introduced by A.A. Smirnov is widely used by Shakespeare scholars in Soviet literary studies to define the Renaissance artistic phenomena as opposed to the Baroque trend. But now it sounds dated and has fallen into disuse. The presentation argues that it is still valid, especially as far as Shakespeare's tragedies are concerned.

V.R. Poplavsky. Shakespeare's historical plots: their political significance

Shakespeare's historical plots are all founded on the chronicles. Reconstructed significant historical events are turned to tragedies with kings and princes in the foreground. In Shakespeare's second historical tetralogy the weak-willed Richard II is succeeded by the usurper Henry Bolingbroke doomed to pray in vain for forgiveness of his sins. It is his wild son Harry who is to assume royal power, lawfully becoming King Henry V and restoring a long-awaited harmony. In «Julius Caesar» the noble conspirator Brutus is unable to pull his country out of crisis.

Hamlet takes revenge on his father's murderer. Yet the murdered king is himself to blame for «all these troubles and calamities»: at one time he killed the old Fortinbras who is now being avenged by Fortinbras Junior, favoured by fortune to assume himself to the Danish crown. Macbeth is a usurper too, but one who, as the play goes on, is consistently perceived as suffering retribution for his crimes. Claudius in «Hamlet» might have become a similar tragic figure destined to relinquish his unlawfully assumed power had he not been overshadowed by the young prince concerned about the warped universe. At the end of «King Lear», the royal power passes into the hands of the Duke of Albany, the king's only surviving son-in-law. The «rightness» of this denouement is predicted in the very first sentence of the play by the Earl of Kent: «I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall».

Stanley Wells Model of Poesy

The paper describes a manuscript from a private collection, previously unexplored by scholars, an addition of exceptional interest to the corpus of Elizabethan literature which contains a series of quotations from and comments upon works by Shakespeare. Its title page reads «[The Model] of Poesy or the Art of Poesy drawn into a short or summary discourse». The author is identified as William Scott, who was bom about 1579. Poetry was in his blood: he was a great-grandson of the poet Sir Thomas Wyatt. But no other published works by Scott are known. The treatise under discussion is of multi-faceted interest to students of the literature and language of the period and of Shakespeare. It adds significantly to the history of Shakespeare's reception: Scott may with justice be called Shakespeare's first serious critic.

Michael Payne. Shakespeare's truth

Shakespeare repeatedly emphasizes the importance of the participative imagination of the audience (or reader in the case of the Sonnets) in providing the necessary ingredient that brings his work to life. His plays, then, are in no sense closed or self-contained fictions. Although each play presents its own unique dramatic world, the projective engagement of the audience makes possible the discovery of aspects of our own selves in the characters we watch. In Sonnet 24 Shakespeare calls this the art of perspective, which is «best painter's art». It is this aspect of Shakespeare's art that claims to offer us the recognition of truth, truth not just as mimesis (representation) but also as aletheia (unveiling.)

A.N. Gorbunov. Shakespeare's theodicy: the «Book of Job» and «King Lear»

In this article King Lear is compared to the Book of Job to show the «tragic cosmos» of Shakespeare's greatest play. The two books have a common theme, the attempt to explain the origin of evil and to justify the divine world order in which this evil is allowed to exist. What is the origin of human suffering and how can one reconcile the notion of an All-good and All-powerful God with the seemingly invincible evil which exists in the world? A more detailed study undertaken in the article shows that there is a very deep and intimate connection between the two books.

The cosmic scale of the action in King Lear, the titanic image of the hero, and the peculiarity of the imagery gave the first spectators a feeling that they were witnessing a decisive battle between good and evil. And here biblical eschatology plays an important role. The relation of God and man is fundamental to the tragedy. Though the action takes place in pagan Britain, the play was written for a Christian audience and the contrast of Pagan and Christian values helped Shakespeare to reveal the religious meaning of the play by correlating it with the ideas of his own time. The difference is that Job finally hears God from the whirlwind, while for Shakespeare's characters He remains hidden and incomprehensible.

Peter Cummings. «The most unkindest cut of all»: anatomy in Shakespeare

The complex and metaphorically productive word anatomy makes its first appearance in Early Modem English. The word is derived from the Attic Greek. Anatomy is, in the imagery of its etymology, precise, deep, complete cutting through — everything. There are eleven instances of the word, in noun, verb, and adjective forms, in Shakespeare, and in looking briefly at the contexts of these uses, the author gains a sense of the range of meanings that Shakespeare seems to find available in it. All the usages of the word anatomy — precise, technical, humorous, ironic, metaphorical, and vulgar — are considered in context.

N.N. Prihodko. The opposition of two «moons» in Shakespeare's «Hamlet»

Different aspects of the image of the Moon connected with wide-spread astrological beliefs of Shakespeare's time have been studied by such foreign and domestic scholars as D.C. Allen, C. Clark, J. Richer, E. Haritonova and others. This paper is an effort to trace plot-constituting and psychological functions of the Moon image in its mythological and astrological senses. The mechanism of lunar influences postulated by the astrological beliefs of the Renaissance is subtly interwoven into the texture of «Hamlet». This mechanism, based on the principle of anthropocentrism, serves as a pattern for the interrelations between the heroes and heroines of the tragedy and is realized through special pairs of characters: passive recipients and «active anthropomorphic Moons». The «Active Moons» act like magnets, involving the passive in the orbit of their influence.

The movements from one universe to another are carried out in the semantic field of lunar mechanism. Analysis of the intersecting lunar mechanisms shows that the tragedy is based on the struggle of the two Moons. This struggle forms an opposition of two levels of reality, the false and the true. The Usurper-Moon Claudius generates a false reality. The true Moon is first manifested through the appearance of the Ghost who represents the materialized, negative aspect of lunar influences. Then his functions are transmitted to Hamlet, who acquires ghostly features and begins to act as a malicious «active Moon». The actions of the hero are not strictly systematic and purposive as a result of his ontological nature. However, due to them the purpose for which the Ghost had appeared is achieved: the usurper is exposed and punished, and the false reality of Danish rule is brought to self-destraction.

Kevin d'Ornellas. Metaphor horse/rider in Early Modem England

In Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, Katherine is compared to a horse to be ridden by her husband, Petruccio, directly and indirectly on many occasions. Petruccio refers to Katherine as «my horse»; elsewhere she is linked to a «Hinding of a duellish spirit» and a «Jade». Both of these terms underline an association with horses. Nevertheless, readers often miss the equine references in The Shrew and in other texts, partly because editors tend to pass over the more veiled allusions.

G.N. Shelogurova, I.V. Peshkov. Ho-ra-tio?: The Greek tragic chorus in «Hamlet»

Shakespeare's «Hamlet» has an intellectual and aesthetic «ingredients» and any attempt to take into consideration only one of its strata is doomed to failure. This statement may apply to all the components of the play, including the so-called smaller parts. Traditionally, Horatio (one of these minor roles) is interpreted as a good friend of the eponymous hero. Contrariwise, some new interpretations suggest that Horatio is a secret enemy of Hamlet. Both approaches have been annihilating the main sense of this phenomenon — isochronal coexistence of all strata within the frame of dramatic unity. We think that Horatio is neither friend, nor enemy, nor an individual character at all. The hypothesis of this paper can be approximately described as follows: Horatio occupies in «Hamlet» the functional place of the Chorus in classical Greek drama. The connection between Greek tragedy and «Hamlet» now seems to be proved (see the works by L. Schleiner). We studied the genesis of Chorus in Oresteia by Aeschylus, Elektra by Sophocles and Orestes by Euripides as a background to «Hamlet» and came to conclusion that Shakespeare, by adopting the role of Chorus (through its substitution by Euripides» Pylades), penetrated deeply into the phenomenon of the classical myth and by this actually revived the spirit and forms of Attic drama. Horatio plays the central structural role in this process.

M.V. Aleksandrenko. In defense of the spectacular: Shakespeare's tragicomedies

Modem critics do not doubt the artistic value of Shakespeare's later plays but, concentrating their attention on these plays» content, they often disregard their spectacular nature. It would be fair to say that the playwright's basic idea can only be fully displayed during stage performance, which confers importance on the stage effects otherwise unnoticed or ignored, but it would be a mistake to reduce the spectacular nature of the tragicomedies to mere showy scenes like, for example, the passage of knights in Pericles or masques in The Winter's Tale or The Tempest, to name a few: it determines the setting and time of action, as well as the distribution of the characters and their manner of speech, and reveals itself in the very composition of the play, thus exceeding the limits of a primitive mechanism to maintain the sympathy of its audience. The moral message contained in the play cannot be separated from the scenic form the playwright invents to convey this message, while the function of the spectacular elements revealing themselves on different levels in all Shakespeare's tragicomedies, i.e. tempests, shipwrecks, disguises, and shifts in mood etc., cannot be confined to a trigger of audience emotion. A thorough analysis of Shakespeare's early comedies and tragedies proves that the spectacular nature of the late plays is not a mere homage to the romantic tragicomedy, brought into fashion by Frances Beaumont and John Fletcher, but the natural development of the playwright's own views on the importance of stage effects, — views that make themselves felt even in the early plays; thus the most imaginary play of the first period — A Midsummer Night's Dream — is remarkable for spectacular motives that will fully develop in The Tempest. Conventional scenery, free management of time and fantastic nature of characters are important inasmuch as they create the conditions that are necessary for the audience to fully grasp the contents of the play. Research confined to a limited analysis of the moral message of the play ignoring the spectacular elements is fraught with serious mistakes in interpreting the tragicomedies. It has been stated time and again that the problem range of the tragicomedies differs strikingly from that of the previous plays, from the tragedies in particular, and that in this lies the very essence of the originality of tragicomedy as a genre. That explains why the simplified characters (simplified as compared to the tragedies) and the abundance of adventure do not so much create the stylised atmosphere which makes the moral message of the tragicomedy more obvious, as fuse themselves with this message, so that it does not stand behind the spectacular elements, but is contained within them. It calls forth what may be described as one of the main difficulties any critic encounters while trying to interpret the tragicomedies — the necessity not only to analyze the text of the play thoroughly but to take into account the stage potential of this play as well as the experience of previous performances; from this point of view, Shakespeare's later plays are distinguished by their «open» structure, — the director cannot confine himself to the material provided by critics, while the critic in his turn cannot rely on mere analysis of the text. This principle is undoubtedly applicable to every dramatic piece, but for the tragicomedies with their spectacular nature so evident it acquires great importance.

Томас Мерриэм. Пожилая леди, или Все неправда

В третьей сцене второго акта хроники «Генрих VIII» («Все правда») между Анной Буллен и «Пожилой леди» происходит разговор. Свою собеседницу, пожилую и не стесняющуюся в выражениях бывшую куртизанку, Анна уверяет, что «ни за что на свете» не пожелает стать королевой Англии. Их беседа прерывается появлением гофмейстера королевского двора. Он предлагает Анне сделать первый шаг к трону, приняв даруемый королем титул маркизы Пемброк. Анна выражает согласие словами, весьма похожими на ответ Богоматери благовествующему Архангелу. Эта сцена полна глубокой иронии. Сарказмы Пожилой леди подчеркивают притворство якобы простодушной Анны, которая лицемерно заявляет о том, что всей душой сочувствует своей госпоже, королеве Екатерине. Пожилая леди делает вид, что верит ей.

В первой сцене пятого акта Пожилая леди появляется вновь, чтобы сообщить королю о рождении его наследницы Елизаветы. Здесь снова налицо библейский мотив, но теперь это ироническая аллюзия на Рождество Христово. Восторженное сообщение о благой вести оборачивается насмешкой над неоправдавшимися надеждами короля на то, что у него родится сын и унаследует трон. Можно было бы сказать, как это часто уже это делалось по отношению к шекспировским шутам и простолюдинам, что Пожилая леди — фигура незначительная. Но это не так. В отличие от других персонажей хроники, Пожилая леди — не реально существующий характер. Крепкая телом и словом, подобно Фальстафу, исполненная сверхъестественной силы зла, подобно матери Калибана колдунье Сикоракс, Пожилая леди — это ключ к тому, как Шекспир относился к политически корректному прославлению Елизаветы I и Иакова I в концовке «Генриха VIII», написанной его соавтором Флетчером.

S.A. Makurenkova. Shakespeare in the XX-th century: Three dimensions of a borrowed metaphor

XIX-th century art tends to symbol, whereas XX-th century culture is marked by metaphor. In Modernist esthetics the latter acquires a special fundamental value. The paper considers three dimensions of Metaphor in Modernist Art: that of the Personage, the Author and the Metaphor itself. The first is explicated by Shakespeare in Murdock's novel, the second — in Stoppard, and the third which is the highest — in Ionesco.

Сара Хэтчуэл. Размывая границы: шекспировский мета-театр на экране

В докладе, фокусирующем внимание на экранизациях Кенета Брана, Питера Гринэвей, Лоренса Оливье, Орсона Уэллеса, рассматривается вопрос, каким образом киноверсии преображают рефлективный и мета-театральный аспекты, столь характерные для шекспировских театральных текстов. Отменяют ли они глубину рефлексии и иллюзию саморазоблачения? Сохраняются ли механизмы сценического искусства? Различие обычно проводится между фильмами с нарративной эстетикой, не раскрывающими театральной глубины, и такими, в которых сделана попытка найти кинематографические эквиваленты мета-театру. Первый тип киноадаптаций предлагает трактовку сюжета наивным кинозрителем и превращает фильм в простое повествование. Несвязные значения, заключенные в различных шекспировских образах, приведены в единство, призванное создать чувство естественной реальности: склейка фрагментов киноленты и движение кинокамеры воспроизводит логическое развитие сюжета. Второй тип экранизаций стремится размыть границы между актерами и зрителями включением приемов отчуждения. Актеры часто смотрят и/или говорят, обращаясь к кинозрителю. К этому можно прибавить сложные съемки, откровение кинотехники или съемки в глубине экрана. Тем не менее, мета-кинематограф никогда полностью не совпадает с мета-театром в раскрытии иллюзии, причина этого в изначальной ирреальности возможностей кино и неизбежной разъединенности между экраном и зрителями. На кинопленке существует привычная диалектика между актами раскрытия иллюзии и ее создания. Техника, которая стремится раскрыть искусственные приемы, может, как это ни парадоксально, участвовать в сокрытии раскрытия, в то время как кино, воплощающее нарративную голливудскую эстетику, закрывает в некоторых моментах саму возможность такого раскрытия. Подобно тому, как пьеса в пьесе раскрывает иллюзию и делает первый уровень ирреальности (сценического действия) более реальным, мета-кино в шекспировских экранизациях может совмещать раскрытие глубин, заключенных в тексте, и погружение в повествование.

V.S. Florova. The «Sonnets» studies in the last sixty years

The modern stage in the scholarship of The Sonnets opened with the publication of the 1944 Variorum (ed. H.E. Rollins). These 2 volumes reviewed three centuries» critical activity and layed down the principles for would-be editors and commentators, to which they have mostly adhered. The Variourum also demonstrated that reading the poet's life (thoroughly documented) into his verse is not a valid method of dealing with aesthetically significant works.

The second half of the 20^th century opened new ways for studies of The Sonnets. Many editors have tried rearranging the familiar order (as originally published in 1609) of the poems, and quite a few have decided in favour of the Quarto spelling. Yet, the 300 years elapsed linger on in some major respects. In the first place, these are the outdated notions of chronology and biography, speculative in nature because they could not be otherwise. If used as initial factual data for an analytical study, they undermine the research value [M. Seymour-Smith, 1963]. Then, there occurs non-critical acceptance of results which need checking, e.g. concerning the compositional structure of the book [K. Muir, 1979]. These two faults are shared, in various degrees, by most commentators [W.G. Ingram and Th. Redpath, 1964; J. Kerrigan, 1986; G.B. Evans, 1996]. An odious habit turns up due to the vogue for psychoanalysis in literary studies: commentary will often focus on marginal meanings of words and sex implication [S. Booth, 1977; 1978]. Considering this development, trend that deals with immanent analysis of language and psycholinguistics is particularly welcome [H. Vendler, 1999]. For all we can see, new principles and approaches in research may soon develop further in forthcoming criticism of The Sonnets.

I.S. Prikhod'ko. The Poet's consciousness in Shakespeare's «Sonnets»

In the first lines of Theseus» soliloquy [A Midsummer Night's Dream: 5. 1. 4—20] Shakespeare tells of a meditative path, by which the poet follows up to the realm of unformed, pure imagination, and then back down to everyday experience, spontaneously marrying «imagination» to «cool reason», along a continuous chain of links from unknown to body, form, and shape, and finally to the down-to-earth attributes of name and address. This meditation in relation to the challenge confronting the poet is fully manifested in The Sonnets, considering that the basic subject of the Sonnets is the Poet brooding on Time, Love, Beauty, Fortune, Nature, Life and Death, as well as on his work, his gift and his verse, on poetry and arts in general.

The foundation of the Poet's knowledge is his personal earthly life experience. But this is not all. The Poet stands at the hub of the universe. He possesses the supreme knowledge (in the Platoic sense), which he has acquired by his gift of observation and from the world treasury of letters and the sacred writings of the past. By means of imagination earthly and temporal happenings are reflected in universal symbolism, whereas universal symbols are replete with everyday facts and events. This kind of interaction is possible only in the realm of imagination, thus uniting heaven and earth. But to see these links is only one task of the Poet. Another is to trap heaven-and-earth within a visible form, forcing the creation onto the tip of his pen, to choose from among the ideas and place them in order, to scrutinize expressions and put them where they belong. Or, in other words, «to shroud in beautiful language», to gather a fine diction, «to test the sap of the words». Words in The Sonnets expand the theme, provoke its development, make the thought more profound. Shakespeare uses a myriad variations to express one idea. His metaphors are arranged in sequences, his language abounds in synonyms, and at the same time there are many recurring keywords. The words monument, stone, marble, brass, piramide and others are traced throughout The Sonnets to prove the connection of the idea they express with Horace.

Э.Дж. Низер. О некоторых русских переводах второго сонета Шекспира («When forty winters...»)

Перевод редко соответствует поэтическим достоинствам оригинала. Набоков, например, настаивает на том, что в переводе необходимо буквальное соответствие оригиналу. Для него не существует права переводчика на определенную свободу по отношению к подлиннику. На противоположном полюсе находится сборник «Подражания» американского поэта Роберта Лоуэлла, черпавшего вдохновение при создании этих стихотворений в чтении Пастернака, Рильке, Бодлера и других поэтов. Возможно, никакие другие поэтические произведения не переводились столь часто, как сонеты Шекспира. Эти поразительные стихотворения приковывали внимание великих иноязычных поэтов, среди которых были Стефан Георге, Унгаретти, Пастернак. В данной работе подробно исследуются несколько русских переводов Сонета 2 (С. Маршак, Я. Колкер, С. Степанов и А. Финкель).

I.V. Peshkov. «Stand and unfold yourself»

The main misfortune of the Russian (perhaps not only Russian) translator of Shakespeare is the lack of access to the original text. As is commonly known there are at least two sources of «Hamlet»: the Second Quarto and the First Folio. No one of the almost 2 dozen Russian translators of «Hamlet» made it clear what text he (or she) had been translating. Any English edition of the XIX century (which our translators used) gave the subjective contamination of the two initial issues. Thus the problem of choice of the source for translation didn't arise at all. Another problem was the absence of indispensable dictionaries. In general, it seems obvious that the more variants of renderings we have the better we penetrate into the original texture. Our comparative study of the classical Russian translations of the tragedy (by Kroneberg, Romanov, Lozinsky, Radlova, Morozov, and Pasternak) helped us to discover that at least 400 textual units of the original can be interpreted otherwise. Some of them are analyzed here to demonstrate the way in which the translation tradition works in practice.

E.B. Pasternak. Boris Pasternak's translation of «Hamlet»

Initially Pasternak began to translate «Hamlet» at the request of Meyerhold who was looking at that time for an imaginative tragedy for the Russian stage, written in the tradition of Grigoriyev and Ostrovsky. A few months after the work had been started Meyerhold was arrested, which effected greatly the character of Pasternak's translation. It was completed and published in May 1940 in the journal «Molodaya Gvardiya» («The Young Guard»). In the course of Pasternak's work for the Moscow Art Theatre, the text of the translation was thoroughly revised, the resulting version being published by Goslit (the State Literary Publishers) in June 1942. Subsequently, the translation was reprinted many times, its editors constantly interfering and demanding that numerous changes be introduced and the translation be made closer to the original. The paper also presents Pasternak's correspondence with V. Kozintsev about the latter's staging of «Hamlet» at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in 1954. In particular, the paper conveys Pasternak's attitude to the requested alterations in the translation and the demand that Fortinbras be omitted altogether.

E.V. Pasternak. Boris Pasternak on Shakespeare

Pasternak's first essay on Shakespeare was written in April 1916 in commemoration of the 300-th anniversary of the playwright's death. The text of the essay is no longer extant, the present paper makes an attempt at its reconstruction. Pasternak's perception of Shakespeare was influenced by the parallel he drew between the poetic genius of the Bard of Avon and of Pasternak's contemporary V. Mayakovsky. Pasternak's reading of A. Swinburne's book on Shakespeare was also significant. Other landmarks include Pasternak's poem «Shakespeare» (1919), his letter to Meyerhold on Shakespearean theatre (1929) and Romain Rolland's advice to the Russian poet to «immerse himself in Shakespeare». The paper also dwells on Pasternak's translations of Shakespeare's sonnets done in the 1930-s along with the plays «Hamlet», «Romeo and Juliet»; his «Translator's Note» (1940); his reading of V. Hugo's «Shakespeare»; and his letter to Sergey Dourylin; as well as on Pasternak's «Notes on Shakespeare» written in Chistopol, his «On Shakespeare» (1942), and his «Notes on the Translations of Shakespeare's Dramas» (1946 and 1956).

O.V. Fevralyova. «The earth hath bubbles»: Natural and human in Shakespeare and A. Blok

Shakespeare's tragedy «Macbeth» should undoubtedly be reckoned among the great literary works of the past which influenced the formation and existence of Blok's integral poetic myth. The motifs of split spirit, betrayal of the ideal and self-destruction were undoubtedly congenial to the poet. Having penetrated into the space of Blok's writing, however, Shakesperian images assume quite a new meaning, obtain some distinctively new aspects and can be seen from a new perspective. Without losing any of their artistic brilliance and integrity, they incarnate quite contemporary cultural categories and philosophical ideas. Once and for all Blok was disturbed and enchanted by «the bubbles of the earth». He gives this title to the poetic sequence of 1904—1905, the first one in the collection «Inadvertent Joy». The epigraph here reveals Shakespeare's source.

In the Scottish tragedy the witches, inimical to people, are portrayed as prophetesses, tempting the hero to commit a crime, and are once referred to as «bubbles of the earth». The personages in Blok's sequence are, however, humble little half-animals, half-imps, lonely dwellers of fields and swamps. In their «half-obliterated faces» one glimpses the spirit of the earth, its natural, benign, peaceable, somnolent, primordial element of the swampland, containing in its entrails ancient mysteries and secret good powers. Macbeth himself is of a special significance in Blok's myth of the world. The disastrous path of Shakespeare's protagonist symbolizes the self-destruction of a culture that has changed greatness of spirit for vanity and self-interest. In Blok's writings, however, this character reappears in the original light of elevated valour and clear conscience, embodying another positive and creative principle of the world, that is of human will. In his coming the poet foresees salvation of culture and he conjures the shades of false values to vanish from the path of «the new Thane of Glamis».

Y.B. Orlitsky. Shakespeare's plays as a source of Russian drama

Shakespeare's tragedies and comedies are usually regarded as classical examples of prosimetria — a kind of rhythmic organization of the text which consists in the alternation of poetic and prosaic fragments within one text. Thus «Shakespearean» prosimetria is characterized by, on the one hand, the functional equality of poetic and prosaic fragments, and, on the other, their interchange throughout the text, including individual scenes. As Shakespeare «reached» Russia after French Classicism, he was perceived at the next, liberated stage of dramatic art, as one of the Romantics. It should be noted that the Russian translators of Shakespeare were rather late in employing prosimetria, giving preference either to prosaic or poetic translations. In original Russian drama prosimetria occurs chiefly in two (quite «Shakespearean») genres: historical drama based on Russian history (first of all, the Time of Troubles) and comedy. Prosimetria is used in dramas by Pushkin, Grigoriev, Mey, A.K. Tolstoy and Ostrovsky. The indirect proof of its «Shakespearean» roots can be found in the use of prosimetria in the scenes with Fools, characters that can be traced back to Shakespeare.

Quite often prosimetria is the manifestation of polystructural textual organization and is supported at the structural level through polymetria in the verse portions of the text. Another important feature of Russian dramatic prosimetria is the presence of contact rhythmic zones that ensure a smooth transition from verse to prose with the help of partial metrization of the latter. Such zones can be discovered even prior to the beginning of Shakespeare's influence, in the comedies by N. L'vov: they then occur in dramas by Pushkin, Khomjakov, Veltman, A.K. Tolstoy, Ostrovsky.

B.I. Motsohein. Shakespeare and the Internet

The practically endless possibilities of the Internet, which has organized uniform information space, have granted scientists and students access to unrestricted information resources. Today on various servers worldwide there are over two billion documents, and this amount is progressively increasing. The initial statistical items of information in searching engines on Shakespeare contain a few million units! Despite the availability of a multitude of developed search engines and specialized sites, the development of this wealth of information, when looking up special items, requires the user to overcome difficult problems of data orientation. The paper introduces brief annotated information on sites in English devoted to Shakespeare. The availability of such a «Selected guide to Shakespeare on the Internet resources» should help the user to reduce the complexity of searching scientific-educational information.

The systematization of the network of resources is divided as follows:

Megaresources — specialized databases integrating miscellaneous information on Shakespeare's life and creativity, his Age and his contemporaries, studies of the text and historical realities;

Sources devoted to concrete problems — servers of universities and science foundations with detailed, scientifically-oriented or educational information;

Electronic publications of Shakespeare's and his contemporaries» works, including facsimiles of the origin publications;

Accompanying materials — sites of physical and virtual libraries, servers of scientific entities, foundations and museums containing information on the history, literature and theatre of the Renaissance;

Teleconferences — exchange of opinions by the publication of messages and correspondence in the electronic network, usually of a global nature.

The materials about Shakespeare authorship are specially highlighted because of the publication of the book, «Who is this Man?» by the author of this paper [«ТЕ», 2001. 456 p.: ill.], granting the reader a maximum of modem information on this problem.

For the whole network of resources, electronic addresses and a brief summary of the sites are presented.

Chronicle of the Shakespeare Committee records the scholarly events of recent years. December 2003 a meeting was devoted to the latest translations of «Hamlet», by V. Peshkov, Y. Chernov, V. Poplavsky and some others. M. Alexandrenko in his notes comments on it. 4 February 2005 is marked by the presentation of Shakespeare's Sonnets' translation by Vladimir Mikushevitch. There were also some papers on The Sonnets delivered at this session. On May 27 the Committee welcomed a visiting lecturer from Israel with his search for the first readers of Chester's collection, among whom was Shakespeare's contemporary W. Drummond. Finally, on June 17 the Shakespeare Committee gathered to discuss a new theatre production of «King Lear», entitled «The Three Sisters», by Dmitry Krymov with participant of the director and the actors. Yury Fridshtein presents his record of the talk.