SUMMARY

I.O. Shaitanov. A Discourse on Method.
The introductory essay reviews the situation in the field of Shakespeare studies in the last decades of the 20^th century when enthusiasm for literary and cultural theory has almost universally prevailed. Various ways of appropriating Shakespeare are contrasted with the books recently brought out by the patriarchs of English language criticism: Brian Vickers, Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode, - who, while differing in their approach, agree in their opposition to the precipitous shift in theoretical mode. Special attention is paid to ‘new historicism’, a novelty in Russia and as such often uncritically accepted here. The achievements and limitations of this critical practice are illustrated with reference to a book regarded as one of the best among ‘new historical’ studies: Lisa Jardin. Reading Shakespeare Historically (1996). Well-grounded and knowledgeable about the epoch, and eschewing radical theoretical approaches, Jardin’s work is largely free from what might be considered as traditional deficiencies of the method: A disregard for the integrity of the literary text; a bending of evidence, background and foreground, to suit one-sided interpretations; the foisting of modern cultural and political attitudes on to Renaissance texts... (Brian Vickers. Appropriating Shakespeare). The essay ends with a reference to the theoretical introduction written by the author for the fifth issue of Anglistica - On the Nature of the Genre Word - where the major principles of historical poetics and its perspectives for English studies were expounded.

This is the first of the four papers brought together in the section ‘The Shakespeare Workshop: Hamlet’. It opens with a due appreciation of ‘new historicism’ for its 'self-reflexive aspect of literary studies’, its attention to a broad cultural exchange within an epoch which involves law, politics, private and public life, church and entertainment and results in what Stephen Greenblatt has termed an ‘institutional economy’. This approach allows us to reconstruct ‘a definition of the sacred’ in relation to the forms and aspects of everyday life as an entire cultural text. Reconstructing this text Akimov suggests that such occasional phrases in Hamlet as head upon your lap, out-herod Herod, precurse, he is fat combine to create a mythological pattern of John the Baptist (The Precursor) which sheds light on the tragedy as a whole and its hero in his sacrificial function and his role of a holy fool.

A.V. Kharitonova. Dramatic Function of the Metaphor in Shakespeare’s Plays (Hamlet).
Beginning with a long established opposition of the two approaches to drama as both a work of literature and a work for theatre the author sets out to resolve the problem by considering a dramatic function inherent in the very nature of Shakespeare’s poetic metaphor. After Earl R. MacCormac metaphor is treated as a cognitive trope which shapes and directs thought, while being at the same time liable to historical changes. The metaphor of the world as a stage is one that different epochs have lived by since antiquity. Its progress and cultural transformation are outlined in the essay.

A.A. Asoyan On the Semantics of the Shakespearean Metaphor ‘The Time is out of Joint’.
The key metaphor of the whole tragedy as it was read by the emminent Russian philosopher Pavel Florensky denotes the progress from the tribal pagan stage to Christianity. It was foreshadowed in the source chronicle by Saxo Grammaticus. Accepting this reading in its essential Asoyan takes issue with some aspects of Florensky’s argument. He believes that the metaphor does not refer principally to the old epic state of affairs prior to Christianity and contemporaneity but serves Shakespeare as a vehicle to express the universal disappointment in the Renaissance idea of homo universalis which is to be replaced by homo generalis restored in his relation to the sacred history. With this interpretation in mind the author compares various Russian versions of the translated metaphor.


Y.N. Chernozemova. How to Explore Shakespeare’s Universe as a Whole?
The author argues that after decades dominated by an approach based on binary oppositions a new development in the sciences is revealing to the humanities how productive less aggressive and more organic methods can be. They are prompted by a trinitarian systematics and can be extended to the field of literary studies, especially if we recall that the triad underlies most linguistic and mythological structures. For the study of cultural patterns the following triad is suggested and applied to the analysis of plays by Shakespeare and his contemporaries: Power - Love - Knowledge. Renaissance harmony is treated as dependent on the balance established between these three values.\

E.B. Akimov King Liar: The Memory of an Image.
The story of King Lear (Welsh - Ler) told by Geoffrey of Monmouth as that of the ancient British king has no parallel in Celtic legends. Nevertheless Lear’s title together with his name can be traced back to much older Indo-Aryan sources where the sound combination [L - R, R - L] was traditionally associated with sunlight, water, life and royal power. Later it descended from its divine dignity to denote an Everyman (still extant in many names). The same mythological progress constitutes the plot of Shakespeare’s tragedy. In the Heath Lear is brought back to a world and time as old as his own name. Lear’s high rage turned into madness is reminiscent of another mythological structure phonetically retained in the combination M - N with its variations in madness, murder, mania, Maha - Celtic goddess of War - and other aggressive demons. This downward-oriented motif leading back to the archaic past is supplemented in the story of King Lear by a contrary upward movement towards sanctity and spirituality. Akimov demonstrates this through an analogy with the Biblical patriarch Job. As he was ‘old and full of days’ so Lear speaks of himself as ‘a poor old man, / As full of grief as age’. Both stand out as an embodiment of sanctity and revolt. The dialectic of nothing - everything, which begins to work itself out in the play in Cordelia’s first answer, has a Biblical parallel, besides that with Job. There are two different men in the Bible who bear the name Lazarus, one in the parable and another in the hymn. Lear says that his hand 'smells of mortality’ as if he were Lazarus who 'stinketh, for he hath been dead four days’ (John, 11, 39). Lear’s resemblance to Lazarus is also manifested in the words he addresses to Cordelia: ‘You do me wrong to take me out of the grave’ (IV, 4, 44). Her tears awaken him and are 'all blessed secrets, all unpublished virtues of the earth spring’ (IV, 4, 15-17). Mythological and Biblical allusions converge to evoke the energy of the cultural semantics hidden in Shakespeare’ tragedy.


N.N. Prikhod’ko. The Function of the Moon in Shakespeare’s Comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Astrology played an important part in late Renaissance thought. At first its centre was in Italy from where it spread far and wide over Europe together with the Corpus Hermeticum translated into Latin by Ficino. Astral images bearing the planets’ names (Sun, Moon, Venus, Saturn) or anonymously referred to as stars, wind, air were involved in comparisons and metaphors capable of characterising both those by whom they were used and those to whom they were addressed. In not a few of Shakespeare’s plays astral leitmotifs are to be found, such as that of the moon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream where its function is syntagmatic: far-reaching links are established in the plot through the moon imagery. This function is analysed on the three levels of plot structure corresponding to three aspects of reality: human, which may be high or low according to its social status, and fantastic. The moon, introduced in the very first lines of the play by Theseus (‘O methinks how slow / This old moon wanes!’), retains its power over the action throughout its movement, in the shape of realised or elaborated metaphors.


Y.N. Chernozemova. What Holofernes Told, or What One Should Know about the Epoch Translating Shakespeare.
A poem by the pedantic and scholarly Holofernes in Love’s Labour Lost has not been properly rendered into Russian. Translators have all made it sound absurd but have actually missed the point of why the epigram addressed to the French princess should produce a comic effect. A compliment based on the metaphor of a hunt and lamenting the death of a deer strikes a discordant note because it is scholastically overdone while its epigrammatic wit ruins what has been intended as an epitaph. The poem is bad in that it is over-elaborate and infringes poetic rules such as those set out by Philip Sidney in his Defence of Poetry. As such it aptly captures the character of Holofernes.


Andrey Chernov. Who is Horatio?; Igor Shaitanov. Hamlet or Horatio?
These two essays discuss the interpretation of Hamlet put forward by Andrey Chernov in his translation of the tragedy which is currently in progress. Pivotal for his reconsideration is the role of Horatio. Chernov argues that the image of the Prince’s sole and faithful friend is a long-standing illusion and that a clue to the character should be sought in his name, significantly rooted in the word ‘ratio’. Horatio is seen as an egoistical, immoral, Machiavellian type of new man no more given to friendship and honesty than Jago. The case against him, besides his name, is built upon the fact that he stays in Elsinore after Hamlet has been sent to England. He seems to be comfortably accommodated there and admitted to Royal service. It is Horatio who comes to inform Gertrude of Ophelia’s dangerous madness (‘to report on her’); he is the person who follows her on the King’s orders: King. Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you. [Exit Horatio]. Ophelia’s death is considered to be a result of this ‘watch’ and Horatio is, if not her murderer, then the one responsible for her drowning.
Igor Shaitanov argues for the part of Horatio on the grounds that his occasional service to the Queen should not be regarded as characteristic but is due to the stage convention whereby actors playing secondary parts were also allowed to appear as messengers, attendants, etc. Horatio appears on stage in the first scene of Ophelia’s madness and is dismissed thereafter not by the King but by the author; this is why he is unaware of her death. There is not a word in the play to suggest Horatio’s insincerity while hypocrites in Shakespeare, both before Hamlet (Richard Gloucester) and after him (Jago), could feature as ‘honest’ only for their partners on stage but not in the eyes of the audience. Chernov’s reconsideration has been prompted by the general transformation of style brought about in his translation: he has tuned his ear to a satirical comedy in the manner of Aleksandr Griboedov and shaped Horatio after Molchalin. This is why Chernov’s translation turns out in reality to be a new play like Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Perhaps Chernov’s should be called Horatio?


M.I. Voropanova. Professor A.A. Smirnov’s Contribution to Russian Shakespeare Studies.
This is both an assessment of the scholarly achievement of Professor A.A. Smirnov (1883-1962) and a memoir about him. Smirnov belonged to the younger generation of Aleksandr Veselovsky’s disciples at Saint-Petersburg University from which he graduated in 1907 (the same year as Aleksandr Blok). Throughout his career Smirnov remained faithful to the tradition of historical poetics focusing on historical-generative (e.g. his work on Shakespeare’s sources) and generic aspects. His field of study was Medieval and Renaissance literature and this was the theme of a course of lectures he gave during World War II at the Pedagogical Institute in Yaroslavl’ where he was evacuated from Leningrad. Voropanova happened to be one of his students there. Among other things she remembers how, instead of speaking extempore as he usually did, Prof. Smirnov read his lecture on Ronsard from what turned out to be the proofs of his contribution to a university textbook on Medieval and Renaissance literature which remains to the present day the standard manual for students.

In the section Classroom two papers by N.A. Gudkova (Oryel) and I.V. Kolyesova (Astrakhan’) tell of Shakespeare performances in local theatres attended by their students and how their theatrical experience can be used in teaching Shakespeare. Opinions and excerpts from the students’ papers and reviews are quoted and analysed.