ABSTRACT
Russians under the Empire saw Shakespeare through a glass darkly. Misleading translations and adaptations, German philosophy and pedantry, and the tours of barnstorming tragedians resulted in a skewed view of the English writer. Although lip service was paid to his greatness as a playwright, barely a dozen of his plays were fixtures in the Russian repertoire. Of the tragedies, Hamlet was most frequently performed, with Othello and King Lear not far behind. Of the comedies, Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, Twelfth Night, and The Merchant of Venice appeared on state-subsidized stages, but rarely elsewhere. The occasional production of Richard III or The Tempest or Midsummer Summer Night’s Dream might be mounted as a novelty, but had no shelf life. The motive force behind the staging of Shakespeare was usually an actor’s desire to sink his teeth into a juicy role (Alekseyev 1965). No Russian actor, therefore, could be called, in the Anglo-American sense, a
Shakespearean. If he played Hamlet, it was as one of a series of romantic heroes of conscience, along with Schiller’s Don Carlos and Gutzkow’s Uriel Acosta. Michael Chekhov’s sallies into Shakespeare were, similarly, few and far between. Malvolio in his apprentice years; Hamlet in his prime; and a staging of King Lear with students comprise the extent of these ventures. These experiences cannot be seen as organic phases in a career of Shakespearean interpretation. Rather, they must be regarded as exceptional moments in the development of Chekhov’s thought and technique, determined by external circumstances.
