ABSTRACT
The article examines Russian anti-Stratfordianism (with Roger Manners, the 5th Earl of Rutland as the preferred candidate) as a cultural phenomenon in its own right rather than a simple borrowing from the British and American traditions. Beginning with the early Soviet attempts at rethinking Shakespearean authorship and until the present moment, the advocates of anti-Stratfordian theories used the playwright’s figure as a lens for commenting on the Russian intellectual history. In the 1920s, the notion of “comrade Rutland” appealed to men of culture with non-proletarian backgrounds. The revival of Rutlandianism in the pre-collapse 1980s was largely based on a melancholy sense of longing for creative freedom and the author’s power over his society, which took the shape of a limitless and unstoppable “game” played by the “real” author. The contemporary Russian anti-Stratfordians’ derisive rejection of “Shaksper the usurer” has grown increasingly escapist as post-Soviet Russia plunged into economic and political turmoil. Ultimately, Russian anti-Stratfordianism can be seen as a tradition that is revived in times of social unrest, with attention to Shakespeare effectively representing a more general approach to the cultural function and current state of art.
