ABSTRACT
The Leningrad Grand Theatre began preparations in 1933. The first night took place in February 1935. Minor, confusing heraldic figures like Sir T. Vaughan, Sir James Blount, Sir Walter Herbert, Christopher Urswick, and the two Archbishops, disappeared altogether. The non-Shakespearean division into acts was wiped off, and the new version split into three parts of nineteen scenes, with only twenty-seven named characters. The general question of translating Shakespeare was discussed at a special all-Union conference of producers held in 1940 for the purpose. This conference followed one in 1939, at which a demand was made for more varied choice of Shakespeare plays, and preceded another in 1941 called to discuss the importance of knowing all there was to be known about Shakespeare’s time and people, without a knowledge of which any ‘interpretation’ of the poet would be, as it often is in other countries, mere personal phantasy.
