The spirit of a play at the end where everyone died. Shakespeare's most famous works

Text for an Unified State Exam essay based on a story by A.P. Chekhov's "Order"

Text

The teacher of the military gymnasium, collegiate registrar Lev Pustyakov, lived next to his friend, Lieutenant Ledentsov. It was to the latter that he directed his steps on New Year’s morning.

You see, what’s the matter, Grisha,” he said to the lieutenant after the usual Happy New Year greetings. “I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t for an extreme need.” Lend me, my dear, for today your order, your Stanislav. Today, you see, I am having lunch with the merchant Spichkin. Do you know that scoundrel Spichkin: he is terribly fond of orders and almost considers those who don’t have something loose to be scoundrels?

on the neck or in the buttonhole. And besides, he has two daughters... Nastya, you know, and Zina... I’m speaking as a friend... Give me a favor!

Pustyakov said all this, stuttering, blushing and timidly looking back at the door. The lieutenant swore, but agreed.

At two o'clock in the afternoon Pustyakov rode in a cab to the Spichkins and, opening his fur coat a little, looked at his chest. On his chest the alien Stanislav sparkled with gold and shimmered with enamel.

“Somehow you feel more respect for yourself! - thought the teacher, quacking. “A little thing, five rubles, doesn’t cost more, but what a sensation it makes!”

Arriving at Spichkin’s house, he opened his fur coat and began to slowly pay the cab driver.

Taking off his fur coat in the hall, he looked into the hall. There were already about fifteen people sitting at the long dining table having lunch. You could hear talking and the clinking of dishes.

Pestyakov thrust his chest forward, raised his head and, rubbing his hands, entered the hall. But then he saw something terrible. Sitting at the table next to Zina was his colleague, French teacher Tramblyan. Showing the Frenchman the order would mean raising a lot of the most unpleasant questions, it would mean disgracing himself forever, becoming disgraced... Pustyakov’s first thought was to rip off the order or run back; but the order was firmly sewn on. Quickly covering the order with his right hand, he hunched over, awkwardly gave a general bow and, without shaking hands with anyone, he sank heavily onto an empty chair, directly opposite his French colleague.

A plate of soup was placed in front of Pustyakov. He took the spoon with his left hand, but, remembering that it is not appropriate to eat with the left hand in a well-ordered society, he declared that he had already dined and did not want to eat.

Pustyakov’s soul was filled with aching melancholy and angry annoyance: the soup gave off a delicious smell, and an unusually appetizing smoke came from the steamed sturgeon. The teacher tried to free his right hand and cover the order with his left, but this turned out to be inconvenient.

Tramblyan, for some reason very embarrassed, looked at him and also did not eat anything. Looking at each other, both became even more embarrassed and lowered their eyes to the empty plates.

“I noticed, you scoundrel! - thought Pustyakov. - I can see by his face that he noticed! And he, the bastard, is a slanderer. Tomorrow he will report to the director!”

The hosts and guests ate the fourth course and, as fate would have it, ate the fifth...

Eh... ep... ep... I propose to drink to the prosperity of the ladies sitting here!

The diners rose noisily and grabbed their glasses.

Lev Nikolaich, take the trouble to give this glass to Nastasya Timofeevna! - a man turned to him, handing him a glass. - Make her drink!

This time, Pestyakov, to his great horror, had to put his right hand into action. Stanislav, with his crumpled red ribbon, finally saw the light and began to shine. The teacher turned pale, lowered his head and looked timidly in the direction of the Frenchman. He looked at him with surprised, questioning eyes. His lips smiled slyly, and embarrassment slowly slipped from his face...

Yuliy Avgustovich! - the owner turned to the Frenchman. - Pass the bottle according to the accessory!

Tramblyan hesitantly extended his right hand to the bottle, and... oh, happiness! Pustyakov saw an order on his chest. And it wasn’t Stanislav, but the whole Anna! This means the Frenchman cheated too! Pestyakov laughed with pleasure, sat down on a chair and fell apart... Now there was no longer any need to hide Stanislav! Both are sinners of the same sin, and, therefore, there is no one to denounce and dishonor...

A-ah-ah... hm!.. - Spichkin mumbled, seeing the order on the teacher’s chest.

Yes, sir! - said Pustyakov. - An amazing thing, Yuliy Avgustovich! How few performances we had before the holidays! We have so many people, but only you and I got it! Amazing thing!

Tramblyan nodded his head cheerfully and put forward his left lapel, on which Anna of the 3rd degree flaunted.

After dinner, Pustyakov walked around all the rooms and showed the young ladies the order. His soul was light and at ease, although hunger was pinching in the pit of his stomach.

“If I had known such a thing,” he thought, looking enviously at Tramblyan, who was talking with Spichkin about orders, “I would have put it on Vladimir. Eh, I didn’t guess!”

Only this one thought tormented him. Otherwise he was completely happy.

To draw the attention of readers to this issue, A.P. Chekhov talks about his hero, Pustyakov, who asked a friend for an order because he was invited to the house of the merchant Spichkin, and here he needed to show off in front of his daughters. Pustyakov meets French teacher Tramblan here: both of them are embarrassed by the fact that undeserved awards - the Order of Stanislav and Anna, 3rd degree - were displayed on their chests.

When Tramblyan and Pustyakov’s deception was revealed, they felt free, independent of anyone.

The writer’s position is quite clear: a small employee strives with all his might to add significance to his existence, not disdaining to deceive.

I completely agree with the playwright’s point of view and also believe that sometimes beautiful appearance the deceiver is hiding, true face which is difficult to see. So Pustyakov and Tramblyan, having committed a deception, wanted to attract attention to themselves, and they succeeded well. Unfortunately, they do not understand that over time everything secret will become clear, and the deception will be revealed. Will the heroes then feel remorse?

To prove the validity of my point of view, I will give a literary example.

Let's remember the novel "Crime and Punishment", where one of the heroes, Marmeladov, a former official, was dismissed from service, as a result of which the whole family was doomed to death. Here the tragedy of the little man is clearly revealed: if you have no money and ranks, no intercessors, you are thrown out of society, and this is scary.

Let me give you the following literary example. In the story by A.P. Chekhov's "Thick and Thin" tells the story of a meeting of former classmates who saw each other at the station. Fat was wealthy, and Thin was poor. Having learned that Tolstoy is rich and has settled well in life, the poor man begins to curry favor with him, and this causes a disgusted attitude towards Thin.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize once again: in life there are always inequalities, that is, society is divided into poor and rich. But even if a person is poor, the most important thing is that he must preserve his human dignity, never stooping to deception.

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Updated: 2017-12-13

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Useful material on the topic

• Military gymnasium teacher, collegiate registrar Lev Pustyakov... (according to A.P. Chekhov). The problem of vulgarity.

When going to the theater, people are in the mood for a pleasant holiday and bright positive impressions. But history knows cases when events theater stage took a dramatic (and not at all according to the script of the play) turn. In our review of 10 performances that claimed lives.

1. “Imaginary patient”

Scene from the play "The Imaginary Invalid".

The greatest satirist of the 18th century, Moliere not only created plays, but also acted in them. His last role played was the role of Argan in The Imaginary Invalid. On February 17, 1673, right on stage during the second act, Moliere, who was suffering from tuberculosis, coughed up blood, but managed to finish the performance. After the performance he was taken home, where he died.

2. "Macbeth"

Poster for the production of "Macbeth".

"Macbeth" in theatrical environment for a long time they thought damn play. The directors tried not to say the original title out loud, but said “Scottish play”. According to legend, the first tragedy associated with the play occurred in 1611, when the young man who was supposed to play the role of Lady Macbeth fell ill with a fever before the performance and died. And this is far from the only case of death associated with this performance. Already in our time, in 1970, 32-year-old George Ostrosk had a heart attack during a performance and died right on stage.

3. "Mary Stuart"

December 18, 2008 at Vienna theater The Burgtheater staged a production of Mary Stuart. The role of Mortimer, who is trying to free the queen from prison, was played by Daniel Hovels. In the story, Mortimer commits suicide in the first act when his plans fail. During this scene, Hovels, as expected, grabbed a knife to “cut” his throat. And then it turned out that the knife was real. Fortunately, doctors managed to save the actor.

4. "Passion"

In October 2010, Passion was staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London. During one of the final scenes of the play, the character Colonel Ricci (actor David Birrell) participates in a pistol duel. When Birrell fired the pistol, a piece of shrapnel entered his right eye. The actor was immediately taken to the hospital, and the production was cancelled. The actor lost one eye and after that filed a lawsuit against the theater.

5. "Waiting for Godot"

Scene from the play "Waiting for Godot".

Waiting for Godot is one of Samuel Beckett's most famous plays. The plot of the play cannot be called dynamic: Vladimir and Estragon sit and wait for Godot, who will never come. But on November 26, 2003, a tragedy occurred during the performance: 64-year-old Scottish actor Jordan Reed became ill with his heart. He collapsed on stage as if knocked down. Shortly before his death, Reed said that he was "poor as a church mouse, but he loved everything he had done so far and would never have lived his life any other way."

6. “The Passion of Christ”

On April 6, 2012 (Good Friday), 27-year-old Thiago Klimek performed as Judas Iscariot in the play "The Passion of the Christ" at a theater in Itarara (Brazil). In one of the final scenes in the play, Judas hangs himself after betraying Jesus. Something went wrong that day, and a noose actually tightened around Klimek’s neck. He hung there for four minutes before people realized that a tragedy had happened. The actor was taken out of the noose and taken to the hospital. He remained in a coma for two weeks and died.

7. "Jesus Christ Superstar"

Klimek is not the only person who died as Judas Iscariot. The life of Anthony Wheeler, who played in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, also ended tragically. On August 17, 1997, a 26-year-old actor hanged himself on the stage of a Greek theater after wearing his seat belts incorrectly.

8. "The Little Mermaid"

On May 10, 2008, in Disney's production of The Little Mermaid on Broadway, 51-year-old Adrian Bailey was walking across a catwalk that was on stage as a set and fell through a hatch accidentally left open by stage workers. The actor fell from a height of 10.5 meters, breaking both wrists, pelvis and back.

9. School nativity scene

People who had nothing to do with the theater also became victims of theatrical productions. Drilling platform worker Lee Wilkinson learned that his wife was having an affair with a certain Michael Dent. On December 6, 2011, Wilkinson, not in a very good mood, went to the school where his three children studied to watch a nativity scene in which the children were performing. But among the spectators I saw Dent. School holiday ended in a massive brawl that resulted in Wilkinson being arrested and spending 11 months in prison for assault.

10. "Bluebeard"

On December 30, 1903, Bluebeard was staged at the newly opened Iroquois Theater (USA). A fire suddenly broke out, in which 603 people died due to the crush, and many suffered burns.

And further...

Andrei Mironov was not only a theater actor, but also a film actor. We remembered that will definitely make you smile. After all, life is wonderful.

Makes you think about the meaning of life and the short duration of people’s stay on this sinful earth.

Godless feast, godless madmen! With feasts and songs of debauchery you swear at the gloomy silence, death widespread everywhere! Amidst the horror of mournful funerals, Amidst pale faces, I pray in the cemetery, And your hateful delights Confound the silence of the coffins - and shake the earth Over the dead bodies! If the prayers of old men and women had not consecrated the common death pit, I might have thought that today demons are tormenting the lost spirit of the atheist and dragging him into the pitch darkness with laughter.

The work is part of the “Little Tragedies” series. They were created in 1830. It was then that there was a cholera epidemic in Moscow. This is reflected in the work. “A Feast in Time of Plague” is a creative reworking of J. Wilson’s (English playwright) “Plague City.” Pushkin not only translated, but also significantly shortened the action, and also introduced two songs into the performance. The title was also changed. On the street, men and women are feasting at a laid table. Chairman Walsingham says that Jackson, a cheerful and cheerful person, recently died. His jokes amused everyone. They loved him and willingly communicated with him. It is impossible to forget Jackson, but there are many alive left. And that means there is no need to be sad. Walsingham offered to drink in Jackson's honor.

Everyone agreed with him and drank in silence. Walsingham asks one of the girls present to sing. Her voice is amazing, perfect sounds. He invites Mary to sing sad song, after which you can indulge in fun again. Mary agrees.

The girl sings about those times when there was no plague. The country prospered, everyone was happy. The song is in dissonance with the surrounding environment. Contrast. And this makes it even harder for those present. But at least with a song, Mary reminds her friends that life can be wonderful.

There was a time when it flourished

In the world our side:

Was there on Sunday

God's Church is full;

Our children in a noisy school

Sparkled in a bright field

Sickle and quick scythe.

Hieronymus Bosch "Feast during the Plague"

These memories are, in general, everyday and simple. But now, when there is mortal danger around people, they are perceived as a symbol of a different, happy life, in which there was no plague, everyone was healthy and happy. In the present, people have nothing, no hope, no faith in tomorrow.

The fun they indulge in is only an attempt to drown out fear.

There is rapture in battle, And in the dark abyss on the edge, And in the furious ocean, Among the menacing waves and stormy darkness, And in the Arabian hurricane, And in the breath of the Plague. Everything, everything that threatens death, conceals inexplicable pleasures for the mortal heart - Immortality, perhaps a guarantee! And happy is the one who, in the midst of excitement, could find and know them.

And yet, in the song, Mary says that everything has changed. Life frightens the living, because death can occur at any moment.

“Everything is quiet - just a cemetery

It’s not empty, it’s not silent -

Every minute they carry the dead,

And the lamentations of the living

They timidly ask God

Rest their souls to rest.

Mary's song contains words about love. The girl says that love will triumph over death. Let the mortal body die. But the soul will always be alive, it will be in heaven. Mary's song is sad. Each of the feasters saw something different in the song. Not everyone liked the song, but it was impossible to remain indifferent to it.

The sound of wheels can be heard. A cart passes by, carrying those who died from the plague. One of those present, Louise, becomes ill. They bring her to her senses. She says that while she was fainting, she had an ominous vision:

"Terrible demon

I dreamed: all black, white-eyed...

He called me into his cart. In it

The dead lay and babbled

Terrible, unknown speech...

Tell me: was it a dream?

Has the cart passed? They are trying to calm Louise down. This black cart travels in various places, everyone is obliged to let it pass. Walsingham is asked to sing a “free, live song.” The chairman says that he will sing a hymn in honor of the plague, which he wrote last night. All those present willingly agree to listen to the anthem in honor of the plague. Terrible Queen, Plague

Now she's coming at us

Flattered by the rich harvest;

And to our window day and night

Knocks with a grave shovel...

What should we do? and how to help? In the song, Walsingam calls for locking yourself up, hiding from the Plague in unbridled fun. Let your minds drown in wine, then the “darkness of the grave” will not be terrible.

Glasses of foam, we are together,

And the rose maidens drink the breath

Perhaps - full of Plague! People decide not to think about the fact that perhaps another day will be their last. They want to enjoy life as long as possible. Their desire cannot but admire. Let there be devastation and death all around, but as long as a person is alive, he should try to find joy in what surrounds him.

The old priest arrives. From his point of view, feasters are madmen. He tells them this directly. Their philosophy is incomprehensible to the priest.

Godless feast, godless madmen!

You are a feast and songs of debauchery

You swear at the gloomy silence,

Death widespread everywhere!

The priest says that he is praying in a cemetery, surrounded by the horrors of death and illness. The feasters insult the “silence of the coffins”, insult the memory of those who died, and the feelings of those who mourn their loved ones. That it is demons who force the feasters to have fun in such a sorrowful time. They try to drive the priest away, but he calls on them to finish the feast, conjures them with “the holy blood of the Savior,” says that if they want to meet the souls of the dead in heaven, they must give up fun and observe mourning. The chairman objects to the priest. He says that “youth loves joy.” And therefore they do not want to come to terms with the tragedy that is about to take their lives. Walsingham believes that they are doing absolutely right, they are trying to counteract the inevitable death with joy and pleasure. The priest reproaches Walsingham, reminding him that his mother recently died. And he sobbed bitterly over her corpse. Is that you, Walsingham? Are you the one

Who is three weeks old, on his knees,

The mother's corpse, sobbing, hugged

Was he screaming over her grave?

The priest tries to explain to Walsingham that his mother is looking at her son from heaven and regrets that he is unable to understand the truth at such a painful moment; the priest is sure that Walsingham’s mother is crying bitterly in heaven when she looks at her son, who is indulging in debauchery, instead of to spend time in mortal prayer. But the Chairman doesn’t want to think about something sad. He wants to lose himself in the joy of the feast. And then the painful reality will not bother him. He tells the priest that he feels sad because of the “dead emptiness” that has settled in his home. Walsingham does not want and cannot follow him. Only in the crowd of feasting friends does he forget his despair, the terrible memories let him go. He says: “...old man! Go in peace; /But damned be whoever follows you!” The feasters support the chairman. The priest reminds him of his dead wife. The chairman recalls her:

She considered pure, proud, free -

And I knew heaven in my arms...

Where I am? holy child of light! I see

I am where my fallen spirit goes

It won't reach anymore...

One of the women calls the chairman crazy: “He’s crazy. He’s raving about his buried wife!” The priest leaves and prays for Walsingam: “Lord save you! Sorry, my son." The priest leaves. The feast continues. The chairman is thoughtful.

The main pathos of the work is reflection on the essence of moral laws. People find themselves in a critical situation. The plague could strike them at any moment. What do they choose in what may be their last hour? They indulge in unbridled fun. On the one hand, their behavior is reprehensible. They violate the unwritten moral laws that govern behavior in such a situation. But on the other hand, the behavior of the feasters can be looked at differently. Everything in this world is fragile and fragile. They understand that their feast may be the last. They don't want to think about the fact that death is behind them. It is much easier to lose yourself in a merry feast. Although it would be a stretch to call it fun. The two songs that are in the work show that the feasters are in fact not as frivolous as they might seem. From the priest's point of view, they are committing a crime. But the priest ultimately understands that these people, who have endured so many trials and lost loved ones, deserve at least a short moment that will allow them to forget about all their troubles. "A Feast in Time of Plague" is philosophical work, which makes you think about the meaning of life and the short duration of people’s stay on this sinful earth.

I can’t help but draw parallels between this work and Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”.

Judge for yourself.

Igor Kornelyuk - music from the film by Vladimir Bortko based on the novel by Mikhail Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita"

“However, all theories stand one another. There is one among them, according to which everyone will be given according to their faith. May this come true! You are going into oblivion, and I will be happy to drink from the cup into which you are turning to existence !" (c) Woland.

Shakespeare's creative path ends with the creation of Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. Until the beginning of the 20th century. these plays were not taken seriously: in best case scenario the poetic merits of “The Tempest” were recognized, but in general these works were seen as the whim of the imagination of an aging Shakespeare, tired and wanting to have fun writing entertaining stories. Now this point of view is a thing of the past. The ideological and artistic richness of this part of Shakespeare’s heritage in our time does not raise any doubts in anyone’s minds; foreign critical literature on the last plays has numbered dozens of works over the past half century and is multiplying every year; a number of foreign Shakespeare scholars make their interpretations of the last plays the basis for the concepts of the entire work Shakespeare.

Unfortunately, our Shakespeare studies have dealt very little with Shakespeare’s final dramas. Meanwhile, they deserve the most serious attention not only because of their individual qualities - not only because each of them has high merits: not to mention The Tempest, which, in general opinion, is quite equal in magnitude to other Shakespearean masterpieces, significant artistic value also represent Cymbeline and especially The Winter's Tale, and even the weaker Pericles, as has been shown by some successful productions of this play on the English stage in recent decades.

Shakespeare's last plays are in their own way no less significant than his comedies and tragedies. Inextricably linked with his previous work, they at the same time constitute an independent stage of his creative development, a new quality of Shakespearean drama. The nature of this new quality is determined not only by the characteristics of Shakespeare's genius, but also by the specifics of the literary tradition, the refraction of which are Shakespeare's final dramas. Therefore, it is possible to correctly understand the essence of his last plays only if we find out what they have in common with each other and with a wide range of similar literary phenomena.

True, the internal relatedness of the final plays cannot be proven with the same degree of reliability as chronological proximity. And the artistic unity of “Pericles”, “Cymbeline”, “The Winter’s Tale” and “The Tempest” is justified differently by different critics, especially when it comes to the tonality of these works, their spirit, the worldview expressed in them, ideological meaning and other things that cannot be verified mathematically.

Nevertheless, in all the final plays there are moments whose commonality seems to us indisputable and which most clearly characterize both the aesthetic homogeneity of the works under consideration, and their artistic originality in comparison with Shakespeare’s previous work, and their connection with a certain literary layer.

First of all, attention is drawn to the remoteness of the setting of all the latest plays from life somewhat familiar to Shakespeare's audience.

The events of “Pericles” are attributed to the era of late antiquity, to Greek and Asia Minor cities. The geographical scope is extremely wide: from Antioch we, together with the heroes, are transferred to Tire, from there to Tarsus, Pentapolis, Ephesus, Mytilene - in a word, as the list of characters says, “the scene is different countries.”

In "Cymbeline" the author also takes us into the distant past, and although this time we have England in front of us, but England of the legendary times of the 1st century AD. e. and wars of independence with ancient Rome, i.e. England, no closer to Shakespeare’s contemporary than ancient Greece. (It is noteworthy that in the entire vast Elizabethan drama, besides Cymbeline, there are only five plays set in the fairy-tale times of English history. Among these plays is King Lear.)

The setting of The Winter's Tale is no less distant from Shakespeare's modernity: Bohemia and Sicily sounded as exotic to the viewer as Pentapolis and Mytilene.

Finally, “The Tempest” takes the viewer to a magical island, associated in the minds of visitors to Shakespeare’s theater with the newly discovered lands of the West Indies.

The atmosphere of remoteness corresponds to numerous historical and geographical incongruities. In Pericles, Pentapolis is a city, when in fact this was the name of a group of five cities. In The Winter's Tale, Bohemia has a seashore. Delphi is on an island. In Cymbeline, the characters are given both ancient Roman and modern Italian names (Lucius, Postumus - Filario, Jahimo).

Local realities are almost completely absent: the numerous cities in “Pericles” are also impossible to distinguish from each other, just as it is impossible to determine the location of Prospero’s island, just as it is impossible to conclude whether ancient or modern Rome is presented in “Cymbeline”; In what era do the events in The Winter's Tale take place?

The plot and composition undergo significant changes in comparison with previous plays, especially tragedies.

The action is filled with a huge number of adventures, incidents, dangers, and acquires an adventurous character. Events lose their logical sequence, and the plot loses its gradual development. The plays are divided into a number of episodes, the internal connection between which is much more difficult to establish than between the various episodes of Shakespeare's previous works. But the viewer follows what is happening with intense interest, because the hero happily extricates himself from one dangerous situation, only to immediately find himself in another, no less risky one.

The plot of “Pericles” is formally the most chaotic and consists of numerous episodes united by the figures and destinies of Pericles and Marina, and in almost each of these episodes the hero or heroine is threatened with death or dishonor, which they successfully avoid.

The composition of "Cymbeline" is no less whimsical and outwardly scattered, with its three plot lilies, throwing the action from England to Rome, from Cymbeline's court to the deserted places near Milford harbor and to the Welsh hills, with countless dangers that await Imogene, Postumus, Bellaria with princes and even Cymbeline.

The construction of “The Winter's Tale” is more orderly, but even here the logic of the event is replaced by their unusualness, and independent episodes can be identified, the drama of which is independent from general action and is determined by the fact that the heroes are under the threat of death and separation: Polixenes faces death from poison, Hermione - by a court verdict, newborn Lost - from wild animals, Loss and Florizel face the wrath of Polixenes both in Bohemia and Leontes.

The role of the miraculous has also increased in recent plays.

There is a touch of miracle in the revival of Thaisa by Cerimon, and in the unexpected appearance of the living Hermione at the end of the action, and in the dreams of the heroes: Diana appears to Pericles in a dream, Jupiter appears to Posthumus, Antigonus talks about Hermione who dreamed of him, on whose instructions he must leave the Loss in Bohemia . In the same magical series is the prophecy of the Delphic oracle. Fantasy dominates in “The Tempest”: the main character, Prospero, is a wizard, among other characters are spirits, fantastic creatures Ariel and Caliban.

The element of the miraculous is in harmony with the numerous folklore motifs woven into the artistic fabric of the final dramas.

Already the first episode of “Pericles” - a young man wooing the royal daughter must guess the riddle, otherwise he will suffer the fate of his predecessors, that is, death - clearly of fairy-tale origin. A common place in many fairy tales is the situation in another episode of the play: a competition between contenders for the hand of the princess, in which the hero - here Pericles - wins and conquers with his valor and other virtues both the king and his daughter (here Simonides and Thaisa). Marina’s misadventures also begin in a fairy-tale spirit: Dionysus with her daughter Philotena and Marina clearly resemble a fairy tale about an evil stepmother who hates her stepdaughter and drives her away from the world because her stepdaughter is superior in beauty and intelligence to her own daughter.

Other plays of the last period are also saturated with folklore motifs.

In "Cymbeline" we again encounter a version of the tale about the evil stepmother - this time she pursues her stepdaughter, wanting to marry her foolish son. One of the main plot situations of Cymbeline has an even greater resemblance to the fairy tale

About Snow White: Snow White runs away from her evil stepmother and, like Imogene, ends up in a cave, where she is carefully looked after by kind dwarfs (in the play - Bellarius and the brothers), and she also runs their household. Snow White, like Imogen, is struck by an imaginary death, and just like the heroine of a Shakespearean play, she comes to life. Note that Pushkin’s “The Tale of dead princess and seven heroes" develops the same ancient fairy tale version, which is reflected in Cymbeline.

The central conflict of “Cymbeline” also has a long folklore tradition: the story of female fidelity, of a braggart who encroached on the honor of a virtuous wife, and of the punishment that befell him, can be found in the fairy tales of many nations.

The main situations of "The Winter's Tale" do not have such direct folklore analogues, although in the love story of Florizel and Loss one can see a distant resemblance to fairy tales like "Cinderella" and other variations on the theme of how a prince falls in love with a poor girl, and in some fairy tales subsequently her noble birth. But some scenes in The Winter's Tale also evoke more obvious associations with folklore characters. So, Paulina and Antigonus, especially in that scene where the enraged Paulina bursts into Leontes and honors both him and own husband, who is unable to tame his raging wife and seems to be afraid of her, are reminiscent of a married couple beloved by many fairy tales: a soft-spoken and quiet husband and a lively, tongue-tied wife who keeps him in fear and obedience. A clever and charming rogue, cheerfully and inventively deceiving simpletons, is a favorite figure of medieval fabliaux, transformed here into Autolycus.

Remoteness in time and space, the convention of geographical names, the abundance of anachronisms, the unusualness of events, their arbitrary and whimsical combination, the lack of a logical connection between incidents, the episodic nature of the plot, a sharp and sudden change in the scene of action, the increased role of the miraculous and fabulous - this is what primarily creates the impression of implausibility and unreality of what is happening, completely uncharacteristic of the works of the immediately preceding, tragic period of Shakespeare’s work.

This impression is aggravated by a number of less obvious, but no less constant and specific to latest works dramatic techniques.

Thus, the use of elements of archaic drama plays an important role. The narrator Gower in Pericles, the first and second nobles in the most poignant scene of Cymbeline, the first and second nobles accompanying Cloten, as well as the first, second and third nobles in The Winter's Tale - these characters are removed from the action, their function is has nothing to do with the plot. Characters of this kind are characteristic of pre-Shakespearean drama, but are almost never found in Shakespeare in more recent times. early works.

Self-characterization and self-presentation of the characters is also a technique that is repeated more often in recent plays than before.

In Pericles, Cleon tells his wife Dionysus about the misfortunes of their city, which she knows about as well as he does. In Cymbeline, Bellarius tells the viewer his own story and the story of the princes he kidnapped, and even tells him his name. In The Winter's Tale, Autolycus is presented to the audience in much the same way as Vice did in the old plays. And these are just some of the most striking examples.

In the final works, the number of monologues and aside remarks generally increases, and they are by no means of a psychological nature. H. Coghill gives a comparative number of characters delivering monologues in some Shakespeare plays: “Richard III” and “Coriolanus” - 4, “Henry IV”, parts 1-3, “Hamlet” - 4, “Othello” - 2, "Pericles" - 6, "Cymbeline" - 10, "Winter's Tale" - 7, "The Tempest" - 5.

The role of theatrical, spectacular, sound and pictorial elements in the plot is becoming stronger than ever.

One can imagine that the very appearance of Gower in his ancient attire made a great impression on the viewer. The parade of knights should have looked very impressive in “Pericles” - with their luxurious weapons and intricate and colorful heraldic signs on richly decorated shields. An even more theatrical and spectacular and at the same time conventional character was given to “Pericles” by such an archaic technique as pantomime.

The same role is played in all plays by "masks": in "Cymbeline" the appearance of Jupiter has the character of a "mask", in "The Winter's Tale" - a shepherd's festival with dances of shepherds and shepherdesses and the dance of twelve satyrs, in "The Tempest" - a "mask" Ceres and the banquet scene. There are also dances in Pericles.

The sound effects are also multiplied.

All plays except Cymbeline feature a storm on stage. But in Cymbeline we see the fights of Postumus and Jahimo, Guiderius and Cloten, the battle between the Romans and the English.

Music is constantly heard. It sounds in the palace of Simonides and in Cerimon's room, puts Pericles and Posthumus to sleep, is heard at the door of Imogene's bedroom and at the cave in the Welsh hills, accompanies the shepherd's festival in The Winter's Tale and the return to Hermione's life; The very air of Prospero's island is filled with music. The sad song of Marina flows, a funeral melody floats over the body of the supposedly dead Imogene, the perky songs of Autolycus ring, the gentle voice of Ariel soars into the heights, and the drunken roulades of Stefano and Caliban are carried out.

There are effects of a different kind in the latest plays: the severed head and headless body of Cloten in Cymbeline, the bear devouring Antigonus in The Winter's Tale.

All plays except Cymbeline feature shipwrecks.

Everywhere the heroes change clothes so as not to be recognized. Pericles, in a poor man's dress, hides his royal origins from Simonides. Imogene travels in a man's dress and in this form is not recognized by either her husband or her father. Polixenes and Camillo, in disguise, talk to Florizel, who does not recognize either his father or his closest adviser. Autolycus changes his dress and becomes a stranger both to his former master Florizel, and to the shepherd and his son with whom he was just talking, etc.

The general scheme of action of all plays also has some similar and very significant features.

Firstly, all the plays (except The Tempest) are based on the history of families. Families are separated at the beginning or during the course of the work and reunited at the end. In Pericles, a husband and father are separated from his wife and daughter. In "Cymbeline" - a wife with her husband, a father with children. In “The Winter's Tale” there is a husband with his wife and daughter, a mother with her daughter. (Hence, in particular, the need for more than one storyline, for it is necessary to give an idea of ​​the fates of all those separated.) At the end of these plays, a “recognition” scene is obligatory: relatives find themselves together and recognize each other.

In all plays, time is of fundamental importance; its length is sometimes very long. In “Pericles” 14 years pass between the third and fourth acts, in “The Winter’s Tale” - 16. In “Cymbeline” the action covers a short period and gives the impression of continuous, in “The Tempest” it generally takes several hours, but in both plays a huge The background of some characters plays a role: in “Cymbeline” - Bellaria and the princes, in “The Tempest” - Prospero and Miranda in the first place, as well as all other main characters.

In all plays, the action moves from less well-being to greater well-being.

Significant changes in comparison with previous plays and greater commonality in comparison with each other in the final dramas have the characters of the characters, the methods of their depiction and the relationship of the characters with the action and circumstances.

The first thing that catches your eye is the connection between the character and composition of the latest plays.

If in previous works the movement of the plot covered the fates of all the main characters, who were constantly in our field of vision, and the viewer’s attention was distributed evenly between them, then the composition of romantic dramas is different in this sense.

In "Pericles" main character does not participate at all during the all-important fourth act, appearing only in pantomime.

In Cymbeline, Posthumus disappears after the second act and again becomes a central figure in the fifth.

In The Winter's Tale, Leontes is at the center of the action in the first three acts, absent and almost forgotten in the fourth, and reappearing only at the end of the play. Hermione actually leaves the play as a character in the middle of the third act, because in the fifth act her role is purely symbolic, and Shakespeare gave her only one small line here.

Other characters appear in the middle or even towards the end of the play. We first meet Marina in Pericles in the fourth act - and from that moment on she becomes the main character. We meet Bellarius and the princes in Cymbeline only in the third scene of the third act. We also see the loss for the first time only in the fourth act, at which time Autolycus also appears.

Many characters emerge only for a moment and immediately drown in the turbulent flow of events, although their role in the destinies of the main characters is paramount (Antiochus in Pericles, Cornelius in Cymbeline, Antigonus in The Winter's Tale).

This structural feature The latest plays are largely connected with principles of characterization that are different from tragedies.

The characters' characters lose psychological depth and volume. The characters live with emotions, each of which, taken in itself, is depicted with completeness and thoroughness, sometimes worthy of Shakespeare’s highest realistic masterpieces - just remember the jealousy of Leontes or the suffering of the slandered Imogene (in the scene with Pisanio near Milford). But the characters as a whole often seem to disintegrate into separate emotional states, a sharp change in emotions is weakly or not at all motivated, therefore the actions of the characters are also deprived of realistic validity, and the impression arises that the feelings of the characters do not correspond to the circumstances and reasons that caused them. In this sense classic example maybe the same Leontes with his sudden causeless jealousy. But similar features of the drawing can be found in the portrait of almost any character in recent plays: Postumus from greatest love turns to burning hatred, while revealing amazing gullibility; Imogene longs to die, accuses Postumus of infidelity and baseness - and immediately accepts Pisanio’s offer to dress up as a boy in order to live near Postumus; Paulina curses Leontes and, without any transition, begins to feel sorry for him; Cymbeline reacts completely calmly to the message about the death and villainous intentions of his hitherto dearly beloved wife. Etc.

Therefore, some heroes almost completely lose their constancy of character. There is nothing in Dionysus who receives Pericles that predicts the evil criminal she will turn out to be when she orders Marina's death. Leontes persuading Polyxenes to stay, Leontes in the grip of jealousy, and Leontes repenting are as if three different people.

On the other hand, as a rule, the fullness of human character is lacking. Overtones and shades exist only in the description of individual feelings. Most characters are dominated by certain qualities that are set from the very beginning and therefore unchangeable. Therefore, characters begin to gravitate toward types and give reason to consider them symbols. Marina's purity, Imogene's loyalty, Pisanio's devotion, Paulina's truthfulness are as emphatically constant as Cloten's anger and stupidity, the queen's hypocrisy and meanness, and Jahimo's treachery.

In this regard, the characters are sharply divided into positive and negative, virtuous and vicious.

Internal conflicts are also weakened or removed altogether. Leontes does not experience, like Othello, pity or hesitation. Posthumus does not doubt the justice of his first decision - to kill Imogen. The heroes suffer only from external misfortunes; contradictions are not characteristic of their inner world. If contradictory passions take possession of their souls, then almost always only alternately, almost never simultaneously: the heroes also completely surrender to one feeling as before to another.

The characters lose the activity characteristic of the heroes of tragedies. Events develop independently of human will and carry the characters along with them.

Therefore, chance plays a huge role. Chance deprives Pericles of his ship and servants, saves him the knight's armor, leads him to the court of Simonides and subsequently reunites him with his daughter in Mytilene. Chance gives the body of the supposedly dead Thaisa into the hands of the wise doctor Tserimon. Chance in the form of pirates saves Marina from Leonin's knife.

In Cymbeline, chance brings Imogene to the cave where her brothers live, puts Cloten under the sword of Guiderius, pits Postumus and Jahimo on the battlefield, and finally brings all the heroes together in the final scene at Cymbeline’s court.

In The Winter's Tale the role of chance is not so noticeable, but essentially no less great, especially in the fate of Lost, whose well-being (and therefore the happy ending of the play) depends on the fact that Loss is accidentally found by a shepherd.

And even in The Tempest, chance helps Prospero take advantage of his charms.

Already this brief preliminary review of some of the most general and, from our point of view, indisputable related features of the latest plays in the field of plot, composition, dramatic techniques and principles of character construction shows that there is every reason to insist on the uniqueness of the final Shakespearean dramas.

True, any of the points noted above can be found parallels and analogues in Shakespeare’s previous works.

But aesthetic nature a work is determined, as we know, not by isolated components, but by their totality and organic unity. Individual features that we consider specific to the latest plays can indeed be seen in many earlier works - for there is a unity of the writer’s creative style and Shakespeare remains Shakespeare throughout his entire dramatic career. But there these features exist separately and in other combinations, but here they are collected together and therefore form new drawing and new quality.

However, in two cases, the closeness of some artistic features of romantic dramas and early Shakespearean works is of fundamental importance and deserves special attention.

First of all, we are talking about certain tragedies.

Until the writing of his last plays, symbolic elements had played such a large role in no other of Shakespeare's works as in Macbeth, King Lear and Antony and Cleopatra.

The feeling that in “Antony and Cleopatra” the whole world is before us, and the feeling of the cosmic that dominates in “King Lear”, is reminiscent of the impression of generalization in the image human life, which arises in the latest plays due to the remoteness of their action from concrete reality.

The character portrayals in Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Timon of Athens also evoke the final dramas.

In Antony and Cleopatra, only the characters of the main characters have depth and versatility, are shown with subtle psychological nuances and are carefully developed.

In Coriolanus, even the main character is shown more in external manifestations than in wealth inner world. The character of Coriolanus is perceived as simplified and one-sided also because one quality dominates in him, one principle - heroic.

In "Timon of Athens" the turning point that occurs in the main character - the transition from philanthropy to misanthropy - with its suddenness and swiftness anticipates sharp transitions from one emotional state to another, from one mood to another, from one feeling to another, which we see in the latest plays.

The development of other personalities in this tragedy is quite straightforward. As in “Antony and Cleopatra,” the secondary characters here are little individualized, but certain qualities of human nature are embodied in them very clearly.

“Timon” has that declarative quality that will manifest itself to an even greater extent in romantic dramas.

Let us now remember the time when all these tragedies were written: “King Lear” - 1605; “Macbeth - 1606, “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Coriolanus” - 1607, “Timon of Athens” - 1608, i.e. all these are works that immediately precede The final stage Shakespearean creativity.

In other words, with all the originality of the latest plays, the transition from deeply individualized, psychologically reliable images, from the depiction of people with a rich, versatile inner life, from the dialectical character shown in the development to more simplified and static images of the final plays is quite gradual, as is the gradual formation of some other elements that dominate the artistic fabric of the works of the last period. Although everything that has been said does not cancel, of course, our thesis about the fundamental difference between romantic dramas and tragedies.

Even more significant is the comparison of recent plays with comedies.

If the position about Shakespeare's departure from tragedy in recent years is an axiom for almost all critics, then other researchers tend to blur the fundamental difference between the final works and comedies. B. Evans, for example, analyzes Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest on a par with comedies of the first period. H. Fry also unites these plays with one concept. G. Charlton writes: “Romantic plays are clearly close to early comedies; they are even more comedies than tragicomedies.”

Indeed, critics have reasons for such a rapprochement - and considerable ones. Comedies such as “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, partly “The Merchant of Venice” and especially “Much Ado About Nothing”, “As You Like It” and “Twelfth Night” have much in common with the final works.

In many comedies, evil is presented in one way or another: in the image of Shylock - “The Merchant of Venice”, Don Juan - “Much Noise...”, Oliver and Duke Frederick - “As You Like It”. Sometimes evil takes possession of the souls of heroes who are not villains by nature (Proteus in The Two Gentlemen of Verona).

But the action takes on a dramatic character even where there are no carriers of evil: the heroes suffer in “Twelfth Night” and even in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The heroes face dangers: sometimes mortal (“The Merchant of Venice”), sometimes dishonorable (“Much Noise...”).

But all the troubles end happily, the worries are crowned with a happy ending, the villains, if there were any, are put to shame or repent.

As in recent plays, the heroes are idealized.

As in recent plays, chance and coincidence play a huge role in what happens. The heroes get into shipwrecks, are separated and reunited, the girls dress up in men's clothes, the action takes place in exotic countries and in a conventional setting.

As in the latest plays, there is a lot of music, songs, dances and picturesque effects.

The fantastic characters of A Midsummer Night's Dream anticipate the fantasy of The Tempest.

Does all this mean that we can, following the English critic E. Pettet, say: take the serious part of “As You Like It” or, even better, “Much Ado About Nothing”, expand it to the size of a five-act play - and if Shakespeare himself performed this operation; wouldn’t the result have been a work like one of his last plays?

But the fact of the matter is that the “serious” part in comedies does not exist on its own, but is perceived only in a general context, and this context speaks of the qualitative difference between comedies and plays of the last period.

The difference concerns primarily the subject matter.

The central theme of all comedies is love. The story of the courtship of young people from the moment they meet and the emergence of feelings, carried through all obstacles and ending in a happy marriage, underlies the plots of all comedies. And all the suffering of the heroes is, as a rule, the suffering of unrequited love.

Of the recent plays, only in Cymbeline are love vicissitudes in the spotlight. In Pericles, only the first two episodes are connected with this theme, and even then only partially; in The Winter's Tale, young lovers appear only in the fourth act; the love of Ferdinand and Miranda in The Tempest is also not the main interest of this play. And the experiences of lovers here depend not on the play of the feeling itself, but on external reasons. Therefore, nowhere (except for “The Tempest”) is the birth of love shown: both in “Cymbeline” and in “The Winter’s Tale” we have an already formed feeling - whereas in comedy passion is always in development.

For all the idealization of the characters and the setting, for all the conventionality of the place and course of action, comedies produce general impression reality and authenticity - an impression that the latest plays do not leave.

This impression, firstly, is created by a more coherent and consistent plot: in comedies there are no huge time intervals, episodicity and sensationalism inherent in the plot of final dramas.

Secondly, the activity, cheerfulness, and versatility of nature characteristic of the heroes of comedies give them that full-bloodedness and psychological persuasiveness that the characters of recent plays lack.

In addition, the atmosphere of reality in comedies depends to a great extent on the rich everyday background, which disappears in recent works.

The bright light of everyday reality, only faint reflections of which can be seen in “Pericles” (the fishermen’s conversation and the scene in the brothel), the light that completely disappears in “Cymbeline” flares up in the fourth act of “The Winter’s Tale” and finally goes out in “The Tempest” , - this light floods comedy and is inseparable from the prevailing element of the comic.

A bright, joyful tone, far from the gloomy, tense sound of the last plays, is also given to the comedies by the motley, colorful inhabitants of their “ground floor”: jesters, merrymakers, artisans, policemen, servants - characters who almost completely leave most of the final plays; and endless verbal skirmishes, puns, duels of wit - in a word, all that spirit of light and spontaneous gaiety, of which not a trace remains in the latest dramas.

That's why evil in comedies looks for the most part conventional and not scary, and the dangers it threatens the heroes with are rarely taken seriously. There are shadows here, but there is still no darkness.

The similarities and differences between comedies and recent plays are of deep fundamental importance. The similarity is due to the fact that in both cases Shakespeare turns to the same literary material: both types of drama are closely related to the same literary tradition. But this tradition is heterogeneous; the material, in its internal potential, was akin to both the vision of life that was reflected in the comedies and the worldview that was expressed in the final dramas. Hence the different dramatic development of it: comic at the first stage and tragicomic at the second.

Therefore, for a historically correct understanding of the artistic and ideological specificity of the latest plays, it is necessary to find out what kind of literary material they are based on. To answer this question, let us turn first of all to the direct and indirect sources of the latest plays.

As you know, Shakespeare did not invent plots for his works. Direct sources have not been found for only three of his plays. But in the first of them - in "Love's Labour's Lost" - there is essentially no plot, and in the second and third - "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "The Tempest" - motifs that were widely used in contemporary Shakespeare and previous literature were used, although they are used with greater independence than in other works.

Since the 18th century. Researchers have done a great job identifying possible sources of Shakespeare's plays, scrupulously studying all the material available to Shakespeare and looking for parallels in the works of all times and peoples.

These studies made it possible to establish that at different stages of his work, Shakespeare not only processes the material used differently, but this material itself is very different and always meets Shakespeare’s artistic goals.

What is the literary genealogy of the latest plays?

The history of the plot of “Pericles” has been traced in great detail. Its primary source is the untitled book “The History of Apollonius of Tyre.” This book has reached us in Latin, the earliest copy dates back to the 9th century, but scientists have proven that the story of Apollonius is a late Greek novel with all the features of this genre.

The plot scheme of the novel on the way to Shakespeare underwent surprisingly few changes, although it came through other authors.

In the Middle Ages, numerous adaptations of the novel began to appear. In particular, at the end of the 12th century. Gottfried of Viterbsky, notary of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, wrote a kind world history, entitled "Pantheon", where he briefly outlined the history of Apollonius. According to scientists, this story, together with the Latin version itself, was the source for the 7th book of D. Gower’s poem “Confession of a Lover” (XIV century, reprinted in 1532 and 1534).

Included a reworking of the story of Apollonius and the famous medieval collection of short stories in Latin (XIV century) “The Acts of the Romans.” From this collection, the story of Apollonius was translated into French, and this version was used by L. Twayne, who retold the story in prose (Twayne's story was published three times between 1567 and 1607).

Gower's poem and Twayne's story were the direct sources for Shakespeare's play.

Shakespeare left all the basic plot collisions these works. It follows Gower most closely, but the fourth act is more similar to the story

Tuaina. However, in both cases, all the vicissitudes of the Latin “History of Apollonius of Tire” are preserved. Shakespeare's most significant changes are as follows: in the first act he introduces a procession of knights going to the tourney, and he devotes much more attention to Marina than both sources gave to their young heroines.

This brief history of how the Latin version reached Shakespeare illustrates, firstly, the amazing stability of the plot and, secondly, especially if we add that there were Spanish, German, Italian and Dutch adaptations of the same novel, shows its enormous popularity .

The plot of Cymbeline, rich in a variety of situations, allows for the widest comparisons with the widest range of literary works.

The main story of the play - the story of Imogene and Postumus - was taken by Shakespeare from Boccaccio (The Decameron, Day Two, Novella 9). This story, as we have already said, is of folklore origin, but has had numerous literary adaptations.

In medieval literature we find two versions of this story. The first, the so-called “tale of the rose,” was retold in verse and prose in a 14th-century novel. “Perseforest”, another - in some French novels, from where it came to Boccaccio. Both versions penetrated into England: the first - in a poem of the 14th century. “The Master's Virtuous Wife” by Adam de Cobsam, the second - an anonymous story from the beginning of the 17th century.

Both versions tell of the triumph of the virtuous wife: the husband proves that no one can seduce his wife, and the braggarts who stake their fortunes on the claim that they will win are ultimately put to shame.

However, events develop differently.

In the “Tale of the Rose,” the husband is from beginning to end confident in his wife’s inaccessibility, for in his box there is a wonderful rose, which retains its freshness when the wife is faithful, and will fade only after her betrayal. Since the rose does not fade, the husband can be calm - and all attention is focused on the wife’s cunning and the misadventures of her admirers, who ultimately end up in the basement, where they are forced to work in order not to die of hunger, and are freed from there by their returning husband.

The second version is closer to Shakespeare and more dramatic: the contender for the honor of a faithful wife manages to convince her husband that he has achieved success - and the decisive proof, as in Boccaccio and to some extent in Shakespeare, is the description of a bodily sign.

The story that Boccaccio used was also processed in a German work of the late 15th century. "Historie von vier Kaufmännern". It was translated from German into Danish, and from Danish into English, and was first printed in Antwerp in 1518, reprinted in 1520 and 1560. entitled "Frederick of Yennen".

It is believed that along with Boccaccio, who was Shakespeare's main source either in the original or in the French version by Antoine Mason, Shakespeare also knew "Frederic", since a number of details in "Cymbeline" coincide with details that are found in this story, but are missing at Boccaccio.

In searching for other possible sources for Cymbeline, researchers have discovered a number of other works that vary the same story.

These include the script Italian comedy del arte, French miracle "Otho, King of Spain", in which the villain, like Jahimo, boasts that he can conquer any woman if he talks to her twice (Que je me scay femme vivant mais que doux fois a la parlasse que la fierce cevoir n"en cuidasse Tout mon delit), and just like Yahimo, trying to seduce the heroine, slanderes her lover, accusing him of infidelity (De Homme vien J"ay leisse Vestre seignueur qui na vous price Pas la quene s"une serise. D"une garce c"est accintie Qu"il a en si grant amitie Qu"il ne scat d"elle departir); medieval English novel"The Count of Toulouse", where there are parallels with the conversation between Jachimo and Imogene.

If we turn to individual motifs of Cymbeline, the number of works involved in comparison will multiply.

In particular, there are some similarities between the adventures of Imogene in the Welsh hills and the adventures of Erminia, the heroine

“Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso (in cantos VII and XIX). Erminia goes in search of her knight, lives with the shepherds and finds Tancred, supposedly dead.

Also noteworthy is one place in Apuleius (“Metamorphoses”, X, 1-12), where an everyday version of the myth of Phaedrus and Hippolytus is given, complicated by the motif of an imaginary lethal, actually sleeping pill: the stepmother, having fallen in love with her stepson and not meeting reciprocity, decides to poison, but the prepared potion is mistakenly drunk by the stepmother’s own son, who accuses the stepson of attempting on his life and honor and poisoning his brother. The imaginary murderer is about to be sentenced to execution, but a wise and kind doctor intervenes, who sold the poison to a slave - the executor of the stepmother’s villainous intentions, but, like Cornelius in Cymbeline, replaced it with a sleeping pill. The poisoned awakens, the criminals are punished, virtue triumphs. The figure of a noble and humane doctor, his decision to replace the poison with a sleeping pill, the universal belief in the death of the child and the grief of his relatives, the surprise of the news that the poisoned man is alive - all this has similarities with some situations in Cymbeline: both here and there the evil stepmother, who plans to poison her stepson (in Shakespeare - Imogen), and here and here a doctor who, with wise caution, prevents murder, and here and here, imaginary death, grief of loved ones, joyful and unexpected revival.

Parallels borrowed from Apuleius and close to Cymbeline are also found in Richard Johnson's Tom of Lincoln (1599).

Finally, we find motifs and situations similar to “Cymbeline” in many dramatic works of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

The fate of Imogene is reminiscent of the fate of Odile, the heroine of the anonymous play “The Weakest Goes to the Wall” ( last decade XVI century), daughter of the Duke of Brabant, who fell in love with a foundling.

In the play Sir Cliomon and Sir Clamid (published in 1599 but apparently written in 1580 at the latest), Neronia, Cliomon's lover, is kidnapped by Frasellius, king of Norway. She, dressed in a man's dress, runs away and enters the service of the old shepherd Klorin. Cliomon goes in search of Neronia, meets and kills Frasellius, with the help of Clorin buries him and hangs his golden shield and sword with an inscription on his grave. Neronia appears, sees the shield, believes that her lover lies in the grave, and wants to commit suicide. Her suicide is prevented by providential intervention. Subsequently, Neronia leaves Klorin and enters the service as a page to her beloved Kliomon, whom, however, she does not recognize, since he is also in disguise.

As is easy to see, not only the general outline of Imogene’s adventures is anticipated here (escaping from Cloten, who is harassing her, dressing in a man’s dress, living with ordinary people in nature, entering the service of a page to Lucius), but also the very specific situation of one of the most remarkable scenes in "Cymbeline" - scenes where Imogen mourns the body of Cloten, mistaking him for Posthumus.

Significant plot similarities are also found in the play “The Extraordinary Triumphs of Love and Fortune” (performed in 1582, published in 1589).

Hermione, the son of the nobleman Bomelio, expelled by false libel, loves Fidelia, daughter of King Pisantium. Hermione was raised at court, his relationship with Bomelio is initially unknown. Fidelia's brother, Prince Armenio, learns of Hermione and Fidelia's love and convinces the king to banish Hermione. Fidelia wants to accompany Hermione, but her plan is betrayed by a traitor. Meanwhile, Hermione ends up in a cave where his father lives as a hermit. Bomelio wants to help his found son and, being a wizard, sends the disease to Armenio, while he deceitfully gets to Fidelia and helps her escape. However, later Bomelio himself finds himself in a deplorable situation: Hermione, in her father’s cave, was horrified to discover godless books and burnt them; Upon discovering the loss, Bomelio goes crazy. Events become so complicated that it is impossible to resolve the situation without the help of the gods. And so first Mercury descends, who lulls and heals Bomelio with music (note that the healing role of music is also not an individual feature of Shakespeare’s plays), then Venus and Fortune, who lead all events to a happy ending.

Thus, both “Cymbeline” and “The Extraordinary Triumphs of Love and Fortune” depict an unjustly expelled, slandered nobleman living in a cave (Bellari - Bomelio), both plays tell about the love of a royal daughter for a young man raised at court, but an humble one (Hermione and Posthumus, Fidelia and Imogen), who is expelled as a beggar, in both acts the evil brother of the princess (Armenio and Cloten) and introduces the “god ex machina”.

The history of the plot of The Winter's Tale is much simpler: in this play, Shakespeare dramatized R. Greene's novel Pandosto (first published in 1588, published in 1592, 1595 and 1607, then - after the appearance of The Winter's Tale - in 1614 and at least 13 times during the 17th century, including in shortened, cheap and ballad versions).

The most significant change that Shakespeare made in the plot was to preserve the lives of the older generation: in Greene Bellaria (Shakespeare's Hermione) dies, and Pandosto (Leontes), when Dorastus and Fawnia (Florizel and Loss) arrive at his court, falls in love with his own daughter (Shakespeare also discarded this motive of incestuous passion) and, having learned the truth, commits suicide.

Therefore, the only plot analogue of The Winter's Tale independent of Green's novel is the parallels with the recognition scene, where Hermione is mistaken for a statue, and then she turns out to be alive. (The statue seems to come to life, so they see here a distant response to the myth of Pygmalion.)

There are more similar options. Thus, in the anonymous play of 1605 “The Trials of Chivalry” there is such a scene. The heroine, Catherine of France, falls to her knees in front of a statue of her deceased lover, Ferdinand of Navarre. Previously, she rejected his love - now she swears love herself. The statue bends down to hug her - the beloved turns out to be alive.

The remaining comparisons concern Green's novel, and their range is quite wide.

The general scheme of the work is close to the plot of the 14th century play. "Esmereit, son of the King of Sicily." This play tells how the king of Sicily suspects his wife of adultery and throws out their only son. He is brought up in a neighboring kingdom, falls in love with the king's daughter and is loved by her.

But the largest number of related works is drawn from the story of Dorast and Fawnia. For Greene, the story of young lovers takes up two-thirds of the entire novel (starting from the 1595 edition, the novel was called “Dorast and Fawnia”). Therefore, the parallels of this storyline actually indicate what literary tradition the novel is connected with (and therefore, through it, Shakespeare’s play). Since the novel itself is not the goal of our work, we will simply refer to the conclusions of scientists who believe that in the second part of Pandosto Greene learns much from Long’s Greek novel Daphnis and Chloe (the first part of Greene’s work is also compared to one of the Greek novels - “Theagenes and Chariklia” by Heliodorus), they also find plot parallels with “Ethiopica” by Heliodorus (where the hero cannot marry the heroine because of her low origin, but in the end it turns out that she is the daughter of the Ethiopian king), and in general they relate “ Pandosto" to the pastoral genre.

Although no direct sources have been found for "The Tempest", it is plot situations also have a rich history.

First of all, we should mention the play by the German author J. Airer “Beautiful Sideya”. Its content is as follows. Prince Ludolf is defeated in battle and expelled from his domain by Prince Leydegast. Together with his daughter Sideya, he lives in a hut in the forest. Ludolf is a wizard, and with the help of magic he forces into service a creature similar to Ariel - the spirit of Rupzifal, as well as the wild man Mosirot (Shakespeare's Caliban). When Sideya grows up, Ludolf captures Engelbrecht, the son of his enemy. Engelbrecht could not resist, since his sword, like Ferdinand's sword in The Tempest, is enchanted, and he cannot pull it out of its sheath. Ludolf forces Engelbrecht to chop wood for him (like Prospero - Ferdinand). Sideya must keep an eye on Engelbrecht; At first she is quite harsh with him, but then the young people fall in love with each other, exchange vows, run away, things happen to them different adventures, but in the end their fathers are reconciled, the children marry, and Liudolf’s possessions are returned.

There are no traces of acquaintance with Airer's play (written at the end of the 16th - the very beginning of the 17th century, the author died in 1605) in England. Therefore, scientists conclude that there is some common source that has not reached us.

Another analogue of “The Tempest” is contained in the collection of Spanish novels by Antonio de Eslava “Noches de Inferno” (published in 1609-1610).

This is also the story of a deposed ruler, a certain Dardano, King of Bulgaria. The Emperor of Byzantium, Nikephoros, demands the kingdom of Dardano for his sons, since Dardano only has a daughter, Seraphina, who, as a woman, cannot succeed her father. Dardano wants to marry Serafina to one of the emperor's sons, but he refuses and expels Dardano and his daughter from their lands. Like Prospero, Dardano knows magic, but does not want to use his art; he only provides himself with housing - he and his daughter settle in an underwater castle near the seashore. Meanwhile, Nikephoros bequeaths the state to his bad son Julian, disinheriting his good son, Valentin. Dardano, disguised as an old sailor, lures Valentin to his palace and marries him to Serafina. IN further development The storm also plays a role. Julian, returning from Rome, where he married the daughter of the Roman emperor, sails over the Dardano Palace. He causes a storm that destroys Julian's fleet, and Julian himself and his wife die just when they reach the shore. The people of the country are so amazed by what they consider an act of divine vengeance that they rush to elect Valentine as king. Dardano is restored to the throne, but he abdicates in favor of his son-in-law.

The Italian scientist Neri noted the similarity of “The Tempest” with the four scenarios of the comedy dell'arte. Everywhere there is a shipwreck, as a result of which the survivors end up on an island, where a love affair ensues between local girls and noble travelers, on the other hand, with hungry and thirsty sailors Various comic incidents occur.There is a wizard on the island.In one scenario, foreigners are mistaken for gods (as Caliban accepts Trinculo).In another, the wizard renounces his art at the end of the play.

Neri also points to Bartolomeo Rossi's pastoral comedy Fiamella (1584), which also features a shipwreck and a wizard.

So, what are those literary works with which, as our review has shown, many significant artistic features latest plays?

These works, despite their large number, can be combined into well-defined groups that belong to a certain general literary body.

This is, firstly, the late Greek novel and its subsequent poetic and prose versions.

This, secondly, is a late medieval and Renaissance adventure story.

This is, finally, a series of dramatic works - mainly an old pre-Shakespearean play from the end of the 16th century.

The named groups form a certain literary tradition, which we will call tradition romantic genres in literature, or, for short, the romantic tradition.

The definition of “romantic” in this context requires clarification. In our literary criticism, this definition, when applied to the named complex of literary phenomena, does not have a general meaning and is not widely used; it is usually used as a companion and always with reservations, because it is associated with the era of romanticism. We use this term in the sense in which it is used by M.M. Morozov and A.A. Anikst. This use of the term is, of course, conditional. It goes back to the German romantics, in particular to L. Tieck, who saw in Shakespeare's last dramas ideal examples of romantic drama. The conventionality of the term in this case is caused by its application to phenomena at different times. Nevertheless, the problem of tradition, which I will call romantic, is extremely important for understanding Shakespeare's last plays. Therefore, without claiming to be a complete and final solution to this issue, I consider it necessary to dwell on those aspects of the problem that are most directly related to our topic.

IN English language To name this tradition there is a very precise word “romance”. Defining this word, the compilers of the Webster Dictionary write: “...Any fictional or surprising story; now chiefly a kind of novel, the interest of which lies not so much in the depiction of real life or character, as in the adventure, the surprising incident, etc.” . In Russian, the word romance is translated as “romantic”, and as “love episode, love story”, and as “fiction, fable”, and as “novel”, but the novel is adventurous, heroic, in no way everyday, modern , not novel. Romance is an ancient novel, a chivalric novel, the novels of R. Greene, these are the poems of Ariosto, these are, finally, Shakespeare's comedies - early romances, and his final dramas - late romances.

All the meanings contained in the word romance characterize the works of the so-called romantic tradition.

The common features of these works are primarily associated with recurring motifs and a recognized position in relation to the subject of the narrative and are expressed, firstly, in clearly fixed features of the plot and, secondly, in a certain way of characterizing the characters.

The primary source of literature of this type was the late Greek novel - Xenophon of Ephesus, Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus, etc. It was then that those artistic components were formed that would later be, to one degree or another, mandatory for all works of this kind.

The plot scheme of almost all Greek novels is the same: the separation of lovers or relatives who, in their desire for each other, undergo various dangerous adventures and are finally happily reunited. In these adventures, chance plays a huge role - both happy and hostile at the same time, and therefore, ultimately, indifferent. The adventures themselves, with all their abundance, can be reduced to some similar situations, and the variety of plots is created not by the variety of situations themselves, but only by the variety of their combinations: in most novels we will meet pirates kidnapping heroes, shipwrecks, imaginary death, miraculous salvation, dressing up, etc. The whole ego forms a plot, at first glance whimsical, scattered and sharp, but in essence strictly consistent.

Constant change of seats is required. But although the geographical scope is extremely wide, there is no ethnographic specificity, and the works lack local flavor.

One of the most curious and interesting features of the Greek novel for us is the relationship between the completeness of character and the description of experiences. The fullness of character inherent in Greek drama is lost - the characters can only collectively characterize human nature, human nature seems to break up into a number of traits, each of which is endowed with a separate character, the characteristics become primitive and uniform.

Finally, the Greek novel as a whole has a fairy-tale flavor also because it more fully assimilates the folklore element and absorbs many fairy-tale situations than any form of written literature before it.

We have highlighted those features of the Greek novel that are repeated with amazing consistency in the future in all romantic genres - both in the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance.

Without dwelling on similar phenomena in the literature of other countries, let us turn to England.

In England, the dominance of the romantic genre began in the 60s of the 16th century. Romance - both translated and national - becomes the most popular reading (as evidenced, for example, by the description of the library of a certain Captain Cox, made in 1575 by one of his guests), and the romantic play becomes a favorite spectacle. And both types - both the play and the novel - reproduce the entire canon of romantic motives and situations that crystallized in the Greek novel.

The old romantic play of the 1560s-1590s is of particular interest to us. In the romantic comedy of Lily and Green, which replaced the old romantic play, tradition is obscured by the sharp personality and talent of the authors. The old romantic play was not distinguished by high artistic merits - and therefore only relatively recently became the subject of serious attention of researchers. But precisely because of its primitiveness and crudeness, tradition appears here, so to speak, in its most primordial form.

Many plays of this type, as can be judged by their titles, directly dramatized the Greek novel, for example: “Chariclia” (1572), “Philomenes” (1574), “The Greek Beauty” (1579), “Phyllis and Corinus” (1584), "Felix and Philemon" (1585), "The Mad Priest of the Sun" (1587). None of these plays have reached us.

But also those who developed knightly adventures (the large number of these plays is evidenced mainly by their surviving names, for example: “Herestul, the Blue Knight” - 1570, “The Irish Knight” - 1576, “The Lonely Knight” - 1576, “The Flaming Knight” cliff" - 1579, etc.), from the earliest surviving plays - "Sir Cliomon and Sir Clamid" - (1570) and "Ordinary Circumstances" - (1576) - to the wider legacy of the 80-90s, all they are built on the alternation of various dangers and extraordinary incidents, on the ups and downs of the heroes’ fortunes, on the machinations of villains and the victories of noble heroes, who in the end are happily reunited with their loved ones.

The play “The Extraordinary Triumphs of Love and Fortune,” as well as the episode we cited from “Sir Cliomon and Sir Clamid,” can give an idea of ​​works of this kind.

No less indicative is another romantic play of this period - “Matsedor” (staged in 1590, published in 1598). We take the liberty of citing the content of this play, because it is also interesting because the period of its highest popularity falls precisely in the years close to the time of the writing of Shakespeare’s last dramas; reprints of it were published in 1606, 1610, 1611, 1613 and 1616. and, as acknowledged by many historians of English drama, Macedor was perhaps the most popular Elizabethan play.

Macedor, Prince of Valencia, disguised as a shepherd, goes to Aragon to see the Aragonese princess, the beautiful Amadine. His meeting with Amadin takes place under very dramatic circumstances: Amadin was walking with Tserasto, who is predicted to be her husband, a bear attacks them, Tserasto runs away, leaving Amadin alone. Amadin calls for help - and then Matsedor appears, carrying the head of a dead bear. (Many scholars believed that the bear on stage in The Winter's Tale was suggested to Shakespeare by the bear "Matsedora".) Matsedora accompanies the princess to the palace.

In the palace, he is received with such goodwill that the jealous Cerasto (the villain) persuades the soldier Tremolio to kill Matsedor (the second danger for the hero), but Tremolio is killed in the fight, and Cerasto, accusing Matsedor of murder, gets the king to sentence the hero to death. True, he is immediately saved by Amadin, who, naturally, has already fallen in love with the imaginary shepherd: she reports that he saved her, and the king decides not to rush into carrying out the sentence and even promises Matsedor a reward.

But while Matsedor is anticipating future joys, an order comes for his expulsion: Cerasto’s machinations have been crowned with success. Amadin declares that he will accompany Matsedor. They agree to meet in the valley where Matsedor accomplished his first feat - he killed a bear. Matsedor is late for a date - for no reason, obviously, specifically in order to give the opportunity to the next obligatory phase of the plot, the separation of lovers as a result of kidnapping: the heroine was kidnapped during this time by the Wild Man, Bremo, who first wants to eat the poor girl, but then, seduced by her beauty, he takes her with him into the forest (in Bremo, some researchers see the predecessor of Caliban). Bremo tries to win Amadin's sympathy by describing to her the delights of forest life.

Matsedor appears in the clothes of a hermit (the second disguise of the hero). Bremo is about to grab him in order to prepare a good dinner from him, but Amadin, although not knowing that it is Matsedor (here, as elsewhere in such works, the hero only needs to change clothes so that none of his acquaintances recognize him; even earlier Matsedor in clothes the hermit met his old acquaintance, the jester, and also remained unrecognized), begs Bremo to take Matsedor as a servant. Amadine tells the still unrecognized Matsedor that he still loves the shepherd. Matsedor decides to use a trick: he tells Bremo that he is concerned about his safety and asks him to teach him how to protect him. During the lesson, Matsedor, who received a weapon in his hands, kills Bremo. Now he reveals himself to Amadin.

The jester appears (he has interrupted the performance before comic scenes, usually not related to the main action) is an ally of Cerasto. The jester calls Cerasto, who demands Amadin as his wife. Matsedor suggests that Amadin decide for herself which of the three - the jester, Cerasto and Matsedor - she prefers. At the same time, he reveals that he is a prince. Amadin chooses

Matsedora, the king, having learned about Matsedora's origins, changes his anger to mercy, Tserasto comes to terms with his defeat. End.

The American scientist K. Holzknecht wrote: “Matsedora” contained everything: a variety of love feelings, adventure, fable, melodrama, villainy, pathos, a certain amount of amusing buffoonery... It is impossible to imagine a work more attractive to the audience... In short, with its An absurd mixture of pastoralism, chivalric romance and crude entertainment, "Matsedor" is a drama of precisely the kind that Sir Philip Sidney condemned.

F. Sidney in his “Defense of Poetry” really attacked the old romantic play with its mixture of “funerals and bagpipes”, wrote with indignation about dramas where in the first act Asia is on stage, and in the second Africa, in the first the hero is born, in the second gets married, and in the third it is his children who act.

But F. Sidney himself in “Arcadia” gave a brilliant example of the romantic genre (in its pastoral version). If in the old romantic plays tradition appears in the most primitive form, then in Arcadia it is in the most refined, elegant and at the same time also crystal clear.

"Arcadia" absorbed all the main motifs of pastoral and love-heroic novels and was the most striking expression of the romantic tradition in English Renaissance literature.

We encounter here the whole set of familiar clichés.

The scene of action is a conventional locality, devoid of specific geographical and realistic features, the fabulous country of Arcadia. The main characters end up here as a result of a shipwreck. The main content is love, in the center there are two pairs of lovers. Love always breaks out at first sight: Pyrocles and Masidor fall in love with the daughters of the Arcadian king Basil. A significant part of the novel is devoted to the courtship of young lovers, which is conducted in full accordance with the romantic code of love and ends in a happy marriage.

However, the path to a happy ending is complicated by numerous unforeseen and mostly incredible incidents, adventures and accidents. Chance generally reigns here. Complex and intricate love entanglements arise. They are often associated with cross-dressing: for example, Pyrocles dresses up in a woman’s dress and, mistaken by King Basil for a girl, becomes the object of his courtship; on the other hand, the king’s wife unravels Pyrocles’ disguise and falls in love with him too. A situation characteristic of this type of literature arises: the character is not what he seems to be, different acting persons he appears in different guises - and this is fraught with both comic and dramatic consequences.

Dramatic consequences include complications in the lovers' relationship. Pyrocles is forced to pretend to be in love with the king's wife. Philoclea, his beloved, believes that he really cheated on her (the motif of imaginary infidelity, which we will meet in Cymbeline and in The Winter's Tale, is also one of the favorite motifs in romantic literature). Another test is the conflict between love and friendship (there is an echo in The Winter's Tale, although weak).

The plot is based on constant surprises and suspense; incredible adventures happen to the heroes, as a result of which they very often find themselves on the brink of death: Pyrocles and the young princesses are kidnapped by the ferocious Cecropia; young heroes are sentenced to death for allegedly committing the murder of Vasily, etc. The author arouses the reader’s curiosity and does not care about logic and consistency. Coincidences, disguises, mistaken identities - the whole intrigue is built on this.

The setting is conventional and eclectic: forest, desert, the general coloring is reminiscent of ancient Greece, but Cecropia and her son are typical medieval characters.

We did not intend to consider the evolution of romantic genres from late antiquity to the late Renaissance. We only wanted to emphasize and, using some characteristic examples, show the most stable features in the field of plot and characteristics inherent in both the Greek novel and English romance at the end of the Renaissance, characteristic, as we noted earlier, also in Shakespeare’s last plays.

First of all, it is this commonality that allows us to agree with those researchers who consider the ancient novel and romantic works of the late Renaissance to be the initial and final stages of a single and strong romantic tradition and add Shakespeare’s final dramas to this tradition.

What caused Shakespeare to turn to the romantic tradition after the tragedies?

We tried to show that Shakespeare did not simply return to the hobby of his youth, as some scholars believed, when we emphasized the qualitative difference between Shakespeare’s romantic comedies and his last plays.

Two other judgments on this matter seem more solid.

Shakespeare, we were told, having completely exhausted the genre of tragedy, felt the need to try his hand at another form. A genius is not able to stop there; he feels the need for continuous search, tireless experimentation, and sets himself more and more new artistic tasks.

Right. Shakespeare in previous periods had alternately reformed the old dramatic genres: historical chronicle, old comedy, bloody tragedy (revenge tragedy) - and now he did the same with the old romantic play. And there is no doubt that the substance itself creativity encourages creative personality leaving old, settled areas and going to still undeveloped lands.

But all this does not remove the question: why did Shakespeare’s search go in this particular direction, why did the romantic tradition become the zero for his dramatic innovation?

Shakespeare, they answered us, was a practitioner of contemporary theater, striving to satisfy the needs of the public, and the romantic genre in the theater was gaining enormous popularity at this time. Shakespeare's last plays responded to the needs of the audience.

One cannot but agree with these judgments, especially since they are confirmed by the facts of literary and theatrical history this period. However, we cannot confine ourselves to them, because, with all their justice, they can only serve as a prerequisite for further reflection: in themselves they provide grounds for very different conclusions, including the opinion of those critics who saw in the late Shakespeare the author of entertaining fairy tales , concerned only with pleasing the ticket buyers at his theater, and indifferent to everything else.

Shakespeare's entire previous career testified to the fact that, although he was a playwright for the public, he never remained a playwright. only for the public that, while satisfying the tastes and needs of visitors to his theater, he did not compromise his own position; that, referring to popular genres, he chose from them only those that corresponded his interests, his attitude. There is a rather complex connection between Shakespeare’s work, his time and the tastes of his audience: Shakespeare’s work expressed those tendencies in the spiritual and artistic life of society sublimated by his genius, which also determined the inclinations of his audience. And there was a correspondence between the sympathies of the viewer and the inclinations of the playwright, but there was no coincidence. And Shakespeare responded to what worried his audience, but at the same time only to what worried him.

It is obvious that in the last period of his activity Shakespeare did not simply slavishly follow theatrical fashion, alien and indifferent to him; It is obvious that even now Shakespeare turned to the romantic tradition because it answered his inner needs. In a word, it is obvious that in the romantic tradition itself there were some moments that turned out to be akin to the state of mind of both Shakespeare and his audience.

All this forces us to return to this tradition again and make a few comments - this time about its internal meaning.

Let us make a reservation right away: we are not going to align ourselves with those scientists who, having discovered parallelism of plots, motives and techniques, deduce from this the complete ideological identity of romantic genres of different countries and eras. But, refusing to absolutize the romantic tradition as something homogeneous in all respects and to see in it the manifestation of a single myth or a single philosophy independent of time conditions, we believe that the formal similarity of the works of this plan is too striking to be accidental or purely external. Obviously, it also indicates some kind of internal closeness. Let's try to define it.

In an effort to emphasize that the romantic genres of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance have nothing in common with the literature of the Romantic era, some critics suggest using the term “romantic literature”. We don't think this is the right way out of the situation. Despite all the ambiguity of the definition of “romantic,” it is also necessary in this case, because it correctly points to the romantic principle as the fundamental basis of literature of this kind.

The impulse towards the ideal, the craving for the unknown, the inclination towards the unusual, the desire to penetrate beyond the boundaries of the known - in a word, everything that characterizes the romantic mood is, to one degree or another, characteristic of people of all countries and all times. The ability for a romantic perception of reality is obviously initially inherent in man as a spiritual being, and the romantic is an inevitable element of the spiritual life of mankind from the moment it becomes spiritual. For dissatisfaction with the given, the desire for the unknown, underlying the romantic, is a prerequisite for the development of mankind, and it has existed and will always exist, whether it forces a person to leave the cave or the earth, to master fire or space, to reject the poverty of natural economy or the satiety of machine civilization.

Therefore, the romantic element can truly be found in the literature of all eras and all peoples.

But this does not mean that it always exists romantic literature. Only when the romantic mood begins to dominate does the romantic element cease to be one of the many ingredients of literature, acquire a dominant character and crystallize into an independent genre.

This process is possible only under certain historical conditions. These conditions are diverse, because the autonomy of the ideal and reality, the known and the mysterious, the material and the spiritual, the base and the sublime, the known and the mysterious, inherent in the romantic mindset can be caused by the most different factors. We will focus only on those that are related to the works that interest us.

One of these factors is a crisis of ideology caused by a social crisis.

It is no coincidence that many romantic genres take shape at a turning point in history. This is the case, in particular, with the Greek novel.

The Greek novel appears at the end of antiquity, when not a single religion that had previously given man clarity of understanding of the world is no longer dominant, when integral systems of views collapse, when the world becomes foggy, changes, becomes more complex, disintegrates, splits, when a person is whirled by the whirlwinds of contradictory ideological currents, the soil fluctuates and floats away from under your feet, everything is vague, unsteady, unreliable and unstable. Prospects for social development are unclear. Social problems confused. A clear understanding of the nature of man and society has been lost. At the same time, the boundaries of the world are expanding. A resident of the Greek state, having become a subject of the huge Roman empire, but not being a full citizen and therefore not feeling himself part of a closed political whole, now feels himself to be a part of the entire universe known to him - a cosmopolitan feeling develops into a cosmic feeling.

Similar phenomena, although with many amendments, because they can arise due to other historical reasons and are therefore individualized by time, we observe in the spiritual life of society in other periods when romantic genres begin to play a noticeable role.

For in this case, romantic literature arises as a response to social anxiety, imbalance, ideological upheavals and shifts inherent in turning points stories. Hence the main artistic features of romantic works.

Their plot most directly reflects the idea of ​​life as a plexus of circumstances not determined by each other, between which there is no cause-and-effect relationship. The feeling of incomprehensibility or incomprehensibility, the illogicality of the world, born of the vagueness of social prospects, the instability of social institutions and the feeling of the expanding boundaries of the universe, is embodied in the most noticeable feature of the plot - in the arbitrary and whimsical alternation of internally related events, in the unusualness and improbability of what is happening.

Chance, Fate, or Fortune becomes the artistic personification of the uncertainty of the general course of life. Romantic literature constantly emphasizes a person’s dependence on external circumstances that are incomprehensible to him and independent of his will. This is exactly how it was understood at the end of the 17th century. R. Green's novel "Pandosto", on the cover of which a cradle was depicted floating on a river flowing into the sea - a kind of emblem of man's helplessness in the world. This was precisely the meaning of L. Tuain’s story, very accurately conveyed by its full title: “A sample of woeful adventures, which contains the most magnificent, pleasant and varied history of the strange incidents that befell Prince Apollonius, Queen Lucina, his wife, and Tarsia, his daughters. In which the uncertainty of this world and the changing state of human life are vividly described.”

However, the role of chance in the fate of the heroes of romantic works does not simply symbolize the vicissitudes of life and the mysterious play of circumstances beyond human control.

Romantic literature, like all literature, is literature that cannot exist without hope. Hope in romantic literature is fundamentally less firm and clear than in, say, tragedy. For tragedy comes from the greatness of man, and romantic literature senses his smallness. But if the course of life is unclear, the relationship between good and evil is arbitrary, social prospects are vague, if a person feels not the master of the world, but its servant, and cannot fully understand himself, what can he hope for?

This is how Shakespeare’s contemporary Fulk Greville answered this question in his work “The Life of Sidney,” published in 1611 (note: the time of the creation of the last plays), where he wrote about the purpose of “Arcadia”: “To portray an accurate picture of the state of the soul of any person, which would help, as in a mirror, to see for everyone, whom the vicissitudes of life will lead not only to the straight and spacious path of good, but also to a bad fate, how to maintain good calm, despite all the disasters, and how to rely on the smile of chance"(emphasis added - I.R.)

However, Chance is not the only hope for romantic literature.

From the elements of a fractured universe, she tries to recreate an ideal universe. The ideal for romantic literature is its main refuge, main hope. And the ideal in this case is not something essentially opposite to the real - it is rather a rethinking, reassembling of the real, so to speak, a distillation of reality.

The ambiguity of social relations forces romantic literature to abstract reality and strive to give a generalized picture of human life. Not being able to fully understand reality, romantic literature cannot mirror it - it can only give an idea of ​​it through analogy. Not being able to penetrate into the depth of phenomena, she tries to compensate for this with the breadth and generality of what is depicted. Let us recall the phrase of F. Greville from the passage quoted above: “To portray an accurate picture of the state of the soul any person..."

Therefore, romantic literature turns to the “eternal” elements of human existence. And this is where she looks for the perfect material.

In these searches, romantic literature primarily appeals to nature as the fundamental principle of everything that exists. Nature organically fits into the circle of interests of romantic literature, harmonizes with its desire for generality, for the “eternal,” with its entire mentality. Pastoral and romantic literature go hand in hand, starting with the Greek novel. The pastoral element is an indispensable component of the romantic tradition, especially those of its stages that interest us in this case. "Arcadia" by F. Sidney is as much an example of pastoral as of romantic literature. In nature, romantic literature tries to find that foothold that it cannot find in society. Therefore, in all the contrasts that the pastoral theme is fraught with: nature and society, nature and culture, nature and the palace, the ideal is found in nature. Nature is the background for idyllic human relationships: if there are glimpses of social utopia in romantic literature, then again only in connection with the theme of nature. But at the same time, the social is almost always translated into the moral plane.

For the main sphere of the ideal for romantic literature is the moral sphere.

Periods of confused and contradictory social relations, periods of social confusion always tend to pay special attention to ethical issues. Romantic literature here also absorbs the spiritual trends of the times. Romantic genres often take on a moral or even moralizing character. Gower, for example, telling the story of Apollonius in A Lover's Confessions, directly stated that his goal was to show how debauchery and lust are punished and how sublime and pure love is rewarded.

Where does romantic literature get its ethical ideals from?

From a fairytale. Of course, class, social, and time connotations are almost always discernible in those norms and concepts that romantic literature affirms. But only as a shade, and not as a main tone. In general, romantic literature borrows its moral ideal from fairy tales; in the moral sphere, the romantic tradition merges with the folklore tradition, with the people’s faith in the ultimate triumph of goodness and justice.

The moral climate of a fairy tale is primarily determined by some simple truths that reflect the millennia-old practice of human coexistence: since people must live together and cannot exist alone, it is necessary that they possess qualities that would make this life possible - kindness, nobility , loyalty, honesty, etc.

It is on these good beginnings that romantic literature places its hope. She does not use fairy-tale situations accidentally or formally. Together with these fairy-tale situations, romantic literature assimilates the thousand-year-old wisdom of the people, the resultant of human experience and morality, which crystallized in the fairy tale, its universal ethical norms and ideals that have developed over the centuries public life humanity.

Thus, the main object of idealization becomes human nature, people's characters.

And the principles of character building in romantic literature are most directly related to its desire to find the ideal in human nature.

Many critics explain the simplification of characterization in romantic works by the peculiarities of the romantic plot: they say, the dynamics of events do not allow the creation of full-blooded characters, the writer must take care of maintaining constant tension, he plays on the childish curiosity of the viewer or reader, and he has no time to engage in psychology. Some insist on the fundamental incompatibility of gripping suspense and deep character, arguing that the thrill of plot and the fullness of character are always in competition with each other and that the writer is forced to give. preference for one thing or another.

The experience of world literature refutes such conclusions: not to mention, say, many of the works of Dickens and Dostoevsky, it is enough to mention the great tragedies of Shakespeare himself, the plot entertainingness of which is just as undeniable as the depth of the characters.

In addition, romantic literature itself does not shy away from psychology at all: it lingers in detail on the depiction of individual psychological states, emotions, experiences - only all this does not add up to a coherent and comprehensive characterization. It’s not psychology that’s missing, it’s the integrity and depth of personality that’s missing.

And they are absent not at all because simplicity psychological characteristics dictated by the plot. In order to create a complex and versatile character, you need a clear understanding of the relationship between good and evil in human life and nature, a clear understanding of the relationship between actions and circumstances, actions and their results, you need the ability to understand the foundations of human nature - in a word, everything that has been lost or not yet acquired during periods when romantic genres dominate. It is not that romantic literature neglects or dismisses human complexity; it simply fails to recreate it.

Therefore, romantic literature is not able to express its impulse towards the ideal in complex and versatile characters, as, say, Shakespearean tragedy does (Hamlet, Othello, even Lear are also ideal, ideal by the titanism of their natures, the fullness of the best human qualities and aspirations, the fact that each of which - Man). She can only limit herself to personifying those moral qualities on which she places her hope.

Our brief description of the inner meaning of the romantic tradition is directly related to Shakespeare's last plays. An examination of the main sources of Shakespeare's final dramas has revealed connections between these plays and a wide range of works. These works belong to the so-called romantic tradition. We tried to establish some of its features. Our main task was to emphasize that the works of this romantic series have not only formal or purely aesthetic similarities, but that their aesthetic proximity is based on related historical conditions and similar processes in the spiritual life of society, which predetermine the commonality of plot features, issues, characters, etc. d. Since the motives, situations, principles of characterization and other artistic components, the commonality of which was for us the first sign of belonging to the romantic tradition, turned out to be akin to the previously abolished similar components that characterize Shakespeare's last plays, we agreed that Shakespeare's final dramas are part of the romantic traditions.

Therefore, everything that has been said about the romantic tradition can also be applied to the plays we are considering.

But with one significant caveat: only to the extent that all this can be applied to the majority of any other specific works of the same tradition - that is, far from completely.

For, giving a generalized description of a whole complex of literary phenomena, we did not protect ourselves from the danger that awaits any abstract reasoning: we constructed from the most essential elements of specific works an absolute that does not exist in nature. This helped us to identify the most general features of Shakespeare's last works as part of a well-defined literary series.

However, if until now we have insisted on the legitimacy of the term “romantic literature”, then in order to take the next step in understanding the ideological and artistic specificity final Shakespearean dramas, it is necessary to emphasize the conventionality of this concept. For each of the points that we have highlighted, justifying the existence of the romantic tradition, embraces an extremely wide range of phenomena and, under the influence of various additional factors, can play a greater or lesser role in specific works and even in entire literary layers, come to the fore. foreground or retreat into the shadows, be filled with one or another content.

First of all, we need to clarify our main thesis: the ambiguity of social relations as main reason and turning points in history as periods of dominance of the romantic tradition or, at least, its significant role in literature.

Turning epochs are extended and heterogeneous, and the degree and nature of the ambiguity of social relations at different stages of turning points in history are not the same. During periods of social change, two stages can be roughly distinguished, in each of which the romantic tradition manifests itself in literature in its own way.

The first stage is the initial one, when society leaves a state of stability and gradually enters a period of beginning changes. The second is the final one, when society begins to acquire new stability and becomes disillusioned with the ongoing changes. In the first stage, new social relations have not yet taken shape and are not even clearly defined; in the second, they have not yet been fully established. Therefore, both stages are characterized by the ambiguity of social relations, contradictory trends in spiritual life, the consequence of which, as we said, is the strengthening of the romantic principle. However, the manifestation of this principle is different at each stage - and here's why.

In the first stage, society lives with the expectation of the beneficence of the beginning changes, lives with illusions that seem feasible, therefore the ideal, the attraction to which brings the romantic element to the surface of literature, on the one hand, is associated with a feeling of vagueness of social prospects, and on the other hand, it is thought of as possible in further a version of reality and therefore acquires a realistic coloring, and sometimes a heroic character.

In the second stage, society becomes convinced that its expectations were not justified, its illusions were not realized, and the ideal is now associated with a feeling of social futility, failed hopes, its implementation in reality seems impossible, and therefore it acquires a distinctly illusory, sharply opposed to the real and conventionally heroic character.

Thus, two main variants of the romantic tradition correspond to the two stages of periods of social breakdown.

In relation to the entire Renaissance, the first option is represented by late medieval and early Renaissance romantic forms, the second by late Renaissance and early Baroque (or mannerist, if you agree with those scientists who consider mannerism an independent phase).

In relation to English art of the period of interest to us, the first option is the romantic genres of the 70-90s of the 16th century, the second - the 10-30s of the 17th century.

In relation to English Renaissance drama, we see the first option in romantic comedy, the second in tragicomedy.

Finally, Shakespeare’s work itself gives us an example of both main variants of the dramatic embodiment of the romantic tradition - the comedy of the 90s of the 16th century. and plays of the last period. And if in a general literary sense, Shakespeare’s last plays are associated with the tradition of romantic genres, then in a purely dramatic sense - with tragicomedy.