Have you noticed that the main character of Shakespeare's tragedies gradually grows old? We can judge this because the chronology of Shakespeare's plays is known. Young Romeo (“Romeo and Juliet”, c. 1595), thirty-year-old Hamlet (“Hamlet”, c. 1600), courageous and mature warrior Othello (“Othello”, c. 1603), old King Lear (“King Lear”, ca. 1605) and eternal, without age, Prospero (The Tempest, ca. 1611). This can be explained by some psychological or philosophical reasons, we can say that the author of the plays himself is growing up, his lyrical hero is growing old and wiser. But there is a much simpler explanation: all these roles were written for one actor - for Richard Burbage, who led the theater troupe, in which Shakespeare was an actor. Burbage played Romeo, and Hamlet, and Othello, and Macbeth, and Prospero, and many other roles. And as Burbage ages, so does the Shakespearean hero.

This is just one example of how Shakespeare's texts are inextricably linked to the theater for which Shakespeare wrote. He did not write for the reader. He, like most people of his time, did not treat plays as a kind of literature. Dramaturgy at that time was just beginning to become literature. Plays were treated as material for actors, as raw material for the theatre. It should not be assumed that Shakespeare, writing plays, was thinking about posterity, about what future generations would say. He wrote not just plays, he wrote performances. He was a playwright with a directorial mindset. He wrote each role for certain actors of his troupe. He adapted the properties of the characters to the properties of the actors themselves. We, for example, should not be surprised when, at the end of Hamlet, Gertrude says of Hamlet that he is fat and short of breath. It's shocking: how is it? Hamlet - the embodiment of grace, the embodiment of sophistication and refined melancholy - suddenly fat and short of breath? This is explained simply: Burbage, playing Hamlet, was no longer a boy, but a man of rather powerful, strong build.

Mandelstam in one article "Art Theater and the Word" (1923). There is a wonderful formula: "Direction is hidden in the word." In Shakespeare's word, this directing is hidden (or open) in the most obvious way. He writes performances, he creates mise-en-scenes.

There is a moment in Bulgakov's "Theatrical Novel" when the main character Maksudov, who had just composed the story "Black Snow", suddenly, unexpectedly for himself, turns it into a play. He is sitting at the table, next to him is some mangy cat, an old lamp over his head. And suddenly it seems to him that in front of him on the table is a box in which small figures are moving. Someone is shooting, someone is falling dead, someone is playing the piano, and so on. That's when he realized that he was composing a play.

Something similar happened with Shakespeare. Only in front of him was not a stage-box, but the open space of the Globe Theater, with its stage crashing into the auditorium, so that the audience surrounded it from three sides - and therefore the mise-en-scenes were not flat, but voluminous. And Hamlet, saying "to be or not to be", saw around him, next to him, the attentive faces of the public. The audience for which and only for which all these plays were written. Shakespeare was part of this theatrical reality. He lived all his life among actors, among actor's conversations, among meager props. He was a man of the theatre. He built his plays in this particular stage space. He not only wrote roles for the actors of his troupe, he adapted the structure of his plays to the structure of the stage of the Globe or those theaters where his troupe played.

There were three stage spaces in the Globe: there was the main stage, there was an upper stage, which hung over the main one like a balcony, and there was an internal stage, which was separated from the main stage by a curtain. There was no curtain in front of the main stage. Shakespeare arranges his play in such a way that it is clear where a certain scene is taking place, how the use of the upper stage, the inner stage, the use of the hut at the very top of the stage where the lifting mechanisms are attached changes. That is, he writes the play. And what a fascinating task — which we have been doing with students for many years — is extracting a performance from the text of a play! From the text of "Hamlet" we extract the premiere of "Hamlet" as "Hamlet" was played in the "Globe" in 1601, when this play was written.

If you read a Shakespearean play from this point of view, then suddenly living faces, living mise-en-scenes, living theatrical metaphors begin to appear in front of you from these pages. This is perhaps the most wonderful thing. And this proves that Shakespeare was a man of the theater to the marrow of his bones, and that the theater, in essence, both then and now, is the main instrument by which Shakespeare communicates with the world. No matter how important philological studies, studies of Shakespearean philosophical ideas are, his world is, first of all, a stage, a theater.

The absence of a curtain in front of the main stage determines the structure of the play. For example, if someone is killed on the stage - and in Shakespeare, as you know, this happens often, especially in the early plays. There is a lot of blood in some "Titus Andronicus", the play begins with the fact that the remains of twenty, in my opinion, four sons of the hero are brought onto the stage "Fourteen murders, thirty-four corpses, three severed hands, one severed tongue - such is the inventory of horrors that fill this tragedy." A. A. Anikst. Titus Andronicus. // William Shakespeare. Collected works. T. 2. M., 1958.. And what is there just not there - cut off hands, cut off tongues. They kill Shakespeare all the time. What to do with the dead on stage? Where to put them? In a modern theater, the lights are turned off or the curtains are closed. The actor playing the hero who has just been killed gets up and goes backstage. What to do here? Given that the performances were in daylight, there was no artificial lighting. By the way, there were no intermissions either. Most of the audience was standing. (Imagine how much you had to love the theater in order to stand under the open sky of London without intermission for two and a half, three hours.)

So, on the stage, someone is killed or someone dies. For example, in Shakespeare's chronicle Henry IV, King Henry IV dies. He delivers a long and very deep farewell monologue addressed to his son. And suddenly he asks a strange question: “What is the name of the next room?” I don't think this is the main question a dying person asks. They answer him: "Jerusa-Lim, sovereign." He says, "Take me to the next hall, for it was foretold that I would die in Jerusalem."

There are many such examples. For example, why would Hamlet carry away the dead Polonius? And then, to free the stage from the dead, since the curtain cannot be closed. One can build a lot of assumptions about why Fortinbras is needed in the finale of Hamlet. What is the philosophical, psychological, historical meaning of this enigmatic character? One thing is absolutely clear: Fortinbras is needed to carry away the corpses, of which there are many on stage in the finale. Naturally, the meaning of its existence is not only in this, but it is one of its purely theatrical functions.

Of course, Shakespeare is not a series of theatrical tricks. His very view of the theater is quite deep and philosophical. One of the leitmotifs of Shakespeare's work is the idea that the whole universe is arranged like a theater. The theater is a model of the world. This is the toy that the Lord invented for himself so that he would not be bored in this boundless space, in this endless loneliness. Theater is the world. History is theater. Life is theater. Life is theatrical. People are actors on the stage of the world theater. This is one of the main motives of Shakespeare's creativity, which takes us out of the realm of purely theatrical and technical adaptations into the realm of world understanding.

Above the heads of the actors in the Globe Theater is a canopy called "heaven". Underfoot is a hatch, which is called "hell, underworld." The actor plays between heaven and hell. This is a wonderful model, a wonderful portrait of a Renaissance man, asserting his personality in the empty space of being, filling this void between heaven and earth with meanings, poetic images, objects that are not on the stage, but which are in the word. Therefore, when we talk about Shakespeare as a man of the theater, we must keep in mind that his theater is a model of the universe.

Decryption

It was in 1607, in my opinion - in September. Two English merchant ships sailed from London to India around Africa along the route opened by Vasco da Gama. Since the journey was long, we decided to make a stop near Sierra Leone - to rest and replenish supplies. One of the ships was called the Red Dragon and was captained by William Keeling. In the ship's log, he wrote that he ordered the sailors to play some play right on deck. This record was opened at the end of the 19th century - before it never occurred to anyone to look for something Shakespearean in the archives of the Admiralty.

What play is chosen for an illiterate sailor? First, it must be extremely effective. Second, the more murders in a play, the better. Thirdly, there must be love. Fourth, songs. Fifthly, that jesters joke and joke without interruption. Surely this is exactly what the absolutely illiterate sailor audience expected from the performance.

Keeling chose a piece that the sailors were to play for the sailors. It was called "Hamlet" and the sailors liked it terribly - then they played it again, already sailing across the Indian Ocean. Unlike us, they did not see any riddles in this play. For them, it was one of the then popular revenge tragedies, one of those bloody tragedies that Shakespeare's predecessor Thomas Kyd wrote. (By the way, most likely the author of the pre-Shakespearean Hamlet.)

This genre of bloody drama boiled down to a whole set of constant features. First, this is a story about a secret murder. Secondly, a ghost must certainly appear in it, telling who was killed and who killed. Thirdly, the play must have a theatrical performance. Etc. By the way, Kid's play The Spanish Tragedy, which was very popular at that time, was built in this way. In the eyes of the sailors, Shakespeare's Hamlet quite naturally entered this popular, beloved and, in essence, very simple genre.

Were these illiterate guys (who in fact were no different from the audience of Shakespeare's Globe Theater - semi-literate artisans) to see in Hamlet what later generations saw, what we see? The answer is obvious: of course not. They perceived this play without distinguishing it from other similar, so to speak, detective plays. Did Shakespeare count when writing Hamlet that the time would come when future mankind would reveal all those great truths that he put into this play? The answer is also clear: no. The man who wants his plays to survive takes care of publishing them. Try to argue with it. Shakespeare not only did not care about the publication of his plays - he often prevented this. At that time, dramaturgy was considered a purely theatrical matter - and the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were published for various, often accidental reasons.

For example, such a story was just with Hamlet. In 1603, the first edition of Hamlet was published, the so-called pirated edition, with an abridged, distorted, mangled text, not very similar to the one we know. The text was stolen and published against the will of the troupe and the author. Although the author's will then meant little. The play was wholly owned by the troupe. If the theaters suddenly closed in London (for example, because of the plague), then the troupe, in order to save the text, was forced to take the play to the publisher and sell it for a penny.

"Hamlet" was a very popular play both among sailors and artisans, and among humanist intellectuals. Everyone likes Hamlet, as Shakespeare's contemporary wrote.

And so, in hindsight, in the 20th century, they began to find out what bastard sold Shakespeare's text? Because exactly one year after the pirated edition came out, Shakespeare's troupe published the original text. The fact is that the troupe itself was very concerned that the play was not stolen. And the publishers wanted to acquire the text of the play by any means, if it was a success. Sometimes they sent stenographers, and they took notes by ear, although the conditions were very bad - the performance was in daylight, and there was nowhere to hide. The actors, having found a person who writes down the text on the performance, could beat him half to death.

And sometimes the publishers bribed some actor to reproduce the text from memory. As a keepsake, because not a single actor received the text of the entire play, only lists of his roles.

And now, more than three centuries after the play was written, historians decided to expose the crook. They started from a very simple assumption. This actor, of course, knew best the text of his role and the text of the scenes in which his character was involved. The researchers compared two texts of the play, pirated and authentic. It turned out that the texts of only three small roles absolutely coincide. The fact is that Shakespeare's troupe consisted, like other troupes of that time, of shareholders - actors who served on shares and received a salary depending on the income of the theater. And for small roles, in mass scenes, they hired actors from outside. It is quite obvious that the pirate (this is the term of the time) who sold the text played these three small roles in three different scenes - and therefore they were transmitted with complete authenticity. One of them is the guard Marcellus from the first act, the one who says the famous words "Something has rotted in the Danish state." It is quite understandable that philosophical monologues were most difficult for the pirate. Try to remember "To be or not to be." Therefore, in this edition, Hamlet's monologues were reproduced in the most miserable way. The pirate added something on his own. Remember, Hamlet lists the misfortunes that fall on the heads of people, and asks who would endure "the oppression of the strong ... judges slowness"? To this list of misfortunes, the pirate added "the suffering of orphans and severe hunger." It is clear that it escaped from his soul.

After this incident, the theft never happened again. It is possible that the actors of Shakespeare's troupe themselves seized this unfortunate crook by the hand - and one can only imagine what they did to him.

Why did I remember this story? This is one of a thousand examples of how the fate of Shakespeare's texts is connected with the fate of the theater of the Shakespeare era, with the life of its troupe and its spectators, for whom these great plays were written.

It is easy to laugh at the illiteracy of the public, at what dark and uncouth guys they were. But at the same time, it was the ideal audience. It was a divinely beautiful audience, ready to believe in everything that happens on the stage. This was an audience brought up in the church to preach, still remembering the experience of medieval mystery performances. It was an audience in which there was a divine innocence. In this audience, for which Shakespeare wrote and on which he directly depended, there was a fantastic, enviable property of absolute faith, which in essence disappeared in the modern theater. Faith, without which there is no great theater.

Decryption

Shakespeare's comedies do not correspond to the idea of ​​the comedy genre in which we were brought up. We are taught that laughter is ridicule. We are used to the fact that comedy and satire are about the same thing. Shakespeare's comedies are works of mystery, magic, and strangeness (“I was born under a dancing star,” Beatrice says in Much Ado About Nothing). This is the most unique example of the Renaissance comedy, lying aside from the traditional path of development of world comedy, which has developed as a satirical, with annihilating, angry, sarcastic laughter (Moliere's type).

Shakespeare laughs differently. This is the laughter of delight before the world. This is poetic laughter, in which a completely renaissance-essential boiling of vitality spills out. This laughter becomes a declaration of love for the world, for the grass, for the forest, for the sky, for people.

Traditional comedies, of the Molière type, are mocking comedies. Shakespearean comedies are laughing comedies. Heroes of the Moliere-Gogolian type are ridiculed, satirical characters, most often old people. Shakespeare's heroes are young lovers wandering the world in search of happiness, people discovering the world for themselves. They fall in love for the first time, they are jealous, they are indignant - everything is for the first time. And the point is not only that Shakespeare's heroes are young themselves, but also that they carry the spirit of a young era, an era that discovers the world for itself. Hence the sense of seductive originality which constitutes the fantastic charm of Shakespeare's plays. For a modern person - ironic, sarcastic, not too inclined to believe anything - Shakespeare's comedies sometimes turn out to be a mystery, a secret with seven seals.

By the way, this is precisely why one can name dozens of great tragedy productions in the theater of the 20th century - and literally countless great comedy productions. It is easy to imagine a director who spends his whole life working towards directing Hamlet. But I would like to see a director who has been preparing all his life for the production of The Taming of the Shrew. This is unlikely. The 20th and 21st centuries are more open to tragedy. Maybe because Shakespeare's comedies are full of happiness, full of radiant dizzying joy - the joy of existence itself, the joy that a person was born, the joy of discovering the world, and man, and love.

Shakespeare's comedies are very different. There is a huge distance between The Taming of the Shrew or The Comedy of Errors on the one hand and A Midsummer Night's Dream or Twelfth Night on the other. And yet there is the concept of Shakespearean comedy as a special integral genre. One of the signs of this genre is that many of the comedies tell the same story - the story of young lovers from a dramatic, hostile world, a world of harsh laws that pursues, destroys love, flee into the forest. And the forest saves and shelters them. All their anguish and drama that made them suffer dissipate in the forest. The forest as an image of nature is one of the central images of Renaissance art. He, like music, brings people back to their own nature. (For a Renaissance person, music is a symbol of being, an image of the structure of the Universe. This is what the people of the Renaissance borrowed from the ancient Pythagoreans: music as the law of the existence of the Universe. Shakespeare's comedies are filled with such music.)

In As You Like It, Rosalind and her lover Orlando flee from the castle of the tyrant Frederick into the forest and find harmony, peace and happiness there. Rosalind is one of the most brilliant, perfect and prone to play and transformation, Shakespeare's super-artistic heroes. In general, his heroes - artists, actors - often find real happiness in the game.

But unlike how it happens in the pastoral Pastoral- a genre in art that poetizes a peaceful and simple rural life, where the heroes also run to nature from the troubles of everyday life, the heroes of Shakespeare's comedies each time return to the world - but to the world already saved and renewed by the forest. This confrontation can be called the main plot of Shakespearean comedies - the confrontation between the harsh, traditional, stupid, conservative, cruel world and the world of freedom that people find in the forest.

This is a fairy forest. In the comedy As You Like It, palm trees grow and lions live in it, although the action takes place somewhere between France and Belgium. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, elves and magical creatures live in the forest. This is the world of a distant kingdom, a dream come true - on the one hand. On the other hand, it is an English forest. The same Sherwood Forest from the ballads about Robin Hood (as in "Two Veronians", where the robbers living between Milan and Verona swear by the bald head of an old monk from the daring band of Robin Hood). Or the very Forest of Arden in the play As You Like It is also the forest near Stratford, where Shakespeare spent his childhood and where, according to popular belief, elves lived - incorporeal flying creatures that fill the air of this forest. It's a magical land, but it's also Elizabethan England. The comedy As You Like It talks about people who live in this forest as exiles, like in the days of Robin Hood. The image of Shakespeare's comedies is also the image of old England. Old Robin Hood England.

In the chronicle "Henry V", a woman standing near the deathbed of Falstaff, Shakespeare's greatest comic hero, says that before his death he muttered about some green fields. These are the green fields of old England, the fields of old Robin Hood England. An England that is gone forever, from which Shakespeare's plays say goodbye. They say goodbye, feeling nostalgia for this simple-hearted and beautiful world, which is captured with such depth, charm and simplicity in Shakespeare's comedies.

I borrow the ending of the lecture from an American scientist. Giving a lecture on Shakespeare's comedy to his students, he ended it like this: "How to define the world of Shakespeare's comedies? Perhaps the best way to define the world of Shakespeare's comedies is this. This is a world where there are students but no lectures.”

Decryption

Shakespeare's Chronicles are historical dramas from the past of England, mainly from the 14th-15th centuries. It is interesting to understand why in Shakespearean England, not only among humanists, scientists, historians, but also among the common people, there was such a huge interest in national history. In my opinion, the answer is obvious. When in 1588 the Invincible Spanish Armada - a huge fleet with tens of thousands of soldiers on board - set off to conquer England, it turned out that the fate of Britain hung in the balance. Who could have imagined that the storm would disperse the ships of the Spaniards, and the English naval commanders would be able to destroy this huge fleet. There was a moment when it seemed that the British were in for a national catastrophe. And this threat, this premonition of catastrophe united the country, united all classes. The British felt like a nation like never before. And as happens in moments of national danger, art, and simply the consciousness of people, turned to the past - so that the English nation could find out there the origins of its historical destiny and find hope for victory there. On the wave of national unification, this specific dramatic genre of historical chronicles arose.

It can be said that in the chronicles of Shakespeare, the view of the Renaissance humanists on history was expressed with the utmost completeness. It was based on the idea that the essence of history is a divine essence, that behind the historical process there is a super-will, divine will, absolute justice. Those who violate the laws of history, those who violate the moral laws, are doomed to perish. But it is essential that the most theatrical, humanly interesting motives and images of Shakespeare's chronicles are precisely in stories about those who break all sorts of laws. The most striking example is Richard III. Monster, monster, villain, voluptuary, murderer, slanderer, rapist. But when at the very beginning of the play he appears on the stage, he turns to us with a confession. What a strange idea to start a play with a confession. How strange to build a play in such a way that in the very first scene the hero reveals his terrible soul. What a terrible violation of all the laws of the structure of drama! How to develop events further? But Shakespeare is a genius, and he is above the laws. And "Richard III" is a wonderful proof.

And the point is not that the play begins with a confession, but that we suddenly fall under the imperious charm, the special terrible attraction of this freak, villain, scoundrel, murderer, voluptuary. His sins are endless. But this is the figure of a genius, black, but a genius, a man born to command. Next to him, other sinful or virtuous politicians seem like small fry. In fact, to gain power over them, he spends even too much energy. Over these silent rams, silent cowards, victory is easier than an easy one.

Richard III is first and foremost a great actor. He enjoys the very process of hypocritical play, changing masks. Here all moral rules, all traditional ideas about good and evil collapse. They collapse before the chosenness of this terrible, monstrous, but truly great figure.

With what ease this hunchback, freak, lame man defeats Lady Anne. This is the most famous scene in the play, although it only lasts about ten minutes. At first, Lady Anne hates him, spits in his face, curses him because he is the murderer of her husband and her husband's father, Henry VI. And at the end of the scene, she belongs to him - such is the super-will, the terrible super-power that destroys all ideas of good and evil. And we fall under his spell. We are waiting for this genius of evil to finally appear on the stage. Actors of all time adored this role. And Burbage, who was the first performer, and Garrick in the 18th century, and Edmund Keane in the 19th century, and at the end of the 19th century, Henry Irving, and Laurence Olivier. And if we talk about our theater, then the play by Robert Sturua remains a great example. Robert Sturua(b. 1938) - theater director, actor, teacher.. Ramaz Chkhikvadze brilliantly played this half-man, half-monster.

This beast was born to command, but his death is inevitable. Because he rebelled against history, against what is combined in Shakespeare in the central leitmotif of the chronicles. He, a rebel, rebelled against time, against God. It is no coincidence that when Keane played this role, the last look of the dying Richard was a look at the sky. And it was the look of the implacable, unforgiving look of the enemy. "Richard III" is one example of how Shakespeare's genius overcomes ethical laws. And we find ourselves at the mercy of this black genius. This monster, the villain, the lust for power, not only defeats Lady Anna, he defeats us. (Especially if Richard is played by a great actor. For example, Laurence Olivier. It was his best role, which he played first in the theater, and then in a film directed by himself.)

Shakespeare's chronicles have long been regarded as something of a de-ideologized treatise on history. Except "Richard III", which was always staged and always loved by the actors. All these endless "Henry VI", part one, part two, part three, "Henry IV", part one, part two, all these "King Johns" were more interesting for historians, but not for the theater.

It was not until the 1960s in Stratford that Peter Hall, who ran the Royal Shakespeare Theater, staged a cycle of Shakespeare's chronicles called The Wars of the Roses. War of the Scarlet and White Roses, or War of the Roses, (1455-1485) - a series of armed dynastic conflicts between factions of the English nobility vying for power.. He arranged them in such a way that the connection between the historical drama of Shakespeare and Brecht, the historical drama of Shakespeare and the documentary drama of the mid-twentieth century, became obvious. The connection between Shakespeare's chronicles and Antonin Artaud's "theater of cruelty" Antonin Artaud(1896-1948) - French writer, playwright, actor and theorist, innovator of theatrical language. The basis of the Artaud system is the denial of the theater in the usual sense of this phenomenon, the theater that satisfies the traditional demands of the public. The most important task is to discover the true meaning of human existence through the destruction of random forms. The term "cruelty" in the Artaud system has a meaning that is fundamentally different from the everyday one. If, in the ordinary sense, cruelty is associated with the manifestation of individualism, then according to Artaud, cruelty is a conscious submission to necessity, aimed at destroying individuality.. Peter Hall abandoned traditional patriotic sentiments, from any attempt to glorify the greatness of the British Empire. He staged a performance about the monstrous, ugly, inhuman face of war, following in the footsteps of Bertolt Brecht and learning from him a look at history.

Since then, since 1963, when Peter Hall staged his historical cycle in Stratford, the theatrical fate of Shakespeare's chronicles has changed. They entered the world theater with a breadth that was previously completely impossible. And to this day, Shakespeare's chronicles are preserved in the repertoire of modern theater, primarily English and our own.

I remember the wonderful play Henry IV staged in the late 1960s by Georgy Tovstonogov at the Bolshoi Drama Theatre. And what a brilliant fate on the Russian stage at "Richard III". It's not that when they staged "Richard III", they remembered our history, the figure of our own monster. It was obvious. But Shakespeare did not write plays with reference to particular historical figures. Richard III is not a play about Stalin. Richard III is a play about tyranny. And not so much about her, but about the temptation that she carries. About the thirst for slavery, on which all tyranny is built.

So, Shakespeare's chronicles are not treatises on history, they are living plays, plays about our own historical destiny.

Decryption

A few years ago I was in Verona and walked around those places that, as the inhabitants of Verona assure, are connected with the story of Romeo and Juliet. Here is an old, heavy, moss-covered balcony on which Juliet stood, and under which Romeo stood. Here is the temple in which Father Lorenzo married young lovers. Here is Juliet's tomb. It is located outside the walls of the old city, in the modern Verona Cheryomushki. There, among the absolutely Khrushchev five-story buildings, stands a charming little old monastery. In its basement is what is called Juliet's crypt. No one knows for sure if it is, but it is believed that it is.

This is an open tomb. I went into the basement, had a look, did my duty to Shakespeare and was about to leave. But at the last moment he noticed a pile of papers that lay on a stone ledge above the tomb. I looked at one and realized that these are letters that modern girls write to Juliet. And although it is indecent to read other people's letters, I still read one. Terribly naive, written in English. Either an American wrote it, or an Italian girl who decided that Juliet should be written in English, since this is a Shakespeare play. The content was something like this: “Dear Juliet, I just found out about your story and I cried so much. What have those vile grown-ups done to you?”

I thought that modern humanity and modern theater are doing just that, that they are writing letters to the great works of the past. And they get an answer. In essence, the entire fate of the modern theater, staging the classics in general and Shakespeare in particular, is the history of this correspondence. Sometimes the answer comes, sometimes not. It all depends on what questions we ask the past. Modern theater does not stage Shakespeare in order to find out how people lived in the 16th century. And not in order to try to penetrate the world of British culture from our Russian world. This is important, but secondary. We turn to the classics, we turn to Shakespeare, mainly to understand ourselves.

The fate of Romeo and Juliet confirms this. Shakespeare did not invent the plot of this play. He didn't seem to have any inclination to make up stories at all. Only two Shakespeare plays exist without known sources - A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest. And then, perhaps, because we simply do not know what sources they were based on.

The plot of "Romeo and Juliet" has been known for a very, very long time. In antiquity, there were their own Romeo and Juliet - these are Pyramus and Thisbe, whose history was described by Ovid. The story of Romeo is also mentioned by Dante - Montecchi and Cappelletti, as he says in the Divine Comedy. Since the late Middle Ages, Italian cities have been arguing about where the story of "Romeo and Juliet" took place. In the end, Verona wins. Then Lope de Vega writes a play about Romeo and Juliet. Then the Italian novelists tell the story one by one.

In England, the plot of Romeo and Juliet was also known before Shakespeare. One English poet, Arthur Brooke, wrote a love poem between Romeus and Juliet. That is, Shakespeare's play is preceded by a huge story. He builds his building on an already finished foundation. And different interpretations of this play are possible because its very basis contains different possibilities for understanding and interpreting this story.

Arthur Brooke's story of Romeus and Juliet's secret love lasts nine months. In Shakespeare, the action of a tragedy fits into five days. It is important for Shakespeare to start the play on Sunday afternoon and finish it exactly five days later, on Friday night. It is important to him that the proposed wedding of Paris and Juliet should take place on Thursday. “No, on Wednesday,” Father Capulet says. A strange thing: how are the days of the week and the great tragedy connected with its philosophical ideas? It is important for Shakespeare that these philosophical ideas be combined with very concrete, everyday circumstances. In these five days, the greatest love story in world literature is unfolding before us.

See how Romeo and Juliet enter this story and how they leave it. See what happens to them in these few days. Look at this girl who just played with dolls. And see how the tragic circumstances of fate turn her into a strong, deep human being. Look at this boy, sentimental teenager Romeo. How does it change towards the end?

In one of the last scenes of the play, there is a moment when Romeo comes to Juliet's tomb and Paris meets him there. Paris decides that Romeo has come to desecrate Juliet's ashes and blocks his way. Romeo says to him: "Go away, dear young man." The tone in which Romeo addresses Paris, who is probably older than him, is the tone of a wise and weary man, a man who has lived, a man who is on the verge of death. This is a story about the transformation of a person by love and the tragedy that is associated with this love.

Tragedy, as you know, is the realm of the inevitable, it is the world of the inevitable. In tragedy, they die because they must, because death is prescribed for a person who enters into a tragic conflict. However, the death of Romeo and Juliet is accidental. If not for this stupid plague, the messenger of Father Lorenzo would have reached Romeo and explained that Juliet was not dead at all, that all this was Lorenzo's noble knavery. Strange story.

This is sometimes explained by the fact that Romeo and Juliet is an early play, that it is not yet a complete tragedy, that Hamlet is still a long way off. Maybe it is so. But something else is also possible. How to understand the plague in Shakespeare's tragedy? But what if the plague is not just an epidemic, but an image of the tragic creature of being?

Behind this story lies a different subtext that allows for a different interpretation. Franco Zeffirelli before making a famous movie "Romeo and Juliet", 1968., staged a performance in one Italian theater. It was brought to Moscow, and I remember how it started. It began with a noisy, colorful, neo-realistic scene of a market crowd, having fun, running, trading, screaming. Italy, in a word. And suddenly we saw a man in black appear at the back of the stage and begin to move through this crowd towards us. At some point, the crowd freezes, and a man with a scroll in his hands comes to the fore and reads the text of the prologue. This black man is the image of fate and the inevitability of suffering and death of lovers.

Which of these two interpretations is correct? And can we talk about right and wrong interpretation? The whole point is that Shakespearean dramaturgy contains the possibilities of very different, sometimes almost mutually exclusive points of view. This is the quality of great art. This is clearly proved both by the literary and mainly theatrical fate of Romeo and Juliet.

Suffice it to recall the tragic performance of Anatoly Efros, one of the most profound views on this play. In this production, Romeo and Juliet were not cooing doves - they were strong, mature, deep people who knew what awaited them if they allowed themselves to resist the world of boorish power reigning in the theatrical Verona. They fearlessly walked towards death. They have already read Hamlet. They knew how it ends. They were united not only by feeling, they were united by the desire to resist this world and the inevitability of death. It was a gloomy performance that did not leave much hope, and it was a performance that grew out of the very essence of Shakespeare's text.

Perhaps Shakespeare himself would have written Romeo and Juliet in this way, if he had written this play not at the time of his youth, but at the time of the tragic Hamlet.

Decryption

Hamlet is a special play for Russia. Hamlet in the tragedy says that the theater is a mirror in which centuries, estates and generations are reflected, and the purpose of the theater is to hold a mirror in front of humanity. But Hamlet itself is a mirror. Someone said that this is a mirror placed on a high road. And people, generations, peoples, estates go past him. And everyone sees himself. With regard to Russian history, this is especially true. Hamlet is the mirror in which Russia has always sought to see its own face, sought to understand itself through Hamlet.

When Mochalov Pavel Stepanovich Mochalov(1800-1848) - actor of the era of romanticism, served in the Moscow Maly Theater. played Hamlet in 1837, Belinsky wrote his famous words that Hamlet is "it's you, it's me, it's each of us." This phrase is not accidental for the Russian view of the play. Almost 80 years later Blok would write: “I am Hamlet. The blood is getting colder…” (1914). The phrase "I am Hamlet" underlies not only the stage history of this play in the Russian theater, this formula is essential and true for every pore of Russian history. Anyone who decides to investigate the history of Russian spiritual culture, the Russian intelligentsia, should find out how this play was interpreted at different points in history, how Hamlet was understood in its tragic ups and downs.

When Stanislavsky rehearsed Hamlet in 1909, preparing the actors for the arrival of Gordon Craig Edward Gordon Craig(1872-1966) - English actor, theater and opera director of the era of modernism., who staged the play at the Moscow Art Theatre, he said that Hamlet is the hypostasis of Christ. That the mission of Hamlet not only in the play, but in the world is a mission that can be compared with the being of the Son of God. This is not an accidental association for the Russian consciousness. Remember Boris Pasternak's poem from Doctor Zhivago, when the words of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane are put into Hamlet's mouth:

“If only it is possible, Abba Father,
Pass this cup.
I love your stubborn intention
And I agree to play this role.
But now there's another drama going on
And this time, fire me.
But the schedule of actions is thought out,
And the end of the road is inevitable.
I am alone, everything is drowning in hypocrisy.
To live life is not to cross a field.

It is very interesting to look at what moments in Russian history "Hamlet" comes to the fore. At what moments, which Shakespearean play is the most essential, the most important. There were times when "Hamlet" found itself on the periphery, when other plays by Shakespeare became the first number. It is interesting to see at what moments in Russian history "Hamlet" turns out to be an instrument of Russian confession. So it was during the Silver Age. So it was in the post-revolutionary years, and above all in Hamlet, played, perhaps, by the most brilliant actor of the 20th century - Mikhail Chekhov. A great and deep actor, a mystic, for whom the main meaning of Hamlet was communication with a ghost, the fulfillment of his will.

By the way, in Pasternak's article to the translations of Shakespeare's tragedies there is a phrase that Hamlet goes "to do the will of the one who sent him." Mikhail Chekhov's Hamlet went to fulfill the will of the ghost who sent him - who did not appear on the stage, but which was symbolized by a huge vertical beam descending from the sky. Hamlet stepped into this pillar of fire, into this luminous space and exposed himself to it, absorbing this heavenly glow not only into his consciousness, but also into every vein of his body. Mikhail Chekhov played a man crushed by the heavy tread of history. It was a cry of pain from a man who had been run over by the mechanism of Russian revolutionary and post-revolutionary reality. Chekhov played Hamlet in 1924 and emigrated in 1928. Chekhov's departure was absolutely inevitable - he had nothing to do in the country of the victorious revolution.

His subsequent fate was dramatic. He died in 1955, and before that he lived in the West: in the Baltic states, in France, then in America. He played, was a director, a teacher. But he did nothing commensurate with the role he played in Russia. And that was his tragedy. This was the tragedy of his Hamlet.

For 30 years "Hamlet" did not go on the Moscow stage. (Except for a special case of Akimov's "Hamlet" at the Vakhtangov Theater "Hamlet" directed by Nikolai Akimov in 1932 at the Theater. Vakhtangov.. It was a semi-parody, a reprisal against the traditional Russian gaze that idolizes Hamlet.) One of the reasons why Hamlet was excommunicated from the Moscow stage was that Stalin could not stand this play. This is understandable, because the Russian intelligentsia has always seen the Hamletian principle in itself.

There was a case when Nemirovich-Danchenko, who received special permission, rehearsed Hamlet at the Art Theater (the performance was never released). And the actor Boris Livanov, at one of the Kremlin receptions, approached Stalin and said: “Comrade Stalin, we are now rehearsing Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. What would you advise us? How do we go about staging this play?” There are several versions of Stalin's answer, but this is the most reliable one. Stalin said with indescribable contempt: "Well, he's weak." "No no! Livanov said. “We play him strong!”

Therefore, when Stalin died, in 1953 several Russian theaters turned to this semi-unauthorized play at once. At the same time, in 1954, premieres were released at the Mayakovsky Theater, where the play was staged by Okhlopkov. Nikolai Pavlovich Okhlopkov(1900-1967) - theater and film actor, director, teacher. Disciple and continuer of the traditions of Vs. Meyerhold. Since 1943 he headed the Theater. Mayakovsky., and in Leningrad at the Pushkin Theater (Alexandrinsky), where Kozintsev staged it Grigory Mikhailovich Kozintsev(1905-1973) - film and theater director, screenwriter, teacher. For the film "Hamlet" (1964) he received the Lenin Prize. even before his film.

The history of Hamlet in the post-war Russian theater is a very big topic, but I want to say one thing. About that "Hamlet", which was the "Hamlet" of my generation. It was "Hamlet" by Vysotsky, Borovsky, Lyubimov Hamlet was staged at the Taganka Theater in 1971. The director of the performance was Yuri Lyubimov, the artist and set designer was David Borovsky, the role of Hamlet was played by Vladimir Vysotsky.. It was not a terrible time, 1971, it is impossible to compare it with the end of the 30s. But it was a shameful, shameful time. General indifference, silence, the few dissidents who dared to raise their voices ended up in prison, tanks in Czechoslovakia, and so on.

In such a shameful political and spiritual atmosphere, this performance with Vysotsky appeared, and it contained a real Russian rebellion, a real explosion. It was Hamlet, very simple, very Russian and very angry. It was Hamlet who allowed himself to rebel. It was Hamlet the rebel. He challenged the absolute force of the tragedy that confronted him. He was opposed not only by the political system, Soviet tyranny - all this Vysotsky was not very interested in. He was confronted by forces that were impossible to cope with. Forces that were symbolized in the famous curtain image “With the help of aeronautical engineers, a very complex structure was mounted above the stage, thanks to which the curtain could move in different directions, changing the scenery, revealing some actors, closing others, sweeping third ones off the stage ... The idea of ​​​​a movable curtain allowed Lyubimov to find the key to the whole performance . Wherever Hamlet was, the curtain moved and stopped according to a strict rule: Vysotsky always remained aloof, separate from others ”(from the article “Hamlet from Taganka. On the twentieth anniversary of the performance” in the newspaper “Molodoy Kommunar”, 1991)., created by the brilliant David Borovsky. It was a huge eyeless monster that became either a wall of earth, or an image of death, or a huge cobweb that entangled people. It was a moving monster, from which there was no escape, no escape. It was a giant broom that swept people to death.

Two images of death in this performance existed at the same time - the curtain as a symbol of the transpersonal inevitable forces of tragedy and the grave on the edge of the stage from the real, living earth. I said live, but I was wrong. It was a dead land, not one in which something grows. It was the land in which they bury.

And between these images of death there was Vysotsky. Hamlet, the very hoarseness of whose voice seemed to come from the fact that someone was holding him by the throat with a tenacious hand. This Hamlet tried to weigh all the pros and cons, and this inevitably led him into the sterility of a mental dead end, because from the point of view of common sense, an uprising is meaningless, doomed to defeat. But in this Hamlet there was holy hatred, if hatred can be holy. In this Hamlet there was the rightness of impatience. And this man, this warrior, this intellectual and poet, headlong, casting aside all doubts, rushed to the fight, to the rebellion, to the uprising and died, as soldiers die, quietly and not ceremoniously. No Fortinbras was needed here, there was no solemn removal of Hamlet's body. Hamlet in the back of the stage, leaning his back against the wall, quietly slid down to the ground - that's all death.

To the frozen hall in which people of my generation were sitting, this performance and this actor gave hope. Hope for the possibility of resistance. It was the image of Hamlet that became part of the soul of my generation, which, by the way, was directly connected with Pasternak's image of Hamlet. After all, it was no coincidence that the performance began with a song by Vysotsky to these very verses by Pasternak from Doctor Zhivago. It is interesting that Vysotsky from this poem, which he performed almost entirely, threw out one stanza "I love your stubborn plan and I agree to play this role ...". This Hamlet did not like the world plan. He resisted any higher purpose underlying the world. He did not agree to play this role. This Hamlet was all rebellion, rebellion, resistance. It was a rush to the will, to the will-will, to the Russian understanding of freedom, to what Fedya Protasov spoke about in Tolstoy Fedor Protasov- the central character of Leo Tolstoy's play "The Living Corpse". listening to gypsy singing. This performance has played a huge role in our lives. This image has remained with us for the rest of our lives.

There are times for Hamlet, there are times not for Hamlet. There is nothing shameful in non-Hamletian times. After all, there are other plays by Shakespeare. Hamlet's times are special, and it seems to me (maybe I'm wrong) that our time is not Hamlet's, we are not drawn to this play. Although, if a young director suddenly comes out and, having staged this play, proves that we are worthy of Hamlet, I will be the first to rejoice.

Decryption

If you look at the latest works of artists from different times and different types of art, you can find something that unites them. There is something in common between the last tragedy of Sophocles "Oedipus in Colon", the last works of Beethoven, the last biblical tragedies of Racine, late Tolstoy or late Dostoevsky and the last plays of Shakespeare.

It is possible that the artist, who has reached the limit, before which death stands with terrible clarity as a near future, comes up with the idea to leave the world, leaving people with hope, something worth living for, no matter how tragically hopeless life is. Perhaps Shakespeare's last works are an impulse to break beyond catastrophic hopelessness. After Hamlet, Macbeth, Coriolanus, Timon of Athens, that darkest, most hopeless of Shakespearean tragedies, there is an attempt to break through into the world of hopes, into the world of hope in order to preserve it for people. After all, Shakespeare's last plays Cymbeline, Pericles, The Winter's Tale, and, above all, The Tempest, are so unlike everything that he has done so far. On the great tragedies that speak of the tragic essence of being.

The Tempest is a play that is called Shakespeare's testament, the last chord of his work. It is probably the most musical of Shakespeare's plays and the most harmonic. This is a play that only a person who has gone through the temptation of tragedy, through the temptation of hopelessness, could create. It is the hope that arises on the other side of despair. This, by the way, is a phrase from a late novel by Thomas Mann. Hope, which knows about hopelessness - and yet tries to overcome it. The Tempest is a fairy tale, a philosophical fairy tale. The magician Prospero acts in it, he is given magical power over the island by witch books, he is surrounded by fantastic characters: the spirit of light and air Ariel, the spirit of the earth Caliban, the charming daughter of Prospero Miranda and so on.

But this is not just a fairy tale, and not even just a philosophical fairy tale - this is a play about an attempt to correct humanity, to heal a hopelessly sick world with the help of art. It is no coincidence that Prospero unleashes music as a great healing force on this crowd of freaks and villains who fall on the island. But it is unlikely that music can heal them. Art is hardly capable of saving the world, just as beauty is hardly capable of saving the world. What Prospero comes to at the end of this strange, very difficult play for the theatre, is the idea that lies at the foundation of all later Shakespeare. This is the idea of ​​salvation through mercy. Only forgiveness can, if not change, then at least not aggravate the evil that reigns in the world. This is what, in simple words, the meaning of "The Tempest" boils down to. Prospero forgives his enemies, who nearly killed him. He forgives, although he is not at all sure that they have changed, that they are healed. But forgiveness is the last thing left for a person before leaving the world.

Yes, of course, in the finale, Prospero returns to his throne of Milan with his beloved daughter Miranda and her beloved Ferdinand. But at the end of the play, he says such strange words, which for some reason are always removed from Russian translations. In the original, Prospero says that he will return so that every third thought of his will be a grave. The finale of this play is not at all as bright as it is sometimes believed. And yet it is a play about forgiveness and forgiveness. This is a parting and forgiving play, like all the last plays of Shakespeare.

It is very difficult for modern theater and rarely comes out with modern directors. Although at the end of the 20th century, almost all the great directors of the European theater turn to this play - it is staged by Strehler, Brook, in Moscow it is staged by Robert Sturua at the Et Cetera theater with Alexander Kalyagin in the role of Prospero. It is no coincidence that Peter Greenaway puts this play in his wonderful film The Books of Prospero. For the role of Prospero, Greenway invites not just anyone, but the greatest English actor John Gielgud Sir Arthur John Gielgud(1904-2000) - English actor, theater director, one of the largest performers of Shakespeare's roles in the history of the theater. Winner of all major performance awards: Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, Tony, BAFTA and Golden Globe.. He can no longer act, he is too old and ill to play the role as he played his great roles in the old days. And Gielgud does not play in Greenaway's film, he is present. For Greenway, this actor is important as an image and symbol of the great culture of the past, nothing more. Gielgud's Prospero is both Shakespeare's Prospero, and Shakespeare himself, who writes The Tempest, and the Lord God, the lord of this beautiful Universe permeated with art. Permeated, but oversaturated.

In order to appreciate the meaning of what Greenaway did, one must understand that almost every frame of this film must be associated with some specific work of Renaissance or post-Renaissance, baroque art of the 16th-17th centuries. Almost every frame refers us to the great works of either the Venetian painters of the 16th century or the architects of Michelangelo. This is a world oversaturated with art. It is a culture burdened with itself and yearning for the end, yearning for the end as its outcome.

At the end of the film, Prospero burns and drowns his magical books. And what are these books? These are the main books of mankind, including, among other things, the "First Folio" - the first collection of works by Shakespeare, published after his death, in 1623. We see the folio slowly sink to the bottom. And a strange thing happens: the catastrophe that befalls the universe at the end of Greenaway's film gives a sense of relief, deliverance and purification. Such, it seems to me, is the meaning of this film, which is deep and deeply penetrated into the semantic layers of Shakespeare's play.

After The Tempest, Shakespeare writes next to nothing. Writes only with Fletcher John Fletcher(1579-1625) - English playwright, who defined the term "tragicomedy". his not the best, last chronicle "Henry VIII". By the way, during her presentation, the Globe fire occurs - Shakespeare's favorite brainchild burned to the ground in half an hour. (No one was hurt, only one audience member's pants caught fire, but someone poured a pint of ale on them and it was all extinguished.) I think for Shakespeare this was a key farewell event. For the last four years he has been living in Stratford and has not written anything.

Why is he silent? This is one of the main mysteries of his life. One of the main secrets of his art. Perhaps he is silent because everything that could be said, that he should have said, has been said. Or maybe he is silent because no Hamlet could change the world one iota, change people, make the world a better place. Desperation and the feeling that art is meaningless and fruitless very often befalls great artists on the verge of death. Why he is silent, we do not know. What we do know is that Shakespeare has been living the life of a private citizen in Stratford for the past four years, writing his will a few months before his death, and dying, apparently of a heart attack. When Lope de Vega died in Spain, the whole country followed his coffin - it was a national funeral. Shakespeare's death has gone almost unnoticed. It would be several years before his friend and rival Ben Jonson wrote: "He does not belong to one of our centuries, but to all centuries." But it was discovered only after many, many, many years. The real life of Shakespeare began in the second half of the 18th century, not earlier. And she continues.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater is considered one of the most famous not only in the UK, but also in Europe. Today it is not only a famous cultural institution, where you can see productions by famous directors and watch the stars of the world theater scene play, but is also one of the most famous attractions in London.

background

It all started with the construction of the first public theater in London in 1576 in Shoreditch, which everyone simply called “The Theatre”. It belonged to James Burbage, who worked as a carpenter in his youth, but later became an actor and assembled his own troupe. This theater existed until 1597, when the owner of the land on which it stood demanded that the plot be vacated or paid double. Then the sons of the owner of the institution - Richard and Cuthbert - decided to establish a new institution on the other side of the Thames and transported there on rafts the dismantled wooden structures of the stage - beam by beam.

The first "Globe"

The construction of the new theater lasted 2 years. As a result, Burbage's heirs became the owners of half of the building and took 50 percent of the shares of the new institution. As for the remaining securities, they divided them among several of the most famous members of the old troupe, one of whom was the actor and author of most of the plays that make up the repertoire of the Globe - William Shakespeare.

The new theater lasted only 14 years, during which the premieres of almost all the works written by the great playwright took place there. The Globe was incredibly popular, and among the spectators one could often see important nobles and aristocrats. Once, when the play “Henry the Eighth” was on stage, the theater cannon failed, as a result of which the thatched roof ignited, and the wooden building burned to the ground within a few hours. Fortunately, no one, except for one spectator who received minor burns, was injured, but Shakespeare's Globe Theater, considered one of the most famous institutions of its kind in England at that time, was destroyed.

History from 1614 to 1642

Shortly after the fire, the theater was rebuilt on the same site. However, to date, researchers do not have a common opinion about whether William Shakespeare participated in the financing of the new project. As biographers of the playwright note, during this period he had big health problems, and it is quite possible that he gradually began to retire. Be that as it may, Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, while the second theater lasted until 1642. It was then that the Globe was closed, and its troupe was disbanded, as a civil war broke out in England, and the Puritans who came to power achieved a ban on any entertainment events as inconsistent with Protestant morality. After 2 years, the theater building was completely demolished, thus freeing up space for the construction of residential apartment buildings. At the same time, the construction was carried out so densely that there were not even any traces of the existence of the Globe Theater.

Excavations

Great Britain is known as a country where over the past 500 years they have been very attentive to documents and archives. Therefore, it is very strange that until the end of the 80s of the last century, no one could name the exact place where the famous Shakespeare's Globe Theater was located in the 17th century. Light on this question was shed by produced in 1989 in the parking lot of Anchor Terrace, located on Park Street. Then scientists managed to find parts of the foundation and one of the towers of the Globe. According to scientists, it would be worth continuing to search for new fragments of the theater complex in this area even today. However, research is not possible, since there are architectural monuments of the 18th century nearby, which, according to British law, are not subject to analysis.

What was the building of the theater under Shakespeare

The dimensions of the second "Globe" are still not known for certain, but scientists were able to restore its plan with great accuracy. In particular, they managed to establish that it was built in the form of a three-tiered open amphitheater with a diameter of 97-102 feet, which could simultaneously accommodate up to 3 thousand spectators. At the same time, it was initially believed that this structure was round, but excavations of part of the foundation showed that it resembled an 18- or 20-sided structure and had at least one tower.

As for the interior of the Globe, the elongated proscenium reached the middle of the open courtyard. The stage itself, with a trapdoor, from which the actors stepped out when necessary, was 43 feet wide, 27 feet long and was raised above the ground to a height of about 1.5 m.

Spectator seats

The description of the Globe Theater that has survived to this day indicates that quite comfortable boxes for the aristocracy were located along the wall on the first tier. Above them were galleries for wealthy citizens, while less well-off but respected Londoners and young people who had money, watched the performance, sitting on the seats located right on the stage. There was also a so-called pit in the theater, where the poor were allowed, who were able to pay 1 penny to watch the performance. Interestingly, this category had a habit of eating nuts and oranges during theatrical performances, so when excavating the foundation of the Globe, piles of shell fragments and citrus seeds were found.

Backstage and places for musicians

A roof was erected over the back of the stage, supported by massive columns. Below it, at a distance of human height, there was a ceiling with a hatch, painted with clouds, from where, if necessary, the actors could descend on ropes, depicting deities or angels. During the performances, stage workers were also there, lowering or raising the scenery.

From behind the wings, where the members of the troupe changed their clothes and from where they watched the performance in anticipation of their appearance, two or three doors led to the stage. A balcony adjoined the wings, where the musicians of the theater orchestra were seated, and in some performances, for example, when staging Romeo and Juliet, it was used as an additional platform on which the play took place.

Shakespeare's Globe Theater today

England is considered one of the countries whose contribution to the world of dramatic art is difficult to overestimate. And today, well-known, including historical, theaters in London, of which there are more than a dozen, do not lack spectators throughout the season. Of particular interest is the third "Globe" in a row, since visiting it is akin to a kind of time travel. In addition, tourists are attracted by the interactive museum operating under it.

In the 1990s, the idea arose to revive the English Globe Theatre. Moreover, the well-known American director and actor Sam Wanamaker, who led the project, insisted that the new building be built in such a way that it resembled the original as much as possible. Feedback from tourists who have already attended performances of the Globe Theater testifies that a fairly large team of famous architects, engineers and consultants, busy reviving one of the most famous cultural institutions in the history of London, succeeded in full. They even coated it with a fire-retardant compound, although such a building material has not been used in the British capital for more than 250 years. The opening took place in 1997, and for about 18 years it has been possible to watch performances of many Shakespeare's plays with original sets and costumes. Moreover, as during the reign of James the First and Charles the First, there are no theaters and performances are held only during the day.

Performances

As already mentioned, the basis of the repertoire of the revived "Globe" is the play of William Shakespeare. Particularly popular are performances such as "The Taming of the Shrew", "King Lear", "Henry IV", "Hamlet" and others, which are played the way they were in the 17th century. In fairness, it must be said that not all the traditions of the Shakespearean theater have been preserved in the modern Globe. In particular, female roles are now played by actresses, not by young actors, as was the custom 250 years ago.

Quite recently the theater came on tour to Russia and brought a production of the play "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Not only Muscovites, but also residents of Yekaterinburg, Pskov and many other cities of our country could see it. The responses of the Russians were more than admiring, even despite the fact that most of the audience listened to the text in simultaneous translation, which could not but interfere with the holistic perception of the actors' performance.

Where is it located and how to get there

Today Shakespeare's Globe Theater is located at New Globe Walk, SE1. The easiest way to get there is by subway to Cannon St, Mansion House station. Since the building is partially without a roof, it is possible to become a spectator at the performance of the Globus Theater only from May 19 to September 20. At the same time, tours of the building are organized throughout the year, allowing you to see not only the stage and the auditorium, but also how the scenery and backstage are arranged. Tourists are also shown costumes made according to sketches of the 17th century and old ones. The price for visiting the theater as a museum of Shakespeare's times is 7 pounds for children and 11 pounds for adults.

Now you know the history of the Globe Theater, and you also know how to get there and what performances you can see there.

We examined the tragedy in the light of the philosophical, moral, social and state problems raised in it. But this does not exhaust the content of Hamlet.

To begin with, in Hamlet's conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, one of the curious episodes of the cultural life of London during Shakespeare's time is told without a hitch about the so-called "war of theaters", which one of its participants, playwright T. Dekker, called the Greek word " poetomachia (war of poets).

It took place in the years 1599-1602 and began with the fact that John Marston, in a play written for a troupe of actors-boys of the school at St. Paul's, brought out the playwright Ben Jonson quite harmlessly. He was offended and, in response, he portrayed Marston in his play rather evilly. Johnson also supplied plays for another children's troupe. So for three years they ridiculed each other on the stage of these two children's theaters.

The introduction of a personal moment aroused additional interest in the theatrical life of London. Performances by children's troupes have gained a kind of scandalous popularity. The theater then had numerous fans, and the controversy between writers was looked at in much the same way as later on the competition of boxers or football teams. It so happened that the children's troupes drew away the majority of the audience, and Shakespeare's "Globe" could not but feel this in its revenue. This is reflected in the story of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that children's theaters have become fashionable and the public is carried away by the disputes of playwrights, as a result of which “children have taken power”, causing damage even to “Hercules with his burden” (II, 2, 377-379). To understand the meaning of the last words, one must know that the emblem of the Globe Theater was the image of Hercules holding the globe on his shoulders. So Shakespeare introduced into tragedy a direct mention not only of contemporary theatrical events, but also of the theater on the stage of which Hamlet was being performed.

I no longer touch upon the fact that anachronism is allowed here, that is, the introduction of a modern fact into the old plot, anatopism (incompatibility of the locality) is also allowed: the action takes place in Denmark, and we are talking about capital London troupes!

Shakespeare deliberately committed these violations of plausibility, because, on the one hand, the appearance of the actors was necessary according to the plot of the tragedy, on the other hand, references to the “war of theaters” made this part of the play topical.

It turned out that the actors of Shakespeare's theater played themselves. There was a special poignancy in the fact that both they and the audience who watched the performance knew this. The theater was like a mirror of itself. The technique of mirror reflection was introduced into painting by mannerist artists. Shakespeare applied it to the stage.

It was not Shakespeare who came up with the technique known as the “scene on the chain”, when the image of a theatrical performance is introduced into the action of a dramatic work. Already in the popular "Spanish Tragedy" by T. Kida, the court performance played an important role in the action. The depiction of actors and amateur performances is also found in some of Shakespeare's plays.

The theme of the theater in the drama of the Late Renaissance had a great philosophical meaning. The notion “life is theater” that arose at that time reflected an important fact of the new social culture. In the Middle Ages, life was closed into separate economic (subsistence) and political cells (the feudal lords). There was relatively little communication between them, not to mention the fact that each estate - feudal lords, clergy, townspeople, peasants - lived apart from one another.

The isolation of everyday life began to collapse with the growth of large cities and the formation of large national monarchies. Barriers between classes began to crumble, social life in the full sense of the word began to emerge. People were more visible to each other. The visibility of reality led to the fact that there was an assimilation of life to the theater. Calderon (1600-1681) called one of his plays "The Great Theater of the World". Shakespeare in the play “As You Like It” put a long monologue into the mouth of one of his characters: “All life is a theater, and people are actors in it ...” This idea was so dear to Shakespeare and his actors, with whom he created a troupe, that they embodied it in the emblem of their theater, which depicted the globe. Moreover, the image of Hercules was accompanied by a Latin saying: “the whole world is acting”, or “all people are acting”.

We don't have to go far for examples. In our tragedy, the main characters act: Hamlet plays the role of a madman, Claudius plays the role of a handsome and benevolent king. We will not talk about the smaller "roles" that secondary characters take on. The acting of the main characters is emphasized by the fact that from time to time they throw off the mask put on themselves and appear in their true form - both Hamlet and Claudius.

With the emergence of large absolute monarchies in Spain, France, and England, theatricality became an integral part of court life. In order to exalt the absolute monarch, magnificent ceremonies took place at every court. The awakening of the king and his going to bed, the receptions of ministers and ambassadors were solemnly arranged. The life of the royal courts included all sorts of rituals and ceremonies. No wonder the position of organizers of court rituals - masters of ceremonies - appeared. In the palace life of Elsinore, a general order of things was adopted, although the remarks in Hamlet do not reflect the ceremonial nature of some scenes of the tragedy. At the beginning (I, 2) it is said: “Pipes. Enter King, Queen, Hamlet, Polonius, Laertes, Voltimand, Cornelius, lords and servants. The entrance is heralded with fanfares, followed by a solemn procession. The remark lists the participants in the procession in order according to their rank. But according to remarks in another play by Shakespeare (“Henry VIII”), we know that all servants walked ahead of the king, carried the royal regalia, and only then did the monarch himself appear. The procession was closed by a retinue,

The same solemn entrance takes place in the second scene of the second act: "Trumpets, Enter the king, queen, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and servants." With observance of all ceremonies, royal persons come to the court performance: “The Danish March. Pipes. Enter King, Queen, Polonius, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and other close dignitaries, with guards carrying torches. Without music, but quite solemnly, Claudius, Gertrude and nobles come to watch the duel between Hamlet and Laertes.

The four ceremonial entrances of the reigning persons with their attendants were performed in Shakespeare's theater with all the appropriate details to set off the other home scenes. The theatricality of court life is directly reflected in Hamlet. In tragedy there is a real theater, the theatricality of palace life, acting in the behavior of the characters in the tragedy.

The acting profession was considered low. The only thing that saved the actors was that they were enrolled in their servants by noble persons. This protected them from the charge of vagrancy, which was severely punished by law. Shakespeare's troupe had high-ranking patrons - at first it was called the Lord Chamberlain's Servants, and then - His Majesty's Servants. But even so, the acting profession did not enjoy public respect. Shakespeare complained about this in his Sonnets and reflected in the tragedy how Polonius and Hamlet treated the actors who arrived in Elsinore differently. The prince orders them to be received well, Polonius replies with restraint that he will accept them "according to their merits." Hamlet is indignant: “Damn it, my dear, much better! (...) Accept them according to your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more glory to your kindness” (II, 2, 552-558).

The Danish prince reveals an excellent knowledge of the humanistic concept of theatrical art. The plays are "an overview and brief annals of the century" (II, 2, 548-549). In Shakespeare's time, there were no newspapers yet, and news became known either from royal decrees, which were read by heralds in squares and crossroads, or from flying sheets - ballads, which were also sung in public places or sometimes from the stage, when sensational events became plots for plays. Bartholomew's Night was the subject of Christopher Marlo's tragedy The Massacre of Paris (1593). The process of the doctor Lopez is indirectly reflected in The Merchant of Venice, the struggle of Venice against the Turks is reflected in Othello. At the beginning of the seventeenth century in London, a story similar to Lear's happened to a citizen, and the ingratitude of modern daughters may have prompted Shakespeare to revive the legend of the ancient British king. But even if there are no direct correspondences to the events of modern life in Shakespeare's plays, then the approximation of plots to his contemporary mores and the creation of characters typical of his era also indicates that he followed the rule of reflecting life on the theatrical stage.

The actors who arrived in Elsinore also performed the function of chroniclers of their time, as evidenced by the presence in their repertoire of the play "The Murder of Gonzago". We do not know whether the news of the brutal murder of the Italian marquis Alfonso Gonzago in his villa in Mantua in 1592 reached Shakespeare, or perhaps he heard that even earlier, in 1538, the Duke of Urbino, Luigi Gonzago, was killed in a then new way. , pouring poison into his ear, which amazed even the battered Renaissance Europe. Either way, The Gonzago Murder was a re-enactment of a sensational event. The situation coincided with what happened at the Danish court. This emphasized that the theater is not engaged in empty fiction, but depicts what takes place in reality.

Everything taken together receives a clear and for that time classic expression in the mouth of Hamlet, when he instructs the actors and tells them: the purpose of acting is “as before, so now it was and is to hold, as it were, a mirror in front of nature: to show the virtues of her own traits, be arrogant - its own appearance, and for every age and class - its likeness and imprint ”(III, 2, 22-27). We have called this definition classical because it goes back to Cicero's formula on the nature of comedy, repeated by the 4th-century grammarian Elius Donatus. It was borrowed from them by the theorists of the drama of the Renaissance, it was repeated in schools and universities, in the study of Latin. This position was also immutable for the following centuries, which translated Cicero's metaphor with the word "reflection". Yes, Shakespeare affirmed the idea that the theater should be a reflection of reality and show morals as they are, without embellishing them.

Flat and straightforward moralizing was alien to Shakespeare, but, as we have said more than once, this did not mean a rejection of the moral assessment of people's behavior. Convinced that the art of the theater must be completely truthful, Shakespeare forces Hamlet to say to Polonius: “It is better for you to receive a bad epitaph after death than a bad review from them (that is, from actors. - A.A.) while you are alive” (II, 2, 550-551).

Defending the theater from the attacks of the clergy and hypocrites-puritans, the humanists argued that the theater not only reflects the existing mores, but also serves as a moral education. The words of Hamlet are imbued with faith in the power of the theater's influence on people's minds:

...I heard
That sometimes criminals in the theater
Been under the influence of the game
So deeply shocked that immediately
They proclaimed their evil deeds...
        II, 2, 617-621

Convinced of this, Hamlet starts the performance of "The Murder of Gonzago", "to lasso the king's conscience" (II, 2, 634). As we know, what happens during the performance confirms the idea of ​​the moral impact of the theater: the king is shocked when he sees on stage the image of the atrocity he committed.

Through his hero, Shakespeare also reveals his understanding of the fundamentals of acting. Hamlet objects to two extremes - to excessive expressiveness, asks not to bawl and "saw the air with your hands" (III, 2, 5), and on the other hand, not to be too lethargic (III, 2, 17). “Do not transgress the simplicity of nature, for everything that is so exaggerated is contrary to the purpose of acting” (III, 2, 22-23). Hamlet affirms the naturalness of the stage behavior of the actors: “... Be equal in everything; for in the stream itself, in the storm and, I would say, in the whirlwind of passion, you must learn and observe the measure that would give it softness ”(III, 2, 6-9). Actors should not give themselves too much to feeling, temperament, they should follow the dictates of reason: “Let your own understanding be your mentor” (III, 2, 18-19). Hamlet says in this case: "the ability to figure out how to play." From the actor, therefore, requires independence and the ability to understand well the role given to him.

Shakespeare is by no means a supporter of cold rationality. Remember the famous words of Hamlet about the actor: “What is Hecuba to him // What is Hecuba to him ...” (II, 2, 585). Fulfilling the request of Hamlet, the actor read a monologue about Hecuba in such a way that even Polonius remarked: “Look, he has changed in his face, and he has tears in his eyes” (II, 2, 542-543). The prince himself even more expressively and with an understanding of the psychology of the actor says:

...actor
In imagination, in fictitious passion
So he raised his spirit to his dream,
That from his work he became all pale;
Moistened eyes, despair in the face,
The voice is broken, and the whole appearance echoes
His dream.
        II, 2, 577-583

"Dream" in the original corresponds, conceit; its dictionary designation - "fantasy" - to pour partly conveys the meaning in which it is used by Shakespeare. M. Morozov gave such an interpretation of the phrase as a whole: "all his behavior began to correspond to the images created by his imagination." This word may well be translated as "concept", which is actually said more extensively by M. Morozov.

Shakespeare left us his opinion on what stage speech should be - words should easily leave the tongue, gestures should be natural. Hamlet is also outraged by the excessive facial expressions of the villain in The Murder of Gonzago, and he shouts to him: “Give up your damned antics ...” (III, 2, 262-263). And Hamlet absolutely resolutely objects to the gag that comedians allowed themselves, "to make a certain number of the most empty spectators laugh" (III, 2, 45-46).

Shakespeare also distinguished between two types of audience in noting the different types of acting art of his time. Any excess can be to the taste only of the ignorant (III, 2, 28), while "the connoisseur will be upset" (III, 2, 29). Asking the actor to read a monologue, Hamlet reminds him that he is from a play that “did not please the crowd; for the majority it was caviar" (II, 2, 455-456) - too refined a treat. The theater should not be guided by such ignorant ones, but by the connoisseur: “his judgment should outweigh the whole theater of others” (III, 2, 30-31). This can by no means be interpreted as a manifestation of snobbery. Shakespeare wrote his plays, including Hamlet, for the public theater of the people. Both he and other playwrights made fun of the vulgar taste of the audience, creating plays designed for intelligent and art-susceptible audiences, while instilling in the entire public an understanding of the essence of the theater. Hamlet's speeches were a lesson not so much for the troupe that arrived in Elsinore, not without reason, the prince's instructions were listened to about what mistakes should be corrected, The first actor remarks: "I hope we have more or less eradicated this from ourselves" (III, 2, 40-41 ), how much for the audience of the Globe Theatre.

In the theatrical aspect, Hamlet is a sharply polemical work that reflects the struggle between different artistic trends of the era.

Before the performance of The Murder of Gonzago, Hamlet recalls that Polonius once participated in a university play. The old courtier confirms: "He played, my prince, and was considered a good actor" (III, 2, 105-106). It turns out he played Caesar and Brutus killed him in the Capitol. This causes the prince's pun: "It was very brutal of him to kill such a capital calf" (III, 2, 110-111). The irony of the situation is that soon after this, Hamlet will also commit this "brutal" act and kill Polonius.

In universities, it was customary to play the tragedies of Seneca and the comedies of Plautus and Terentius for a better assimilation of Latin. As we shall now see, Polonius was well aware of this. The tragedies and comedies of the Roman playwrights were considered the highest examples of dramatic art in humanist circles. The dramaturgy of the classical style did not take root on the stage of the public folk theater. "Scholarly" drama remained the privilege of the universities. Here they believed in the need for a strict division into genres, considered it aesthetically unacceptable to mix the comic with the tragic, while on the folk stage, for which Shakespeare wrote, no restrictions approved by the supporters of Renaissance classicism were recognized. Spectators demanded varied and dynamic action; the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were free from the dogmatism of strict theoreticians of drama.

In light of this, the characterization of the repertoire of the wandering troupe, which is given by Polonius, deserves attention: “The best actors in the world for tragic, comic, historical, pastoral performances ...” Until now, there is an enumeration of the really existing types of drama, clearly delineated from each other; the humanistic theory of drama recognized them as "legitimate". Polonius further names mixed types of plays: "pastoral-comic, historical-pastoral, tragic-historical, tragico-comic-historical-pastoral, for indefinite scenes and unlimited poems." Of these types of drama, Polonius speaks with obvious irony; for him, brought up at the university, these types of drama were illegal hybrids. But the visiting troupe, as is clear from his words, takes an eclectic position. She plays plays of mixed genres, but she also pays tribute to the classical style: “They don’t have too much Seneca, and Plautus is not too light,” that is, they know how to play Seneca’s monotonous and monotonous tragedies vividly, and Plautus’ cheerful comedies give significant meaning. The range of this troupe is such that it plays both from ready-made texts of plays and resorts to improvisation in the spirit of Italian commedia dell'arte: "For written roles and for free ones, these are the only people" (II, 2, 415-421).

Polonius' taste should have dictated to him a negative attitude towards a significant part of the troupe's repertoire. But by showing actors free from taste restrictions, skillful in performing plays of any genre, “except boring,” as Voltaire would say, Shakespeare expressed his ideal of a theater free from aesthetic dogmatism and universal in its artistic possibilities.

Thus, "Hamlet" contains a detailed aesthetics of the theater.