Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/164

142 recently the fame of almost all the best Russian actors was created almost exclusively by their Shakespearean roles.

Shakespeare's "career" in Russia began in the next to the last decade of the eighteenth century. Catherine the Great was an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare. Well read in his works, she wrote a drama in 1786 about an early Russian prince, Ryurik, and called this work not an original play, but "An Imitation of Shakespeare." Her next play, dealing with the life of Prince Oleg, bears the same subtitle. Of course, there was little of Shakespeare in these dramas, but the very fact that they were characterized as imitations of Shapespeare indicates that even in the time of Catherine the Great all theatrical art was connected with Shakespeare's name.

In 1787 the first translation from Shakespeare appeared in Russia. It was Julius Caesar, done into Russian by the noted writer, Karamzin. From that time on, those of the higher society began to familiarize themselves with Shakespeare, at first in the original, and, later on, in translations. But these renderings were at first of an accidental character. They were printed now and then in the periodicals of the time. It was only at the beginning of the nineteenth century that these translations began to appear in separate editions. It was at this period, too, that there commenced the efflorescence of Russian literature. Original geniuses, full of freshness and spontaneity, such as Pushkin, and later Gogol, and others, came to replace the older, mainly imitative talents, like Benediktov, Derzhavin, Viasemsky, who followed in the footsteps of French, and especially German pseudo-classical literature. The cause of Shakespeare in Russia owes much to these great writers: they really appreciated Shakespeare's grandeur and depth.

In the decades that followed, almost all of Shakespeare's plays were translated into Russian, but the complete edition of his works appeared only in the sixties. It was edited by N. A. Nekrasov, at that time the greatest national poet. This edition comprised translations by one of the best of the Russian Shakespearophiles, A. A. Sokolovsky, also by the poets P. Veinberg, F. Miller, A. Rizhov. P. I. Polevoy, the author of a very detailed biography of Shakespeare, which opens the edition, wrote: "In undertaking this edition we neither had, nor could have in view to give Russian literature such a translation of Shakespeare, that after it nothing could be left to do in the way of making the Russian public more intimately acquainted with the greatest poet of all ages and nations."