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Measure for Measure and Pushkin's Angelo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George Gibian
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Extract

Pushkin summarized Measure for Measure in Angelo (1833), a partly dramatic, partly narrative poem of 535 lines. He considered Angelo his best work, but critics have slighted it. Russian commentators on Pushkin have perhaps been discouraged from paying more attention to Angelo because it is not an original, independent work. Even Vissarion Bielinsky, otherwise a very attentive critic of Pushkin, dismissed Angelo cursorily. There are numerous studies of Shakespeare's influence on Pushkin. These have concentrated on Boris Godunov and a few of the shorter plays, and neglected Angelo. This lack of attention is strange, because Angelo, in addition to being a fine example of the art of condensation, is a piece of Shakespearean criticism by one of the world's greatest poets, who had a very good knowledge of Shakespeare. The poem reveals what Pushkin liked in a play by Shakespeare and what he preferred to change. Its value may be all the greater because its criticism is not expressed in general, abstract terms. Besides the indirect comment in Angelo we have a fragment of Pushkin's formal opinion on Measure for Measure. In 1834 he wrote on the character of Angelo in a further development of his earlier views on Shakespeare's characterization in general:

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 4 , June 1951 , pp. 426 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 426 “Our critics did not give their attention to this piece and think that this is one of my weak works, whereas I have written nothing better.” N. V. Bogoslovsky, ed. Pushkin o Literature (Moscow, 1939), p. 554 n. Pushkin had also begun a line-for-line blank verse translation of Measure for Measure, of which only the opening 22 lines have survived. See Polnoe Sobraniye Sochineniy (Academia, 1936), ii, 599.

Note 2 in page 426 Sochineniya Aleksandra Pushkina, in Sobraniye Sochineniy (Moscow, 1948), iii, 614–615.

Note 3 in page 426 Some of the chief treatments of Pushkin's general indebtedness to Shakespeare are: M. M. Pokrovsky, “Shekspirizm Pushkina,” Pushkin (St. Petersburg: Brokgaus-Efros, 1910), iv, 1–20; C. H. Herford, A Russian Shakespearean (Oxford, 1925); and Ernest Simmons, “La Littérature anglaise et Pouchkine,” Revue de littérature comparée, xvii (1937), 79–107.

because his public actions contradict his secret passions! And what depth there is in that character !4

Note 4 in page 427 Fragment of “Table Talk,” first printed in Pushkin o Literature, p. 322.

Note 5 in page 427 See my article, “Pushkin's Parody on The Rape of Lucrèce,” SQ, I (Oct. 1950), 264–266.

Note 6 in page 427 There are interesting connections between Godunov and Angelo. The second meeting of Isabella and Angelo recalls the fountain scene in Godunov in Angelo's and Pseudo-Dmitry's emphasis on oaths and in Isabella's and Pseudo-Dmitry's reasoning. Henry Gifford, “Shakespearean Eièments in Boris Godunov,” Slavonic Rev., xxvi (Nov. 1947), 152–160, points out that the two scenes have in common their tension, the unexpectedly sudden turns of action, and the flash of revelation which, even if for different reasons, strikes the two women.

Note 7 in page 428 For example, “yield [your] body” is translated by a request for submission, “pokor-nost.”

Note 8 in page 429 The simplified structure of Angelo resembles the construction of individual scenes in Pushkin's shorter dramas, such as The Avaricious Knight, which, in turn, may have been influenced by Pushkin's study of Barry Cornwall's dramas and his preface. See notes in Pushkin, Dramaticheskiye Proizvedeniya (Akademiya Nauk, 1935), pp. 380–381.

Note 9 in page 430 Characters of Shakespear's Plays, in P. P. Howe, ed. The Complete Works of William Hazlitl (London, 1930), iv, 346.

Note 10 in page 430 In the conclusion of Angelo and in other particulars Pushkin peculiarly anticipates the judgments of a student of Shakespeare more recent than Hazlitt. E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare's Problem Plays (London, 1950), pp. 121–122, draws attention to the same outstanding scertes which Pushkin emphasizes in Angelo, also considers Shakespeare's final scene a failure, and distinguishes two parts in the play marked by differences in the Duke's character and other features which Pushkin changed to give the play a new unity. Tillyard designates iii.i.151 as the point of division; Pushkin's Parts ii and iii separate at the same line.

Note 11 in page 430 “Trend of Shakespearean Scholarship,” Shakespeare Survey (Cambridge, 1949), ii, 113–114.

Note 12 in page 430 Examples are given in Gifford, p. 158.