Understanding of Christopher Marlowe and his creative work in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century

In 1901 a book The English Drama by I.I.Ivanov was published. It contained general evaluation of the outstanding, according to the author, literary talent and vigorous moral world of Christopher Marlowe, the first gifted psychologist-dramatist on the English stage. At that time Marlowe was mentioned as a direct predecessor of Shakespeare by Yu.N. Vereshchagin and E.V. Anichkov. The edition of ''the sketch on comparative history of literature'' by the famous Polish critic-subjectivist I. Matushevskiy Devil in Poetry. History and Psychology of Characters, Personifying Evil in Fine Literature of All Peoples and Centuries translated into the Russian language by V.M. Lavrov in 1902 came to be a significant event. The study of the concept Satan in it was connected with interpretations of it in the Bible and works of the authors who referred to the image of the devil - Marlowe, P. Calderon, A. Dante, J. Milton, G.G. Byron. Marlowe was mentioned in the essay of the famous Russian publicist N.K. Mihkailovskiy in 1903 in connection with the article by A.Rette ''Souvenirs sur le Symbolisme'' published in Paris journal La Revue and having interesting opinions about symbolism tendencies in literary development and searches of new schemes in drama correlated with them. F.G. de La Bart in his Conversations on History of General Literature (1914; the first edition was issued in 1903 under the name Conversations on History of General Literature and Art) named Marlowe the most outstanding of all dramatists in the pre-Shakespearean epoch, considering him to have prepared the grounds for Shakespeare's creative work, and briefly characterized Marlowe's tragedies. The Complete Works of Shakespeare: In 5 volumes printed in the publishing-house of F.A. Brockhaus and I.A.Efron in the series of books ''The Library of Great Writers'' edited by S.A. Vengerov included articles of scholars and literary critics (F.F. Zelinskiy, N.P. Dashkevich, P.O. Morozov, L.Yu. Shepelevich, F.A. Braun, E.V. Anichkov) devoted to the analysis of some Shakespeare's works and at the same time containing notes about Marlowe. N.I. Mishiyev in the second part of Essays on History of General Literature (1911) devoted to the epochs of the Middle Ages and Renaissance put Marlowe on the first place among Shakespeare's predecessors and considered The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus to be the best writer's work. Marlowe was also mentioned in Readings on History of General Literature (1914) by I.I. Gilivenko. The most detailed analysis of creative work by Marlowe as a great predecessor of Shakespeare was presented by N. K.Bokadorov who devoted to it a separate chapter of his History of West European Literature of the XVIth - XVIIth centuries. Cervantes and Shakespeare published in 1913. Bokadorov made parallels between Marlowe's creations and many later works of West European and Russian literature of J.W. Goethe, W. Shakespeare, F. Schiller, J.-B. Moliere, G.E. Lessing, W. Scott, E. Zola, A.S. Pushkin, M.Yu. Lermontov, N.V. Gogol, A.K. Tolstoy. In 1916 in the book by the Russian literary critic K.F. Tiander The General Course on History of Antique and Western Literature Marlowe was also named as the most outstanding among Shakespeare's predecessors.

Keywords

Authors

References