Sergey Durylin on Shakespeare in the Russian Theatre: On the Question of the Modalities of Theater Critical Writing in the USSR in the 1930s–1950s

The article examines Sergei Durylin’s writings in the 1930s–1950s as a theater critic (in particular, writing about Shakespeare in the Russian theater), interpreted as a marginal hypostasis of this author’s work. The methodological basis for the study is the method of context-hermeneutic approach applied by E.A. Korshunova to the work of Durylin the writer. Theater criticism became one of the main areas of Sergei Durylin’s work after his two exiles. Durylin’s historical research on Shakespeare on the Russian stage was never published (with the exception of actor’s biographies, where Shakespeare’s roles were touched upon), but his newspaper texts were published quite actively. In radical early Soviet rhetoric, he develops the most important provisions of the contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare: the opposition of the ‘active’ Soviet and decadent, ‘passive’ pre-revolutionary interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays; democratism of the ‘best’ examples of pre-revolutionary Shakespeare and Soviet interpretations of roles; correct understanding of Shakespeare exclusively in the Soviet theater. The rhetorical mask of a theater critic of a vulgar sociological nature developed by Durylin became his personal way of putting into print important ideas and topics: covering the history of Shakespeare on the Russian and Soviet stage.

Sergey Durylin, theater studies, Russian Shakespeare, Shakespeareanism, Soviet press, 1930s