Abstract

At the beginning of the 20th Century, in reaction to the 19th-century emphasis on realism, Russian artistic life became strongly influenced by popular theatrical practices, accentuating masks and clowns as dominant themes. This development created an interconnectedness of the Renaissance theatre, such as commedia dell’arte and Shakespearean drama, and the avant-garde culture, whose accent on the elemental presented the traditional masks and stage plots in a new light. As the theater became the governing artistic medium which influenced other media, it also permeated the critical thought of the period. This essay investigates how Shakespearean drama was interpreted and incorporated into the formalist theatrical practices of the time, focusing on Vsevolod Meyerhold’s stagings, as well as the theoretical thought of the formalist circle known as OPOYAZ, and traces those influences in Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of the novel. The essay provides an analysis of Meyerhold’s experiments with Hamlet, followed by a close reading of Viktor Shklovsky's essay "On the Subject of King Lear.” In the final section, the essay focuses on a close reading of Bakhtin's "notes and additions to Rabelais," which contain unfinished ideas and interpretations of Macbeth and King Lear. Understanding the way Bakhtin re-interpreted formalist ideas about the Shakespearean stage provides new insight into the underpinnings of his theory but also highlights the elements of Shakespearean plays usually left without attention.