The plot and images are the main conflicts and problems based on the play (tragedy) Hamlet (William Shakespeare). Internal conflict Conflict of the tragedy Hamlet

LECTURE 17

Shakespeare's tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet", "Hamlet", "Macbeth", "Othello", "King Lear". Refusal of the illusions of the early period, discovery of the tragedy of existence. Tragicomedies: affirmation of man's high earthly mission.

We do not know what circumstances of Shakespeare’s personal life prompted him to turn to the tragedies that occupied a central place in his work at the beginning of the 17th century. it is only clear that the great playwright was unusually sensitive to the trends of his time. After all, England has entered a critical period of its existence. Social conflicts in the country were intensifying, opposition to absolutism was growing, and the storms of the Puritan revolution were approaching. At the same time, the touching faith of humanists in the unlimited possibilities of man increasingly collided with the harsh practice of the real world, spurred on by selfishness, greed, and lust for power. The sheep continued to eat people. The man who had gained spiritual freedom continued to languish “in the clutches of evil.” And if in the Middle Ages the blame for this could be laid on otherworldly forces, on mysterious providence or devilish machinations, now man remained face to face with his own kind. And the “great chain of being” (heaven, earth, underworld), in the inviolability of which Shakespeare, along with the majority of humanists, continued to believe, only reminded the heroes of Shakespeare’s tragedies of itself, either with heavenly signs, or with ghosts, or with witches. It was man, in his strengths and weaknesses, that continued to remain not only the main, but, in fact, the only hero of Shakespeare's plays. In this, Shakespeare remained a representative of the Renaissance. His plays are not characterized by the effective duality that is so characteristic of Baroque writers. His protagonists are not giants, like the heroes of F. Rabelais, because giants live in a fairy tale, and Shakespeare's heroes are children of the earth. But they are strong both in spirit and in body. Even Hamlet, one of the most intelligent heroes of European Renaissance literature, is excellent with a sword, surpassing the skilled swordsman Laertes in this. The generals who took part in the battles were Macbeth and Othello.

It is all the more sad for Shakespeare when the characters in his tragedies direct their minds, strength and talent to the destruction of moral harmony, which reflects the harmony of the universe. Avoiding pictures of the current political life, turning to legends, ancient tales and foreign subjects, the English playwright with extraordinary relief creates pictures of worldly disharmony, quite understandable to any English viewer. It was natural for him to begin the countdown of worldly disorder with man, since man represented in his eyes a microcosm that allows him to look into the very heart of the universe. This does not mean that Shakespeare is indifferent to the social environment surrounding a person. He pays some attention to her, but invariably brings to the fore the person who becomes the focus of tragic events. Tragic events also raged in historical “chronicles,” but there, as noted above, the English state, which was, in fact, the main character of the chronicles, came to the fore. This made the genre of historical chronicles “open,” allowing Shakespeare to stretch out the dramatic plot, all the time complementing and developing the events underlying it (three parts of Henry VI, two parts of Henry IV). The content of the tragedy is limited to the fate of the protagonist. Here is both the beginning and the end of the moral tension that finds its way out in the tragic denouement. But perhaps such endings, conditioned, as a rule, by the death of the protagonist, meant Shakespeare’s break with the behests of the Renaissance, which brought man to great heights? This is unlikely to be the case. Parting with the illusions of humanism, Shakespeare continued to appreciate moral ideals, which affirmed the high earthly mission of man.

In comedies sparkling with carnival lights, the world smiled tenderly at the audience. The heroes of the comedy did not pretend to have depth and complexity. They were cheerful participants in earthly acting. In tragedies, a person becomes much more significant and complex. It is in Shakespeare's tragedies that the most profound "discovery" in Renaissance literature takes place. This is facilitated by the increased interest in the “dark” passions of the human personality, in the real world and its various contradictions. For Shakespeare, the world was not flat and one-line, as for classicists of later times. In this regard, in his tragedies the tragic is freely combined with the comic, and near the arrogant king the motley jester scatters his sarcastic witticisms.

Romantics early XIX V. contrasted the "freedom" of Shakespeare's creativity with the dogmatism of classicism. The realists relied on his authority. For several decades, the young Goethe, challenging literary conservatives, wrote: “For most of these gentlemen, the stumbling block is primarily the characters created by Shakespeare. And I exclaim: nature! nature! What could be more nature than Shakespeare’s people!” ("For Shakespeare's Day", 1771) [Goethe I.V. About art. M., 1975. P. 338.] . In turn, V.G. Belinsky, who highly regarded the great playwright, stated in the article “Hamlet, Shakespeare’s drama. Mochalov in the role of Hamlet” (1838): “In all Shakespeare’s dramas there is one hero, whose name he does not list among the characters, but whose presence and primacy is the viewer recognizes already when the curtain falls. This hero is life..." [Belinsky V.G. Full collection op. M., 1953. T. II. P. 301.]

At the same time, Shakespeare's tragedies do not obey any single pattern; they are diverse, like human life itself. They wrote in different times, sometimes even in different periods of Shakespeare’s creative quest.

So, in early period, surrounded by historical chronicles and comedies, in which the world was still illuminated by warm sunlight, the tragedy "Romeo and Juliet" (1595) appeared. The plot of this comedy was widespread in Italian short stories of the Renaissance. M. Bandello's short story "Romeo and Juliet. All kinds of misadventures and the sad death of two lovers" (1554) was especially famous. In England, the popular plot was processed by Arthur Brooke in the poem “The Tragic History of Romeus and Juliet” (1562), which served as a direct source for Shakespeare.

The events of the play unfold in the city of Verona under the azure Italian sky. Verona is overshadowed by the long-standing enmity of two influential families: the Montagues and the Capulets. We do not know when and under what circumstances this enmity arose. Over time, it has lost its original fervor, although echoes of it sometimes still make themselves known. Either the servants of the warring masters get into a fight on the city street (I, 1), then the restless Tybalt, the nephew of Lady Capulet, is ready to strike with a dagger the young Montague, who came without an invitation to a masquerade ball in the Capulet house (I, 5). The head of the family himself is already more peaceful (I, 5).

With the aforementioned masquerade ball, a chain of events begins, ending with a tragic denouement. At the ball, Romeo Montague first saw young Juliet Capulet and fell in love with her dearly. True, before that he had already liked one pretty girl, but it was not love, but only a passion characteristic of youth. Now love has come, hot, strong. Juliet also fell in love with all the strength of her young soul. The family feud that stood in their way no longer guided their consciousness. She was an empty phrase to them. The benevolent monk Lorenzo, a natural philosopher and healer, marries them in secret from everyone, hoping that this marriage will end the protracted feud between the two families. Meanwhile, avenging the death of his closest friend, the cheerful and witty Mercutio, Romeo kills the frantic Tybalt. The Verona prince Escalus, who banned duels on pain of death, sentences Romeo to exile, and Juliet's parents, knowing nothing about her marriage, decide to marry her to Count Paris. Lorenzo persuades Juliet to drink a sleeping pill, which will temporarily create the appearance of her death. The sad story ends in the Capulet family crypt. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Lorenzo's clever plan leads to disaster. Mistaking the sleeping Juliet for a dead woman, Romeo drinks a potent poison and dies. Juliet, awakened from sleep, finding her husband dead, stabs herself to death with his dagger.

Although the internecine strife that disturbs the peace of Verona plays an important role in Shakespeare’s tragedy, it is not the leading theme of the work. The leading theme of "Romeo and Juliet" is the love of young people, which immediately attracts the attention and sympathy of the audience. V.G. wrote excellently about Shakespeare’s tragedy. Belinsky: “The pathos of Shakespeare’s drama “Romeo and Juliet” is the idea of ​​love, and therefore, in fiery waves, sparkling with the bright color of stars, enthusiastic, pathetic speeches pour from the lips of lovers... This is the pathos of love, because in the lyrical monologues of “Romeo and Juliet” one can see not only admiration for each other, but also a solemn, proud, ecstatic recognition of love as a divine feeling" [Belinsky V.G. Full collection op. T. VII. P. 313.] .

But one of the conquests European culture The Renaissance was precisely the entire high idea of ​​human love. In this regard, Shakespeare's tragedy turns into a kind of poetic manifesto of the English Renaissance. Love was also glorified by Shakespeare in comedies, but only in Romeo and Juliet do lovers at the cost of their lives affirm the beauty and power of free feeling. Carnival colors are no longer enough here. Here everything is much more serious, but this seriousness does not extinguish the tremulous light that the tragedy emits.

Romeo and Juliet, under the pen of Shakespeare, turn into genuine heroes. The playwright can no longer depict them with cursory strokes. The viewer sees them not only in movement, but also in development. Romeo is less complex. He is ardent, brave, smart, kind, ready to forget about old enmity, but for the sake of a friend he enters into a duel. Death prefers life without a beloved. Juliet's character is more complex. After all, she has to reckon with the demands and hopes of her parents. She is very young, not yet fourteen years old. Meeting Romeo transforms her. From hatred grows her great love (I, 5). The death of Tybalt, and then the matchmaking of Paris, puts her in a difficult position. She has to dissemble and pretend to be a submissive daughter. Lorenzo's bold plan frightens her, but love eliminates all doubts. The same love snatches her from life.

A characteristic feature of Shakespearean tragedy is its amazing poetry. Individual scenes of the tragedy resemble collections of lyrical poems. Of course, this is the famous scene at the balcony (II, 2), which begins with Romeo's monologue:

But what kind of light flashes in that window? There is a golden east: Juliet is the sun!.. (Translated by A. Radlova)

Or the scene in the Capulet garden, when Juliet anxiously awaits the arrival of Romeo: “Ride quickly, fiery horses, to the dwelling of Phoebus...” (III, 2). In the speeches and remarks of the heroes of the tragedy, the love poetry of many centuries and countries comes to life. Here are the sounds of Ovid, and the troubadours, and Petrarch, and the English lyric poets. The lovers' speeches sometimes resemble sonorous canzonas, as well as other genres of European love poetry. For example, the scene of parting in the Capulet garden (III, 2) is a real alba (morning song).

A number of colorful figures appear near Romeo and Juliet in the tragedy. The lively nurse, devoted to her young mistress, but ready to serve her demanding parents, brings a comic element into the lyrical atmosphere of the love drama. Always inclined to get involved in a dangerous brawl, Tybalt personifies the protracted unrest that deprives the inhabitants of Verona of peaceful normal life. A completely different person is Fra Lorenzo, a learned man who collects medicinal herbs for the benefit of people. He secretly marries young lovers in order to restore peace in the ill-fated city, as well as to establish the rights of nature as opposed to blind family prejudices. The atmosphere of poetry in the play is deepened by Romeo's friend Mercutio, witty, lively, and cheerful. In response to Romeo's disturbing dream, he recites the English folk tale about the elf queen Mab, riding in a chariot made of nutshells, with a mosquito for a coachman, which evokes different people different dreams(I, 4). Here Shakespeare's tragedy, infused with poetry, echoes his romantic comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The story of Romeo and Juliet is sad. But this sadness is light. After all, the death of young people is a triumph of their love, ending the bloody feud that has disfigured the life of Verona for many decades, and perhaps centuries.

Hamlet (1601) begins with the tragedy new stage Shakespeare's creative development. The tragic consciousness of the playwright reaches its culmination here. Love itself becomes here the plaything of the evil principles that have triumphed in the Danish kingdom. The sunny southern sky gives way to a gloomy northern sky. And not in the vast expanses of a busy Italian city, but behind the heavy stone walls of the royal castle in Elsinore, dramatic events unfold here. The plot of the tragedy goes back to the medieval folk tale about the Jutlandic (Danish) prince Hamlet, avenging the treacherous murder of his father. The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (XII-XIII centuries) talks about this in Latin in his work “The Acts of the Danes” (book 3). The mentioned story subsequently attracted the attention of writers more than once. It was translated into French by François Belfort in the book “Tragic Histories,” which became famous in England in 1589. In London, there was a play by an unknown author, presumably Kidd, based on the plot of Hamlet, which was used by Shakespeare.

The very beginning of Shakespeare's tragedy makes the audience wary. Midnight. On the platform in front of the royal castle, soldiers guarding the residence of the Danish king are talking. They talk about how more than once in these dark times a silent ghost appears, whose face is unusually similar to the recently deceased King Hamlet. All their attempts to talk to the mysterious alien led to nothing. And only when the son of the deceased king, Prince Hamlet, who hastily returned to his father’s funeral from Germany, where he was taking a course in science at the University of Wittenberg, came to meet him, the ghost told him a fatal secret. Young Hamlet learned that his father was killed during his sleep by his brother Claudius, who seized the Danish throne and soon married the widow of the murdered man, Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. The ghost demands revenge from Hamlet. But revenge for Hamlet is not just a tribute to a centuries-old tradition, and the death of his father is not just a tragic event in the life of his family. Endowed with insight and a comprehensive mind, Hamlet sees in this single event disturbing signs of the times. Having listened to the ghost’s story with deep shock, he exclaims: “The century has been shaken - and worst of all, / That I was born to restore it!” (I, 5). "The century has been shaken!" (more precisely: “the eyelid is dislocated”), i.e. lost its natural harmony, became ugly, sick. The beautiful world, broken by the villainy of Claudius, is personified for Hamlet in the image of the murdered king. The Danish prince endows him with truly divine beauty. He has “the forehead of Zeus, the curls of Apollo, the gaze of Mars” (III, 4). And most importantly, “He was a man, a man in everything; / I will never meet anyone like him” (I, 2). At the same time, Shakespeare says nothing about exactly what that worthy world was like, the personification of which was King Hamlet. For the audience, this world is equal to a dream - a dream of justice, nobility and moral health. The real world, which gave birth to Claudius and all his crimes, Shakespeare does not miss the opportunity to brand with bitter words. According to Marcellus, “something has rotted in the Danish state” (I, 5). Marcellus is not a philosopher, not a politician, he is just a warrior guarding the Elsinore castle. But the judgment he expressed has apparently already become the property of many people. And the fact that it is uttered by a warrior guarding the royal castle has a certain meaning. After all, the rotting of Denmark began with the head of state and his entourage. King Claudius is the main, if not the only, true villain of the tragedy. Shakespeare did not portray him as ugly, like Richard III, nor as gloomy. He even, to some extent, attracts those around him. He loves feasts, fun, theatrical performances. Hamlet calls him a "smiling scoundrel." Least of all, Claudius thinks about the good of his neighbor. He is a callous egoist and power-hungry. Having killed his own brother, he plans to deal with Hamlet as soon as he realizes that the young prince has penetrated his secret.

Naturally, Elsinore became a reserve of hypocrisy, deceit, and evil. Here such nonentities as the court hypocrite Osric thrive. Here, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, submissive to the will of the king, as well as the entire family of Polonius, the minister devoted to the usurper - himself, his daughter Ophelia, his son Laertes - become victims of royal deceit. Gertrude dies in the networks of deceit. The very air of Elsinore seems to be saturated with deadly poison. But for Hamlet, Elsinore is only the tip of the kingdom of evil that has approached the earth. It is no coincidence that in a conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he calls Denmark a prison (II, 2).

It's difficult for Hamlet. An intelligent, insightful person, he clearly feels his tragic loneliness. Who can he rely on? His beloved mother became the wife of the main villain. Sweet, loving Ophelia does not find the strength to resist her father’s will. His childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are ready to serve the tyrant. Only Horatio, Hamlet's friend and classmate, is faithful to him and understands him. But Horatio is a student, a man without connections and influence. But Hamlet must not only kill Claudius, but also heal the flaw of a shaken century. This task falls with terrible weight on the shoulders of the Danish prince. Even before meeting the ghost, he mournfully exclaimed:

How boring, dull and unnecessary everything in the world seems to me! O abomination! This is a lush garden, bearing only one seed: wild and evil It reigns... (Translated by M.L. Lozinsky)

After this meeting, in the already mentioned conversation with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he admits: “... I have lost all my cheerfulness, abandoned all my usual activities; and indeed, my soul is so heavy that this beautiful temple, the earth, seems to me like a deserted cape..." (II, 2). And further: “What a beautiful creature is man! How noble in mind! How limitless in his abilities, in appearance and in movements! How precise and wonderful in action! How like an angel he is in his deep comprehension... The beauty of the universe! The crown of all living things ! What is this quintessence of ashes for me? (II, 2).

Does this mean that Hamlet renounced the humanistic ideals that were undoubtedly close to him? Hardly! Does he say that earth and heaven are devoid of charm, and man is not the crown of creation? He only sadly admits that they have lost their attractiveness for him - for Hamlet, Hamlet's son. Does Hamlet refuse to fulfill his sacred filial duty? Not at all. But fulfilling one’s duty means returning its integrity, and therefore its beauty, to the dislocated world.

Hamlet must begin by eliminating Claudius. But then why does he hesitate to take revenge? And even reproaches himself for this slowness (IV, 4)? Of course, in Elsinore he is surrounded by enemies or people always ready to carry out the will of his enemies. In this tragic situation, even the most strong man there may be moments of weakness. In addition, Hamlet is no longer a medieval knight, immediately drawing his sword and falling on the enemy without further thought. He is a man of new times - not so much a man of the sword as a man of thought. It was not for nothing that Shakespeare made him a student at the University of Wittenberg and even provided him with a notebook where he entered his observations and reflections. The book is his faithful companion (II, 2). Reflection is his natural need. In the famous monologue “To be or not to be” (III, 1), Hamlet seems to settle scores with his own thought:

To be or not to be - that is the question; What is nobler in spirit - to submit to the Slings and arrows of furious fate, or, taking up arms in a sea of ​​turmoil, to defeat them with Confrontation?..

Explaining what he means by “arrows of furious fate” and “sea of ​​troubles,” Hamlet no longer concerns the treacherous murder of his father. This is already clear. He, like Shakespeare himself in Sonnet 66, sketches a broad picture of triumphant evil. This is “the lashes and mockery of the century, / The oppression of the strong, the mockery of the insolent /... the slowness of judges, / The arrogance of the authorities and insults, / Inflicted on uncomplaining merit.” So, is it the humility found in death or the struggle? Hamlet responds with all his behavior: fight! But only a struggle, illuminated by the light of rational thought.

After all, the ghost that told Hamlet about Claudius’s crime could be an evil spirit that took the form of the late king. At the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. Many still believed in the machinations of hell, and this was quite understandable to the audience. From this doubt the active actions of the Danish prince begin. The arrival of traveling actors in Elsinore helps him find out the truth. Hamlet instructs the actors to perform the play "The Murder of Gonzago", in which the circumstances closely resemble the murder of King Hamlet. Claudius cannot stand it and leaves the auditorium in excitement. The “mousetrap” conceived by Hamlet did its job. Now he knows for sure that Claudius is a murderer. Everything that follows in the tragedy takes on the character of a grandiose duel. There is only one Hamlet, and his enemies are legion. His enemies have power, deceit, and meanness. The whole kingdom serves as their support. Hamlet can only rely on himself, on his mind, his energy, his ingenuity. And he, not submitting to “the slings and arrows of fury,” boldly accepts her challenge. Piercing Polonius, who was hiding behind the tapestry, with his sword, he is sure that he is delivering a mortal blow to the usurper.

Those cannot be considered right literary critics who have repeatedly spoken about Hamlet’s weakness and passivity. The entire course of the tragedy indicates otherwise. With amazing resourcefulness and tenacity, Hamlet fights against the insidious enemy. To mislead him, he puts on the guise of a madman. He confuses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who, at the command of Claudius, are trying to penetrate the secret of his soul (II, 3). Subsequently, he surprisingly deftly and quickly parries Claudius’s deadly blow, sending his unlucky “friends” to the scaffold in return (IV, 6, 7). So why doesn’t he deal a fatal blow to Claudius, having caught him one day without his bodyguards and obedient servants? Because Claudius is praying on his knees, depressed by his crime. And this means, according to the ideas of those years, that if he dies now, his soul, cleansed of filth, will rush to heaven, and Hamlet wants the soul of the villain to fall into a dark hell. In the end, Hamlet carries out his plan. The fatal blow strikes Claudius when he, filled with cunning, is ready to commit another crime.

All this gives us reason to classify Hamlet as a heroic character. At the end of the tragedy, the young Norwegian prince Fortinbras orders military honors to be given to the deceased Hamlet. Like a true hero, he is raised to the platform. The performance ends with a solemn funeral march and a cannon salvo (V, 2).

Hamlet is a hero. Only for the audience he is no longer the hero of an ancient legend who lived in pagan times, but a hero of new times, educated, intelligent, who rose to fight against the dark kingdom of selfishness and deceit.

At the same time, Shakespeare does not forget to recall that Renaissance humanism became tragic humanism, and therefore Hamlet is not only burdened with the heavy worries of the world, but also with thoughts incompatible with the idyllic ideas of the early Renaissance. The scene in the cemetery (V, 1) adds an additional touch here. At the cemetery where the funeral of the drowned Ophelia is to take place, the Danish prince meets gravediggers digging a grave for the unfortunate girl. The skull of the royal jester Yorick, who once carried him on his back, falls into his hands. In this regard, there is a conversation about the transience of earthly undertakings, which fade before the open mouth of the grave. It has its own logic, its own value system. According to Hamlet, “Alexander [Macedonian. - B.P.] died, Alexander was buried, Alexander turns to dust; dust is earth; clay is made from earth; and why can’t they plug up a beer barrel with this clay into which he turned? "

Does not this graveyard philosophy, which turns the great conqueror into an insignificant plug, foreshadow the gloomy lamentation of the Baroque poets? Only there we are talking about the vanity of everything earthly. Shakespeare does not renounce earthly things, just as Hamlet does not renounce earthly love (“I loved her; forty thousand brothers / With all the multitude of their love / Could not equal me” - V, 1), from his duty to his father and people. He goes to his death to cleanse the earth of evil and vice. And the mention of earthly rulers in the cemetery, where King Claudius is soon to come, contains an open hint of an arrogant usurper, doomed by Hamlet’s will to disappear.

It should be noted that Shakespeare, who did not write special treatises on art, outlined in Hamlet his views on the tasks of theater and drama, which go back to the formula of Cicero [See: Anikst A. Shakespeare's Tragedy] and characteristic of the realistic quests of the Renaissance. In Elsinore, Hamlet meets with the actors. Instructing them, he says that the actor must observe moderation in his play: “Consistent actions with speech, speech with action, and especially observe so as not to transgress the simplicity of nature; for everything that is so exaggerated is contrary to the purpose of acting, whose goal is before, so now, it was and is to hold up, as it were, a mirror before nature; to show the virtues of its features, arrogance - its own appearance, and to every age and class - its likeness and imprint" (III, 2).

Among the most important figures in the tragedy is King Claudius - the usurper, the main culprit of the tragic events played out in the play. We encounter usurpers more than once in Shakespeare. The usurper was Henry IV from the historical chronicle of the same name. Under him, England, engulfed in feudal unrest, was going through difficult times. The usurper was the hard-hearted Richard III. Even in the comedy As You Like It, Duke Frederick played an unseemly role, seizing the throne of his worthy brother. The playwright's attention to the figures of usurpers indicated Shakespeare's keen interest in the most critical periods of English history. But England did not always appear on the stage of Shakespeare’s theater. Claudius ruled in Denmark, Frederick ruled somewhere in northern France. Shakespeare combined his interest in the country with an interest in man, his moral world, and his spiritual capabilities.

In this sense, Shakespeare's tragedy "Macbeth" (1606), named after the Scottish thane (a noble feudal lord and military leader), who killed his relative King Duncan and seized his throne, is very noteworthy. The events of the tragedy (11th century) go back to the chronicle of Holinshed. The fate of medieval Scotland was not of much interest to the author. His attention is focused on the fate of people who are ready to commit villainy out of ambition. First of all it is Macbeth, and then his wife Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare shows them in movement, in the development of characters.

What do we know about Claudius, Hamlet's uncle? Actually, only that he poured poison into the ear of his sleeping brother, that he loves feasts, that he is a hypocrite and a deceiver. Compared to Macbeth, this figure is flat and small. Macbeth unfolds in close-up before the viewer's eyes. At the very beginning, he appears as a brave warrior, a skilled commander, saving the Scottish kingdom from the machinations of enemies. In other words, he is a true hero. King Duncan grants him - in addition to the title of Thane of Glamis - the title of Thane of Cawdor, who rebelled against the Scottish king and was sentenced to death (I, 2). But precisely because Macbeth is a powerful, victorious man, the seeds of lust for power begin to ripen in the depths of his soul. And in order to emphasize the sinister nature of this growing passion of Macbeth, the author frames the play in a demonic frame. King Duncan, his sons and comrades-in-arms have not yet appeared on the stage, the bleeding soldier has not yet appeared, telling about the exploits of Macbeth (I, 2), and in the desert area, with the ominous flash of lightning and thunderclaps, three terrible witches - “prophetic sisters” - are called the name of Macbeth, whom they must meet (I, 1).

This is the beginning of the tragedy, casting a dark shadow on what follows. When the witches call Macbeth the coming king (I, 3), a great temptation takes possession of his soul. We do not know with what ease Claudius entered the criminal path. With Macbeth everything is much more complicated. From the very beginning, his comrade-in-arms Banquo, to whom the witches announced that his descendants would become kings, warns Macbeth that the servants of darkness, in order to destroy a person, sometimes entice him with dubious prophecies (I, 3). Macbeth is confused. After all, he is the savior of the fatherland. King Duncan is his cousin, he is alive and so are his sons, the legal heirs to the throne. The words of the witches awaken horror in him. Let Time itself decide the fate of kings (I, 4)! But when King Duncan declares Malcolm, his eldest son, heir to the throne, Macbeth shudders at the thought that the good promised by the witches is eluding him (I, 4). "Jump or fall?" - he asks himself. From this moment Macbeth's moral death begins. In the play, one dramatic event follows another, and yet the “external action” increasingly recedes before the “internal” action. After all, Macbeth is not a play about Scotland and its historical paths, as was the case with historical chronicles entirely dedicated to England. This is a play about the trial and moral fall of a person ruined by indomitable selfishness.

However, Macbeth did not immediately become the embodiment of evil. Lady Macbeth, who knew him well, and like him, possessed by an unbridled desire for power, notes with alarm that by nature he is gentle, “fed with the milk of mercy” (I, 5). And Lady Macbeth decides to breathe her fierce spirit into him. She summons the demons of murder to Macbeth's castle Inverness, where King Duncan, unaware of the terrible treachery, is supposed to spend the night. After tragic hesitations, Macbeth decides to take the bloody path (I, 7). Macbeth kills the sleeping king and his two bodyguards, and then sends assassins to Banquo, seeking to eliminate everyone who stands in his way. Chosen king, he becomes a gloomy despot.

Once upon a time, who had not yet raised his hand against Duncan, he feared inevitable retribution. Retribution not only in heaven, but also here on earth (I, 7). And he was right about that. Retribution overtook the criminals - Macbeth and his power-hungry wife Lady Macbeth. And hers even earlier than his. After becoming queen, Lady Macbeth lost her peace of mind. At night, in a state of deep sleep, she wanders through the dark halls of the royal castle and gloomily repeats into the void: “Away, damned spot, away, I said!.. Black in hell... Even if they find out, then under our power no one dares to call us to account..." And at the same time she rubs her hand, as if washing it, saying: "And yet here the smell of blood cannot perfume this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!" (V, 2). This is how the criminal queen lost herself and soon lost her life.

The downfall of man is also accomplished by Shakespeare using the example of Macbeth himself. He, like Lady Macbeth, is overcome by visions and ghosts (the vision of a bloody knife before the murder of the king - II, 1, the ghost of the murdered Banquo at the banquet table - III, 4). Filled with gloomy despair, realizing that he killed the affectionate Duncan for the sake of Banquo’s grandchildren - “gave away the immortal treasure of the soul,” Macbeth poses a hopeless challenge to fate (III, 1). He understands that evil begets evil, that he can no longer find another way (III, 4). And yet, having again met the terrible witches, he conjures to open him until the end of the coming days (IV, 1). From a brave military leader saving the state from enemies, Macbeth turns into a despot, into a gloomy tyrant who kills children and women (Macduff's son and wife). Scotland has been turned into a complete grave by him. According to Ross,

Not a single Intelligent person laughs there; There moans and screams tear the air - No one listens; there evil grief is considered common; They'll ring for the dead man - "For whom?" - no one will ask... (IV, 2. Translated by A. Radlova)

Great Mother Nature herself turned her back on Macbeth. The sky is embarrassed by his villainy. The sun was eclipsed, and night prevailed in the middle of the day. The owl kills the proud falcon (II, 4).

The abundance of infernal images in Shakespeare's tragedy does not at all indicate the conservatism of Shakespeare's thinking. During the Renaissance, many still believed in witches and evil spirits. The "Age of Reason" has not yet arrived. This gave Shakespeare the opportunity to depict in the most concentrated and visual form the attack of the forces of evil on the world, giving rise to the poisonous seedlings of selfishness. This carnival of evil even has its own jokes and amusements, its own “black” humor. These are the dubious remarks of the witches and their deceptive prophecy: “He who is born of a woman is not dangerous to Macbeth” and “Not before Macbeth can be slain / Than he moves to the Dunsinane slope / Birnam Forest” (IV, 1). The prophecies that Macbeth was ready to believe turned out to be a hoax. Devastated, depressed, “fed up with horrors,” Macbeth dies at the hands of honest Macduff.

Among the great tragedies, Shakespeare's tragedy "Othello" (1604) is the most "chamber". There is no solemn archaism in it, no menacing heavenly signs, witches and ghosts, and its action dates back not to the early Middle Ages, but to the 16th century, i.e. to years close to Shakespeare. According to Hegel’s definition, “Othello is the tragedy of subjective passion” [Hegel G.V.F. Aesthetics. M., 1968. T. I. P. 221.] . The love of the Venetian Moor Othello and the daughter of the Venetian senator Desdemona forms the plot basis of the play. We all the time follow their fate with unflagging attention, how Othello, believing Iago’s slander, raises his hand against an impeccable woman. At the same time, those who, following Georg Brandes, believe that “Othello” is “a purely family tragedy” are hardly right [Brandes G. William Shakespeare. St. Petersburg, 1897. P. 306.] . After all, from the very beginning of the play the rumble of a big story begins to reach us. From the first act we learn that the Turks are threatening Cyprus, which was (until 1571) under the rule of the Venetian Republic, and that it is Othello, an experienced and brave warrior, who the Venetian Doge intends to send against them. For the audience of Shakespeare's time, Türkiye was not at all a spectacular exotic backdrop - it was a formidable political reality.

The first act includes Othello's excited speech, from which we learn how Othello and Desdemona met and how they fell in love with each other (I, 3). In the house of Senator Brabantio, Desdemona's father, Othello talked about his difficult life spent in military camps, among skirmishes and battles, about the vicissitudes of fate, about a difficult childhood, captivity and slavery, about barren deserts, gloomy caves, about cliffs and mountain ranges, touching the sky with their peaks. According to Othello, Desdemona fell in love with him “for the disasters that I experienced, and I loved her for my compassion for them.” Thus, a large, disturbing world, with its trials and cruelty, invades the fate of the heroes.

Of course, in magnificent Venice everything was different. But, if we take into account the attitude of Senator Brabantio towards the marriage of his daughter, even here, in a civilized world in which there is an offensive racial hierarchy, Othello could not feel easy and free. That is why he accepted Desdemona’s love as a great blessing, and she herself became for him the embodiment of light and harmony. The words of Othello, thrown as if by chance, acquire a deep meaning: “Wonderful creature! May my soul perish, but I love you! And if I stop loving you, chaos will return again” (III, 3 Translation by M.M. Morozov).

Cyprus, far from Venice, according to ancient legend, was the abode of the goddess of love Aphrodite (Cypris). This island was also supposed to be the abode of pure sincere love for Othello and Desdemona. The crafty, arrogant Venice remained far away. However, the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedy fail to escape this treacherous world. He overtook them in Cyprus in the person of the insidious Iago, the hypocritical ensign Othello, offended by the fact that Othello did not appoint him as his deputy, preferring Cassio to him, who had not yet smelled gunpowder on the battlefield. Knowing well that "the Moor is by nature a free and open soul", considering "those people who only seem so to be honest" (I, 3), Iago builds his low and vile plan on this. The world of Othello and Desdemona is a world of sincere human feelings, Iago's world is a world of Venetian egoism, hypocrisy, cold prudence. Under the pressure of this predatory world, the noble world of lovers collapses. The roots of Shakespeare's tragedy lie precisely in this.

It is clear that in Shakespeare's dramatic concept a large place is given to Iago. His world is, so to speak, an anti-world and at the same time is the real world that replaces humanistic illusions. Iago has his own way of looking at things. He is sure that everything can be bought, that gold conquers all obstacles, that people are selfish by nature. In this regard, his conversation with the Venetian nobleman Rodrigo, in love with Desdemona, is noteworthy: “I tell you, pour money into your wallet - it is impossible for him to love her for a long time. The beginning of love was stormy, and you will see an equally stormy break, pour only money into your wallet..." (I, 2).

In the future, Iago turns all his satanic energy towards Othello and Cassio, whose place he hopes to take. He is an excellent actor, an inventive schemer and a deceiver. Just look at the story about Othello’s handkerchief, which Desdemona allegedly gave to Cassio! Trying to instill in Othello the idea that the immaculate Desdemona is cheating on him with the young, handsome and fair-skinned (!) Cassio, Iago immediately strikes two blows at his opponents. He has another reason to intrigue against Othello. He suspects Othello that he was once the lover of Emilia, his wife. But Iago’s main thing is not jealousy, but self-interest, lust for power, and calculation for a higher position associated with material gain. And meanness defeats noble simplicity and sincerity. Believing Iago's slander, Othello takes Desdemona's life. At the end of the tragedy, dejected by everything that has happened, he speaks about himself to Lodovico, a relative of Brabantio who has just arrived in Cyprus: “If you want, call him an honest murderer; for I did nothing for the sake of hatred, but did everything for the sake of honor” (V, 2).

What do these words from Othello mean? Typically, actors portrayed Othello's emotional drama as unbridled jealousy, as a kind of rage of African blood. Meanwhile, A.S. Pushkin noted that “Othello is not jealous by nature - on the contrary: he is trusting” [A.S. Pushkin about literature. M., 1962. P. 445.] . For Othello, losing faith in Desdemona meant losing faith in man. Having lost Desdemona, Othello lost faith in life. Chaos reigned in his soul. But the murder of Desdemona is not so much an explosion of dark passions as an act of justice. Othello takes revenge both for desecrated love and for a world that has lost harmony. He is not so much a jealous husband as a formidable judge, attacking the world of untruth, baseness and deceit. It is not for nothing that at a critical moment in his existence he speaks of “honor,” investing deep human meaning in this capacious word. And having learned the whole truth, he, like an impartial judge, lays hands on himself (V, 2).

In this regard, it is interesting to compare Shakespeare’s tragedy with Giraldi Ciltio’s novella “The Moor of Venice” (1565) [See: Foreign literature. Renaissance / Comp. B.I. Purishev. M., 1976. pp. 135-145.] from which the English playwright borrowed the plot of his play. In Cintio’s work, this is an ordinary bloody novella, a novella about an unbridled Moor who, out of “the bestial jealousy that has awakened in him,” with the help of a lieutenant (Iago), kills Disdemona (Desdemona) and even under torture does not admit to the crime he has committed. Everything in it is much simpler and more primitive. Its moral is contained in the words of Desdemona: “You Moors are so hot that you lose your temper and seek revenge over every trifle.” And in another place: “I don’t know what to think about the Moor. How could I not become a terrifying example for girls who marry against the will of their parents...” [Ibid. P. 142.]

Shakespeare's tragedy is written in a completely different vein. In her, Othello was able to arouse the love of the educated and intelligent Desdemona. In the Italian novella he doesn't even have his own name - he's just a Moor.

One of Shakespeare's most grandiose works and, in any case, the most mournful is the tragedy "King Lear" (1605), whose plot goes back to the chronicles of R. Holinshed, which repeatedly attracted the attention of the great playwright. The events depicted in the play unfold in ancient, semi-legendary Britain back in the pre-Christian period. The play has repeatedly caused controversy among literary scholars, who interpreted its ideological orientation in different ways and artistic originality. It is known that L.N. Tolstoy, in his essay “On Shakespeare and Drama” (1906), sharply criticized the creative heritage of the English playwright, and in particular the tragedy “King Lear”. Tolstoy was annoyed that Shakespeare continually violated the rules of everyday verisimilitude. But the truth of life, as it was defined in XIX literature century, did not coincide with the artistic practice of the Renaissance. Especially in theatrical works of the Shakespearean era, which were directly focused on the viewer’s ability to perceive conventional techniques. It was enough for the dramatic character to change his clothes, and he was no longer recognized by those closest to him (the Duke of Gloucester and his son Edgar, who appears in the garb of a poor madman - Tom of Bedlam, Earl of Kent and King Lear). Spectators have become accustomed to dressing up and amazing transformations since the days of carnival events. True, "King Lear" is far from a cheerful farce. Although it featured the witty jester who accompanied King Lear on his wanderings, it is one of the most sad works Shakespeare. The world continued to remain a huge theatrical stage for the playwright. It is not for nothing that when it comes to the world, Lear mournfully remarks: “... we cried when we came into the world to this performance with the jesters” (IV, 6).

The atmosphere of majestic acting is aggravated in the tragedy by the fact that its action dates back to legendary, almost fairy-tale times. True, there are no fairies and witches here, but as if out of fairy tales, King Lear himself and his three daughters appeared on the theater stage. The elderly king, in his actions, is least of all guided by common sense. In order to relieve himself of the burden of royal power, he decides to divide his state between his daughters. At the same time, like a child who loves new fun, he wants the transfer of power to be accompanied by a kind of competition in filial devotion and love. The eldest daughters Goneril and Regan, like a memorized speech, pronounce their pompous confessions: the old father is dearer to them than all the treasures of the world, life, its joys, the air itself (I, 1). Of course, there is no truth in these words. This is just an elegant festive mask that should amaze those present. The youngest daughter loves the truth itself. Therefore, she sincerely declares to her father that she loves him, just as a daughter should love her father. Lear is furious. He gives all his possessions to his eldest daughters, and leaves Cordelia with nothing. This, however, does not prevent the noble French king from taking her as his wife.

Life severely punishes the gullible Lear, who preferred a sparkling appearance to a strict but noble essence. Very soon he realizes how frivolous his act was. After all, along with the crown, he lost real power in the country, and it was not difficult for the heartless eldest daughters to deprive him of the last privileges that he counted on (a retinue of one hundred knights). Turning into a beggar wanderer, Lear takes refuge in a wretched shepherd's hut during a storm on the bare steppe.

There are features in all this that are reminiscent of the famous folk tale about the stepmother, evil daughters and Cinderella. Only at the very beginning, the foolish King Lear plays the role of stepmother, and the modest and faithful Cordelia turns out to be Cinderella. Subsequently, the roles in the tragedy change. The evil sisters become stepmothers, and Cordelia shares with Lear the place of the rejected Cinderella. But Shakespeare does not have the happy ending typical of a folk tale.

Closely intertwined with the history of King Lear and his daughters is the history of the Duke of Gloucester, the king's close associate, and his sons - the legal Edgar and the illegal Edmund. Shakespeare found this story in the pastoral novel Arcadia by F. Sidney. In one of the episodes of the novel we are talking about the Paphlagonian king and his two sons, good and evil. The appearance of a second storyline in King Lear should apparently reinforce the idea of ​​the world as an arena in which good and evil forces collide.

In "King Lear" the rampant evil forces reach terrible tension. Lear renounces Cordelia. Is he expelling his loyal Earl of Kent from the kingdom? who dared to condemn Lear's unreasonable arbitrariness. Lear himself sinks to the bottom of life. Regan and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, are put in the stocks of Kent. The Duke of Cornwall plucks out both eyes of the Earl of Gloucester for his devotion to Lear. Out of jealousy, Goneril gives poison to his sister Regan. Capable of any meanness, Edmund orders the death of Cordelia, who was captured by the British after the French army landed on the coast of Britain. Lear dies, depressed by terrible trials. Goneril is stabbed to death. In a fair duel, the noble Edgar kills Edmund, introducing the motive of triumphant justice into the ending of the tragedy.

And yet the picture of the world unfolded in the tragedy is truly terrible and sad. The noble Earl of Gloucester has in the play the role of an exposer of this tragic world, of which he is soon destined to become a victim. It even seems to Gloucester that the abundance of villainies and meannesses that have taken possession of the earth is disconcerting nature itself, sending people eclipses, solar and lunar. In his words, “love is cooling, friendship is weakening, fratricidal strife is everywhere. There are riots in cities, discord in villages, treason in palaces, and the family bond between parents and children is collapsing... Our best time passed. Bitterness, betrayal, disastrous unrest will accompany us to the grave" (I, 2).

The wisdom of the common man is represented in tragedy by the jester (fool), standing on the lowest rung of the social ladder. The jester does not need to be flattered; he is friends with the truth. Without leaving Lear in trouble, he scatters bitter truths in front of him. In his words, “the truth is always driven out of the house like a guard dog, and flattery lies in the room and stinks like an Italian greyhound.” “When you split your crown in two and gave away both halves, you put the donkey on your back to carry it through the mud. Apparently, the brain under your golden crown was not enough that you gave it away.” In the presence of Goneril, the jester says to Lear: “You were quite a nice fellow at a time when you didn’t care whether she frowned or not. And now you’re a zero without a number. Even now I’m bigger than you.”

However, the jester’s sarcasm concerns not only Lear, but also Britain as a whole, in which, in his opinion, everything is turned upside down. The priests are idle, instead of cultivating the land, the artisans cheat, there is no justice in the courts, but theft and debauchery flourish everywhere (III, 2).

But, of course, the most significant figure in the tragedy is Lear himself. It is named after him. We find King Lear at the end of his days. A king “from head to toe,” he was accustomed to honor, blind obedience, and court etiquette. He imagined the whole world as a servile court. Handing over the sovereign crown to his flattering daughters, Lear could not even think that he was taking a fatal step that would upend not only his entire habitual way of life, but also his very idea of ​​the world around him. Shakespeare follows with close attention the spiritual transformation of his hero. We see how the arrogant autocrat, frozen in his usual greatness, becomes a completely different person who has experienced humiliation and grief. The scene in the steppe during a furious storm (III, 1) forms the dramatic peak of the tragedy. The storm in nature corresponds to the storm raging in the soul of Lear, who has turned into one of those unfortunates whom he previously simply did not notice from the height of his throne. In a dilapidated shepherd's hut among the raging elements, he first begins to think about the poor: Homeless, naked wretches,

Where are you now? How will you repel the blows of this severe bad weather - in rags, with your head uncovered and a skinny belly? How little I thought about this before! Here's a lesson for you, arrogant rich man! Take the place of the poor, Feel what they feel, Give them some of your excess, As a sign of the highest justice of heaven. (III, 4. Hereinafter translated by B. Pasternak)

Difficult trials transform the arrogant Lear. Having ceased to be a king, he becomes a man. True, the suffering he endured darkens the mind of the unfortunate old man, and yet, like flashes of lightning among black clouds, bright thoughts flash in his mind. According to N.A. Dobrolyubova, in suffering “everything is revealed best sides his soul; Here we see that he is accessible to generosity, tenderness, compassion for the unfortunate, and the most humane justice. The strength of his character is expressed not only in curses to his daughters, but also in the consciousness of his guilt before Cordelia, and in repentance that he thought so little about the unfortunate poor, loved true honesty so little... Looking at him, we at first feel hatred for this dissolute despot, but following the development of the drama, we become more and more reconciled with him as a person and end up being filled with indignation and burning anger, no longer towards him, but for him and for the whole world - to that wild, inhuman situation that can lead to such dissipation even of people like Lear" [Dobrolyubov N.A. Collected works: In 3 volumes. M., 1952. T. 2. P. 198.].

Shakespeare's play, filled with the deepest tragedy, is at the same time an apology for humanity, which, at the cost of the greatest sacrifices, asserts itself in the minds of the audience. Lear's transformation is a clear example of this. The harsh play ends with the words of the Duke of Alban, condemning the meanness and inhumanity of the eldest daughters of Lear and the Duke of Cornwall:

No matter how much melancholy the soul is struck by, times force us to be firm...

It is not possible to dwell on all of Shakespeare's works. Among the most monumental creations of the English playwright are his Roman tragedies. Interest in Ancient Rome was quite understandable during the Renaissance. Moreover, Roman history was perceived as a classic example of political history. The main source of Shakespeare's Roman tragedies was Plutarch's Lives, translated into English language North (1579). The tragedies "Julius Caesar" (1599), "Antony and Cleopatra" (1607), "Coriolanus" (1607) are filled with the roar of historical upheavals, social conflicts and explosions of human passions. Strong, bright people are at the center of events. For them, “man is the master of fate.” “We ourselves, not the stars, are to blame for our enslavement,” states Cassius in the tragedy “Julius Caesar” (I, 2). The "proud spirit" of Coriolanus (Coriolanus, III, 2) gives greatness to the events that unfold in the play. He raises the hero of the tragedy to great heights. He also serves as the cause of the death of Coriolanus, who, having opposed himself to Rome, ceases to be a support for his homeland.

The tragedy “Timon of Athens” (1608) also goes back to Plutarch. Its action takes place not in Ancient Rome, but in Athens during the time of Alcibiades (5th century BC). The named tragedy has points of contact with Coriolanus. Like Coriolanus, Timon of Athens renounces his native city, leaves it and treats his former fellow citizens with hatred. Only in Coriolanus this hatred is the result of his socio-political views. An arrogant aristocrat, he treats plebeian circles with contempt. Timon of Athens is far from politics and government affairs. His renunciation of Athens has a purely moral basis. A rich man, he squandered all his property on imaginary friends, confident that all people are virtuous and at the right moment will show themselves as generous and worthy friends. But he was cruelly mistaken. His faith turned out to be ephemeral and naive. All his friends were motivated only by self-interest. Only Flavius, the humble servant of Timon, who truly loved and appreciated his kind master, turned out to be a worthy person. All this led Timon to misanthropy, to a loss of faith in man. The root of this sad moral degradation peace is rooted in self-interest. And not only Timon understood this bitter truth. One of the strangers who wandered into Athens sadly notes that “calculation has now begun to win over conscience” (III, 2). Gold has become the emblem of time and its submission to the impulses of greed, and Timon pronounces a passionate monologue in which he talks about the destructive influence of the precious metal on man and society. After all, with the help of gold everything black can be made whiter, everything vile can be made beautiful, everything low can be made high; gold is a visible god, the all-world concubine, the cause of enmity and wars of nations (IV, 3).

In the last years of his life, Shakespeare did not create a single work that could be put on a par with King Lear or Macbeth, not to mention Hamlet. He even returned to the comedy genre, only his later comedies “All's Well That Ends Well” (1603) and “Measure for Measure” (1604) were far from carnival love of life. It is no coincidence that they are called "dark comedies" and the plays that complete it creative path, - tragicomedies. This does not mean that Shakespeare stopped noticing the tragic features that furrow the face of the earthly world. In the comedy "All's Well That Ends Well" the feudal swagger that forced Count Bertram to reject the young, smart, beautiful Elena, who loves him, does not evoke sympathy simply because she is the daughter of a poor doctor. By the will of the playwright, the French king himself condemns feudal arrogance (II, 3). The direct indignation of the audience is caused by the viceroy of the Austrian Duke Angelo (“Measure for Measure”), a vile hypocrite, in order to assert his power, he is ready to break his word to Isabella, the selfless sister of the nobleman Claudio, who was condemned to death. If it had not been for the Austrian Duke, who, like Harun al Rashid, watched the actions of his minions unrecognized, everything could have ended quite sadly.

Shakespeare continued to highly value the humanity and nobility of the human spirit, which, however, triumphs on the stage only in fairy-tale situations created by the poet’s imagination. This fairy-tale element is especially noticeable in the late tragicomedies that complete the writer’s creative career. Thus, in the tragicomedies "Cymbeline" (1610), the features of popular folk tales known to various nations clearly appear. Firstly, these are the machinations of the evil stepmother (queen), who is ready to destroy her stepdaughter (Imogen, the daughter of King Cymbeline of Britain from her first marriage), and subsequently her husband, Cymbeline, so that power in the kingdom passes to her stupid, insignificant son from Cloten's first marriage. Imogen's escape is associated with echoes of the fairy tale about Snow White (a forest cave, good gnomes). Only instead of gnomes, the noble Belarius, a courtier expelled by Cymbeline, and the king’s two sons, young and beautiful, the legitimate heirs of the British throne, live here. With the full sympathy of the author, Belarius condemns the arbitrariness generated by feudal arrogance and which almost destroyed Imogen. After all, the chosen one of her heart - the humble nobleman Postumus Leonatus - is endowed with many perfections and is not comparable in this regard with the insignificant, although high-born Cloten.

The title of the next tragicomedy, “The Winter's Tale” (1611), directly indicates its fairy-tale basis. Everything here is shaky and bizarre. Here Bohemia is washed by sea waters (II, 3), and Queen Hermione, the wife of the jealous King of Sicily Leontes, is the daughter of the Russian emperor (!) (III, 2). Here, suddenly and without reason, Leontes’s awakened jealousy knows no bounds. Here, as in a fairy tale, the newborn daughter of Hermione and Leontes, the ill-fated Perdita (Loss), is ordered by her father, distraught with jealousy, to be taken into the forest and left there to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. And, as in a fairy tale, abandoned to the mercy of fate, the girl does not die, but, found by a kind old shepherd, grows up in his modest hut. Over time, having found her real parents, the imaginary shepherdess becomes the wife of the Bohemian prince Florizel, who fell in love with her when she was still living among the shepherds. And at the end of the play, to the surprise of people, a statue depicting the supposedly dead Hermione, supposedly created by the famous Italian artist Giulio Romano, “comes to life” (V, 2). A happy ending thus crowns the tragicomedy. Shakespeare tried to make her as entertaining and elegant as possible. He introduced into it the amusing figure of the cheerful tramp Autolycus, who trades in petty scams, performing folk ballads, and also selling trinkets of all kinds (V, 4). This does not happen without dressing up, in which, in addition to Autolycus, the Bohemian king Polyxenes himself takes part. The play is decorated with pastoral scenes dedicated to the rural sheep shearing festival. Young Perdita appears in the clothes of the goddess Flora (V, 4). The theme of spring confronts the world of dark human passions in the play. Perdita presents the guests with elegant flowers - here are rosemary and rue, daffodils and violets, lilies and irises (IV, 4). Shakespeare, as it were, weaves wreaths in honor of life. And life wins the play. As one of the Sicilian courtiers says, “so many miracles have been revealed in just one hour that the writers of ballads will find it difficult to cope with it.” According to him, “all this news” is “like an old fairy tale” (V, 2), and an old fairy tale is always favorable to people.

Shakespeare's last dramatic work was The Tempest (1612). Once again we have before us a tragicomedy, again a fairy tale, and at the same time a fairy tale that is “favorable to people.” The fairy-tale element in The Tempest is expressed even more clearly than in earlier tragicomedies. So, if in The Winter's Tale the action is confined to Bohemia, which, however, has turned into a sea power, then the events in The Tempest unfold on a deserted fairy-tale island that once belonged to the evil sorceress Sycorax and her disgusting son Caliban. The bright spirit of the air Ariel became a victim of her dark malice (I, 2). In the play, miraculous events happen all the time. But they are not interesting in themselves, as in the court “masks” of that time or on the stage of the Baroque theater. Fairy-tale enchanting elements form only an elegant frame for the humanistic content of the play. Fairytale plot, chosen by Shakespeare, conceals deep life wisdom, and therefore life truth. We learn that the Duke of Milan Prospero is dethroned and expelled from Milan by his power-hungry brother Antonio. Finding himself on a deserted island, Prospero, by the power of magical spells, subjugated the gloomy Caliban and the bright spirit of Ariel, making him his faithful assistant. Soon, a storm caused by the magical art of Prospero throws the Milanese usurper Antonio onto the island with the King of Naples Alonzo, to whom he handed over Milan, a number of courtiers, a jester, a drunken butler, as well as Ferdinand, worthy son Neapolitan king. Prospero gathered them all on the island to untie the tragic knot tied in Milan. But with bad people, human vices penetrate the island: Alonzo’s brother Sebastian, together with the usurper Antonio, is going to kill the King of Naples in order to seize his throne. The drunken butler Stefano wants to kill Prospero and, having captured Miranda, become the ruler of the island. Lust for power haunts people. Vice rages in their hearts. The same Stefano is ready to steal everything that comes to hand (IV, 1). However, there are decent people on the island. This is the wise Prospero, his daughter Miranda and the young, handsome Ferdinand. The young people fell in love with each other. Prospero blessed their marriage. At the sight of Ferdinand and other people, Miranda exclaimed: “Oh, a miracle! What beautiful creatures here! How good the human race is! The world of such people is beautiful!” (V, 1. Translated by T.L. Shchepkina-Kupernik).

The small island created by Shakespeare's imagination becomes, as it were, a fragment of a big noisy world. It is no coincidence that events begin with a storm, which gives the name to tragicomedy. The storm turns the island into a whirlwind of human affairs. Here beauty comes into contact with ugliness, nobility with baseness. This is where true love and human wisdom find themselves. Prospero defeats the dark forces of selfishness. After all, villains repent of their criminal acts and plans. The usurper Antonio returns the throne of Milan to Prospero. Ferdinand and Miranda are united in a happy marriage. The bright spirit Ariel gains freedom. Harmony is restored in a troubled world. Prospero no longer needs the power of magic, and he renounces it, deciding to break his magic rod and bury the magic book at sea (V, 1).

As one might expect, the fairy tale ends with a happy ending. Meanwhile, the viewer remains aware that harmony has been restored only in a fairy tale. Isn’t that why Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” is shrouded in a haze of sadness? Isn’t that why Prospero says to Ferdinand, watching the nymphs dance:

Our fun is over. The actors, as I already told you, were spirits and melted in the air like steam. Just like these light visions, just like lush palaces and towers, crowned with clouds, and temples, and the very globe of the earth will someday disappear and, like a cloud, melt away. We ourselves are created from dreams, And the Dream surrounds this little life of ours... (IV, 1).

Here Shakespeare came closer than anywhere else to the wisdom of the Baroque. Yet The Tempest does not make Shakespeare a baroque writer. In one of his most “Renaissance” comedies, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” he addressed the realm of dreams. Only there “dreams” meant vivid theatricality and unusual plot twists. However, “The Tempest” is also characterized by a bright theatricality. Despite all the fabulous equipment of the play, the person does not become a ghost. He, as it should be in a Renaissance work, remains the sovereign of this world.

Of course, Prospero’s “miracles” do not go beyond the boundaries of a fairy tale, but fairy tales that affirm, and not reject, life.

This is the manuscript of B.I. Purisheva ends.

Municipal district Yeisk district

(territorial, administrative district (city, district, village)

Municipal educational institution

secondary school No. 3 of Yeysk municipality

Yeisk district

(full name educational institution)

Open lesson according to literature.

"Romeo and Juliet"

8th grade

Teacher: Demchenko O.S.

2012-2013 academic year

Literature lesson using elements research activities and technologies for problem-based study of material.

8th grade

“The experience of reading William Shakespeare's tragedy

"Romeo and Juliet"

Objective of the lesson: get acquainted with the work of the great playwright,

consider different interpretations of the play Romeo and Juliet

Lesson objectives:

- identify the main problems of William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet;

Develop the skill of interpreting works of art;

Develop the concept of conflict as the basis of the plot of a dramatic work.

Equipment: presentation about the life and work of the playwright, exhibition of various editions of William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”.

Lesson progress:

Teacher's word :

Today, starting a conversation about tragedyWilliam Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the great playwright created his works in the era that later became known as the Renaissance (XIV- XVIIcentury). This was a time when the nobility lost its former power, and the church weakened its spiritual oppression. It was a time when trade and industry flourished rapidly, and great geographical discoveries were made. Reviving ancient culture, this era proclaimed the main value of the worldperson . The new humanistic ideology affirmed a new view of man, which was based on faith in his strength and abilities, in his active creative energy.

According to humanists, a person must be honest, kind, spiritually and physically developed, and most importantly, free.

Having studied William Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet, one of the research groups had to try to answer the question:

-Does this work belong to Renaissance literature? Let's hear them.

2. The first group of “researchers” reports on the most interesting and important, in their opinion, facts of the biography and work of William Shakespeare.

Information for teachers:

(SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616), English playwright, poet, actor of the Renaissance. In world history, he is undoubtedly the most famous and significant playwright who had a huge influence on the development of all theatrical art. Stage works Shakespeare is still on stage today all over the world.
Born in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon on April 23, 1564. He came from a family of merchants and artisans. Studied in the so-called "grammar school", where the main subject was Latin and the basics of Greek. At school he gained extensive knowledge of ancient mythology, history and literature, which was reflected in his work. In 1582 he married A. Hasway (Hathaway), from whose marriage he had three children. However, around 1587 he left Stratford-upon-Avon and his family and moved to London. It is considered likely that Shakespeare became a professional actor as early as the late 1580s; and from 1590 he began his dramatic activity. In those years, there was little to predict that Shakespeare would become not only the world's most famous playwright, but also one of the most mysterious personalities in history. There are still a lot of hypotheses (first put forward at the end of the 18th century) that his plays belong to the pen of a completely different person. Over the more than two centuries of existence of these versions, about 30 different candidates were put forward for the “role” of the author of these plays - from Francis Bacon and Christopher Marlowe to the pirate Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth. There have been versions that under the name of Shakespeare there is a whole group of authors hiding - and this is undoubtedly prompted by the unprecedented versatility of Shakespeare's creative heritage: his palette includes tragedy, comedy, historical chronicles, baroque dramas, lyrical and philosophical poetry - let's remember the famous sonnets.

After 1603, the playwright was closely associated with the Globe, on whose stage almost all the plays he wrote were staged. The design of the Globus hall predetermined the combination of spectators from a variety of social and property classes at one performance, while the theater could accommodate at least 1,500 spectators. The playwright and actors faced the most difficult task of holding the attention of a diverse audience. Shakespeare's plays met this task to the maximum extent, enjoying success with audiences of all categories. Around 1610, Shakespeare left London and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. Until 1612 he did not lose touch with the theater: in 1611 the Winter's Tale was written, in 1612 - the last dramatic work, The Tempest. Recent years life moved away from literary activity, and lived quietly and unnoticed with his family. This was probably due to a serious illness - this is indicated by Shakespeare's surviving will, clearly drawn up hastily on March 15, 1616 and signed in a changed handwriting. On April 23, 1616, the most famous playwright of all times died in Stratford-upon-Avon.)

3. Shakespeare's work is mainly associated with dramatic art. The author himself did not seek to see his works published: they were intended primarily for production on stage.

All dramatic works comedies, tragedies, and dramas have some commonality. At the heart of any dramatic action is conflict. Conflict- the basis of the plot. It manifests itself in the clash of people, interests, positions. In a tragedy, the conflict is insoluble, it, as a rule, leads the hero to death. The rest of the participants in the tragedy are involved in the conflict, it is experienced by everyone.

The experiences depicted in the tragedy are conveyed to the audience and readers. Through sympathy for suffering, tragic fate The hero reveals one of the most important aspects of human life, defines the boundaries of good and evil, and reveals true and imaginary values.

Let's turn to tragedy « Romeo and Juliet."

4 . "Romeo and Juliet" - a tragedy in 5 acts tells about the love of a young man and a girl from two warring ancient families - and.

The work is usually dated to 1594-95. The reliability of this story has not been established, but the signs of the historical background and life motives present in the Italian basis of the plot provide a certain plausibility to the sad story of the Verona lovers.

The ancient analogue of the tragedy of faithful lovers is the story told in “Metamorphoses” by the Roman poet (43 BC - 17 AD)

The play, entitled “The Most Excellent and Sorrowful Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet,” was officially published in London in 1599. The theme of the work in turn gave rise to a long series of variations in literature and other forms of art, which continues to this day.

Prologue

Two equally respected families
In Verona, where events meet us,
There are internecine fights
And they don’t want to stop the bloodshed.
The children of the leaders love each other,
But fate plays tricks on them,
And their death at the grave doors
Puts an end to irreconcilable strife.
Their life, love and death and, moreover,
The peace of their parents on their grave
For two hours they will make up a creature
Were being played out before you.
Have mercy on the weaknesses of the pen -
The game will try to smooth them out.

There is enmity between the noble Montague and Capulet families.

The house is getting ready happy holiday. Mercutio and Benvolio persuade Romeo to sneak into the ball with them at the Capulet house, wearing masks. Rosalina, the niece of the owner of the house, will also be there. The ball is in full swing. Tybalt, Juliet's cousin, recognizes Romeo as a representative of a hostile family. Signor Capulet stops the hot-tempered Tybalt. But Romeo doesn't notice anything. Having forgotten about Rosalina, he cannot take his eyes off the unfamiliar girl of radiant beauty. This is Juliet. She also feels an irresistible attraction to an unfamiliar young man. Romeo kisses Juliet. They find out what abyss separates them.

Juliet dreams aloud about Romeo. Romeo comes to her balcony and hears these speeches. He responds to them with passionate confession. Under the cover of night, young people take an oath of love and fidelity to each other.

5. The happy dreams of this couple in love were not destined to come true: death in four days would end their lives.

- What or who was to blame for this? (The second group of “researchers” report their findings.(Probably, the heads of two warring families, Tybalt, fate will be named. It is worth dwelling on each version.)

G. Burton, one of the Shakespeare scholars, argued that "to some extent the sad death of young people is caused by their characters and temperament: they are young and ardent, impatient and full of passion."

Another literary scholar , Whitaker goes even further, arguing that the heroes "especially Romeo, for a variety of reasons, deserve moral blame and are partly responsible for their own tragedy."

-Do you agree with this opinion?

- Can we say that the love of Romeo and Juliet was real?

-Prove your point of view.

(Of course, yes. The monologue of the main characters (act II, scene two) serves as confirmation of this: we pay attention to various visual and expressive means. Numerous metaphors, comparisons, rhetorical appeals, exclamations, etc. are a truly poetic expression of strong feelings, except Moreover, having exchanged confessions, the heroes immediately decide to link their lives by getting married secretly.)

That same day, Tybalt and Mercutio come face to face. The quarrel quickly turns into a sword fight. Romeo tries in vain to separate the opponents. Tybalt mortally wounds Mercutio. Romeo, enraged, rushes after Tybalt. After a long, bitter struggle, Romeo kills Tybalt.

Tybalt, deliberately insulting Romeo, was unable to provoke reciprocal anger; Mercutio stood up for his friend’s honor... and dies.

Romeo, enraged, rushes after Tybalt. After a long, bitter struggle, Romeo kills Tybalt.

Let's see how it went. (Staging of scenes of two fights)

-Could it have been otherwise?

( It is no coincidence that Mercutio is called Romeo's best friend. He simply could not help but stand up for his friend’s honor. But the fight might not end in death

Tybalt, although he was too cocky and irreconcilable and would probably soon find a new reason. T.O., the dramatic plot has its own logic.)

6. A happy ending in a tragedy is unnatural. And the fate of our

The characters have been touching the souls of viewers and readers for four centuries.

-Why?(The theme of love and death is the main one in this work; it belongs to the category of “eternal” themes in literature. Let’s listen to the report of the third group of our “researchers” about this.

The tragedy ends with the death of Romeo and Juliet, but at their grave the heads of the warring families extend their hands to each other. Peace is concluded. In Verona, a monument is erected to Juliet, who “sacredly preserved her fidelity,” and to Romeo, who was worthy of it.

Homework:

1.What questions would you like answered after reading the play?

2. Why does the tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” continue to live and excite today’s readers?

At the end of the lesson, a short test.

Test work on W. Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet.

Determine what the conflict of the tragedy is.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Give (brief) characterization of Romeo. Who is he: a noble young man, endowed with an ardent heart, or a frivolous talker (loves Rosaline in the morning, and Juliet in the evening)?_____________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Is this play about love? Whose love? Is this love? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4.Which of the characters did you like the most? Why?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________5.Why do you think the play was written?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

External conflict in Shakespeare's most profound works is the basis for a different kind of dramatic conflict occurring in the mental world of his heroes. However, before saying this, we must decisively reject the underestimation of the external conflict. It is incorrect, and indeed impossible, to reduce the essence of Shakespeare’s dramaticism to pure psychologism. If we draw an analogy between art and life, then the external action in Shakespeare’s plays is objective reality, life circumstances, while states of mind his characters are a subjective, deeply personal reaction of a person to the world. For a person, the life process consists of the interaction of these principles. People exist in real world, and everything that happens in their souls, in their consciousness, is inseparable from reality, makes sense only in connection with it. In the same way, it is impossible to separate from each other the external dramatic circumstances and the spiritual dramas of Shakespeare's heroes. Shakespeare pays no less attention to the artistic reproduction of the conditions in which his heroes live than to the expression of spiritual movements. From the point of view of verisimilitude, the external circumstances in Shakespeare's dramas are not always accurate, but they are adapted to create exactly the environment that is necessary to give drama to the fate of the heroes.

This is obvious in a play like Romeo and Juliet. The discord between the Montague and Capulet families gives a special drama to the passion of the young heroes. If their parents lived in peace, their children's love would be idyllic. The feelings of Romeo and Juliet themselves are harmonious. But the hero and heroine are fully aware that external circumstances put their love in conflict with the conditions in which they live. This is emphasized in the words of the Chorus between the first and second acts:

Romeo loves and is loved by the beautiful
In both, beauty gives birth to passion.
He prays to the enemy; from a dangerous fishing rod
She must steal the bait of love.
As the sworn enemy of the family, he does not dare
Whisper tender words and vows of love to her.
Moreover, he has no opportunity
She will see him somewhere.
But passion will give strength, time will give a date
And sweetness will soften all their suffering.

(II, Pr., 5. TSCHK)

We are talking here not just about external obstacles that prevent the union of Romeo and Juliet, but about a fundamentally new attitude to love that arose during the Renaissance.

Medieval knightly love was extramarital love - the knight worshiped the wife of his feudal lord, and they had to guard the secret of their relationship. The Renaissance strives for the unity of love and marriage. In The Comedy of Errors, Adriana ensures that her relationship with her husband is not a formal union, but is based on mutual love. All of Shakespeare's comedies affirm the Renaissance understanding of love that ends in marriage. Romeo and Juliet strive for the same thing. The first proof of love that Juliet requires is Romeo's consent to get married immediately, and he happily agrees to this. But, as we know, they were not given the simplest in the eyes of man, the Renaissance of happiness - open recognition of their love and its legal registration in marriage. This gives special acuteness to their feelings, which is always the result of obstacles that make open communication between lovers impossible. Family feud invades the spiritual world of the heroes.

When Romeo, after his secret wedding with Juliet, encounters Tybalt, he tries to establish a new relationship with him:

   I, Tybalt, have a reason
Loving you; she forgives you
All the fury of angry words.

(III, 1, 65. TSCHK)

But the murder of Mercutio puts an end to Romeo's conciliatory attitude; he fights Tybalt and, avenging his friend, kills him. The tangle of relationships turns out to be very complex:

My best friend - and well, mortally wounded
Because of me! Tybalt my honor
Scolded! Tybalt - the one with whom
I got married an hour ago!

(III, 1, 115. TSCHK)

What a mental storm Romeo is going through: love for a friend collides with love for Juliet. For the sake of Juliet, he should not take revenge on her relative, but friendship and duty of honor require otherwise, and Romeo follows their orders. Without thinking about the consequences, he acts under the impression of the death of his friend. This act, as we know, turns out to be fatal: Romeo, who wanted to take the first step towards reconciling the clans and extended his hand to Tybalt, killing him, further incites enmity, and exposes himself to ducal punishment. True, it turns out to be relatively mild - Romeo is not executed, but only expelled, but for him, separation from Juliet is tantamount to death.

Juliet also does not remain aloof from the family feud. Like Romeo, she, too, at first thought that the barrier separating their families was easy to cross. It seemed to her that Montague was only a name and that human essence was more important than family feuds. But, having learned that Romeo killed Tybalt, Juliet flares up with anger like a real Capulet; she curses the killer (by the way, in magnificent oxymorons):

O bush of flowers with a lurking snake!
A dragon in a charming guise!
A fiend with an angelic face!
Fake pigeon! A wolf in sheep's clothing!
A nonentity with the features of a deity!
Empty appearance! Contradiction!
Saint and scoundrel in one flesh!
What does nature do in the underworld?
When she possesses Satan
With such an endearing appearance?

(III, 2, 73. BP)

But love quickly overcomes family affections in Juliet. The individual turns out to be stronger than the generic feeling, and Juliet begins to say the exact opposite:

Should I blame my wife? Poor husband
Where can you hear a good word?
When his wife doesn't say it either
In the third hour of marriage? Ah, robber,
He killed his cousin!
But would it be better if in a fight
Did this robber kill you, brother?

(III, 2, 97. BP)

The mental struggle was short-lived for Romeo and Juliet - they are generally quick in their feelings. It is not duration, but strength that serves as the measure of their experiences, and their passion is great.

It must be admitted, however, that although Romeo and Juliet feel the contradictions of their position, there is no internal conflict in their love itself. This does not deprive the work of tragedy. Beautiful, ideal passion turned out to be in conflict with the enmity of loving families; Hegel himself recognized such a collision as quite tragic.

In “Julius Caesar” we already encounter an internal conflict, which is closely related to the state conflict. Brutus admits:

I haven't been able to sleep since Cassius
He told me about Caesar.
Between the execution of terrible plans
And the first impulse is the interval
Looks like a ghost or a bad dream:
Our mind and all the members of the body argue...

(II, 1, 61. MZ)

Macbeth says almost the same thing (cf. I, 7, 1, see p. 130). It is alien to Brutus’s open nature to enter into a secret conspiracy; the very idea of ​​a conspiracy is deeply unpleasant to him. Resorting to the figure of personification, Brutus says:

         Oh conspiracy.
Are you ashamed to show yourself at night?
When evil has its way. So where is it during the day?
You will find such a dark cave,
To hide your terrible face? There is no such thing.
It’s better to cover it with a smile:
After all, if you don't embellish it,
That is Erebus himself and all the underground darkness
It won't hurt to figure you out.

(II, 1, 77. MZ)

Brutus here expresses the objective, author's attitude to a conspiracy, but it coincides with what he should feel as an honest Roman. This can be seen from his further behavior in the conspiracy scene. When Cassius demands that everyone swear, Brutus declares: “There is no need for oaths” (II, 1, 115). A Roman's word is enough; honor is a reliable guarantee of fidelity to the cause. Cassius proposes to deal with Caesar's supporters. Brutus is against letting the plot to restore the republic turn into a bloodbath:

We rebelled against the spirit of Caesar,
But in the human spirit there is no blood.
Oh, if only we could do it without killing
Break the spirit of Caesar!

(II, 1, 167. MZ)

Brutus regrets that a bloodless coup is impossible. He would like to do without shedding blood, not only from the principle of humanity in general, but also because of the feelings he has for Caesar. Cassius convinces Brutus that the conspiracy has noble goals in mind. Brutus hoped that it would be possible to limit himself to the elimination of Caesar. An idealist in politics, he makes a fatal mistake for himself and for the whole business, insisting that Anthony not be killed. When, after all the vicissitudes, Brutus commits suicide, he utters significant words:

O Caesar, without sorrow,
I would rather kill myself than you!

(V, 5, 50. MZ)

The fact that Brutus remembers Caesar before his death reflects his constant check whether he did the right thing by raising his hand against the dictator. After initial hesitation, Brutus seemed to be convinced of the need to kill Caesar, but then everything did not go as he expected. The just cause was defeated, and this, in his eyes, casts doubt on the expediency of the conspiracy against Caesar. Brutus retains mental fortitude to the end in the face of danger and death, but the thought of Caesar that does not leave him best demonstrates that he was never able to justify in his own eyes the murder he committed.

If we ignore many philosophical and psychological speculations about the hero of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy, then for Shakespeare and his contemporaries the central moral problem Hamlet's story was close to the one outlined in Brutus's internal conflict. Without in any way rejecting philosophical meaning tragedy, one should still not neglect its plot and the real dramatic situation in which the hero is placed.

Let us remember: the ghost places on Hamlet the duty of revenge for two of Claudius' crimes - the murder of the king and an incestuous marriage with his brother's widow (I, 5, 25 and 80). Critics who wonder why Hamlet, after meeting the ghost, does not immediately rush at Claudius and stab him with a dagger, forget about many circumstances that Shakespeare introduced into the traditional genre of revenge tragedy in order to take it beyond these narrow boundaries and give it universal interest. .

Unlike previous images of avengers in English Renaissance drama, Hamlet is not a character who embodies only one retribution. If this were so, the question of why he hesitated would have some basis. But Hamlet is not a one-sided character, having only one goal in life - revenge, but a multifaceted human personality. The content of the tragedy goes far beyond the theme of revenge. Love, friendship, marriage, relationships between children and parents, external war and rebellion within the country - this is the range of topics directly touched upon in the play. And next to them are philosophical and psychological problems, over which Hamlet’s thought struggles: the meaning of life and the purpose of man, death and immortality, spiritual strength and weakness, vice and crime, the right to revenge and murder. But no matter how extensive the content of the tragedy is, it has a dramatic core.

Hamlet's revenge is not resolved by a simple blow of a dagger. Even its practical implementation encounters serious obstacles. Claudius has reliable security and cannot be approached. But the external obstacle is less significant than the moral and political task that faces the hero. To carry out revenge, he must commit murder, that is, the same crime that lies on the soul of Claudius. Hamlet's revenge cannot be a secret murder, it must become a public punishment for the criminal. To do this, it is necessary to make it obvious to everyone that Claudius is a vile murderer.

Hamlet has a second task - to convince his mother that she has committed a serious moral violation by entering into an incestuous marriage. Hamlet's revenge must be not only a personal, but also an act of state, and he is aware of this. This is the external side of a dramatic conflict.

It is complicated by a deep spiritual breakdown - Hamlet has lost faith in the value of life, in love, everything seems disgusting to him. To fulfill the task assigned to him, one must have an inner conviction that it makes sense to fight. We are witnesses to the mental struggle experienced by the hero. For our time, this side of the tragedy is of greatest interest, because it reveals the birth of the psychology of man of modern times. But, unfortunately, too often the drama of this process is lost sight of due to the neglect of the unity of action, character and thought in the play. The contradictions in the hero’s behavior and speeches are consequences of a special artistic method, used by Shakespeare. If we believe in one of the axioms of Shakespearean criticism - that Hamlet's character develops - then we can only admit that development does not necessarily proceed in a straight line. Shakespeare shows the development of personality that occurs dramatically, so it is natural that it occurs in leaps and transitions from one extreme to another.

Above, certain passages of the tragedy “Hamlet” were repeatedly cited, in which the problems facing the hero are unambiguously expressed, so here it is enough to confine ourselves to a brief indication of how external and internal conflicts are defined in the tragedy itself. Claudius's crime is a moral plague that has infected the entire country. Not only Hamlet, but also other characters, partly even Claudius himself, is aware of this. General corruption raises before the hero the question of human nature, and he loses faith in the optimistic ideal of humanism, that man is inherently good. The difficulty of the task requires Hamlet to comprehend the ways and goals of revenge. On this basis, a discord arises between thought and will, desire and action. Trying to be guided by reason, Hamlet, however, acts impulsively, and his rash actions create the opportunity for Claudius to gain an ally in the fight against the prince, which becomes the immediate cause of the hero’s death.

Hamlet is aware of the inferiority of his personality and understands the danger of his internal discord. He understands that not only a vice, but even a small flaw or weakness stains a person. Using the technique of dramatic irony, Shakespeare sometimes puts thoughts into the speeches of characters general, and at first it seems as if they have a purely external meaning, whereas in fact they concern the essence of the action. When Hamlet, at the beginning of the tragedy, goes with the guards to see if the ghost will appear, a feast takes place in the palace. Hamlet argues that under Claudius, widespread drunkenness developed in Denmark, disgracing the entire country. Although the love of wine is not the worst of vices, it does cause great harm to the reputation of the people. In this regard, Hamlet remarks:

It also happens to an individual,
What, for example, is a birthmark,
Of which he is innocent, for it is true
I didn’t choose my parents,
Or a strange warehouse of the soul, in front of which
Mind gives up, or defect
In manners, offending habits, -
It happens, in a word, that an empty flaw,
Whether in the family or one's own, it destroys a person
In the opinion of everyone, be his valor,
Like the grace of God, pure and countless.
And all from this stupid drop of evil,
And immediately all the good things go down the drain.

(I, 4, 23. BP)

All surrounding life decomposes from a drop of evil penetrating into human souls. But that's not all. Shakespeare's heroes are endowed with a special sense of personal dignity; they have little internal consciousness of their virtue. Humanistic morality borrowed from chivalry the idea that moral virtues should be publicly demonstrated and received public recognition. Therefore, for Hamlet the question of his reputation is important. In order to fight, he pretended to be crazy, behaved strangely, but when the last moment of parting with life comes, he does not want to leave it tainted. His last wish- so that Horatio would tell the truth about him to the “uninitiated” (V, 2, 352). He is afraid to leave behind a “wounded name” (V, 2, 355). When Horatio wants to drink poison to die with his friend, Hamlet stops him:

Be my friend and sacrifice bliss,
Breathe the heavy air of the earth.
Stay in this world and be told
About my life

(V, 2, 357. BP)

Needless to say, the circumstances of Hamlet’s life and death are complex, but throughout the entire tragedy runs the thought of his nobility as a person and how difficult it is to remain unsullied in a world poisoned by evil.

In Othello, the hero falls into error, and the true meaning of what he has done is revealed to him too late. In Macbeth, the hero knows from the very beginning what the essence of his tragedy is; Shakespeare puts words into Macbeth's mouth that express the essence of the hero's internal conflict:

In a little bit of your life you will set a bloody example,
She'll give you a lesson.
You pour poison into the cup, but justice
Brings this poison to your lips.

(I, 7, 8. BP)

Having committed murder, Macbeth deprived himself of peace - killed sleep -

     An innocent dream, that dream
Which quietly winds the threads
With a tangle of worries, he buries his days in peace,
Gives tired workers rest
Healing balm for the soul,
Sleep is a miracle of mother nature,
The most delicious dish in the earthly feast.

(II, 2, 37. BP)

With his crimes, Macbeth placed himself outside of humanity. Instead of the expected benefits, the crown brought him constant worries, he rejected everyone from himself and remained in terrible loneliness:

       I lived
Until autumn, until the yellow leaf.
For what brightens up our old age -
For devotion, love and a circle of friends, -
I have no right to count. Curses
Covered with cowardly flattery, -
This is what is left for me, the breath of life,
Which I wouldn't mind stopping
When could I part with her?

(V, 3, 22. BP)

The terrible mental struggle he experienced, the horrors with which he filled the life of the country - everything turned out to be in vain. Macbeth comes to the conclusion that life in general is fruitless; he equates it to an ephemeral theatrical performance, and a person to an actor who briefly grimaces on stage. These thoughts are expressed in such an impressive poetic form that they can be mistaken for the opinions of Shakespeare himself. But this magnificent monologue is inseparable from Macbeth’s personal fate: “sound and fury” turned out to be of no use in his life, but not at all, because this is opposed by the “official” moral of the play, expressed in the victory of Malcolm. But this undoubtedly positive character looks pale next to the “negative” Macbeth and does not evoke any emotions, while the personality of the villain has a certain magical appeal. While certainly condemning Macbeth's crime, Shakespeare revealed it human tragedy, without at all mitigating his guilt.

In King Lear, the hero's guilt hardly needs to be talked about at all. Shakespeare very accurately determined the degree of guilt of the old king, putting into his mouth the words:

         I'm not like that
Before others I am sinful, like others -
In front of me.

(III, 2, 60. BP)

The old king admits that he made a mistake, and the jester never tires of reminding him that even Cordelia, whom he expelled, was not deprived by Lear as much as his eldest daughters were deprived. Lear's tragedy is not associated with a crime, although he violated the order of his life by dividing the kingdom and curse youngest daughter. But the misfortune that happened to Lear constitutes the external side of the tragedy. Its essence, as we know, consists in a mental shock through which he comes to a completely new understanding of life. His ideal becomes pure humanity, freedom from those social obligations and connections that prevent people from being people in the true sense of the word. After all the trials, he finds this ideal in Cordelia. It is true happiness for him that she, having forgotten the insult, is moved pure love, returned with the sole purpose of helping him. The return of Cordelia seems to crown the truth about life that Lear found in his suffering. It is about love and mercy. Cordelia is their living embodiment. To lose Cordelia now, when the whole meaning of life is focused on her, means for Lear to lose everything. Having taken his daughter out of the noose, Lear thinks that she will come to life, and then hope awakens in him:

         this moment
It will atone for everything that I have suffered in life.

(V, 3, 265. BP)

But he was wrong, and his grief knows no bounds:

The poor thing was strangled! No, he's not breathing!
A horse, a dog, a rat can live,
But not for you. You're gone forever
Forever, forever, forever, forever, forever!

(V, 3, 305. BP)

The most beautiful of living beings perishes, and the lower species of the animal world (the reader, of course, remembers the great chain of being) survive. This is how the victory of evil over good is metaphorically expressed. In his old age, Lear experienced too much, more than a man can bear, and dies. When Edgar tries to bring Lear to his senses, Kent stops him:

     Don't torture. Leave it
His spirit is at peace. Let him go.
Who do you have to be to jerk again
Him on the rack of life for torment?

(V, 3, 313. BP)

Mark Antony is depicted twice by Shakespeare. The first time we see him is in “Julius Caesar,” and here he appears as a cunning politician, a clever demagogue and, most importantly, a man in complete control of himself. In “Antony and Cleopatra” he is no longer like that. True, he retained the ability to be cunning in politics, but everything that he decides with reason is then overturned by passion.

Antony's tragedy is already defined in the first speech, which opens the dramatic story about the Roman triumvir and the Egyptian queen:

Our commander has gone completely mad!
That proud look that before the army
Shined like Mars, clad in armor,
Now forward with prayerful delight
In a pretty gypsy face,
And a powerful heart, from whose beats
The fasteners of the armor were torn in battles,
Now he humbly serves as a fan,
The love fervor of the libertine is freezing.

(I, 1, 1. MD)

In essence, this is nothing more than a prologue, a speech outlining the content of the play, its main dramatic situation. When Anthony experienced all the bitterness of Cleopatra’s betrayal and the hopelessness of defeat, he repeats the same thing:

O lying Egyptian creature!..
O witchcraft! She should have looked -
And I threw troops into battle.
To think that her embrace was
The crown of my desires, the goal of life!
And here she is, like a true gypsy,
She cheated me out
And I became a beggar.

(IV, 10, 38. MD)

Anthony lost his dominion over the world, but he did not lose his human valor. His passion for Cleopatra turned out to be fatal, but his life was by no means shameful. Having been defeated, he commits suicide, but without Macbeth’s mental breakdown. Anthony's life was not free from mistakes and compromises, but he always remained himself, although his soul was split in two when he had to choose between his political interests and his passion for Cleopatra. And yet he has the right, summing up his life, to say about himself to Cleopatra:

Don't think about the sad turnaround
And my death, but return in thought
To the past, happier days,
When, possessing the greatest power,
I used it nobly.
And now I’m not ending ingloriously
And I don't ask for mercy, taking off my helmet
Before a fellow countryman, but a Roman I perish
From Roman hands.

(IV, 13, 51. BP)

This self-characterization of Anthony is reinforced by the opinion of his opponents who learned of his death. One of them, Agrippa, says:

Rulers with such a soul are rare,
But gods, so that people don’t wonder,
We have been given weaknesses.

(V, 1, 31. AA)

Antony is not a criminal like Macbeth. If his behavior caused harm, then first of all to himself. He is a man with weaknesses, who makes mistakes, but is not vicious. This needs to be emphasized; Agrippa's maxim had to be re-translated because all available translations say that people are endowed with vices, while in the original we are talking only about mistakes, shortcomings, weaknesses - some faults. The detail is essential for the moral characterization of the hero.

Among Shakespeare's plays, Antony and Cleopatra has the right to be called a heroic tragedy. It dramatizes the fate of a man of rare spirit, whose greatness and nobility is emphasized by everyone - both supporters and opponents.

In Coriolanus, Shakespeare did not use his usual technique of expressing the central ideas of the play through the lips of the characters. This is natural, for it is not in the character of Coriolanus to deal with ideas. He is a man of action, not thought, and is also extremely impulsive. He is driven by feelings, and he does not know how to control them. But in the play there is another character who is given the function of a mediator in all dramatic situations of the play - Menenius Agrippa. He is, one might say, a reasoner, although his personal attitude to what is happening is by no means impartial. He is an interested participant in events, occupying a very definite position.

Menenius gives such a characterization of Coriolanus, which explains the inevitability of the hero’s irreconcilable conflict with the Roman plebs. According to Menenius, Coriolanus is “too noble for this world,” proud and adamant, -

Neptune with a trident and Jupiter with thunder
And they won’t force him to flatter him.
His thoughts and words are inseparable:
What the heart says, the tongue will repeat.
He forgets in moments of anger,
What does the word "death" mean?

(III, 1, 255. UK)

Although, under pressure from his mother and the patricians, Coriolanus made attempts to compromise with the crowd and pretend to be submissive, the tribunes Brutus and Sicinius, knowing his nature well, easily provoked a conflict. Before meeting with Coriolanus, Brutus taught Sicinius:

Try to piss him off right away.
He is used to everywhere, including in disputes,
Be the first. If you make him angry,
He will completely forget caution
And he will tell us everything that is in his heart
Heavy. And there's enough of it there,
To break Marcia's spine.

(III, 3, 25. YUK)

And so it happened. The only thing the tribunes did wrong was that they could not break Coriolanus, but succeeded in setting him at odds with the people forever. The proud commander is ready for anything, but not for humility:

I won't buy mercy with a meek word,
I will not humble myself for all the blessings in the world...

(III, 3, 90. YUK)

He is confident that without him, without his military valor, Rome is nothing and can perish, and in response to the sentence of exile he replies: “I myself am expelling you” (III, 3, 123). He leaves Rome, convinced that the most important thing is to remain himself. Saying goodbye to his family and friends, he says: “they will never / They will tell you that Marcius has become different / Than he used to be” (IV, 1, 51. JK).

However, Coriolanus is soon forced to admit that he is by no means the same as before. Having changed the world, people change, relationships change: friends turn into enemies, and enemies into friends:

Isn't it the same with me? I hate
The place where I was born and fell in love
This is the enemy city.

(IV, 4, 22. YUK)

Coriolanus, who once risked his life for Rome, is now ready to give it up just to avenge the insult inflicted on him by Rome. However, as we know, Coriolanus gave up revenge when his mother, wife and son came to him. There was a discord in his soul. Aufidius noticed this: “your honor and compassion / Entered into a quarrel” (V, 4, 200. YuK). In the name of his honor, desecrated by Rome, Coriolanus should have taken revenge, as he intended, but the prayers of his loved ones and compassion for them broke his will. He realizes that such a change could be fatal for him, and says to his mother:

     Happy victory
You won for Rome, but know
That the son is formidable, perhaps deadly
Put me in danger.

(V, 3, 186. UK)

The premonition did not deceive Coriolanus. Aufidius took advantage of the fact that the Roman commander showed mercy that was unusual for him before. This is what destroyed him. The paradox of Coriolanus’s fate is that both good and bad were equally disastrous for him. He did not show gentleness where it could not only save, but also elevate him; instead, he showed it when it made his death at the hands of the Volscians inevitable.

One of the speeches of Coriolanus’s opponent, Aufidius, is of great interest. Reflecting on what quarreled the Roman hero with the people, he names several possible reasons. Quoting, I break the speech into separate passages:

1. Only the pride that accompanies success
Misled him;
     2. either inability
Use what you have wisely
In his hands;

3. and at the same time, as can be seen,
He could not change his nature,
And, taking off his helmet, he sat down on the bench in the Senate,
During the peace he behaved menacingly
And commandingly, as in war.

(IV, 7, 37. AA)

According to Aufidius, one of these reasons is enough to arouse the hatred of the people and be expelled from Rome. He himself does not know which of them led to the hero’s break with his hometown. The audience can see: Coriolanus was overly proud; failed to take advantage of the fruits of his victory in order to occupy a dominant position in Rome; He didn’t know how to betray his nature and pretend.

“Timon of Athens” is a work whose external conflict is closely intertwined with the internal one. Timon's generosity ruined him. His butler clearly defines the hero's tragedy:

My poor lord, you are lost forever,
Destroyed by your kindness!

(IV, 3, 37. PM)

He emphasizes that it is strange that kindness becomes a source of unhappiness for the one who is kind. Convinced of human ingratitude, Timon becomes imbued with hatred of people. However, as discussed above, his hatred became stronger the more he loved people. This is the difference between Timon and Apemantus, who always had a low opinion of people. The cynic Apemantus laughs at people, Timon suffers from the fact that they betray true humanity.

The content of the tragedies is broader than the topics raised in the characters’ statements. The problems of life posed by Shakespeare have been the subject of many thoughtful studies, and what is said here does not pretend to illuminate Shakespeare's masterpieces in their entirety. The task was much more modest - to show that the main motives of the tragedies were revealed by Shakespeare himself. Criticism that moves away from what the playwright said may be interesting in itself, revealing new aspects in the modern understanding of the problem of the tragic, but if it is not based on Shakespeare’s text, then its significance for understanding the works of the great playwright will be very relative.

At the same time, although it is customary to say that Shakespeare is limitless, there are limits to his thought. Shakespeare gave so much in his work that there is no need to raise his significance for our time by attributing to him something that could not have been in his thoughts in any form. We sometimes mix the stimuli received for thought with what is contained in the work that caused them.

Although the general consensus considers Shakespeare's tragedies to be the pinnacle of his work, for him they were not the the last word about life, which he, as an artist, could say. His creative thought was not satisfied with what had been achieved. Having created such majestic and beautiful works, Shakespeare began to look for new ways.

Notes

N. Berkovsky. “Romeo and Juliet”, in his book: Literature and Theater. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1969, pp. 11-47; V. Bakhmutsky. About Shakespeare's tragedy "Romeo and Juliet", in the collection: Shakespeare on stage and screen. M., Ed. VGIK. 1970, pp. 55-76.

See Hegel. Aesthetics, vol. 1. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1968, p. 224.

Yu. Shvedov. "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare. M., “Iskusstvo”, 1971.

From latest literature about “Hamlet” see: I. Vertsman. Shakespeare's Hamlet. M., " Fiction", 1964; Shakespeare collection 1961. Ed. WTO, articles by A. Anikst, I. Vertsman, G. Kozintsev, M. Astangov, D. Urnov, V. Klyuev, N. Zubova; A. Anikst. "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", in the book. Shakespeare, Collected Works in eight volumes, vol. 6. M, “Iskusstvo”, 1960, pp. 571-627; M.V. Urnov, D. AD. Urnov. Shakespeare, his hero and his time. M., “Science”, 1964, pp. 125-146; G. Kozintsev. Our contemporary William Shakespeare. Ed. 2nd. M.-L., “Art”, 1966. In: William Shakespeare. 1564-1964. M., “Science”, 1964, articles: A. Kettle. Hamlet, pp. 149-159, K. Muir. Hamlet, pp. 160-170.

N. Berkovsky. Articles about literature. M.-L., GIHL, 1962, pp. 64-106. Yu. Shvedov. "Othello", Shakespeare's tragedy. M., “Higher School”, 1969; J.M. Matthews. "Othello" and human dignity. In the book: Shakespeare in a changing world. M., “Progress”, 1966, pp. 208-240; Shakespeare collection 1947. Ed. WTO, articles by G. Boyadzhiev (pp. 41-56) and G. Kozintsev (pp. 147-174).

V. Komarova. “Coriolanus” and social contradictions in England at the beginning of the 17th century. In the book: Shakespeare collection 1967. M., ed. WTO pp. 211-226.

Contrary to the well-known words from this work, “There is no sadder story in the world // Than the story of Romeo and Juliet,” this is the lightest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, in which, in essence, the concept of the playwright’s mature comedies is realized.

In Romeo and Juliet, literally before our eyes, a new, harmonious world is born, created for the happiness of the heroes: the church is on their side (in the person of Brother Lorenzo, who secretly marries them); authorities condemning family feuds; and the Montague and Capulet families themselves do not remember the reasons for the feud and are ready to reconcile.

Now let’s imagine that the feud between the families is truly irreconcilable and that the events described in the work took place (Romeo kills Juliet’s brother Tybalt; Juliet, in order to avoid marriage with the unloved Paris, drinks her brother Lorenzo’s potion and falls asleep in a sleep similar to death, she is buried; Romeo, by coincidence, does not find out in time that Juliet is alive, and poison is being prepared to drink from her body). Let's imagine that, under all these circumstances, Romeo waited a few seconds. Juliet would wake up (at the moment when he is poisoned, she is already breathing), the heroes would find happiness.

Only a game of accidents (unlucky ones, as opposed to happy accidents in comedies) and an excess vitality For some heroes, forcing them to rush to live and rush to feel leads them to death. However, it would be a mistake to see only an accident in the death of heroes - it triumphs only on an external level, as in comedies.

The outcome of the tragedy is logical: victory still lies with love, not with hatred, and over the bodies of Romeo and Juliet, their parents renounce their enmity. The combination of the tragic and the comic is found not only in the concept of this tragedy, but also directly in the comic scenes associated with the colorful image of the Nurse and such a colorful character as Romeo’s friend Mercutio. The language of the tragedy, rich in metaphors, eufuistic expressions, and wordplay, also confirms the cheerful, Renaissance basis of this early Shakespearean tragedy.

"Julius Caesar". In Julius Caesar there is a departure from this cheerfulness. The development of the tragic principle in this “ancient tragedy” indicates a transition to new positions predetermined in the tragedies of the next period. This tragedy is close to the chronicles (it is no coincidence that Julius Caesar, after whom the work is named, dies in Act 3, i.e. in the middle of the play).

"Great tragedies". This term is used to refer to four of Shakespeare's tragedies that constitute the pinnacle of his work: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. According to L. E. Pinsky, the main plot of tragedies is the fate of an outstanding personality, the discovery by man of the true face of the world. The character of the tragic changes: Renaissance optimism disappears, the confidence that man is the “crown of all living things”, the heroes discover the disharmony of the world, the power of evil previously unknown to them, they must make a choice how to exist in a world that encroaches on their dignity.

Unlike chronicles, which are linked together, Shakespeare's tragedies (including early ones) do not form a cycle. If they contain the same characters (for example, Antony in “Julius Caesar” and in “Antony and Cleopatra”), then these are essentially different people; the problem of character identity in tragedies is not worth it. The appearance of twins in tragedy is unthinkable: the genre requires the uniqueness of the individual.

The hero of Shakespeare's tragedy is a powerful, titanic figure, he himself builds the line of his fate and responds to the choice he makes (in contrast to the genre of melodrama that developed by the end of the 18th century, in which the hero, and more often the heroine, pure but weak creatures, experience blows unknown fate, suffer persecution from terrible villains and are saved thanks to the help of patrons).

As Pinsky noted, in Shakespeare’s comedies the hero is “not free”, he is subject to natural instincts, while the world, on the contrary, is “free”, which is manifested in the play of chance. In tragedies, the opposite is true: the world is inhumanly ordered and unfree, but the hero freely decides “to be or not to be,” based only on “what is nobler.”

Each of the tragedies is unique in its structure. Thus, the composition of “Hamlet” with its climax in the middle of the work (the “mousetrap” scene) is in no way reminiscent of the harmonious composition of “Othello” or the composition of “King Lear,” which essentially lacks exposition.

In some tragedies, fantastic creatures appear, but if in “Hamlet” the appearance of a ghost follows from the concept of the Unified Chain of Being (this is the result of a crime committed), then in “Macbeth” witches appear long before the hero’s crime, they are representatives of evil, which becomes not temporary (in periods of chaos), but a constant component of the world.

"Hamlet". The sources of the plot for Shakespeare were the “Tragic Histories” of the Frenchman Belfort and, apparently, a play that has not reached us (possibly by Kyde), in turn dating back to the text of the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200). Main feature the artistry of “Hamlet” - syntheticity: a synthetic alloy of a series storylines- the destinies of the heroes, a synthesis of the tragic and comic, the sublime and the base, the general and the particular, the mystical and everyday, stage action and words, a synthetic connection with the early and late works of Shakespeare.

Interpretations of the image of Hamlet. Hamlet is one of the most mysterious figures in world literature. For several centuries now, writers, critics, and scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of this image, to answer the question of why Hamlet, having learned the truth about his father’s murder at the beginning of the tragedy, postpones revenge and at the end of the play kills King Claudius almost by accident. J. V. Goethe saw the reason for this paradox in the strength of Hamlet’s intellect and weakness of will.

A similar point of view is developed by V. G. Belinsky, adding: “Hamlet’s idea: weakness of will, but only as a result of decay, and not by its nature.” I. S. Turgenev in the article “Hamlet and Don Quixote” gives preference to the Spanish hidalgo, criticizing Hamlet for inactivity and fruitless reflection. On the contrary, film director G. M. Kozintsev emphasized the active principle in Hamlet.

One of the most original points of view was expressed by the outstanding psychologist L. S. Vygotsky in “The Psychology of Art.” Having rethought the criticism of Shakespeare in a new way in L. N. Tolstoy’s article “On Shakespeare and Drama,” Vygotsky suggested that Hamlet is not endowed with character, he is a function of the action of the tragedy. Thus, the psychologist emphasized that Shakespeare is a representative of old literature, which did not yet know character as a way of depicting a person in verbal art.

L. E. Pinsky connected the image of Hamlet not with the development of the plot in the usual sense of the word, but with the “main plot” of the “great tragedies” - the hero’s discovery of the true face of the world, in which evil is more powerful than what humanists imagine.

It is the ability to know the true face of the world that makes Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth tragic heroes. They are titans, surpassing the average person in intelligence, will, and courage. But Hamlet is different from the other three protagonists of Shakespeare's tragedies.

When Othello strangles Desdemona, King Lear decides to divide the state between three daughters, and then gives the share of the faithful Cordelia to the deceitful Goneril and Regan, Macbeth kills Duncan, guided by the witches' predictions - Shakespeare's heroes are mistaken, but the audience is not mistaken, because the action is structured so that they could know the true state of things.

This elevates the average viewer above the titanic characters: the audience knows what they do not know. On the contrary, only in the first scenes of the tragedy does Hamlet know less of the audience. From the moment of his conversation with the Ghost, which is heard in addition to the participants only by the audience, there is nothing significant that Hamlet does not know, but there is something that the audience does not know.

Hamlet ends his famous soliloquy “To be or not to be?” nothing meaningful phrase“But enough,” leaving viewers without an answer to the most main question. In the finale, having asked Horatio to “tell everything” to the survivors, Hamlet utters a mysterious phrase: “What follows is silence.” He takes with him a certain secret that the viewer is not allowed to know. Hamlet's riddle, therefore, cannot be solved. Shakespeare found a special way to build the role of the main character: with this structure, the viewer can never feel superior to the hero.

THE MYSTERY OF THE TRAGIC

Considering Shakespeare's tragedies, we will further see the entire complex dialectic of good and evil, as it manifests itself in the characters, actions and experiences of the heroes. However, the tragic in Shakespeare is always associated with consequences for society as a whole. Man is not only the architect of his own happiness or misfortune. He is responsible for the well-being of others, for the entire society. A grain of evil upsets the balance of the entire social organism and leads to disharmony throughout life.

The tragic in Shakespeare is deeply social at its core, for the life of each person is connected with the lives of everyone else by thousands of threads. This is all the more true, since Shakespeare's heroes occupy a high social position and each of their actions most directly affects the state of society and the state.

The power of Shakespearean tragedy is determined by the strength of the characters of his heroes and the involvement of the entire society in the tragic conflict. Not only society, but also nature is involved in the upheavals that occur in the life of an individual.

Here we come to a question that is especially significant for understanding the nature of the tragic.

Why did subsequent centuries, no less saturated with tragic contradictions, give rise to such a high and organic form of tragedy as the one created by Shakespeare?

First of all, this is due to reasons of a social and moral order, more precisely, what, philosophically speaking, the subject of the tragedy is, or, simply put, what the people are like who suffer a tragic fate.

The tragedies depicted by Shakespeare are possible only where people have completeness and integrity of character, but where, at the same time, life begins to demand that they sacrifice precisely these qualities of theirs, cease to be themselves.

As a result, a duality arises, more or less characteristic of tragic heroes. They cease to understand life, themselves, and the world becomes mysterious to them. The ready-made life concepts that they possess turn out to be incompatible with reality. Life and man thus become mysterious.

This comes into conflict with the naive poetic consciousness bequeathed to Shakespeare and his contemporaries by previous centuries, when a comprehensive cosmogony was created, both poetic and scholastic, as is clearly seen in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Such consciousness replaces the real laws of life with fantastic ideas about the causal connections of life phenomena. It creates a solid scale of evaluation for various manifestations of good and evil.

The consciousness of Shakespeare himself and his heroes is still full of poetic ideas about the world, and the memory of how eternal morality evaluates what is good and what is bad, but all this is no longer consistent with life. In short, the tragic is inevitably associated with the “death of the gods.” Just like in the golden age Ancient Greece When tragedy blossomed, the consciousness of the Renaissance was still poetic in its tone and, at the same time, it was no longer satisfied with a naive mythological explanation of the world. In part, it is already rational consciousness.

This combination predetermines the entire structure of Shakespeare’s work, and his tragedies in particular. In Shakespeare's comedies, the collision of poetry and reason creates that bizarre poetic irony that gives special charm to these works. In tragedies, thought struggles in the snares of naive consciousness, strives to break out of it, but neither the old nor the new conquers completely. Therefore, both Shakespeare’s heroes and he himself both know and do not know the causes of misfortune. They are both understandable and yet largely incomprehensible. There is no longer fate as the personified embodiment of the mysterious reason for the inevitability of the death of the hero, but still, in the chain of causes and consequences, mystery remains - a certain fatal inevitability of the hero’s involvement in a tragic conflict that cannot be analyzed and the equally inexorable necessity of the catastrophic outcome of the conflict.

Shakespeare's tragedies are distinguished by clarity and extreme expressiveness of antagonisms, but their endings are full of uncertainty. Not a single conflict ends with a solution that would provide definite, unique answers to the entire sum of questions raised by the heroes’ struggles with circumstances and with themselves. They are not completed by any positive moral, conclusions that would contain a clear lesson. This is a natural consequence of the state of consciousness that forms the basis of Shakespeare's tragic worldview.

The powerful mind of the artist-thinker reaches to the very roots of evil. He exposes the ulcers of predation and selfishness, sees social injustices, the heavy hand of despotism, the yoke of inequality, the perverting role of gold, and yet a terrible, fatal, inexplicable riddle remains: why a person, knowing what interferes with happiness, cannot destroy evil and it becomes more and more afflicts even the best and strongest souls?

The field of action of the tragedies (with the exception of Othello) is the entire state. The political side of conflicts receives a clear solution. Troubles and civil strife end with the restoration of order and the establishment of more or less legitimate power. But this is the only thing that gets a solution in tragedies. Such endings could be satisfying if the conflict had its focus in the sphere of statehood and the passions of the heroes were political. However, there is no need to prove that for all the involvement of the characters in conflicts of a state-political nature, the essence of the tragedies is not in them.

The roots of conflicts are social, but Shakespeare's tragedies are human. Why a person suffers and how he suffers can only ultimately be explained by social causes. The social is created by people themselves, but a person is not a simple sum of social qualities that make up his relationships with others. The social orientation of life is one thing, and another thing is what is happening in the human being itself, the spring from which all living things flow. Why is one kind in poverty and the other cruel, why does excess make one stingy and another generous, what makes one devote his energies to the common good) and the other to personal good, in short, why, under equal external conditions, people are not internally equal ?

I repeat, the question does not boil down to establishing the social foundations of the tragic. Shakespeare already showed an understanding of them in his early works, and over the years it deepened more and more. He solved this riddle with insight surprising for his time. But the mystery of the birth of evil in man himself, in his brain, in his soul, remains. How Maybe insult a person, trample him into the dirt, kill another person? What is this terrible force that is hidden in the human mind and suddenly breaks out in order to sow evil, destruction and death? Hamlet asks his mother: “What demon has confused you?” What kind of demon has entangled the heroes of tragedies who commit violations of humanity?

The easiest way to answer this is in relation to Othello. There this demon appears in human form, and we know his name. It is not difficult to see that Macbeth was also confused by a demon in the guise of his wife. But all demons are helped by something located in the souls of those who are being seduced; this demon lurks in them themselves, and not only in Othello and Macbeth, but also in Lear, and in Coriolanus, and in Antony, and even in Brutus and Hamlet, which is the latter, by the way. to say, he is fully aware.

Renaissance humanism began with the affirmation of the good nature of man. In Shakespeare's era he doubted it. Marlowe was the first playwright to discover the satanic principle in man. Shakespeare came to this, and with him Chapman and Ben Jonson and later Webster.

Shakespeare's tragedies reveal to us a picture of an ever-deepening awareness of contradictions and the absence of real prerequisites for solving them. Shakespeare knew this, and hence the increasing darkness of the tragic pictures he created.

The problem of human nature posed by him in his tragedies does not receive a theoretical solution in them, reduced to a convenient and encouraging formula. The death of the best, and especially the best of the best, like Desdemona and Cordelia, can be explained, but cannot be justified. A world in which this is possible has reached the limit of inhumanity.

Shakespeare's tragedies. Features of conflict in Shakespeare's tragedies (King Lear, Macbeth). Shakespeare wrote tragedies from the beginning of his literary career. One of his first plays was the Roman tragedy Titus Andronicus, and a few years later the play Romeo and Juliet appeared. However, Shakespeare's most famous tragedies were written during the seven years of 1601-1608. During this period, four great tragedies were created - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth, as well as Antony and Cleopatra and less. famous plays- “Timon of Athens” and “Troilus and Cressida”. Many researchers have associated these plays with the Aristotelian principles of the genre: main character must be an outstanding, but not devoid of vices, person, and the audience must have a certain sympathy for him. All of Shakespeare's tragic protagonists have the capacity for both good and evil. The playwright follows the doctrine of free will: the (anti) hero is always given the opportunity to extricate himself from the situation and atone for his sins. However, he does not notice this opportunity and goes towards fate.

Features of conflict in Shakespeare's tragedies.

Tragedies are the creative core of William Shakespeare's legacy. They express the power of his brilliant thought and the essence of his times, which is why subsequent eras, if they turned to W. Shakespeare for comparison, first of all comprehended their conflicts through them

The tragedy "King Lear" is one of the most profound socio-psychological works of world drama. It uses several sources: the legend of the fate of the British King Lear, told by Holinshed in the Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland based on earlier sources, the story of old Gloucester and his two sons in Philip Sidney's pastoral novel Arcadia, some moments in Edmund's poem Spencer's "The Faerie Queene". The plot was known to the English audience because there was a pre-Shakespearean play, “The True Chronicle of King Leir and His Three Daughters,” where everything ended happily. In Shakespeare's tragedy, the story of ungrateful and cruel children served as the basis for psychological, social and philosophical tragedy, which paints a picture of injustice, cruelty, and greed prevailing in society. The theme of the antihero (Lear) and conflict are closely intertwined in this tragedy. Literary text without conflict is boring and uninteresting to the reader, respectively, without an anti-hero and a hero is not a hero. Any work of art contains a conflict between “good” and “evil”, where “good” is true. The same should be said about the importance of the antihero in the work. The peculiarity of the conflict in this play is its scale. K. grows from a family into a state and already covers two kingdoms.

William Shakespeare creates the tragedy “Macbeth”, the main character of which is a similar person. The tragedy was written in 1606. "Macbeth" is the shortest of William Shakespeare's tragedies - it has only 1993 lines. Its plot is borrowed from the History of Britain. But its brevity did not in any way affect the artistic and compositional merits of the tragedy. In this work, the author raises the question of the destructive influence of individual power and, in particular, the struggle for power, which turns the brave Macbeth, a valiant and renowned hero, into a villain hated by everyone. In this tragedy of William Shakespeare his constant theme sounds even stronger - the theme of fair retribution. Fair retribution falls on criminals and villains - a mandatory law of Shakespearean drama, a peculiar manifestation of his optimism. His best heroes They die often, but villains and criminals always die. In Macbeth this law is especially evident. In all his works, William Shakespeare pays special attention to the analysis of both man and society - separately, and in their direct interaction. “He analyzes the sensual and spiritual nature of man, the interaction and struggle of feelings, the diverse mental states of a person in their movements and transitions, the emergence and development of affects and their destructive power. W. Shakespeare focuses on turning points and crisis states of consciousness, on the causes spiritual crisis, reasons external and internal, subjective and objective. And it is precisely this internal conflict of a person that constitutes the main theme of the tragedy “Macbeth”.

The theme of power and the mirror image of evil. Power is the most attractive thing in an era when the power of gold is not yet fully realized. Power is something that, in an era of social cataclysms that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times, can give a sense of confidence and strength, and protect a person from becoming a toy in the hands of a capricious fate. For the sake of power, people then took risks, adventures, and crimes.

Based on the experience of his era, Shakespeare came to the realization that the terrible power of power destroys people no less than the power of gold. He penetrated into all the bends of the soul of a person who is seized by this passion, forcing him to stop at nothing to fulfill his desires. Shakespeare shows how the love of power disfigures a person. If before his hero knew no limit to his courage, now he knows no limit to his ambitious aspirations, which turn the great commander into a criminal tyrant, into a murderer.

Shakespeare gave a philosophical interpretation of the problem of power in Macbeth. The scene where Lady Macbeth notices her bloody hands, from which traces of blood can no longer be erased, is full of deep symbolism. Here the ideological and artistic concept of the tragedy is exposed.

The blood on Lady Macbeth's fingers is the culmination of the development of the main theme of the tragedy. Power is gained at the cost of blood. Macbeth's throne stands on the blood of the murdered king, and it cannot be washed from his conscience, just like from Lady Macbeth's hands. But this particular fact turns into a generalized solution to the problem of power. All power rests on the suffering of the people, Shakespeare wanted to say, referring to the social relations of his era. Knowing the historical experience of subsequent centuries, these words can be attributed to the proprietary society of all eras. This is the deep meaning of Shakespeare's tragedy. The path to power in bourgeois society is a bloody path. It is not without reason that commentators and textual critics have pointed out that the word “bloody” is used so many times in Macbeth. It seems to color all the events taking place in the tragedy and creates its gloomy atmosphere. And although this tragedy ends with the victory of the forces of light, the triumph of patriots who raised the people against the bloody despot, the nature of the depiction of the era is such that it forces the question: will history repeat itself? Are there other Macbeths? Shakespeare assesses the new bourgeois relations in such a way that there can be only one answer: no political changes guarantee that the country will not again be given over to despotism.

The real theme of the tragedy is the theme of power, and not the theme of boundless, unbridled passions. The question of the nature of power is also significant in other works - in Hamlet, in King Lear, not to mention the chronicles. But there it is intertwined with a complex system of other socio-philosophical problems and was not raised as a cardinal theme of the era. In "Macbeth" the problem of power arises in full force. It determines the development of action in the tragedy.

The tragedy “Macbeth” is perhaps the only play by Shakespeare where evil is all-encompassing. Evil prevails over good. Good seems to be deprived of its all-conquering function, while evil loses its relativity and approaches the absolute. Evil in Shakespeare's tragedy is represented not only and not so much by dark forces, although they are also present in the play in the form of three witches. Evil gradually becomes all-consuming and absolute only when it settles in Macbeth’s soul. It eats away at his mind and soul and destroys his personality. The cause of his death is, first of all, this self-destruction and secondarily the efforts of Malcolm, Macduff and Siward. Shakespeare examines the anatomy of evil in tragedy, showing various aspects of this phenomenon. Firstly, evil appears as a phenomenon contrary to human nature, which reflects the views of the people of the Renaissance on the problem of good and evil. Evil also appears in tragedy as a force that destroys the natural world order, man’s connection with God, the state and family. Another property of evil, shown in Macbeth, as well as in Othello, is its ability to influence a person through deception. Thus, in Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth, evil is all-encompassing. It loses its relativity and, prevailing over good - its mirror image, approaches the absolute. The mechanism by which the forces of evil influence people in Shakespeare’s tragedies “Othello” and “Macbeth” is deception. “Macbeth” this theme sounds in the main leitmotif of the tragedy: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” Evil is comprehensive in the figurative sphere of the tragedy, as evidenced by the development of the main leitmotif of the play “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”, the predominance in tragedies of gloomy, ominous images such as night and darkness, blood, images of nocturnal animals that are symbols of death (raven, owl), images of plants and repulsive animals associated with witchcraft and magic, as well as the presence in the play of visual and auditory image effects , creating an atmosphere of mystery, fear and death. The interaction of images of light and darkness, day and night, as well as natural images reflects the struggle between good and evil in the tragedy.

The problem of the Renaissance man or the problem of time in Hamlet. Conflict and system of images.“The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark” or simply “Hamlet” is a tragedy by William Shakespeare in five acts, one of his most famous plays, and one of the most famous plays in the world dramaturgy. Written in 1600-1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 4,042 lines and 29,551 words.

The tragedy is based on the legend of a Danish ruler named Amletus, recorded by the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in the third book of The Acts of the Danes, and is primarily concerned with revenge - in it the protagonist seeks revenge on the death of his father. Some researchers associate the Latin name Amletus with the Icelandic word Amloði (amlóð|i m -a, -ar 1) poor fellow, unfortunate; 2) hack; 3) fool, blockhead.

Researchers believe that Shakespeare borrowed the plot of the play from Thomas Kyd's play The Spanish Tragedy.

The most likely date of composition and first production is 1600-01 (Globe Theatre, London). The first performer of the title role is Richard Burbage; Shakespeare played the shadow of Hamlet's father.

The tragedy "Hamlet" was written by Shakespeare during the Renaissance. The main idea of ​​the Renaissance was the idea of ​​humanism, humanity, that is, the value of every person, every human life in itself. The Renaissance (Renaissance) first established the idea that a person has the right to personal choice and personal free will. After all, previously only the will of God was recognized. Another very important idea of ​​the Renaissance was the belief in the great capabilities of the human mind.

Art and literature in the Renaissance emerge from the unlimited power of the church, its dogmas and censorship, and begin to reflect on “ eternal themes being": over the mysteries of life and death. For the first time, the problem of choice arises: how to behave in certain situations, what is correct from the point of view of the human mind and morality? After all, people are no longer content with ready-made answers from religion.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, became a literary hero new generation. In his person, Shakespeare affirms the Renaissance ideal of a man of powerful mind and strong will. Hamlet is able to go out alone to fight evil. The Renaissance hero strives to change the world, influence it, and feels the strength to do this. Before Shakespeare, heroes of this magnitude did not exist in literature. Therefore, the story of Hamlet became a “breakthrough” in the ideological content of European literature.

The conflict in the tragedy "Hamlet" occurred between Hamlet and Claudius. The reason for this conflict was that Hamlet turned out to be superfluous in society, and Claudius wanted to get rid of him. Hamlet loved the truth too much, and the people around him were liars. This is one of the reasons for Claudius' hatred of Hamlet. After Hamlet learned that Claudius killed his father, he decided to take revenge. The conflict between Hamlet and Claudius is so strong that it could only end in the death of one of them, but Hamlet is the only fair person, and power was on Claudius’s side.

But the desire for justice and grief for his dead father helped Hamlet gain the upper hand. The cunning and deceitful king was killed.

The central image in Shakespeare's tragedy is the image of Hamlet. From the very beginning of the play, Hamlet's main goal is clear - revenge for the brutal murder of his father. In accordance with medieval ideas, this is the duty of a prince, but Hamlet is a humanist, he is a man of modern times and his refined nature does not accept cruel revenge and violence.

The image of Ophelia evokes different emotions in different readers: from indignation through the girl’s meekness to sincere sympathy. But fate is also unkind to Ophelia: her father Polonius is on the side of Claudius, who is guilty of the death of Hamlet’s father and is his desperate enemy. After the death of Hypnoigius, whom Hamlet killed, a tragic break occurs in the girl’s soul, and she falls ill. Almost all the heroes fall into such a whirlwind: Laertes, Claudius (who, seeing his obvious “negativity”, is still tormented by reproaches of conscience...).

Each of the heroes of William Shakespeare's work is perceived ambiguously by the reader. Even the image of Hamlet can be perceived as a weak person (unless in our modern world, partly raised on comic books and films of dubious quality, someone who does not look like a superhero in the fight against evil does not seem weak?), or perhaps as a person of extraordinary intelligence and life wisdom. It is impossible to give an unambiguous assessment of Shakespeare’s images, but I hope that their understanding is formed over time in the minds of everyone who read this majestic work, and will help give their own answer to Shakespeare’s eternal “to be or not to be?”