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Chekhov's Seagull and Shakespeare's Hamlet: a Study of a Dramatic Device

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

Thomas G. Winner
Thomas G. Winner*
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Extract

Chekhov's use of literary allusions or echoes represents one of the most striking variations of the playwright's many evocative devices. Such devices, which stand outside the immediate action of his later plays, frequently are of symbolic significance and sometimes have a commentary function similar to that of the Greek chorus. Chekhov's use of literary or folklore allusions in his later plays is usually eclectic and may shift from author to author, folksong to folksong. Quotations from Shakespeare, especially from Hamlet, occur in various plays of Chekhov. But in the Seagull we find more than incidental background snatches from Hamlet. For Hamlet appears related to the total structure of the play, and it would seem that the image of Hamlet is, in the intent of the playwright, most intimately connected with the situations and characters of the Seagull.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 15 , Issue 1 , February 1956 , pp. 103 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1956

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References

1 This review, signed “Man Without Spleen,” appeared in the journal Moskva, No. 3, 1882, and referred to the Hamlet performance of January 11, 188

2 Cf. Chekhov, A. P., Polnoe sobranie sochinenij i pisem (Moscow, 1944-51), I, 489-91, 596-70Google Scholar, hereafter referred to as PS. 2 PS, 1,490.

3 Cf. Letters No. 218, 322 (1887), PS, XIII.

4 Magarshak, David (Chekhov the Dramatist [London, 1952], pp. 173, 192, 194-95, 198- 99)Google Scholar discusses briefly the mother fixation parallel and has suggested some aspects of Chekhov's variations on this theme. Magarshak's analysis of parallels between the Seagull and Hamlet, however, is limited to the mother fixation problem and is not concerned with the many other aspects of the relationship of Chekhov's play to Hamlet.

5 Cf. Hamlet, IV, 7: after Gertrude informs Laertes of Ophelia's drowning—Laertes: “Too much water hast thou, poor Ophelia.“

6 Magarshak (op. cit., p. 199) incorrectly quotes Hamlet's rejoinder to Gertrude: Hamlet: Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty.

Here Chekhov uses verbatim the Hamlet translation of N1. A. Poleyoj (Gamlet, princ datskij). This translation is available in the Folger Library in an editinn of 1876 (Shkol'nyj Shekspir, P. N. Polevoj, ed. [SPB, 1876]). It is interesting to note that among all the Hamlet translations which existed in Chekhov's time and which are available in this country, Polevoj's is the only one which deliberately softens Hamlet's reply to Gertrude. All other translations use a rather accurate translation of Hamlet's angry words hurled at his mother. (Cf. Gamlet, tragedija v pjati dejstvijax, M. V., transl. [SPB, 1828]; Gamlet, A. Kronenberg, transl., 2nd ed. [Moscow, 1861]; Gamlet, princ datskij, M. Zaguljajev, transl. [SPB, 1861]; Gamlet, A. L. Sokolovskij, transl. [SPB, 1883]; Polnoe sobranie sochinenij V. Shekspira, P. A. Kanshin, transl. [SPB, 1893], vol. 1.) Whether Chekhov was aware of the softening of the lines in the translation he used and deliberately chose them to hint at the difference between Treplev and Hamlet, or whether he was acquainted only with Polevoj's translation, is unfortunately not clear.

7 Hamlet, III, 3.

8 Cf. Dover Wilson, J., What Happened in Hamlet (New York, 1935), p. 301.Google Scholar

9 Nina: Your play is hard to act. There are no live characters in it. Treplev: Live characters! One must depict life not as it is in reality and not as it ought to be, but as it presents itself to us in dreams. (Act I)

10 “Both Nina's and Dorn's criticisms represent Chekhov's views. Cf.: “Remember that the writers whom we consider immortal or even just good, possess one very important common characteristic: they get somewhere and call upon us to go with them. We feel not only with our reason but with the whole of our being that they have an aim… . The best of them are realists and depict life as it is, but because every line they write is permeated … with the consciousness of a goal … one feels not only life as it is in reality, but as it should be and that is what delights you.” (Letter to Suvorin, No. 1186, November 25, 1892, PS, XV, 446.)

11 Wilson, op. cit., p. 106.

12 Pol. What are you reading my lord? H. Words, words, words. and then … Pol… . Will you walk out of the air, my lord? H. Into my grave? Pol… . I most humbly take my leave of you. H. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal—except my life, except my life, except my life.

13 Wilson, op. cit., p. 102.