Romantic drama

Romantic drama - in the sensitivity of “ sentimental ” and “tearful” drama it is not difficult to find features of early romanticism , the beginnings of a new dramatic style .

Ever since the time of the classical tragedy, the custom of literary author's forewords to his plays has been preserved. This introduction of the young Hugo to the drama "Cromwell" is considered a manifesto of romantic drama.

Hugo lays the foundation for the new dramaturgy, which has been proclaimed unchanged since the time of Aristotle, "allegiance to nature." Hugo, defending “fidelity to nature”, brutally falls upon what classical tragedy saw this “fidelity” into three unities . “To cross, the unity of time with the unity of place,” says Hugo in the preface to “Cromwell,” “to make them into a cell grid and let into it with great pedantry all the facts, all those peoples, all those figures that are in such masses overwhelm reality, it means to disfigure people and objects, it means to make history grimaces ” ^[1] .

Leaving the unity of action in force, Hugo and his nature understand quite differently than the theory of classical drama . There, the unity of action demanded the unidirectionality of the plot , one of its mains, without any deviations to the side, not even allowing the tragic to be comical - it was still a theater of situations, a theater of character as a single passion. At the same time, her Lessing and Didro resolutely overestimate the nature of the comic and introduce it into character as psychological chiaroscuro .

Romanticism emphasizes this position even more sharply, reflecting it structurally as well. Hugo understands unity of action as the law of theatrical perspective . Such unity is not at all violated by secondary, secondary branches of the main theme. It is important that all this be holistic and coherent and based on the main, most important, leading action. Hugo strongly disagrees with the strict division of the unity of action in the genres of “ tragedy ” and “ comedy ” and returns to the syncretism of the drama as a whole, where “ugliness exists alongside the beautiful, ugly alongside the graceful, where the funny is the flip side of the majestic, where evil is connected with good and a shadow with light ” ^[1] .

This leads Hugo to defend the theory of dramatic grotesque . He sees such a grotesque “among storytellers, chroniclers , and novelists , before the authors of farces or jokes brought him to the stage; he inspires folk legends and ancient superstitions of the Middle Ages ; he puts his stamp on the pediments of Gothic cathedrals ; he even sneaks into the altar when a donkey’s mass is served or a jester’s father is chosen ” ^[1] .

The grotesque structurally gives a contrast effect to the sublime and thereby further emphasizes its value. Polonius or Caliban make Ophelia and Miranda even more bewitching, grave diggers' crude humor sets off the delicate lyrics of Hamlet . Iago , Tartuffe , Polonius , Harpagon , Bartolo , Falstaff , Scapen , Figaro - all this defines the work of Hugo as a gallery of high examples of dramatic grotesque.

The greatest master of such a combination of the sublime with the grotesque, the beautiful with the terrible Hugo sees in Shakespeare , who did not know any unity. A romantic drama should “force the viewer to move from the serious to the funny, from the clownish episodes to the tearing-hearted scenes, from the harsh to the gentle” ^[1] .

Hugo, denying the system of classical drama, believed that all his new statements stem from nature itself, from its eternal laws, from its natural order of things. “We will destroy,” he calls, “all sorts of systems, theories, and teachings on poetic art.” Let us drop this shabby mask covering the face of art. May we have neither rules, nor patterns, or rather, let only general laws of nature be our rules ” ^[1] .

No wonder that romanticism provoked sharp opposition from the defenders of the "shrines" of classicism, who called the romantics contemptuously "apprentices." Victor Hugo ( 1802 - 1885 ) wrote eleven dramas: Cromwell ( 1827 ), Amy Robsart ( 1828 ), Marion Delorm ( 1829 ), Hernani ( 1829 ), The King Amuses ( 1832 ), “ Lucrezia Borgia ( 1833 ), Maria Tudor ( 1833 ), Angelo, Tyrant of Padua ( 1835 ), Ruy Blaz ( 1838 ), Burggraphs ( 1843 ) and Torquemada ( 1882 ), unfinished drama " The Twins ”and the libretto of the opera Esmeralda.

All these typically romantic drama are characterized by syncretism of dramatic genres ( tragedy , comedy , etc.) and poetic genera (lyrical and epic elements are equally equal with dramatic ones). Such a confusion certainly precluded the creative synthesis that Hugo sought. He did not succeed in containing the whole complexity of life and the human soul in drama. His characters, built according to his favorite principle of abstract antithesis , are devoid of shades, simplified and abstract. His intrigue is not skillful.

In this respect, Hugo is significantly superior to Dumas the father (especially in Anthony), the author of the first romantic drama staged on the stage (Henry III and his court, 1829 ) ^[2] . Vigny refuses from intrigue, from action, which in his Chatterton seeks only to create the image of a poet who is superfluous in society.

Musset occupies a special place, having created an interesting variety of a romantic play. His comedies can be called lyrical. The poet dramatizes his personal experiences here, his introspection. Musset’s lyrical and fantastically predominant plays are also distinguished by their extremely important dignity: a refined dialogue technique.

The works of Scribe , the most popular drama writer of the period, are sometimes only connected with romanticism by plot. In essence, his plays , bordering on a vaudeville or passing into it, cannot be assigned to any literary direction at all. Scribe is only interested in intrigue and stage design. In the field of solving purely technical problems, he achieves great skill. This is the significance not only for the French , but also for the European drama ( Ibsen , Suderman ) of this fashionable author “Adrienne Lekuvrer”, “Glass of Water”, “Battle of the Ladies”, etc.

Among other significant representatives of the French romantic drama, it is necessary to mention Merimet , George Sand , and later, already at the junction with naturalism , of her epigones such as Sardoux , Rostand and Coppe .

If French romanticism, guided by Shakespeare, creates a number of genuinely scenic works that can be decorated within the framework of a traditional theater, then German and English romance, in search of new forms, turns to the deeply archaic forms of medieval mystery ( Genovef Tika , “Halle und Jerusalem” Arnima, “Cain” of Byron ) and making attempts to rehabilitate the forms of primitive theater ( puppet theater by Arnim , apology commedia dell'arte by Hoffmann ), creates works inaccessible to theatrical design.

Hence, the heyday of the “drama for reading” ( Lesedrama ) in this era (the drama of Byron, the final edition of Goethe 's Faust ). Only in the middle of the century did this search for new forms find scenic permission at the Wagner syncretic theater. As for the German romantic drama for the scene, its most prominent representatives are G. Kleist and Zachariah Werner . The plays of the first were not appreciated during his lifetime. Nowadays, he is considered one of the largest playwrights in Germany .

Kleist expressed the psycho-ideology of the nobility descending from the historical scene, who, in patriotism, tried to overcome his spiritual tearing. The Prince of Homburg is his most scenic work. His "Ketchen from Heilbronn" is already a "tragedy of rock" ("Schicksalstragödie"), which became famous for another playwright of romanticism, Zacharia Werner. The concept of fate, borrowed by Werner from Schiller ’s antikidizing Messina’s Bride, was developed in the Schicksalstragödie in Catholicism- style reactionary trends of late romanticism . Werner and his followers (Grilparzer as the author of Pramateri, Mülner, and others) expressed the passivity of the attitude characteristic of German romantics in the “rock tragedy”. The fatalism here is so great that the victims of rock have no actions, no “tragic guilt”, and the fate of the heroes cannot be regarded as retribution for it.

An outstanding example of Russian romantic drama of the 1820s is Pushkin ’s Boris Godunov . However, its stylistic nature is duality. The protest against the rationalist poetics of classicism is romantic here. “A dramatic writer,” says Pushkin, “must be judged by the laws that he himself has recognized over himself” ^[3] . ... “The spirit of the century requires important changes on the dramatic stage” ^[4]

In Boris Godunov, Pushkin carried out these changes by arranging the tragedy “according to the system of our father, Shakespeare, and sacrificed two classical unity to him before his altar and barely preserved the latter” (the unity of time.). But, on the other hand, with this destruction of the static linearity of the classic tragedy, nevertheless, in Boris Godunov the static epic characteristic of it is still quite characteristic; it does not have the emotions of a romantic fuse. The plot of Boris Godunov extremely vividly characterizes the creative aspirations of Pushkin, this major artist of the patrimonial Russian aristocracy. “The poet introduces his ancestors - the“ rebellious clan of the Pushkin ” ^[5] - in the person of his two representatives. Both are in clear opposition to the tsarist government, both do not believe in the authenticity of the Pretender, but both are ready to use it as a powerful tool in the fight against tsarism ... Elder Pushkin ... in tragedy is an exponent of the boyar opposition of noble families, humiliated and persecuted by "yesterday's slave" - Tsar Boris ^[6] .

“I will not put the clan, but put the mind in the governors” ^[7] , says Godunov , who took possession of the throne after the Rurikovich line died out. But his reforms are incomprehensible to the people and, most importantly, hostile to the boyars - Shuisky , Mstislavsky . It is they who raise an uprising against Boris, opposing him under the name of Tsarevich Dmitry to Otrepiev’s razstrigu .

And Boris Godunov perishes, defeated by the fortress of the feudal system that he hoped to destroy. Pushkin’s tragedy was not put on the scene, in part because of the complexity of its architectonics . Among the subsequent playwrights who tried to follow in the footsteps of Pushkin, one should especially note Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy . In his historical trilogy : “The Death of John the Terrible” ( 1865 ), “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” ( 1868 ) and “Tsar Boris” ( 1870 ), Tolstoy, as it were, repeats the main opposition of the boyars led by Belsky , Shuysky , Mstislavsky , rootless upstart Godunov . His historical dramas were regarded as attacks against the autocracy and were strictly forbidden to be staged. Some of them were allowed only in the late 1890s . ("Tsar Fedor Ioannovich" walked on the evening of the opening of the Art Theater in Moscow in 1898 ).

While romantic tragedy predominantly expressed the tastes of the higher circles of the nobility , the broad masses of the then society gave their attention to more democratic genres. These include, first of all, vaudeville and melodrama . Both types of the play originated in the West in the era of romanticism , experienced the influence of the latter and were then transferred to the Russian stage.

Ducange ’s play “Thirty Years, or the Player’s Life” is essentially the melodrama that Gogol complained about the dominance of, and which largely replaced the strip of Russian stage romanticism. Representing a descending, epigonizing line of tearful, sentimental drama, melodrama was greatly developed in France at the end of the 18th century , where Pixerecur was the most prominent representative. Due to her connection with the “ drama of the New Time ”, the melodrama also liked to pose the humanistic problems of “justice” and “pity”, such as, for example, “Paris Beggars” Pia and others.

Even earlier than in France , melodrama became widespread in England and in the 19th century included such prominent representatives of this genre as Philipps , Gerrald , Simo . The translator of one of the melodramas “Maternal Blessing” that became very popular in Russia was Nekrasov (under the pseudonym Perepelsky ), and Grigorovich (The Legacy of Sulie) translated the other. With her plots, a mixture of comic and tragic melodrama reminded of a romantic drama, she vulgarized her tricks.

The influence of romanticism on vaudeville was expressed in the introduction of elements of science fiction and historical figures. In Russia, he adapted to Russian customs. Repetilov’s phrase in Griboedov’s “ Woe from Wit ” that “vaudeville is a thing, and everything else is rot” ^[8] , accurately determined the position of vaudeville in the repertoire of the Russian theater. Belinsky spoke of vaudeville that they stuck with Russian life as "sleigh riding and sheepskin sheepskin coats for the inhabitants of Naples ", that they were essentially "vaudeville vaudeville, not life," that their wit "ran out of the mail road when they were forwarded ".

However, this did not prevent them, along with melodrama, from taking a very strong place in the Russian repertoire. Vaudeville such as Lev Gurych Sinichkin by Lensky remained in the repertoire until the beginning of the 20th century , but the active role of vaudeville after its heyday in the period of 1820-1850s gradually decreases and almost disappears from the 1880s ; vaudeville is preserved only occasionally as an appendage to the main play (the so-called play for "departure" or "congress"). Attempts to democratize romantic drama (in imitative forms: the influence of Hugo and the German Schicksalstragödie) include the dramatic production of Polevoy and Puppeteer - artists of the 1830s .