SOURCE: Lang, D. M. “Sumarokov's Hamlet: A Misjudged Russian Tragedy of the Eighteenth Century.” Modern Language Review 43, no. 1 (January 1948): 67-72.

In this essay, Lang argues that Sumarokov's version of Hamlet has not deserved the unfavorable criticism it has received, claiming that the drama is an important work of the early Russian stage.

Like many prominent figures of the Russian neo-Classical school, Alexander Petrovich Sumarokov (1718-77) was for a long time unjustly neglected by succeeding generations. His eccentricities, which in the heyday of Romanticism would have been greeted as visible signs of genius, were exaggerated by his many rivals, particularly Lomonosov and Trediakovsky. Even Baron Grimm helped to make Sumarokov appear ridiculous to posterity. In the Correspondance Littéraire he described with enjoyment how the Empress Catherine, after Sumarokov had in 1770 quarrelled with the Governor of Moscow, graciously rebuked the irascible dramatist who in any other kingdom (France, for...