SOURCE: Levitt, Marcus C. “Sumarokov's Russianized ‘Hamlet’: Texts and Contexts.” Slavic and East European Journal 38, no. 2 (summer 1994): 319-41.

In the following excerpt, Levitt attempts to reconstruct the context and meaning of Sumarokov's Hamlet in order to define its central dramatic and philosophical concerns.

The truism about the eighteenth century's rejection of Shakespeare as a “barbarian” who was lacking in “good taste” upon closer examination reveals a much more complex and nuanced picture of cultural reception. The question to consider is not how eighteenth-century writers misunderstood or corrupted Shakespeare but how they adapted him to meet specific needs of their own. This perspective is especially pertinent as regards Alexander Sumarokov's Gamlet (pub. 1748) not only because this was the first appearance of Shakespeare in Russia, often viewed as an outrageous travesty of the bard (Hamlet and Ophelia survive to presumably live happily ever after on the throne of Denmark), but...