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Measure for Measure and Pushkin's Angelo

1951; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 66; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/459484

1938-1530

George Gibian,

Cultural, Linguistic, Economic Studies

Pushkin summarized Measure for Measure in Angelo (1833), a partly dramatic, partly narrative poem of 535 lines. He considered Angelo his best work, but critics have slighted it. Russian commentators on Pushkin have perhaps been discouraged from paying more attention to Angelo because it is not an original, independent work. Even Vissarion Bielinsky, otherwise a very attentive critic of Pushkin, dismissed Angelo cursorily. There are numerous studies of Shakespeare's influence on Pushkin. These have concentrated on Boris Godunov and a few of the shorter plays, and neglected Angelo. This lack of attention is strange, because Angelo, in addition to being a fine example of the art of condensation, is a piece of Shakespearean criticism by one of the world's greatest poets, who had a very good knowledge of Shakespeare. The poem reveals what Pushkin liked in a play by Shakespeare and what he preferred to change. Its value may be all the greater because its criticism is not expressed in general, abstract terms. Besides the indirect comment in Angelo we have a fragment of Pushkin's formal opinion on Measure for Measure. In 1834 he wrote on the character of Angelo in a further development of his earlier views on Shakespeare's characterization in general: