Dostoevsky’s Lost Play “Mary Stuart” (Materials for the Reconstruction of the Idea)

The reconstruction of Dostoevsky’s first literary experience — the lost drama “Mary Stuart” — involves the identification and analysis of the sources of the idea. As a result of the conducted research, a hypothetical chain of events was built. In 1838 (1835, according to other sources), Dostoevsky was impressed by “Mary Stuart” at the Alexandrinsky Theater with A. M. Karatygina in the title role: the image of the suffering queen created by the actress was superimposed on the reading of both Schiller’s tragedy “Mary Stuart” and Walter Scott’s novel “The Abbot.” Russian collection of her biographical documents, published in 1809 and the 1839 French-Russian edition of letters of Mary Stuart, her will and the report on the execution discovered by A. Ya. Lobanov-Rostovsky in the archives, came into the view of the novice writer when he was studying the “historical data” about the “life and execution” of Mary Stuart. In 1839–1840, a fictionalized biography of the “criminal” queen, compiled by Alexandre Dumas, was published. In his version, the image of Mary Stuart is twofold: along with the heroic beginning of the character, the theme of sinful passion emerged. The bifurcation of the image was reinforced in the 1841 essay by Filaret Shal, who also emphasized the religious motives of the unfolding historical drama. Comprehending all these turns of European and Russian historiography in 1839–1842, Dostoevsky could use as the basis of his play the dialogue of the nurse and Mary in the fourth scene of the first act of his tragedy about the correlation between guilt and responsibility, which Schiller did not continue. For Schiller, Mary Stuart is the title character, but not the only main one, moreover, the theme of Elizabeth in many ways attracted dramatic interest. Dostoevsky most likely focused on the internal collisions of the “gigantic character,” whom he placed in a line of Racine’s heroines (first of all, the “Shakespearean essay” by Phaedra): Maria integrated the firmness of spirit in the face of suffering and death itself with the omnipotence of passion, accompanied by torments of conscience. The “historical data” that Riesenkampf hinted at, mastered by the Russian author, allowed to continue Schiller’s creative work. The article identifies and analyzes a range of these data thatrevealed the deep collisions of European history embodied in one of its iconic characters to Dostoevsky.