“What Are You Reading, My Lord?”scene From “Hamlet” Interpreted by Russian Poets

The article examines the creative responses of Russian poets to the reading scene from Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” (Act II, Scene 2), where Hamlet appears with a book and talks with Polonius about its contents. Pavel Antokolsky’s poem “Tragedy” (1917) reflects the turning point of the revolutionary era; the book in Hamlet’s hands here turns into a “torn charter,” symbolizing the collapse of the old world. For the lyrical hero of Vladimir Vysotsky’s poem “My Hamlet” (1972), reading becomes a sign of unsolvable life questions, but taking into account the later “Ballad of Struggle” (1975), which develops this theme, we can talk about the poet’s approach to the motive of reading “necessary books” allowing you to make good life choices. In Alexander Kushner’s poem “What book did he read, about this...” (2014), the book in Hamlet’s hands is a moment of truth and frankness of the hero, behind which one can discern the spiritual experience of modern man (“and the book supported us in trouble”).