Marlowe’s Creativity in A.A.Anikst’s Works on Literary and Art Criticism

Objectives: To analyze the Soviet Shakespearean scholar A.A. Anikst’s ideas about dramaturgic art of the English Elizabethan poet, Shakespeare’s predecessor, Christopher Marlowe. Methods: The methodological base of the research is based on fundamental works of classics of the Russian literary and art criticism Alexander and Alexey N. Veselovskys, V.M. Zhirmunsky, M.P. Alekseyev, Yu. D. Levin, researches in the sphere of history and theory of the Russian literary translation and Russian translated belletristic literature (A.V. Fedorov, E.G. Etkind), Russian-English literary and historical and cultural relations (G.N.Boyadzhiyev, L.E.Pinsky), history of the English literature (N.I. Storozhenko, M.M. Morozov, A.A. Smirnov, A.T. Parfyonov, R.M. Samarin). In the course of the analysis cultural and historical, comparative and historical, and biographic research methods were used. Findings: A.A. Anikst, who devoted his works to the study of Shakespeare’s creativity and theatre of his era, realized that without understanding peculiarities of art perception of the world in works of his predecessors it was impossible to estimate dramaturgic art of Elizabethan time as the unique phenomenon in the world literature and theatre history, and Shakespeare as the most considerable playwright of this era. The scientist noted the significant influence of Christopher Marlowe on the subsequent development of the English drama – improvement of an art form of drama, namely, creation of the drama action design with distinct internal unity and development of a plot around the personality of the main character, development of the concept of tragic, introduction of true poetry into drama art. Nevertheless, A.A. Anikst was not inclined to idealize Marlowe’s creative activity, noted his inability to create an image of the positive character, tendency to deliberate pomposity of monologues, bringing manifestation of individualism to extreme forms, anti-Semitic elements. A.A. Anikst paid attention to those works of Marlowe, which did not draw much attention of researchers, – “Dido, Queen of Carthage” and “The Massacre at Paris”, found the facts of Elizabethan playwrights’ cooperation and mutual influence in their creative activity. Novelty: The research of A.A. Anikst’s works on literary and art criticism showed the importance of the author’s contribution to the evolution of the Russian study of Shakespeare, in particular, the study of creativity of Shakespeare’s predecessors – Ch. Marlowe, R. Greene, T. Kid, J. Lyly, R. Peel, Th. Nash.