Some observations on value and greatness in drama

Abstract

This paper argues that value in drama partly results from the nature of the resistance in a scene, resistance used in its common, everyday meaning. A playwright’s ability to imagine and present such resistance rests on several factors, including his sublimation of the fantasies that underpin his work. Such sublimation is evident in Chekhov’s continuing reworking in his plays of a fantasy that found its initial embodiment for him in one of the central scenes in Hamlet. The increasingly higher value of the scenes Chekhov wrote as he repeatedly reworked Shakespeare’s scene resulted from his increasing sublimation of the initial fantasy and is reflected in the ever more complex nature of the resistance found in Chekhov’s scenes, resistance that, in turn, created an ever more life‐like, three‐dimensional central character in the scenes.

Key words:

• aesthetic value
• applied analysis
• Chekhov
• drama
• Shakespeare
• subli‐mation

Notes

1. The importance of examining drama in the terms of the interplay between impelling and resisting energies has been discussed in detail by Beckerman (1970, 1990). Beckerman examines drama as a vehicle for theatrical performance but I am deeply indebted to his ideas.

2. I have noted that the flatness of many of Ben Jonson’s characters results from Jonson’s failure to develop resistance in his scenes and have suggested that this failure resulted from insufficient sublimation of the fantasies whose conscious derivatives appear in those scenes (Mandelbaum, 2008).

3. There is no evidence that Chekhov knew English, and it is unlikely that he directly knew Hamlet. However, he could have referred to one of the numerous extant translations of Shakespeare into Russian. Chekhov’s specific use of Polevoy’s translation of Hamlet has been discussed by Winner (1956).