Comrade Fortinbras and Bourgeois Hamlet

Global Leftist Hamletism

Authors

Jeffrey Butcher College of Coastal Georgia

Abstract

In Bend Sinister, Vladimir Nabokov creates the world of Padukgrad, a dystopian society symbolic of Stalin's tyrannical regime. In the novel, an obscure scholar proposes an adaptation of Hamlet to be performed at Padukgrad state theater. This adaptation transforms Fortinbras into the hero of the play and presents the tragic flaw of Hamlet as secondary. I use Nabokov's anti-Stalinist appropriation of Shakespeare as a point of departure to legitimize Marxist-Leninist appropriative deployments of Hamlet that precede the taint of Stalin. German, Soviet, and American Leftists alike incorporated Hamlet as a negative prototype — a representation of bourgeois individualism and uncommitted Leftist sympathizers — into political rhetoric so as to advocate commitment and reform. I argue that global Leftist "Hamletism" not only illustrates a clear (political) distinction between proletarian and popular appropriations of Shakespeare, but also demonstrates a theory crucial to the re-politicization of Shakespeare's social function today.

Author Biography

Jeffrey Butcher, College of Coastal Georgia

Jeffrey Butcher was awarded his Ph.D. in English from George Washington University and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the College of Coastal Georgia. His scholarly interests in the early modern period, namely Shakespeare studies, are complemented by his engagement in political interventions into Marxist-inflected theory. Most of his publications entertain the impact on teaching and research when we historicize economic movements — nationally and globally — in literature. This is evidenced in his "Review of Robert Lewis's Red Hamlet" which appears in Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association. The article is not a traditional review, but rather an analytical reconstruction of a dramatic text. In addition to his publications in peer-reviewed Shakespeare venues, Jeffrey has published scholarship in the Journal of Medieval and Religious Cultures and the American Communist History journal. While his true passion is his teaching, Jeffrey intends to continue to work with working-class literature to further investigate class dynamics and their influence on conditioning power relations and social constructions.