Create a 6 page essay paper that discusses Boris Godunov by Alexander Pushkin.Download file to see previous pages... A large number f speaking characters is further augmented by crowd scenes. (Briggs

Create a 6 page essay paper that discusses Boris Godunov by Alexander Pushkin.

A large number f speaking characters is further augmented by crowd scenes. (Briggs 10-11) Though the play is a historical tragedy, Pushkin includes snatches f comedy. In short, Pushkin exhibited in Boris Godunov the romantic sensibility f his day in creating a poetic drama that placed the arresting confusions f history above the theoretic requirements f art. Russian history in the early seventeenth century was somewhat confused, but Pushkin chose to set up several definite determinants. He took as the source for his play Nikolay Karamzin's History f the Russian State (1816-1829), which maintained that Boris Godunov was culpable in the death in 1591 f Dmitri, the half brother f the ruling czar, Feodor. There is in fact no clear evidence for this, Boris Godunov was first called to be czar after Feodor died in 1598, and initially he seems to have been a popular ruler. When the situation changed, however, people began to remember that Godunov had not been part f any ruling dynasty and that he had achieved power because, as Feodor's brother-in-law, he was strategically placed at a moment when Russia needed a ruler. This led many to suspect that he may have engineered his own rise to power by evil means.

Karamazin also claimed that the false Dmitri was an ambitious monk with determination and ability but no legitimate claim to power. This put Pushkin in a difficult spot, for in order to remain faithful to his source, he could not develop a dramatic opposition f good and evil in his characters. A Boris Godunov who was a vicarious assassin and a Dmitri who was a crass imposter did not provide effective theater. Pushkin could f course have altered the historical premise, but that would have conflicted with his motive in writing the play, which was to record a critical epoch in Russia's past. Pushkin resolved his dilemma by finding the point in the story where history gives way to tragedy. He made his title character, Boris Godunov, a man who was capable and even in many ways honorable but in whose internal struggle between conscience and ambition, ambition had been the victor. Dmitri, on the other hand, is shown to possess few admirable traits so that in the conflict between the two ambitious men, Boris Godunov is the likeliest figure who can be seen as a tragically flawed hero.

Another problem Pushkin had to surmount was the unexciting nature f Godunov's death. He resolved this difficulty by concluding the play with the death f Boris Godunov's children at the hands f Dmitri's agents. Having shown that Godunov was responsible for the death f the true Dmitri, Pushkin implied a rough justice in showing Godunov's children being destroyed by the agency f the false Dmitri. (Vickery 1-3)

For the purposes f theater, history is more readily married to tragedy than to comedy. The dramatist must try to find in history patterns f human conduct that are somehow heroic, even if flawed. Shakespeare, Pushkin's model, often chose historical figures sufficiently remote in time or clouded in circumstance so that he could revise the past to fit a tragic mold.