Shakespeare in Hungary

Abstract

For about 100 years now Shakespeare has been customarily referred to here as most popular and most often played Hungarian classic. There is, of course, the proverbial Hungarian sense of humor to account for this amusing quip. But at the same time there is the undeniable truth-and it will, I hope, convince the reader that this dictum is to be taken quite seriously-that in some mysterious way Shakespeare has been assimilated into the stock of Hungarian national cultural heritage. The fact is that ever since 1790 (the year when Hamlet was first translated into Hungarian, from an altered German version, by Ferenc Kazinczy, Dr. Johnson of Hungarian literature) or, to be more precise, since 1794 when Hamlet was first performed in Kolozsvar, Transylvania, Shakespeare's works have never been missing from the repertoires of the theatres of this country. Theatre in Hungary emerged as a by-product of the Hungarians' incessant striving for national independence in the last decades of the eighteenth century and reached its early maturity in the revolutionary atmosphere of European Romanticism in the first half of the nineteenth century. It was this theatre, deeply rooted in Romanticism, that Shakespeare was absorbed into and suited to, remaining long after Romanticism tapered off. This phenomenon accounts for the fact that romantically conceived Shakespearean productions prevailed on Hungarian stages well into the 1900s. During the first decade of the twentieth century and the inter-war years, great efforts were made by Sandor Hevesi, an outstanding Hungarian stage director and Shakespeare scholar, to liberate theHungarian cult of Shakespeare from its Romantic conventions and to introduce a more upto-date style of acting Shakespeare. Hevesi's style, combined with a historico-realistic approach to the plays, became in the post-war years the standard for Shakespearean stage interpretations. The most remarkable manifestations of this standard were Hamlet and Richard III at the Budapest National Theatre in 1952 and 1955. These performances bore a very close resemblance to meticulous historical studies, and, however excellent they were in their own right, they were bound to distance audiences from the dramatist and his work alike. The first attempt at something less scholarly and more subjective in interpreting Shakespeare came in 1962, when Hamlet, conceived as the tragedy of a twentiethcentury intellectual, was staged at Madach Theatre, Budapest. The most powerful impetus, however, came from Peter Brook, whose King Lear, presented in Budapest by the RSC on its 1964 tour, created a stir among Hungarian theatrical experts, making them seek more novel ways of presenting Shakespeare on the stage. For awhile it was merely the external qualities-the trappings, formal settings, leather jackets, and jeans-that were believed to be the desirable hallmarks of modernity. Considerable time elapsed before Hungarian directors came to realize that any modern interpretation of Shakespeare must depend on how one reads his plays and, furthermore, that each generation tends to look for its own truth, conflicts, and confrontations in Shakespeare. By the early 1970s, once the idea ofdirector-centered theatre had been established in Hungary, directors came to regard Shakespeare's works, not as mere monuments of dramatic art, but as vehicles for conveying ideas and sentiments that were their own but that could be substantiated with ideas and sentiments latent in the Shakespeare text. The 1976-77 theatrical season seemed to be the climax of what had started in the early '70s with Timon of Athens and Romeo and Juliet (both directed by Tamas Major) at the Budapest National Theatre and Troilus and Cressida (directed by J6zsef Ruszt) at the Kecskemet Katona Jozsef Theatre. No less than nine plays by Shakespeare were staged in Hungary in this season, and with one or two exceptions (King Lear at the Szeged Open-Air Festival and Romeo and Juliet at Kisfaludy Theatre, Gyo5r) each was what one could rightly call a modern stage interpretation of Shakespeare. Even those conceived in a more conventional way showed unmistakable signs of the impact made by up-to-date stage interpretations. Attention was focused on plays hitherto very rarely presented in Hungary, the dark comedies as well as the so-called problem plays, and serious attempts were made to reconsider and challenge the vogues of their former interpretations.