Star-cross'd Lovers: Shakespeare and Prokofiev's 'pas de deux' in Romeo and Juliet

Abstract

It is tempting to perceive, in the conception and development of Prokofiev’s famous ballet, Romeo and Juliet, a narrative of potentially tragic dimensions that both enacts and parallels Shakespeare’s famous tale of emotional awakening through a forbidden liaison. For in the repressive atmosphere of Stalin’s regime, composers, like all artists, had to be very careful about the company they kept. No one could risk being caught flirting with art forms or concepts belonging to the ‘other side’ of the great ideological divide, and those that did were condemned to an exclusion every bit as severe as the banishment meted out to Romeo in Act III Sc.I of Shakespeare’s play. It was not that Shakespeare himself, or this play in particular, were forbidden. One aspect of Soviet cultural policy seems to have been the systematic appropriation of canonical works from the past in order to affirm the veracity of official ideology while simultaneously establishing their own artists as the culmination of a tradition that stretched back into the mists of time, and Shakespeare was in fact very much appreciated as one of the Great Precursors of Communism. However, productions of his works, as all others, were expected ‘to show life truthfully’ in order to point out ‘what was leading it towards Socialism’; 2 consequently, his plays were frequently adapted to the new politics, typically by the introduction of more crowd scenes to represent the proletarian element, by expanding the comic parts of the tragedies to give them a more optimistic tone, and by sharpening the contrast between good and evil characters to reflect social antagonism. 3