The Russian Folk Play 'Tsar Maximillian': An Examination of Some Possible Origins and Sources

The Russian Folk Play 'Tsar Maximillian': An Examination of Some Possible Origins andSourcesAuthor(s): Lisa WarnerSource: Folklore, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Autumn, 1971), pp. 185-206Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1258401 .

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The Russian Folk Play 'Tsar Maximillian': An Examination of Some Possible

Origins and Sources

by LISA WARNER

THE Russian folk-theatre which remained operative until the first quarter of the twentieth century presents both the folklorist and the theatrical historian with a varied and rewarding subject for research. Nevertheless, its repertoire, compared with those of other folk-literature genres, is small and loses much of its original impact when seen only upon the printed page. It is partly for this reason that it has been so little studied both by Russian and, particularly, by West European scholars.

There are other reasons for this relative neglect of the folk- theatre, however. Historical factors produced an artificial break in the development of spontaneous drama in Russia. Indeed, the history of the folk-theatre in Russia may be roughly divided into two phases. There was, firstly, the period ranging from the earliest beginnings to the end of the reign of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich. This was characterised on one side by the development of dramatic games and scenes from earlier rituals and maskings of partly paganistic origin, and on the other by the activities of the skomorokhi, Russia's first professional wandering players, who participated in and encouraged both these and other types of entertainment. The general trend of this period was a slow movement towards a more secular concept of theatre but with ritual as its foundation and starting point; it was, of necessity, basically rural in character. The latter half of this period was characterised by increasing conservatism and antagonism in the attitude of the official church towards folk-entertainment in all its manifestations, culminating in Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich's notorious Ukaz of 1648 prohibiting all forms of public entertainment. The folk-theatre closely connected as it was even then with lingering pagan beliefs and rites was particularly vulnerable to such attacks throughout its history.

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This fact has contributed to our comparative lack of information about the development of folk-drama in this early period.

The second period of the folk-theatre was inaugurated mainly by the reign of Peter the Great. Relaxation of the power of the Church and of the strict ecclesiastical morality which had up to this time suppressed or destroyed much of the spontaneous amusements of the people, dramatic or otherwise, coupled with Peter's own interest in the theatre and his introduction of Russia's first completely secular theatre for all classes of society, were followed during the whole of the eighteenth century by a flourishing of theatrical arts on a variety of levels.

Excluding the puppet-theatres, the Russian 'Petrushka' and the predominantly Ukrainian 'Vertep' the repertoire of the secular folk-theatre between the early I8th and the beginning of the 2oth century consisted of a comparatively small, but varied selection of plays and dramatic games based on literary, historical, social and satirical sources. Among these, one of the most widespread in its territorial distribution and certainly the most popular and dramatically interesting was the play 'Tsar Maximillian'.

The central theme of this somewhat amorphous dramatic complex consists of the religious conflict between the pagan father, Tsar Maximillian, and his Christian son, Adol'f. The latter, three times summoned to adore the pagan gods, three times refuses, is imprisoned or banished to the wilderness to reconsider his disobedience and is finally executed by Brambeus, the court-executioner. In some variants the Tsar's attitude towards his son is reinforced by the demands of his second wife, a pagan goddess who has married him only on condition that his subjects accept her faith.

Closely connected with the central plot are several comic scenes of an interlude nature which recur between the 'serious' scenes throughout the play. The key figure in these revelries is the gravedigger, Markushka, who is summoned to remove the bodies of Adolf and Brambeus, who has committed suicide after the death of the young prince. Along with Markushka appear several other comic characters, his close friend, also a grave-digger, his old woman, a tailor, a devil, a doctor, and a variety of humorous antics take place - the measuring of the body for the coffin, the sewing of a hat or sheepskin coat for Markushka as a reward for

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his work. Such scenes were almost entirely improvisatory and depended for their success upon the quick wits of the comic actors in each troupe and upon the establishment of a friendly rapport between the audience and the acting body. The most important of the characters thus drawn into the play was, undoubtedly, the Doctor called in to cure Markushka of his aches and pains or to tend the wounds of the fallen knights who appear in the second half of the play. He is sometimes accompanied by his assistant, Pashka-fel'dsher, whose drunkenness further adds to the hilarity. The scene which follows the Doctor's appearance takes the form of a mock examination of the patient with ridiculous remedies offered for bogus illnesses.

The second part of 'Maximillian' consists basically of a series of duel scenes (rytsarskoe shturmovanie), linked only tenuously with the preceding section, between the tsar's champion, Anika-the- warrior, and a number of enemies who come to destroy Maxi- millian and capture his city Anton-grad. These include such characters as the Black Arab, the Zmeiulan and, most frequently King Mamai with his nephew who demand tribute from Maxi- millian and send him challenging letters.

A similar scene to the above in construction, although quite differently motivated, is the battle between Venus (Venera) and Mars (Mars, Marets) which occurs in some variants. Venus, defeated, is left to the mercy of her enemy until her brother arrives to defend her.

'Tsar Maximillian' usually end on a highly moral note as the consistently victorious and boastful knight, Anika, is struck down in his turn by Death with her scythe. Anika, at first, challenges Death boldly as he does the others, then, horrified at the in- evitability of destruction, begs for just a little longer to live three years, three months, three days, even three hours - but without success.

The problems facing scholars wishing to study this odd collec- tion of scenes are considerable. There is, for example, the problem of deciding when it was first written and performed. Without more detailed documentary evidence it is impossible to give an exact date to the play's first appearance but many folklorists have agreed in naming the early-mid i8th century as the probable period of its genesis. Before the middle of the 19th century refer-

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ences to the play's existence are fragmentary and vague. For instance, after 1793 when the Tobol'sk Archbishopric school became a seminary the pupils performed plays at Christmas including 'Maximillian' and 'Tsar Herod'.'

'Tsar Herod' was another play of the folk-theatre repertoire popular in south Russia based upon the story of the Nativity and closely connected with the Ukrainian puppet-theatre but drawing its dramatic conventions from the 'live' secular theatre, in particular from 'Tsar Maximillian' itself which it came to resemble in many ways. The writing, producing and performing of plays was an important part of the curriculum of the theological 'schools' during the I7th and i8th centuries and the seminarists did much to spread a knowledge of the theatre among the ordinary people. It was not uncommon for groups of impecunious students to bolster their resources by performing extracts from plays of the school-repertoire to country audiences during the vacation. The process of democratisation taking place in the literary world during this period led to a considerable amount of cross-borrowing between oral and written literature. Not only were the popular tales and plays which laid the foundations for secular literature in Russia full of stylistic and thematic devices taken from folk sources, but folklore, itself, in particular its plays, was rejuvenated by the new developments in other spheres.

The first eye-witness account of a performance of 'Tsar Maxi- millian' was given in an anonymous article in 'Iskra' (No. 6 pp. 82-83) in 1863 but the bulk of the extant texts belong to the late I9th century when a revival of interest in folklore led to the first appearances of the play in print, in versions collected by amateur observers as well as by professional folklorists all over the country and published in a variety of ethnographical journals, notably the 'Etnograficheskoe obozrenie'.

The performance of 'Tsar Maximillian' began to die out from the beginning of this century. The advent of mass entertainment, the break-up of rural seclusion and the upheavals of war, revolu- tion and civil war hastened on the process of decay. Only sporadic performances were noted in the twenties in outlying districts. In the early i960s, 'Tsar Maximillian' was briefly revived in Gorky

x Prot. Sulitskii, 'Seminarskii teatr v starinu v Tobol'ske' Chteniya v imp. obshch. ist. i drev. rossiiskikh, 1870, Bk. 2, Pt. V.

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Oblast' for the benefit of a group of ethnography students from Moscow University by collective farm workers who had been familiar with the play in the 1920os. A film was made at the same time which provides a valuable record of a now extinct dramatic tradition.

'Tsar Maximillian' penetrated to all sections of the 'people', being played by artisans, factory workers, sailors, peasants and especially by soldiers. Versions of it have been found scattered over the length and breadth of European Russia from the Kherson government in the extreme south of the Ukraine to the Onezh and Archangel governments in the far north, from the Orenburg district on the frontier of south-eastern European Russia to Minsk government in western White Russia.

This dissemination of the known variants of the play over such a wide area, coupled with the fact that only a handful of variants in any one region were ever published while many other regions remained totally unexplored, makes it difficult to discover its place of origin. The existence of many versions in the central belt round Moscow (the Ryazan' and Yaroslav governments, or the Kostromskii uezd, for example) led to the idea that the play grew up among the industrial (predominantly textile) workers in this area. N. E. Onchukov, on the other hand, has stressed the importance of the sawmills in the northern maritime regions of Russia (round Archangel, for example) as a repository and dispersal point for the folk-theatre.2 However, although it is certainly true that the North has produced a large number of texts of this and other folk-plays, it should be remembered that the area is remark- able in general for its preservation of oral literature, in particular the epic, a fact amply shown by the unexpectedly successful expeditions of A. F. Gil'ferding, the Sokolovs and Onchukov himself among others at the end of the x9th - beginning of the 20oth century. Observations upon the language of the text which might be of help here are seriously hampered by the fact that the extant texts do not always truly reflect the language of the original spoken version. The nineteenth-century copies of the play were often collected by untrained observers, unaware of the importance of exact reportage. Most of the texts were, therefore, copied down

2 N. E. Onchukov, Narodnaya drama na severe, Izvestiya 0 R Ya S Vol XIV (1909), p. 219.

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in more or less standard Great Russian with obvious regional features removed for the sake of clarity. Moreover, before publica- tion, the texts were often 'bowdlerised', odd spellings were altered, obscure passages omitted or 'corrected', artificial divisions into acts and scenes introduced and so on.

In spite of the confusion, however, one point does seem to be quite clear. The basic text of the play was written in Great Russian as opposed to White Russian or Ukrainian, although a number of features can be seen both in the content and in the language which reflect its passage across the country and the various areas in which it settled and became part of the local life. Thus in the Ukrainian and White Russian texts one finds characters which traditionally belong to the popular literature of these regions, the Jew, the Cossack, the Ukrainian Hetman, etc. Here too occurs the strongest influence from the 'vertep' and the allied play of 'Tsar Herod'. Several versions from the Kherson government, for instance, present 'Herod' and 'Maximillian' combined into one under the title 'The Throne' ('Tron').3 Similarly, regional influences can be found in variants of the play from the far north collected by Onchukov. In these we find, for example, characters who have served in the Baltic fleet and whose conver- sation is, therefore, full of nautical terminology.4

The stability of Great Russian as the language of 'Tsar Maxi- millian' is borne out by the fact that even in those places where Russian was not the local tongue, the language of the text, nevertheless, remained unchanged. Ivan Abramov, for example, in his introduction to one variant particularly stresses the fact that although the people in the area of Voronezh where his text was found spoke mainly Ukrainian the performances of 'Maximillian' were always given in Russian.5

A superstitious refusal to depart from the accepted original text except in those places where improvisation was allowed has always been a feature of oral culture. It is interesting to note, therefore, that it was the 'serious' characters who invariably tried to keep close to the literary language while the comic characters in

3 For text see e.g. A. Smirnitskii, 'K voprosu o vyrozhdenii vertepnoi dramy' in Izvestiya Odesskogo bibliograficheskogo obshchestva (Odessa 1913), Vol. 2, issue 5.

4 N. E. Onchukov, Severnye narodnye dramy (SPb 19 11). 6 I. S. Abramov, Tsar' Maksinmilian: Svyatochnaya kumediya (SPb 1904). Off- print from Izvestiya OR Ya S, Vol. IX bk. 3 (1904), p. I.

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the improvisatory interlude-type scenes were allowed, even encouraged, to get as much local colour into their speech as possible.

Another and more complex problem concerning the origins of 'Tsar Maximillian' is that of deciding upon the nature of the actual artistic impulse which lay behind its creation. Many theories have been put forward about this. There is, for instance, the suggestion that 'Tsar Maximillian' is based upon a hagiographic tale, in particular the life of the martyr St. Nikita. The main exponent of this idea was Vladimir Kallash who explained away the often widely divergent variants which were later obtained and the emergence of characters and scenes quite unconnected with the hagiography as the result of additions and distortions through the oral tradition.6 To support his view he stressed the basic similarities in the plot of the two works and the fact that St. Nikita was, like Adolf, the son of a pagan king, Maximian (the name Maximian is found as an alternative to Maximillian in some variants of the folk-play). But it is also true that Maximillian was an accepted popular name for any royal pagan persecutor, appearing on Russian folk-pictures in company with other heretics and oppress- ors of Christianity. It is of interest to note in passing that a King Maximianus appears in the pages of the German mediaeval 'Kaiser Chronik' in connection with the Martyrdom of St. Maurice.

Moreover, in order to discover the basic thematic similarity between the 'Life of Nikita' and 'Tsar Maximillian' it is necessary to strip the former of a considerable part of its contents since the religious plot of 'Maximillian' consists only of the Tsar's refusal to accept his son's faith, the latter's imprisonment and finally execution, whereas in the hagiography, Nikita is subjected to a whole series of tortures (he is beaten, burnt, flung down from a tall cliff, etc.) and temptations (by beautiful maidens, by the devil in the form of an angel): the people rise up against the Tsar, the soldiers, wizards and finally Maximian himself are saved by a miracle.' The events which Kallash sees as significant can be found in many other hagiographical tales, for example in the Life of St. Egor, as described in the dukhovnve stikhi (spiritual verses). He too

6 V. V. Kallash, K istorii narodnogo teatra: Tsar' Maksimilian (Moscow 1899) offprint from Etnograficheskoe obozrenie vol. xxxix (M. 1898), p. 3.

7 N. S. Tikhonravov, 'Nikitino muchen'e' Pamyatniki otrechennoi russkoi literatury, vol. 2. (M. I863), p. 15.

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had a pagan father who persecuted him and cast him into prison and his tormentors are described in terms reminiscent of the folk- play. Moreover, the 'Life of St. Nikita' is not included in either of the two major Russian calendars of the saints, Dmitri Rostov's 'Chet'i Minei' or the Archbishop Sergei's 'Polnoe mesyacheslov vostoka'. As apocryphal literature it was not likely to have become widely enough known to form the basis for a folk-play.

Another popular theory postulates that 'Tsar Maximillian' is a folklorised version of some unknown religious school drama of the early i8th century. While some scholars, V. D. Kuzmina,8 for instance, have been content to consider such a basis for the play in purely general terms, others have made more specific claims. Both P. N. Berkov9 and V. N. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross'O connect 'Tsar Maximillian' with one school-play in particular: Dmitri Rostov's 'Venets Slavnopobedonosnii Velikomucheniku Dimitriyu' (1704). Both agree that there are close similarities between the two plots. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross lists the following: (i) the name of the persecutor, Maximillian, (2) the fundamental conflict between father and son, (3) military action against the Tsar, (4) Dimitri's imprisonment, (5) the intervention of a third party on his behalf (in the 'Venets . . .' this is Nestor, in 'Tsar Maxi- millian' the executioner Brambeus), (6) the execution of both Nestor and Dimitri. In considering the non-religious plot of 'Tsar Maximillian', in particular the many duel and battle scenes, Berkov tries to explain their presence as a later corruption of the battle between the faithful Nestor and the temptress, Melei. The name Melei he thinks is a distorted form of Medeia or Megera which he equates with the Venera of 'Tsar Maximillian'."

The same criticism holds good for this theory as for that of Kallash since the plots of school plays based upon tales of martyrdom which tended to follow a certain pattern, would themselves reflect this sameness. Thus, other scholars (notably P. G. Bogaty- rev) have already indicated connections between 'Tsar Maxi- millian' and the folklorised Czech school play of 'St. Dorothy'

8 V. D. Kuz'mina, Russkii demokraticheskii teatr xviii v. (Moscow 1958). 9 P. N. Berkov, 'Veroyatnyi istochnik narodnoi p'esy o tsare Maksimiliane

i ego nepokornom syne Adol'fe' Trudy otdela drevne-russkoi literatury A N SSSR (M-L 1957), xiii.

10 V. N. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, Russkaya ustnaya narodnaya drama (Moscow 1959), p. Ioz.

1 P. N. Berkov, op. cit., p. 310o.

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which has a similar plot. Berkov's explanation of apparent ano- malies between the text of the Russian folk-play and the school play seems highly unlikely, since the basic duel scenes, although there are many of them, are too consistent and organic in character to allow of such an interpretation. Moreover, in all the texts known to me there is no duel between Venera and Brambeus, Adolf's friend (the equivalent of Nestor) which one would certainly expect, to occur frequently if Berkov's hypothesis were correct.

As to the character of Venera there is no justification for seeing in her a distortion of Medeia. The loves and quarrels of Mars and Venus were a popular subject for drama in the 18th century and there can be little doubt that the scene entered 'Tsar Maximillian' via the stage of the late school-theatre or possibly of the urban democratic theatre.

I. L. Shcheglov-Leontiev was one of the first to suggest that the original impulse towards the creation of 'Tsar Maximillian' may have been a desire to satirise the relationship between Peter the Great and his son, Alexis, a dramatic interpretation of con- temporary events among the most 'strikingly dramatic', as he puts it, of the Petrine period.'"

T. A. Martem'yanov adopted this idea and developed it,1' putting forward various reasons to support his claim. He notes, for example, that Peter had his son executed for disloyalty (c.f. Maximillian and Adolf), that Peter's second wife (later Ekaterina Alekseevna) was a disruptive influence between father and son (cf. Tsar Maximillian's second, pagan, wife, who demands Adolf's conversion from Christianity); like Maximillian, Peter persecuted those of another faith (i.e. the Old Believers); in the comic patriarch or priest and the parody weddings and funerals which occur in 'Tsar Maximillian' he sees the influence of Peter's 'Synod of Fools'; a strong connecting link between Peter and the name Maximillian he sees in the document acclaiming Peter's right to the title of Emperor, in which the Tsar is reminded that his ancestor, Vasilii Ivanovich, father of Ivan the Terrible, had already been granted the title by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian, in the 16th century.

12 I. L. Shcheglov, Narodnyi teatr (SPb x898) p. 138. 1'T. A. Martem'yanov, 'Komediya o Tsare Maksimiliane' Istoricheskii

vestnik (Pb. 1914), Vol. 136, No. 5.

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P. N. Berkov, while not accepting this theory as the origin of 'Tsar Maximillian' brings forward points supporting the influence of the historical period upon the plot of the play. In a variant collected by Vinogradov,14 one of the knights who pleads for Adolf's life and threatens to avenge his death holds the title of Roman ambassador (rimskii posol). This, he suggests, could be a reference to the complications which arose between Russia and Austria after Alexis' death since he was married to the daughter of the Austrian (H.R.E.) Emperor.15

While not wishing to deny the possibility that a historical satire lies at the foundation of 'Tsar Maximillian', it seems that most of the arguments brought forward to support it are also rather slender. When examining Martem'yanov's evidence, for instance, it is possible to rule out the influence of Peter's 'Synod of Fools' upon 'Tsar Maximillian' for it is well known that parody weddings and funerals in Russia as elsewhere in Europe were a widespread feature of the folk-theatre. In Russia they occurred either in- dependently as part of the winter or spring ritual games or within the framework of folk-plays such as 'Pakhomushka', 'Mal'bruk' and 'Lodka', as well as 'Tsar Maximillian'.

Secondly, the comparison between Catherine and Venera should not be taken too far since, in the play, it is Venera who encourages the persecution of Christians while Catherine could hardly be blamed for Peter's policy towards the 'Old Believers'. Thirdly, it is unlikely that the sort of people for whom 'Tsar Maximillian' was a favourite entertainment would have been aware of the document quoted by Martem'yanov or that Peter's claim to the title of Emperor could be traced to Maximillian, thus providing an extremely tenuous link between the two names.

Similarly, Berkov's point about the Roman ambassador cannot be taken as evidence since the character occurs rarely and is also known by the title Rimsko-Katolicheskii posol (Roman-Catholic ambassador) and Krymskii posol (Crimean ambassador). It is likely that rimskii is simply a corruption of krymskii since the play is otherwise full of allusions to the Turks and Tarters and the Crimean and Turkish Wars.

14 N. N. Vinogradov, Tsar' Maksem'yan i ego nepokornyi syn Adol'f (SPb 1905), offprint from Izvestiya O R Ya S, vol. X bk. 2, 1905. 16 P. N. Berkov, Ruskaya narodnaya drama XVII-XX vv. (M. 1953), p. 33.

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A close examination of the texts of the folk-play and the historical facts of Alexis' life fails to reveal any conclusive parallels. However, it is interesting to note that the dispute between Peter and his son as expressed in folk terms in the historical songs, while having little connection with the known facts, does bear a close resemblance to the conflict situation in 'Tsar Maximillian'. In the historical song 'Semeinaya zhizn' Petra I' ('The family life of Peter I')16 the action begins with the birth and early life of Peter Alekseevich. When he decides to marry he refuses to live in Moscow and asks his father to build him a town, Pitenburkh (i.e. St. Petersburg). Peter, like Tsar Maximillian takes a pagan wife ("the daughter of the Swedish king, Princess Nastasya'). After this the Tsar and his subjects are converted to the foreign faith and when his first son, Theodor, is born Peter is warned by wise men that the boy will refuse to obey his father and will not worship the pagan gods. The young prince, when he grows up, in fact resumes the Christian faith of his ancestors, for which offence he is imprisoned for three days. Peter threatens to have him executed for disobedience and Theodor dies of fright. This episode is clearly a distorted reference to Peter's attitude to the 'Old Believers' and Alexis' involvement with them.

In this historical song we find a situation very close to that in 'Tsar Maximillian': The foreign wife of another faith, the Tsar's conversion, the son's refusal to abandon the true faith. Moreover, Adolf in many variants is, like Theodor, betrayed to his father (by his stepmother or by an anonymous slanderer). It seems possible, therefore, that the central plot of the drama is, in fact, more closely linked with events in Russian history as interpreted by the folk than with hagiography or the religious drama of the school theatre.

The repertoire of the school theatre in the i8th century, in particular plays adapted from the rytsarskie povesti (knightly tales) has, however, had some influence upon the textual arrangement of the folk-play. In spite of suggestions made by scholars such as P. 0. Morozov, P. N. Berkov, Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, and V. D. Kuz'mina among others that 'Tsar Maximillian' was directly based upon some non-extant school play, little attempt has been

16 V. V. Sipovskii, Istoriya russkoi slovesnosti, Pt. I, issue x, (Petrograd 1916), PP. 97-98.

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made to particularise the similarities beyond such obvious general features as the courtly milieu, the interpolation of mythological characters (Mars and Venus) and the succession of duel scenes. To these one might add such textual similarities as the ceremonial entry of the royal regalia which is one of the most constant and elaborate scenes of 'Tsar Maximillian' and which frequently occurs in similar form in school plays such as 'Kaleandr i Neonilda' or 'Istoriya o tsare Davide i tsare Solomone'. In both 'Tsar Maximillian' and the school plays one finds the monologue of self-introduction and self-eulogy and the somewhat naively ex- plicit descriptions of each character's emotional state. Some of the linguistic formulae constantly used in recurring situations are also close. Such is the case with the enemies' challenge to combat, the announcement of an invader's approach, the summoning and briefing of a page or royal champion.

However, such points of similarity do not indicate the possible existence of a prototype for the folk-play but simply link the emergence of the text as we know it with a period when the ordinary people had become thoroughly familiar with the style of the secularised school repertoire, most probably through the urban democratic theatres, the existence of which can be docu- mented as far back as the 1730s.

On the other hand, one factor in particular seems to deny any strong organic link between 'Tsar Maximillian' and the school- theatre and to place the play very firmly within the boundaries of a purely oral tradition. The vast majority of religious plays in the repertoire of the school theatre were written in syllabic verse, albeit in many cases irregular and sometimes intermixed with prose. All the extant texts of 'Tsar Maximillian', however, are written in 'raeshnyi stikh' a verse form which derived its title from its extensive use in the monologues of the fairground comics (raeshnyi ded) accompanying the peepshow or raek. In the 18th century raeshnyi stikh was almost exclusively restricted to folk and popular Ms. literature, particularly of a humorous or satirical nature.

Wherever one looks for the antecedents of 'Tsar Maximillian' there is little point in searching for an exact identifiable origin since the play consists not of a single dramatic thread but of a series of loosely linked and thematically unrelated units. The

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subsequent combining of these originally separate elements under one heading, can easily be explained by the methods of the folk theatre itself. It was customary for the troupe of folk actors to perform a consecutive programme of short scenes rather than longer plays in isolation. The chief rbles in each play were often performed by the same people, sometimes without any substantial change of costume. Additional confusion was created by such features as the absence of props and scenery, the existence of stock comic characters and scenes common to a number of plays and the similar style and tone of the dialogue used throughout. A blurring of the limits of the separate parts of the show was inevitable and led to such discrepancies as the appearance of Anika (from 'Tsar Maximillian') at the court of King Herod in the Ukrainian folk plays or Prince Adolf's participation in scenes clearly borrowed from the robber play 'Lodka'.

In fact, the originally separate scenes which later went to form the folk play 'Tsar Maximillian' are of widely differing sources both folk and literary.

The neo-classical origins of the 'Mars and Venus' scene have already been mentioned. The scenes 'Mamaevo Poboishche' ('the battle with Mamai') and 'Anika-the-warrior and Death' are both of folklorised literary origin.

The great and significant battle of Kulikovo field in 1380 between the Tartar Khan Mamai with his 'Golden Horde' and the Russian Prince, Dmitri Ivanovich, passed not only into history but into legend. First related in the Kulikovskii cycle of the chronicles, the story was retold thereafter in many differing versions, mostly dating to the i5th-17th centuries. Folklorised, the battle became the subject of innumerable tales, byliny (epic poems) and historical songs and was pictorially represented in the folk pictures. The form which this scene takes in 'Tsar Maxi- millian' is close to the bylini and historical songs. The challenge from King Mamai to Maximillian is issued through the former's nephew by means of a letter, a formula reminiscent of many historical songs popular in the i7th-i 9th centuries such as 'Pishet, pishet korol' shvedskii svoe groznoe pis'mo' ('The Swedish king writes a threatening letter .. .') which closely follows the language of Mamai's written threat. This conventional challenge also occurs in the byliny such as the 'Mamaevo Poboishche' itself where

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Vasilii Prekrasnyi, Mamai's son-in-law, is told to write 'npJImI•H

coponHcHNe... c yrposaMH c BeaJIKHiMH' ('letters in his own hand containing fearsome threats').

The scene 'Anika-the-warrior and Death' occurs in almost all the variants of 'Tsar Maximillian'. Tales of the inevitable enemy Death, of the eternal combat between Death and Life, enjoyed widespread popularity in medieval Europe. For a time the theme was one of the most prominent in popular literature, inspiring many paintings, etchings, poems, etc. It has its influence too upon dramatic literature, occurring for example in various episodes of the English miracle and morality plays, such as the 'Slaughter of the Innocents' when Death comes to Herod, or in 'Everyman'.

The sixteenth century saw the appearance and growth of tales upon the theme of Life and Death in Russia - 'Prenie Zhivota so Smert'yu' ('The contest of Life and Death') or 'Skazanie o nekoem cheloveke bogoboyaznive' ('The tale of a God-fearing man')' - which, originally translated from German originals, gradually adapted themselves to their new surroundings and evol- ved peculiarly Russian features. It is in these later versions that there are unmistakable similarities to the scene 'Anika-the-warrior and Death'. In them Life is represented as a warrior, like Anika, in search of a combatant.

All the salient features of the tale are in fact repeated in the drama. The champion's search for a combatant, his first scornful attitude to Death, his pleading for mercy and, finally, his destruction at the hands of Death and her scythe. Anika, himself, has been the subject of many folk-legends. He is supposed to have been a brigand, a robber of monasteries and the subduer of kings, princes and knights, yet managing to live to a great old age.

In some texts he was equated with an infamous robber, executed in the reign of Peter I, the so-called 'Brigand of Vologda'. Anika appears too as the hero of folk-tales, songs and spiritual verses.

The further popularity of Anika among the people is attested by his appearance on folk-pictures.

'Death scenes' bearing some resemblance to 'Anika-the-warrior and Death' were not unknown in early Ukrainian and Russian dramatic literature. Among the Ukrainian interludes of the I8th century is 'Intermediya na tri persony; Smert', voin, khlopets'

17 R. P. Dmitrievna, Povesti o spore zhizni i smerti (M-L 1964), p. 179.

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('An interlude for three characters; Death, a warrior, a peasant').s8 In moralising Russian school plays too the abrupt appearance of Death in person before a sinner was a common element. Thus, in 'Tsarstvo natury lyudskoi' (1698) Death appears with a speech and behaviour much resembling that of the mediaeval tales. Similarly Death acts very much as a deus ex machina in the later school plays from translated literature as, for example, in 'Kaleandr i Neonilda'.

There would seem to be little doubt that the scene 'Anika and Death' in 'Tsar Maximillian' was based upon a combination of the mediaeval 'Contest between Life and Death' with the tales about the folk-hero, Anika. Its inclusion in the play may be due

partly to a knowledge of the traditions of the school theatre and perhaps even more so to the analogous scene in the Ukrainian 'vertep' where Herod is justly felled by a mocking Death for his slaughter of the infants. The influence of the 'vertep' can be seen most clearly in the few versions of 'Tsar Maximillian' in which it is the Tsar, himself, who is killed rather than Anika.19

Most of the attempts at solving the mystery of the origins of 'Tsar Maximillian' have been concerned with the discovery of literary prototypes. From some of the points made above, it is clear that many literary influences can indeed be found in certain scenes of the folk-play. However, one important matter which has been largely overlooked is the significance of 'Tsar Maximillian' as a part of an essentially oral, folk-tradition. Although some characters such as Mamai and Anika have been drawn partly from literary sources, others such as the Black Arab and the Zmeiulan have obviously entered the play from folk-culture, and it is essentially the uniformity of style and method based upon folk-literary principles and the presence throughout the play of certain stock comic characters of purely folk origins, in particular the gravedigger and the doctor which give the play its shape and a certain sense of cohesion.

Blacking the face with soot was one of the most popular ways of disguising in the Russian Christmastide mummings. The Black Arab of the folk-play who is similarly decorated and dressed all in black springs from the same source. It was a commonly held

8i Prof. A. Beletskii, Starinnyi teatr v Rossii (Moscow I923), p. 89. 19 See e.g. the second variant of "Tsar Maximillian in P. N. Berkov op. cit.

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belief in ancient times that the colour black, in particular the blackness derived from the soot and ashes of the fire, home of the house-spirit, was extremely powerful in warding off evil. Figures with blackened faces were common in ritual games and processions all over Europe. In the sword-dances of England, the Basque country, Spain, Portugal, etc. these characters became known as Moors and the battles of the sword-dancers were explained as clashes between them and the Christians. It is probable that the Black Arab of 'Tsar Maximillian' who is one of the chief partici- pants in the duelling scenes in fact belongs to a very ancient European ritual tradition.

Similarly, the enemy knight, Zmeiulan, is connected with the Russian epic, the serpent being one of the chief enemies of the bogatyri (knights). The Zmeiulan of 'Tsar Maximillian' is doubly serpent-like since the last part of his name ulan is Persian for 'snake'. The word ulan is, of course, used in Russian folklore for the Turks and Tartars. The snake was not only the symbol for the pagan enemy but originally indicated evil in general and the powers of darkness. It is as such that serpents figure in the fairy- tales and epic poetry, creatures with magical gifts and forbidden knowledge, inhabiting the frontiers of the known world and beyond, essentially hostile to men.

Not only has little attention been paid to the purely folk- elements of the play, but as far as I am aware no attempt has been made to look for possible antecedents of the basic plot of 'Tsar Maximillian' in European folklore in general. Nevertheless, an examination of Western European dramatic folk literature reveals some interesting parallels to the Russian play, particularly with regard to the comic and duelling scenes. There are, for example, striking similarities between parts of 'Tsar Maximillian' and the English folk-play 'St George'.

In England, as in Russia, the folk-theatre was a flourishing art-form for many centuries and 'St George' was the most popular and widely performed play of the repertoire. The known time span of the existence of 'St George' covers roughly the same period as that of 'Tsar Maximillian' (the earliest known text dates to 1788) but its origins are almost as obscure. Variants where the protagonists consist of a series of saints, Patrick, George, David, Andrew, Denys and James, probably derived from Richard

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Johnson's 'Famous History of the Seven Champions of Christen- dom' which appeared towards the end of the I7th century. How- ever, as by no means all the variants follow this pattern, it is likely that both Johnson and the creators of the folk-play were drawing upon some commonly known earlier material. The performances of both the Russian and the English folk play were to a large extent seasonally fixed, forming an integral part of the winter cycle of ritual games, maskings and entertainment centred upon the period of Christmas and the New Year (zimnye svyatki) when the mummers would visit the big houses and prosperous farms in their district requesting permission to perform their play. After the formal entry of the players the plot of the 'St George' plays begins to develop along similar lines to 'Tsar Maximillian' after the execution of Adolf.

The main action of the play begins when the hero, St George, (King George, King William, King Alfred, etc.) like Anika-the- warrior, steps forward into the acting arena and praising his own valour challenges any knight to compete with him in single combat. As in the Russian folk-play the challenge is accepted by a series of noble combatants from distant lands, the Turkish knight, the Royal of Prussia King, the Black Prince of Paradise and so on. The whole structure of these bellicose scenes, the naive monologues and exchange of threats as well as the actual dramatic methods of play, are highly reminiscent of 'Tsar Maximillian'. Both the Russian and the English folk actors observe similar dramatic conventions. The felled knights, for instance, retire to the back of the acting arena where they remain on one knee in token of defeat. The combatants emphasise their angry speeches with regular foot-stamping and a persistent banging of the spear upon the ground.

It has already been mentioned that the serious action of 'Tsar Maximillian' was interspersed with comic interlude-type scenes revolving mainly round the gravedigger (Mark, Marko, Markushka) and the Doctor. These two characters even more than the Black Arab and the Zmeiulan connect 'Tsar Maximillian' with a folk rather than a literary tradition and in them, especially the latter, we find a further point of contact between the Russian play and a whole series of European folk-dramatic games of partly ritualistic origin including 'St George'. The gravedigger is an impudent

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character, lazy and disobedient. He mimics and mocks the Tsar yet enjoys the same degree of immunity as the Mediaeval Court Jesters. Sometimes he is accompanied by his old woman; they bicker, take snuff and try to measure the corpse for its coffin. This comic old man, with or without his female companion occurs frequently in the plays of the Russian folk theatre as well as in the Ukrainian puppet-theatre (did and baba). Markushka's most distinguishing features are his humpback, his generally tattered appearance and his sheepskin coat worn inside out.

Within Russia, the ancestors of this character, much of whose horseplay is of an overtly erotic nature, may be found in the remnants of pagan rituals of the spring and winter cycles. The gravcdigger is close, for instance, to the humpbacked ritual bear whose dance was originally intended to promote fertility and prosperity and whose costume, like that of the other Russian ritual animal the goat, was also made from inverted sheepskin garments. He is also related to the grotesque culture figure, the hunchback Semik (a girl in male clothing) with his Semichikha (a youth in female clothing) who appeared in the spring festival of 'Semik' during the 7th week after Easter. The erotic play of the gravedigger, who is sometimes adorned with a phallic symbol, and his connection with death is a direct parallel to the often exagger- ated sexual nature of the spring vegetation figures and the enact- ment of their death and subsequent resurrection during the ritual.

A similar figure can, of course, be found in the ritual drama of other countries. There is the hunchbacked fool of the English 'St. George' plays, Red Jack, Happy Jack, Beelzebub, etc. The humpbacked clown, Dossemus, was one of the stock masks of the Atellan theatre of Ancient Greece and the figure seems to have retained its popularity throughout the ages. Names like Morychos, Momas, Marikas, connected etymologically with moros which is the generic name for a mimic fool, were frequently given to the comic figures of the ancient mimes,20 and it is interesting to specu- late upon a possible link with the Russian Marko/Markushka. The gravedigger's female companion may also be connected with the hag-like counterpart of the 'moros' whose descendants can be traced to the stages of mediaeval Europe.

An important part of the interlude-scenes in the Russian folkplay 2o Allardyce Nicoll, Masks, Mimes and Miracles (London 193 1), p. 28

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was also dedicated to the Doctor who was summoned to tend Adolf and the fallen knights. In 'St. George' too, the Doctor has a key role. The English and the Russian 'Doctors' are closely related in character, speech, action, costume and most important of all in their function within the play. Both have been given a comically 'professional' appearance, the main distinguishing features of which are the sober, dark clothes, the black bag with its grotesque assortment of medical instruments and the enormous spec- tacles without which neither the English nor the Russian players would consider the costume complete. Both are essentially comic characters and much of the humour of the plays can be found in the incredible cures they boast of and the unorthodox medicines and methods they use. While Dr. Brown (Dr. Lamb, Dr. Ball, etc.) boasts of curing 'The squally grubs, the molly grubs/tight looseness in the chest/and wind in the knee',21 the Russian doctor claims:-

'H HC1KycHO Jaey, H8 MepTBIuX 1POBb Mely. 1Ho MHe pIp4BORT

a3opoBsx, a OT MeHI yBO~FIT cna6mx... H 3y61 yIgepraio, riIasa KOBbIpuo , Ha TOT CBeT OTnpaBJImo.'22

('I'm good at curing people. I can draw blood from the dead. People come to me when they're healthy and are carried away from me, sick. I pull teeth, poke eyes out and send folk off to the other world.')

Dr Brown cures gout by drawing the patient's teeth, cures a magpie of toothache by cutting off its head while his Russian counterpart's remedy for a headache consists of shaving the patient's head to the scalp, taking off the skull, removing the brains and stuffing it instead with a mixture of wine and vodka. The ludicrous com- position of the medicines used by the English Doctor (e.g. pigeon's milk with the blood of a dying donkey)23 also finds an echo in 'Tsar Maximillian' (milk of a hare, smetana from a dog).24

The Doctor, however, apart from being one of the stock comic figures of both the Russian and the English folk-theatre had a

,1 Stuart Pigott, 'Berkshire Mummers' Plays', Folklore (1928) No. XXXIX p. 272.

22 N. E. Onchukov, op. cit., p. 23. 23 R. J. E. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play (Oxford 1923), p. 191i. 24 A. I. Myakutin, Pesni Orenburgskikh kazakov, Vol. 4 (SPb 1910), p. 298.

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more specific and a more significant function within the plays. In the 'St George' plays a comic scene follows the Doctor's entrance during which he attempts to revive his mortally wounded

patients by the use of some special medicine (e.g. the Golden Foster Drops) or treatment as in one Berkshire variant where he sprinkles the combatants with 'Elecampane' and commands them to rise up again.25 A revival of the dead also occurs frequently in 'Tsar Maximillian' and other plays of the Russian folk-theatre

repertoire such as the robber play 'Lodka' and 'Tsar Herod'. In Volkov's variant of 'Tsar Maximillian'26 there occurs the unusual circumstance of the Tsar himself being killed by Mamai, where-

upon the English (Sic!) doctor is called in to cure him:-

')IOITOp - f1logar IHBHTrejbHMhX AYXOB!

(His assistant brings the potion)

,IOTOp - (Points at Maximillian) - CupicHH, c6piSHH, Ha Mopo3 nOCTasb b 6yAeT 8aopOB!'

('Doctor - Bring the reviving potion! ... Splish, splash, put him out in the frost and he'll soon come round!')

At this the Tsar awakes. All the dead knights are similarly revived by the comic doctor in the variant of 'Tron' described by Smirnit- skii, although here the cure is achieved by giving them a thorough shaking.27 A slightly different approach is to be found in 'Mash- en'ka' (a variant of 'Lodka') where the Ataman has magically destroyed his ungrateful robber-band by placing his curse on them. The resurrection is accomplished through the efforts of a 'spirit' who claps his hands and blows upon the corpses, followed by a monk who reads from the Bible and commands life to return to their bodies.28 This scene corresponds closely to the English mumming play from Symondsbury where the doctor also blows upon an old woman to revive her.29

Scenes involving a ritual death, with or without the preface of

25 Stuart Pigott, 'Mummers' Plays', Folklore (1929) Vol. XL, pp. 267-268. 26 R. M. Volkov, 'Tsar' Maksimilyan', Russkii filologicheskii vestnik, Vol.

LXVIII (Warsaw 1912) p. 355. 27 A. Smirnitskii, op. cit. 28 V. N. Dobrovol'skii, 'Mashen'ka: Materialy dlya istorii narodnogo teatra'.

Etnograficheskoe obozrenie, Bk. XLVI, No. 3 (Moscow 1900), pp. I22-123. 29 fotrnal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Reprint No. 6 (1952), pp. 8-9.

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an actual battle, and a subsequent resurrection by a 'doctor' or 'wise-woman' were, in fact, a common feature of European folk drama. Frazer, for example, describes the customary resurrection of a corpse by 'Dr Iron-Beard' on Shrove Tuesday in Swabia30 and A. J. B. Wace's descriptions of mumming plays in the Balkans31 reveal a similar pattern. Here the place of the comic Russian ded was taken by the Punches (Karag'ozu). After some initial horseplay including the rubbing of the patient's eyes with garlic or onion the 'corpse' again came to life.

The death of the hero in battle, followed by a miraculous cure as portrayed in the 'St George' plays and 'Tsar Maximillian' was probably a rationalisaLion of the ritual death or deliberate destruction of the anthropomorphic vegetation figure around which the European agricultural rituals revolved. In Russia itself, outside the folk-plays the resurrection scene was most commonly found in the winter cycle of quasi-dramatic rites connected with domestic farm animals, in particular, the goat and horse. In one of many scenes collected by Vsevolodskii-Gerngross for example a sick horse, played by a costumed youth was cured by a wise-woman and once again the remedy consisted of human breath, blown this time twice into the animal's ears.32

The constantly recurring cure of blowing air into or at the patient is connected with the ancient belief that the soul or the essence of life passed out of the body through the mouth and could in certain cases be transmitted as the giant Svyatogor transmitted his life-force to Ilya Muromets in the epic tale 'Svyatogor i grob' ('Svyatogor and the coffin'). The other most common method of revival was the use of a potion or reviving mixture equivalent to the water of life and death, the quest for which was one of the most frequent tasks of the heroes of European folk-tales including the Russian Ivan-Tsarevich.

The similarity between 'Tsar' Maximillian' and 'St George' can also be seen in the appearance of the actors, the most character- istic feature of which is undoubtedly the strange quasi-military uniforms which were worn. These were liberally decorated with medals, rosettes, sashes, belts and straw epaulettes and accompanied

30 Sir J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, (London I923), p. 307 3x A. J. B. Wace, 'Mumming Plays in the Southern Balkans', Annual of the

British School at Athens, No. XIX, session 1912-13, p. 255. a2 V. N. Vsevolodskii-Gerngross, Igry narodov SSSR (M-L I933), PP. 70-71.

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by wooden swords and spears. There was no attempt at historical

accuracy or continuity, borrowed uniforms of different periods and

regiments being worn by the same collective in a single performance. The military appearance of the costumes was the one essen- tial feature and this was strictly observed by both Russian and English actors.

'Tsar Maximillian', in fact, was an important part of the repertoire of the soldiers' folk-theatre and shows many other signs of

military influence, particularly in the conventions of play, in the gestures and stance of the actors; the soldiery were largely res-

ponsible for the dissemination of the play over such a wide area and they took an active part in encouraging and organising performances wherever they settled.

Although much of 'Tsar Maximillian' still requires to be explained, it seems clear that the play cannot be regarded as merely a folklorised version of some non-extant literary text, dramatic or otherwise. Through its language and metrical form, through its characters, themes and dramatic conventions, it must be considered as an important and integral part of a European dramatic folk- tradition, partly rooted in ritual and thus spanning the artificial gap in the Russian folk-theatre created by the Ukaz of 1648 and the persecution of indigenous theatrical forms.

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Documents

The Russian Folk Play 'Tsar Maximillian': An Examination of Some Possible Origins and Sources