Director Oleksandr “Les” Kurbas’s 1920 Macbeth was the first production of a Shakespeare play in Ukraine. Kurbas staged the play in the midst of the famine and violence of the Russian Civil War: Lady Macbeth fainted from hunger in the wings, and Kurbas used series of hand signals to warn the actors onstage that they were about to be shot at.

Kurbas was one of the main subjects of “‘What's Past is Prologue’: Shakespeare and Canon Formation in Early Soviet Ukraine,” a presentation given by Dr. Irena Makaryk at Shakespeare and the Worlds of Communism, a 1996 conference sponsored by the Folger, Penn State University, and the Russian Embassy in Washington. The event looked at Shakespeare’s role in the formation of culture within the bloc of countries that had been allied with the newly-collapsed Soviet Union.

Makaryk’s paper explored the ways Ukrainians used Shakespeare’s plays to assert the existence and value of Ukrainian culture. She also examined how the Russians—first the Czars, and then the Soviets—repressed Ukrainian theater order to keep Ukrainian culture under their thumb. As Vladimir Putin’s savage invasion of Ukraine continues, we spoke with Makaryk about her research on Shakespeare, theater, and Ukrainian national identity. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

Dr. Irena Makaryk is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. Her book Shakespeare in the Undiscovered Bourn: Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism, and Early Soviet Cultural Politics was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2004. You can read her paper “‘What's Past is Prologue’: Shakespeare and Canon Formation in Early Soviet Ukraine” in Shakespeare in the Worlds of Communism and Socialism. The paperback edition was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2013.

From the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. Published May 10, 2022. © Folger Shakespeare Library. All rights reserved. This podcast episode, “I Do but Dream on Sovereignty,” was produced by Richard Paul. Garland Scott is the associate producer. It was edited by Gail Kern Paster. Ben Lauer is the web producer. Leonor Fernandez edits a transcript of every episode, available at folger.edu.

We had technical help from Andrew Feliciano, Lucas Kuzma and Evan Marquart at Voice Trax West in Studio City, California.