This dissertation investigates form and discourse in Alexander Pushkin's dramaturgy. Because Pushkin had passive rather than active theatrical experience (i.e. he never staged, produced, directed, or acted in a play), his dramatic works therefore better reflect the dramatists and schools of thought that influenced him than they do the trial-and-error process of working in the theatre. We shall examine the most prominent of these influences—in general Renaissance English drama vs. French Neoclassicism, and more specifically Shakespeare and Voltaire.

On more than one occasion, Pushkin stated that Shakespeare set a better precedent than French Neoclassicism for the development of Russian theatre. Renaissance English dramatists disregarded arbitrary rules and aimed at generating spectacle, while the French Neoclassicists hoped to fulfill the demands of aesthetic philosophies designed to produce a hypothetical ideal. Thus, Pushkin believed romantic drama should define staging practices, while neoclassical drama could, with some alteration, evolve into a viable poetic form more suitable for reading (or performing in literary salons).

Pushkin's dramatic oeuvre will therefore be studied in terms of its relative literariness vs. theatricality. The most literary of Pushkin's dramatic works are his three quasi-dramatic narrative poems: Gypsies, Poltava, and Angelo. His Little Tragedies reflect many aspects of Senecan rhetorical drama and French Neoclassical drama theory. We shall also examine the origins of “Shakespearean” drama and its effect on Boris Godunov, the most stageworthy of Pushkin's dramas. Finally, to clarify the differences between literary and dramatic discourse in Pushkin's work, we will read Karel Čapek's modernist novel Hordubal as an adaptation of Aeschylus' Oresteia.