The Institute of History of Ukraine in its online encyclopedia (in Ukrainian) explains that the vertep, a telling of the Christmas story through puppet theatre, is thought to have appeared in the second half of the 17th century and lasted until the early 20th century. In 1929, I︠E︡vhen Markovsʹkyĭ published a book about vertep which was due to be the first volume of a set but which was never added to. The UL’s copy has its record here.
The front cover of the book, with two pages showing puppets and a stage.
The vertep stage was often a two-storey house, with the story of the nativity taking place on the higher floor while the other provided other religious or secular puppet plays, with a strong strain of comedy running through the secular plays. The Museum of Theatre, Music, and Cinema of Ukraine shows a beautiful array of vertep houses on this page.
Secular stories involved stock characters, among which often featured a Ukrainian peasant couple, a Zaporozhian Cossack, clerics, a Jewish character, a Polish character, Russian soldiers, and various animals.
Markovsʹkyĭ starts by discussing the roots of vertep, and then goes on to provide the texts of four specific strands of vertep, named by the towns/villages they were associated with:
- Sokyrensʹkyĭ (Sokyrynt︠s︡i), with multiple texts
- Slavutynsʹkyĭ (Slavuta)
- Baturynsʹkyĭ (Baturyn)
- Khorolsʹkyĭ (Khorol)
He then provides pictures of stage arrangements and puppets from all but Baturin, and also provides some music scores from Sokrynt︠s︡i and Slavuta.
Markovsʹkyĭ’s book was digitised just last year as part of a project to make available online the publications of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences produced from 1919 to 1931. The digitised copy loads a little slowly but is a super resource. Our physical copy is getting a little fragile, but readers keen to see the real thing are welcome to request it in the new year, by filling in a slip at the Modern Collections Desk in the main Reading Room.
On behalf of all of the Collections and Academic Liaison staff, I wish our blog readers a peaceful Christmas and a good and refreshing break.
Mel Bach
Languages across Borders 