2,500 entries. First of Shakespeare’s plays to be represented in America, ‘Richard III’ was performed in New York in March 1750. More recently Edwin Forrest, Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Booth, Charlotte Cushman, and Miss Ada Rehan have maintained on the American stage the great traditions of Shakespearean acting; while Mr. E. A. Abbey has devoted high artistic gifts to pictorial representation of scenes from the plays.
Translations. In Germany. German translations.
The Bible, alone of literary compositions, has been translated more frequently or into a greater number of languages than the works of Shakespeare. The progress of his reputation in Germany, France, Italy, and Russia was somewhat slow at the outset. But in Germany the poet has received for nearly a century and a half a recognition scarcely less pronounced than that accorded him in America and in his own country. Three of Shakespeare’s plays, now in the Zurich Library, were brought thither by J. R. Hess from England in 1614. As early as 1626 ‘Hamlet,’ ‘King Lear,’ and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ were acted at Dresden, and a version of the ‘Taming of The Shrew’ was played there and elsewhere at the end of the seventeenth century. But such mention of Shakespeare as is found in German literature between 1640 and 1740 only indicates a knowledge on the part of German readers either of Dryden’s criticisms or of the accounts of him printed in English encyclopædias. [342] The earliest sign of a direct
acquaintance with the plays is a poor translation of ‘Julius Cæsar’ into German by Baron C. W. von Borck, formerly Prussian minister in London, which was published at Berlin in 1741. A worse rendering of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ followed in 1758. Meanwhile J. C. Gottsched (1700-66), an influential man of letters, warmly denounced Shakespeare in a review of Von Borck’s effort in ‘Beiträge zur deutschen Sprache’ and elsewhere. Lessing came without delay to Shakespeare’s rescue, and set his reputation, in the estimation of the German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal entitled ‘Litteraturbriefe,’ that Lessing first claimed for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had dominated European taste, but to all ancient or modern poets. Lessing’s doctrine, which he developed in his ‘Hamburgische Dramaturgie’ (Hamburg, 1767, 2 vols. 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet Johann Gottfried Herder in the ‘Blätter von deutschen Art and Kunst,’ 1771. Christopher Martin Wieland (1733-1813) in 1762 began a prose translation which Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1743-1820) completed (Zurich, 13 vols., 1775-84). Between 1797 and 1833 there appeared at intervals the classical German rendering by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, leaders of the romantic school of German literature, whose creed embodied, as one of its first articles, an unwavering veneration for Shakespeare. Schlegel translated only seventeen plays, and his workmanship excels that of the
rest of the translation. Tieck’s part in the undertaking was mainly confined to editing translations by various hands. Many other German translations in verse were undertaken during the same period—by J. H. Voss and his sons (Leipzig, 1818-29), by J. W. O. Benda (Leipzig, 1825-6), by J. Körner (Vienna, 1836), by A. Böttger (Leipzig, 1836-7), by E. Ortlepp (Stuttgart, 1838-9), and by A. Keller and M. Rapp (Stuttgart, 1843-6). The best of more recent German translations is that by a band of poets and eminent men of letters including Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Ferdinand von Freiligrath, and Paul Heyse (Leipzig, 1867-71, 38 vols.) Most of these versions have been many times reissued, but, despite the high merits of von Bodenstedt and his companions’ performance, Schlegel and Tieck’s achievement still holds the field. Schlegel’s lectures on ‘Shakespeare and the Drama,’ which were delivered at Vienna in 1808, and were translated into English in 1815, are worthy of comparison with those of Coleridge, who owed much to their influence. Wordsworth in 1815 declared that Schlegel and his disciples first marked out the right road in æsthetic criticism, and enjoyed at the moment superiority over all English æsthetic critics of Shakespeare. [344] Subsequently Goethe
poured forth, in his voluminous writings, a mass of criticism even more illuminating and appreciative than Schlegel’s. [345] Although Goethe deemed Shakespeare’s works unsuited to the stage, he adapted ‘Romeo and Juliet’ for the Weimar Theatre, while Schiller prepared ‘Macbeth’ (Stuttgart, 1801). Heine published in 1838 charming studies of Shakespeare’s heroines (English translation 1895), and acknowledged only one defect in Shakespeare—that he was an Englishman.
Modern German writers on Shakespeare.
During the last half-century textual, æsthetic, and biographical criticism has been pursued in Germany with unflagging industry and energy; and although laboured and supersubtle theorising characterises much German æsthetic criticism, its mass and variety testify to the impressiveness of the appeal that Shakespeare’s work has made to the German intellect. The efforts to stem the current of Shakespearean worship made by the realistic critic, Gustav Rümelin, in his ‘Shakespearestudien’ (Stuttgart, 1866), and subsequently by the dramatist, J. R. Benedix, in ‘Die Shakespearomanie’ (Stuttgart, 1873, 8vo), proved of no effect. In studies of the text and metre Nikolaus Delius (1813-1888) should, among recent German writers, be accorded the first place; in studies of the biography and stage history Friedrich Karl Elze (1821-1889); in æsthetic studies Friedrich Alexander Theodor Kreyssig (1818-1879), author of ‘Vorlesungen über Shakespeare’ (Berlin, 1858 and 1874), and ‘Shakespeare-Fragen’ (Leipzig, 1871).
Ulrici’s ‘Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art’ (first published at Halle in 1839) and Gervinus’s Commentaries (first published at Leipzig in 1848-9), both of which are familiar in English translations, are suggestive but unconvincing æsthetic interpretations. The German Shakespeare Society, which was founded at Weimar in 1865, has published thirty-four year-books (edited successively by von Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, and F. A. Leo); each contains useful contributions to Shakespearean study.