GERMAN APPRECIATION.

107

portion is neither laboriously dull nor extravagantly theoretical. In Elizabethan days several of Shakespeare's plays were performed in Germany by English companies travelling on the Continent, and adaptations or imitations of them were produced by German playwrights. But our great poet's name was first mentioned in a German book in 1682; and even as late as 1740 Bodmer seems to have known our "Saspar" (so he prints the name) only as the author of A Midsummer Night's Dream. An attempt to translate Julius Cæsar into rhymed Alexandrines was made in 1741 by C. W. Von Borck, a Prussian minister of state, and seventeen years later an equally unhappy travesty of Romeo and Juliet was published at Basle. It was Lessing who first taught his countrymen to honour Shakespeare aright; opposing himself to the tyranny of French models on the stage, he maintained that judged even by the standards of antiquity Shakespeare, whom Voltaire had styled "le Corneille de Londres, grand fou d'ailleurs", was a higher dramatic poet than the Corneille of Paris. In 1762 appeared the first volume of Wieland's translation of twentytwo plays by Shakespeare, on which the later complete translation by Eschenburg (1775-77) was based. Garrick's acting of Hamlet was described to German readers by Lichenberg, and the manager of the Hamburg theatre, Schröder a player of great eminence-put several of Shakespeare's tragedies. upon the boards. Herder shared in that enthusiasm for our great dramatist which was extravagantly expressed by his younger contemporaries of the days of the Sturm und Drang. Goethe as a youth

prepared an oration in Shakespeare's honour; in manhood he illuminated the tragedy of Hamlet by his admirable criticism introduced into Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship; in his elder years he declared that had he been born an Englishman, with Shakespeare's masterpieces in their full might before him, they would have overpowered his imagination, and he would not have known where to turn to find an opening for his creative instinct. Schiller adapted the tragedy of Macbeth, Goethe that of Romeo and Juliet, to the German stage. Two valuable gifts to lovers of Shakespeare came from the Romantic school-Schlegel's and Tieck's incomparable translation of the plays; and the criticism of Schlegel on dramatic art and literature, first offered in 1808 to a Viennese audience in the form of lectures. In later years three important commentaries on the complete works of Shakespeare have appeared in Germany that of Ulrici, which errs in German fashion by reading into the dramas abstract ideas of the critic's own theoretical mind; that of Gervinus, which is thoughtful and sensible, but somewhat laboriously moralizing; and the lectures of Kreyssig, which seem to me to exhibit German Shakespearian criticism at its best. The William Shakespeare of Karl Elze is a work of solid erudition, and for the German student a mine of information. Since 1865 the German Shakespeare-Gesellschaft has published annually a volume of studies, and among these the scholarly articles by Delius deserve a special word of commendation. Cotta's Morgenblatt of 1864, the year of the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth, and in the early

In

THE FRENCH POINT OF VIEW.

109

numbers of 1865 appeared a series of "Shakespeare Studies by a Realist" which attracted the attention of a wide circle of readers; the articles were brilliant in style, and it was refreshing in the midst of Teutonic enthusiasm and Teutonic earnestness to hear the voice of a critical Mephistopheles who denied the supremacy of the English dramatist. The loyal adherents of Shakespeare directed each his lance against this unknown and profane Paynim, who before long was discovered to bear the name of Rümelin. His attack rather stimulated than checked the "Shakespeare-mania"; there is yet no diminution of the seemingly inexhaustible stream of German studies of our poet; it is still in Germany, as when Goethe wrote, "Shakespeare und kein Ende".

§ 58. In France Voltaire called public attention to the genius of Shakespeare, whom, however, he represented as an intoxicated barbarian, "without the smallest spark of good taste or the least knowledge of the rules". When in 1762 the French Academy thanked Voltaire for his adaptation of Julius Cæsar they confessed that they were unable to obtain a copy of his English original. Ducis adapted several of Shakespeare's plays-Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and Othelloto the French stage. Hamlet in Ducis' version lives at the close of the play; with the story of the lovers of Verona the adapter entangles that of Dante's Ugolino. The versions, however, did much to make Shakespeare better known. The first French translation of all Shakespeare's plays was that of Letourneur (1776–82). The tone of his author was in some

places altered to suit the taste of the age; but his enthusiasm for the English dramatist was evident. The ardent eulogy of Shakespeare by Diderot is characteristic of that great writer, who was in so many ways an imitator in criticism. Madame de Stael declared that while Shakespeare is the type of the English, or rather the Northern genius, the beauties of all countries and of all times may be found in his pages. In later years Guizot contributed to French literature a sober study of Shakespeare, and Victor Hugo a rhapsody of praise. Victor Hugo's son, François-Victor Hugo, executed an admirable translation of Shakespeare, and prefixed to each of the plays and poems an interesting essay. The best fruits of recent Shakespearian scholarship in France, besides Hugo's translation and that of M. Montégut, are the critical studies of M. Mézières, and M. Paul Stapfer whose work on Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity has been translated into English.1

§ 59. Among recent English studies Lady Martin's essays on Some of Shakespeare's Female Characters have an interest as the critical interpretations of one who was a distinguished interpreter of Shakespeare on the stage; they may be read with advantage in connection with the earlier criticism of Mrs. Jameson in her Characteristics of Women (1832). A series of thoughtful essays by W. W. Lloyd was contributed to the 1856 edition of Singer's Shakespeare and has since been separately published. Hudson's Shakespeare; his

1 On Shakespeare in France see Lacroix's Histoire de l'Influence de Shakespeare sur le Théâtre français (1856).

Life, Art, and Characters, a thoughtful and sympathetic piece of work, has achieved a deserved popularity on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Swinburne's A Study of Shakespeare (1880), written with ardour and insight, characterizes the three periods of the poet's development, the lyric and fantastic period, the comic and historic, and the tragic and romantic. Mr. Richard Moulton, aiming at a popular illustration of the principles of so-called "scientific criticism", has published some excellent essays on "Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist" (1885). Two annotated editions of the Sonnets have recently been published, the later, that edited by Mr. Tyler, containing the results of an ingenious endeavour to identify the persons of the "Dark Lady" and "Mr. W. H." In numberless editions the plays of Shakespeare have been adapted to the purposes of education. Now, more than at any previous period, our greatest poet, our greatest Master of Life has a conspicuous part in forming the mind of England.

§ 60. The interpretation of Shakespeare by commentators and critics has been slow, laborious, cumulative. There is another kind of interpretation which is vital, of immediate efficacy, and directly addressed to a multitude roused for the time to imaginative sympathy-the interpretation of great actors; unfortunately this can be but coldly and imperfectly transmitted to posterity, and hence it must be ever begun anew. The greatest tragic actor of Shakespeare's time was Richard Burbage. It has been suggested that Hamlet was made "fat and scant of breath" to suit the stout person of this