„Blicken wir in die Originalausgabe!“

Abstract

Abstract With his contributions both to textual criticism and editorial methodology, Michael Bernays substantially shaped the field of scholarly editorial practice in the nineteenth century. While his treatise of 1866, Über Kritik und Geschichte des Goetheschen Textes (On the Critical Reception and History of Goethe’s Texts), has come to be recognized as one of ‘foundational’ documents of editorial theory and practice, his 1872 analysis of the gestation and emergence of August Wilhelm Schlegel’s Shakespeare translations (Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare – The Creation of Schlegel’s Shakespeare), as well as his conception of a new and revised edition of the Schlegel-Tieck translation (1871–1873, 1892), have both until now attracted very little attention. This article attempts to provide a more precise account of Bernays’ text-critical methodology, and to set his editorial deliberations over the Schlegel-Tieck translation in the broader context of contemporary endeavours to create a ‘German’ Shakespeare.