Shakespeare as German Author ed. by John McCarthy

Abstract

Reviewed by: Shakespeare as German Author ed. by John McCarthy Peter Höyng John McCarthy, ed. Shakespeare as German Author. Amsterdam: Brill, 2018. 242 pp. This is an important bilingual work on Shakespeare reception in the Germanspeaking world, and a significant addition to Roger Paulin's The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany 1682–1914 (2003), his edited essay collection Shakespeare im 18. Jahrhundert (2007), as well as Hans-Jürgen Blinn's Shakespeare-Rezeption: Die Diskussion um Shakespeare in Deutschland (1982), the latter mainly providing documentary resources. In light of these three previous contributions, John McCarthy's Shakespeare as German Author stands out in regards to the time span it covers (focusing on the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century), its thematic focus on literary and theater reception, and its emphasis on theories of translation and cultural transfer. At nearly a third of the book, McCarthy's contribution serves not only as an introduction, but a crucial chapter in its own right. His meticulous research on the making of Shakespeare as a German "writer alongside Goethe and Schiller in full accord with the German spirit" is presented through the discussion of three texts by Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Joachim Eschenburg, and Georg Gottfried Gervinus. These texts are the "primary markers" for introducing Shakespeare into German-speaking culture in the years 1750–1850. McCarthy's chronological overview of the German-speaking Shakespeare reception will be of great value for both newcomers and those well-versed in the topic, since all three texts have long been overlooked by scholars despite their valuable theoretical reflections on the aesthetic issues that Shakespeare's plays presented at the time. Another strength of McCarthy's essay is that he broadens his evaluation of Shakespeare's reception history by incorporating two frameworks: cultural transfer, which also takes into account theoretical considerations of translation, and "communicative communities." McCarthy's essay alone makes the volume worthwhile and, as a whole, this book will be indispensable for anyone interested in researching Shakespeare translations in the Age of Goethe. Till Kinzel's essay, "Johann Joachim Eschenburgs Shakespeare zwischen Regelpoetik und Genieästhetik," rightly opens the book's chronological trajectory. After all, Eschenburg's thirteen-volume collection of Shakespeares theatralische Werke (1775–82) completed "Wieland's project of translating all of Shakespeare's plays." Kinzel's well-written and well-researched essay takes its main cue from Eschenburg's Über W. Shakespeare (1787), "the first scholarly monograph on the poet written in German," and situates Eschenburg's theoretical interest in literary criticism within a larger network of friends (among them Lessing) and foes on Shakespeare plays. Kinzel treats Eschenburg's mediating position as a paradigm for how Shakespeare presented a litmus test for the poetological discourse of the Enlightenment. Monika Nenon's essay first shows Wieland as a translator of Hamlet (1766) before comparing two theatrical adaptations of Wieland's work: the one by Franz von Heufeld in Vienna (1772), and the other by Friedrich Ludwig Schröder in Hamburg (1777). Most fascinating are her examples for Wieland's adaptive translation, followed by Heufeld's later edits, and Schröder's appropriation not of Wieland but of Heufeld (!). While Nenon's essay is not guided by a larger theoretical framework, it is an important showcase of how theatrical confinements and moral taste came to bear on adaptations of Hamlet. Lisa Beesley's contribution compares two translations of the same work: Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream by Christoph Martin Wieland, Ein St. [End Page 374] Johannis Nachts-Traum (1766) and August Wilhelm von Schlegels Der Sommernachtstraum (1797). Beesley's appraisal is especially persuasive because she does not attempt to prove one translator superior to the other but brings them into dialogue and thereby follows Wieland's notion of translation as a collaborative project. Beesly's examples of comparative deletions and puns are both informative and instructive. Regrettably, the author provides no further context as to why Wieland used for his translation the Catholic holiday "St. Johannis" instead of "Sommernacht" as Schlegel did. Astrid Dröse's first-rate article, "Der Weimarer Macbeth (1800/1801) im Licht der Kulturtransfer-Forschung," makes explicit what her cocontributors have so far done implicitly, for she...