ways sometimes by popularising the knowledge of Shakspere's works by cheap editions; sometimes by the translation of a single play, with a dissertation on its characteristics; and sometimes by works merely critical, of considerable bulk, and often of much merit, of which specimens have already been given from Schlegel, Horn, Ulrici, &c. Of the translations of the whole of the dramas, the first we need name is that by Joseph Meyer, published between 1824 and 1834, in numbers, at 6d. each play. Meyer himself translated only thirteen of the plays, the others were made by H. Döring, and the poems and the spurious plays were by R. S. Schneider. In the Life of Shakspere, contained in the Introduction, Meyer follows implicitly the old myths of Shakspere's early life, saying, after Aubrey -"he followed, for some years, the trade of a slaughterman (Schlächtermeister), and, as his contemporaries faithfully assure us, with more than the usual ability." Thus does a tale improve!

Bottger's edition in 16mo. was issued in single plays at 6d. each; and in this work he was assisted by L. Petz, Th. Mugge, E. Ortlepp, A. Fischer, Karl Simrock, L. Hilsenberg, Th. Oelckers, W. Lampadius, E. Susemihl, H. Döring, and E. Thein; the translations are on the whole well done. It was first published in 1836-9, and has been more than once reprinted. One of the contributors, E. Ortlepp, issued a complete translation of his own, and in 1840 a supplement, containing the Doubtful and Ascribed Plays, with Dissertations on the Characterization of Shakspere.

The translation of P. Kaufmann, commenced in 1830 with Macbeth and Lear, was never completed, and includes only Othello and Cymbeline, published in 1832; the Merry Wives of Windsor, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Much Ado about Nothing, in 1835; and ceased in 1836; in which year were issued All's Well that Ends Well, the Comedy of Errors, and Love's Labour's Lost. The translator, who had previously distinguished himself by a happy rendering of a large selection from the poems of Burns, was equally successful with Shakspere; all the dramas are satisfactorily translated; that of Lear has been thought by some as the best version that has yet appeared; and it has been more than once published separately.

In 1843-47 A. Keller and M. Rapp issued a new translation, with explanatory notes, in 16mo., in thirty-seven parts or eight volumes, which was very tolerably executed, and reached a second edition in 1854. Its most noticeable peculiarity is in the titles of several of the plays, as the Mischievous Windsor Women, the Friends of Oporto (Two Gentlemen of Verona), a Tale by the Fireside (Winter's Tale), &c., an effort apparently to distinguish themselves from other trans

lators by their singularity. In 1856 another translation, by Ph. Reclam, also in 16mo., was commenced, and has been completed, but it calls for no special notice.

In 1856 Dr. F. Jencken published the translation of six of Shakspere's plays. The selection certainly shows some ambition; they were Hamlet, Julius Cæsar, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth. The translator was blind at the time of his undertaking the task, and his motive for doing so was a belief in the essential difference of the two languages: the English, as he says, having, even in what we term the sphere of ideality," a practical and realistic tone, that leaves its colouring on the poetical images; in the German the translation gives not merely an altered sound, but an altered and frequently a wholly different significance and importance. In this there is some truth; but the translator has not succeeded in giving a version superior to those previously existing.

Dr. O. Fiebig, in 1857, published a 'College Shakspere,' taking as his text Bowdler's 'Family Shakspere,' which he says has the great merit of having "extirpated the offensive expressions of the great English poet without any injury to the context or any visible scar or blank in the composition." This we think is a sufficiently bold assertion; but it was intended, as is stated, for those students in a college at Leipzig who are acquiring the English language, and is accompanied by a quantity of useful explanatory notes for that purpose.

English editions of Shakspere have also been published in Germany. The most noticeable is that by N. Delius, who in 1841 published Macbeth, a reprint of the folio of 1623, with the variations of those of 1632, 1664, and 1674 given as foot-notes, and the whole was completed in eight volumes in 1864. It is accompanied by explanatory and critical remarks in German, and many ingenious new readings have been suggested, some of which have been adopted by English editors. N. Delius is a thoroughly good English scholar, and for Germans reading the plays in the original language his work is invaluable. He has written much and well upon Shakspere; but in his 'Tieck'sche Shakespeare-Kritick beleuchtet' (Bonn, 1846), he has indulged in a captious tone against that translation that might have been well spared. He has pointed out errors no doubt, but they are for the most part of very little importance; and occasionally in doing this he has himself fallen into a mistake. Herr Delius makes it matter of complaint that Tieck has not availed himself of the labours of J. P. Collier, C. Knight, and A. Dyce, in his later editions ; and also that "translated by Schlegel and Tieck" is deceptive, as Tieck did not translate. He also

blames him for his harsh judgment of the English critics who disbelieved Shakspere's authorship of Henry VI. Part I. and who thought the Second and Third Parts were originally written by some other pen, and he says that Tieck's opinion "at no time was generally maintained." Tieck had said of Hamlet "this work certainly belongs to the earliest period of the poet. The first production has probably never been printed." Delius says that this "was one of those vague guesses too often found in Tieck, and for which he had no foundation." But speaking of the quarto of 1603, he adds, that "this was a youthful work of the young poet is a belief adopted by Mr. Knight in his edition, and by the critic in the Edinburgh Review, but for which they advance nothing more than sufficient to make it probable." Delius, however, in his Introduction to Hamlet (English edition, 1854), altogether adopts the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Knight. Of the smaller fault-finding we refrain from giving any specimen. Together with the plays Delius has given the Poems, and he says of the Sonnets that in the first edition they seem thrown together accidentally. He prints them according to this arrangement, but gives a list of them as arranged in the edition of 1640, and notices Mr. A. Brown's division of them into series. Among his other works may be mentioned the Mythus von W. Shakespeare. Eine Kritik der Shakespeareschen Biographieen,' 1851, in which he compliments the Editor of the Pictorial Shakspere as having been the first to show the worthlessness of the idle tales that had encumbered the lives of the poet; a Shakespeare-Lexikon,' in an 8vo. volume, published in 1852; and an Essay on the MS. Corrections on the folio of 1632 propounded by J. P. Collier, which he refuses to accept as an authority. Mr. Collier's text after this corrected folio has, however, been reprinted in Germany.

A useful work for German readers is that of Dr. Schmidt of Dantzig, 'Sacherklärende Anmerkungen zu Shaksperes Dramen,' published in 1842, consisting chiefly of a selection from the notes of the English variorum editions, with explanations of particular idioms, and the supply occasionally of a passage omitted, or asserted to be imperfectly given, in Tieck and Schlegel's translations, to which work it forms a sort of Appendix. Another, of more general interest, is that of P. H. Sillig, the Shakespeare Literature to the middle of 1854, containing lists of all the editions of Shakspere; of all the translations in German, French, Dutch, and Italian, whether of collections or of single plays; and of all essays, illustrations, commentaries, &c.' The list displays a thorough knowledge of the subject down to the date at which it closes.

Of single plays with commentaries, explana

tions, and critical remarks, the examples are almost innumerable. We can but mention Professor Tycho Mommsen's Romeo and Juliet, with his critical remarks on the earlier and later texts; an English text of the Taming of the Shrew, with notes by R. Kohler in 1864, which is accompanied by the reprint of a German translation published in 1672, under the title of Kunst über alle Künste, ein bös Weib gut zu machen; an excellent edition of Hamlet in 1857, by Karl Elze, with some judicious remarks ; ‘Letters upon Hamlet,' 1864, by the Baron von Friesen, a searching investigation of the date of the play, and of the general characterization; and Karl Simrock's 'Remarks on the Plots of Shakespeare's Plays,' which has been reproduced by Mr. J. O. Halliwell in the publications of the Shakspeare Society.

The latest of these new translations has been begun in 1865 as a portion of a Bibliothek ausländischer Klassiker,' which is to include translations of the standard works of all languages, and of which have already appeared Dante's Divina Comedia, Tegner's Frithiofs Saga, the novels of Töpfer and Björnsen; and Molière, Rousseau, Le Sage, Ariosto, Tasso, Boccaccio, Alfieri, Cervantes, the Cid, Milton, Swift, Pope, Goldsmith, Macpherson's Ossian, Burns, Walter Scott, &c. &c. are to follow. The translators of Shakspere have hitherto been W. Jordan, Ludwig Seeger, Karl Simrock, and Franz Dingelstedt. In the Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Macbeth, Tieck's version is adopted, in many lines unaltered, in many others with the change of a word or two, sometimes for the better, but not always; and on the whole we may rest well contented with the old version.

Shakspere's Poems and Sonnets have been repeatedly translated; the Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucretia first by Albrecht in 1783; and since by Schumacher, Bauernfeld, Schneider, Richter, Ortlepp, Wagner, Lachmann (the Sonnets only), and Freiligrath (the Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucretia only). The Sonnets and the Passionate Pilgrim by G. Regis is on the whole the closest and considered to be the best, and with the introduction and explanatory remarks displays a commendable industry and a true feeling of the author. It was published in 1836, in 16mo. in the Shakespeare-Almanack,' and has been eclipsed in form at least by the translation of the Sonnets by Fr. Bodenstedt in Svo. in 1862. In this a new arrangement has been adopted, for which a satisfactory reason is promised in the introduction, but which he has omitted to give, and though not inelegant, is far from being so close to the original as that of Regis. It will nevertheless give to the German public a wider acquaintance with these Poems than they have hitherto possessed.

But with all these repeated efforts at translation, that of the dramas edited by Tieck remains the most popular and therefore the most influential. There have now been eight editions published. In the sixth, published in 1853-54, it was first publicly announced who was the third person to whom Tieck alludes in his parting address at the close of the first edition-" often have the three fellow-labourers assembled together to improve their common work." It was then first stated that Dorothea, Tieck's eldest daughter, had contributed Coriolanus, the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Timon of Athens, the Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and Macbeth; Count Wolff von Baudissin had furnished King Henry VIII., King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus, Othello, Troilus and Cressida, the Comedy of Errors, All's Well that Ends Well, Love's Labour's Lost, the Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado about Nothing, the Merry Wives of Windsor, and Measure for Measure; the remainder were those which Schlegel had prepared; except that Pericles was not included in the first edition, nor has it been added in the later editions, neither was it included in the translation of Voss. This is very singular, as Tieck has translated it in his 'Alt Englisches Theater,' in which he expresses himself as having no doubt of its being an early work of Shakspere. The influence exercised by Tieck over German opinion was probably more extended by his readings of Shakspere, which he gave in his own house at Dresden for many years, and which were attended not only by intelligent Germans but by foreigners of all nations, than by his publications. A listener to many of these readings (the Baron von Friesen) says-"By the fulness and flexibility of his voice, by the certainty and delicacy with which he governed every sound without the slightest appearance of effort or constraint, and by the warmth and depth of the poetical feelings with which he rose to the most elevated expression of passion, or sunk to the most delicate shadowing of the tenderest emotion, the dramas of Shakspere, which he delivered in succession, appeared the animated images of an harmonious organism. We forgot the want of scenery, and saw only the speaking character alive before us." Nor was the English influence on German literature limited to the example of Shakspere; other examples from our older dramatists were likewise translated, besides those we have mentioned by Tieck. In 1831 E. von Bülow issued translations of Grim the Collier of Croydon, Edward II. and the Jew of Malta; and in 1836 Count von Baudissin gave to the world a selection from Ben Jonson and his School,' containing specimens from Jonson, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher; with notices of the manners, customs, and peculiarities

of the period, a work of great value for a German reader, and which was certainly derived from the example and received the assistance of Tieck.*

The amount of critical labour bestowed on Shakspere within the last few years is enormous. In the literary publications occasional papers appear. Some have considerable merit; others, and the more numerous, are superficial or altogether erroneous. Only one fact is encouraging, that none now venture to speak of Shakspere as merely an uncultivated natural genius. The critics of the school of Coleridge, Schlegel, and Tieck have entirely annihilated that belief. On the whole, there is little that is of importance in the modern criticism; where it is new, it is too frequently marked by ill-nature directed against either the adherents or the opposers of what is called the romantic schools, and this is said to have been originally commenced by Delius in his attack on Tieck. In 1837 and 1842 H. Th. Rötscher in Essays on Lear and Romeo and Juliet, given in his Essays on Philosophy and Art, endeavours to show, but very unsatisfactorily, that Shakspere had formed a system of philosophy, and that it is assimilated to that of Hegel; in 1844, a Cycle of Dramatic Characters; in 1859, Critical and Dramatic Essays; and in 1864, Shakspere in his highest characterform explained and developed. In this he takes a wider view and in a more liberal spirit, and has shown much diligence and good taste in pointing out the manner in which Shakspere's characters should be represented. 'Shakspere im Verhältniss zur deutschen Poesie, insbesondere zur politischen,' by Dr. Friedrich Theodore Vischer, published at Stuttgardt in 1861, in the New Series of the "Kritische Gänge,' is a valuable and highly popular contribution to Shaksperian literature.

Professor F. Kreyssig published in 1858 and 1862, Lectures on Shakspere, his Times, and his Works. It is extremely well written, displays great industry in investigating the sources of the dramas, a sincere and intelligent appreciation of the dramatist, and has become a popular work with the reading public, but it betrays a too undisguised depreciation of the so-called romanticists.

The term romantic is scarcely used now in the sense in which Lessing used it. It is alleged that the romanticists lay too much weight on imagination and feeling, and thus not only neglect all principles of regularity of form, but also too

It may be worth mentioning, that another work, also published in 1836, under the title of Vier Schauspiele, von Shakespeare; übersetzt von L. Tieck,' was, in fact, the work of Baudissin. It contained Edward III., Thomas Lord Cromwell, Sir John Oldcastle, and the London Prodigal. Tieck had given his assistance, and saw it through the press. He was to have furnished a preface, naming the real translator; but the printer and publisher hurried the work, and before the preface reached them, the work had been issued to the public under Tieck's name, to the surprise of both editor and translator.

frequently indulge in the expression of their own peculiar emotions. Long since Göthe had marked the distinction: "I should define the classic by the word healthy, the romantic by the word sickly. In this sense the Niebelungen Lied is as much a classic as the Iliad. Most modern productions are not romantic because they are new, but because they are weak, morbid, and sickly, and the old are not classics because they are old, but because they are strong, fresh, healthy, and cheerful."* The adversaries of the romanticists also add that, with unrestrained imaginations, feelings, and sensations in poetry and literature, obscurity, complications, and untruth to nature are produced, and they accuse the romanticists with peculiar emphasis that they mistake or leave unnoticed the spirit of the time in its social and political aspect of advance. Now, if we remember who, in the true sense of the word, really deserve the name of romanticists-and except Tieck and the two Schlegels there are but few prominent writers-we must feel convinced that these reproaches are unfounded; on the other hand, if the swarm of writers, now with much and now with but little justification, are reckoned amongst them, we shall certainly find many names to whom the reproach of an obscure crowding of thoughts or a sickly sentimentality may justly apply. But party spirit does not distinguish thus; and the name of romanticist is used as betokening an adherent of a disagreeable and old-fashioned school. This conclusion acts ill on the criticism of Shakspere, for it was from the romanticists proper that the earlier enlightened judgments proceeded upon Shakspere and the true character of his dramas. The opposers of the romanticists are sometimes styled classicists, but in truth they are realists.

In 1863-4 Dr. and Professor J. L. F. Flathe issued two volumes upon Shakespeare und seine Wirklichkeit.' He quotes Göthe, who has said: "Shakspeare offers us golden apples in silver dishes. We get the silver dishes by studying his works, but unfortunately we have nothing better than potatoes to put into them."+ It is painful to have this sentence of Göthe's made the groundwork of an attack on all preceding critics, and the conscientious labours of so many learned and industrious men condemned. The German æsthetic is disserted on and highly praised, but without any novelty; he adopts many of the opinions of those he attacks; he adds little or nothing to the knowledge of Shakspere; and the whole is tedious. Surely we have here a specimen of the potatoes without the silver dish.

The only other critical work we shall notice is that of Gervinus, first published in four volumes

'Eckermann's Conversations with Göthe,' translated by S. M. Fuller, 1839, p. 285.

t Ibid, p. 157.

in 1849-50, of which a third edition was issued in 1862, and of which an English translation has been given to the public. Gervinus was a well known author; he possesses an easy style, is frequently eloquent, and he had been persecuted for his liberal opinions in politics; consequently it is no wonder that his work was at once popular. But we cannot avoid thinking that it has been greatly over-praised. In his analyzation of the plays and the principal characters he is often acute, but he is also often super-subtle. The marks of a too fluent pen are constantly observable; and there is an air of superficiality over the whole. As one instance we may quote the treatment, in his first edition, of the Three Parts of Henry VI., in which, resting on Malone, he decided against the First Part having been written by Shakspere, as well as against the early copies of the Second and Third Parts, and asserts that Shakspere has only touched up these two parts; adding dogmatically in a note, "Tieck's belief that these pieces were by Shakspere in an older and original form is now participated in by no one," ignoring the fact that they have been included in every German translation of the collected plays, and passing unnoticed the Essay on the Three Parts of King Henry VI., and King Richard III., published in the first edition of the Pictorial Shakspere. In the translation of the last edition of Gervinus by Miss F. E. Bunnett, he is made to say: "The two last Parts of Henry VI. are worked up by Shakspeare from an existing original, which may have early suggested to our Poet the idea, not alone by additions to appropriate them to his stage, but also to append to them the whole series of his histories, and this not only with regard to the Parts, but even to the leading idea. For the First Part, on the contrary, we possess no sources; in its tenour it is but very slightly united with the two last Parts, and this union was not originally contained in the piece..... From Malone's ample dissertation upon the Three Parts of Henry VI., until Dyce, all authorship of this first Part is in England generally refused to our Poet." He then proceeds to show that scenes might be expunged without loss, and that when Tieck and Ulrici so highly praise the trilogy, he says, "they betray that they do not distinguish between matter and form, and that they have not compared the chronicles which these dramas follow with the poetical version. There cannot be much question of plan and composition in a piece which simply follows, with a few exceptions and errors, the course of the chronicle, which, like the chronicle, unfolds in succession the various layers of the matter, and brings forward a series of scenes which, as the anecdotes of the armourer and the lame Simpcox, stand in very slight connexion with the great course of the whole." In the translation, how

ever, the note is omitted, that "the belief is now participated in by no one." Of the whole, the Baron von Friesen writes in a MS. communication:-"One can scarcely believe that the clear, and in my opinion convincing, Essay of Charles Knight upon the subject, can have been wholly unknown to him. Should this have been actually the case, he should have remembered the contradiction of the older commentators-though given with less energy and less authority-Steevens, for instance, and that the subject required a much more earnest consideration. For an author of the position and the celebrity of Gervinus could not or should not but have known that this inquiry is of the highest importance for a true judgment of the general poetical character of Shakspere." Gervinus's knowledge of Shakspere's times, and the manners and ideas then prevalent, are evidently slight. We will only add that his attacks on the idealists or romanticists are continuous, and that he assumes that Shakspere uniformly prefers action as a principle in his writings, and in his development of character; this is what he mainly endeavours to establish. This, however, is taking a very narrow view of the poet, who has, indeed, generally abundant action, and also meditation, passion, wit, and imagination. But as the book is accessible to the English reader, we here quit the subject. We may add that Karl Simrock has no such high idea of Malone's merits as Gervinus has. In his translation of Macbeth he notices the arbitrary divergences of Malone and others from the folio of 1623, and compliments Mr. Knight on having been the first to revert to it as the best authority.

The Aufsätze über Shakespeare,' by C. Hebler, published in 1865, are a series of clever Essays on the various plays, in which he discusses the opinions of many of his predecessors in his own country-Tieck and others with much acuteness, and, where not displaying too much of the German super-subtleness, a true feeling of the Shakspere characteristics and a well-balanced judgment.

What has been the influence of so diligent a study of Shakspere on the literature of Germany, is too wide a subject for our present purpose; but we may be allowed to remark, that beyond freeing its writers from the fetters of the old classical and French schools, no very evident elevation of their modern drama has been manifested. Oehlenschläger was a Dane by birth, but he wrote some of his dramas in German, and translated others, and they are far above anything produced by a native author, except perhaps those by Grillparzer. Both authors have no doubt received a colour from the diffusion of a knowledge of Shakspere; but neither were disciples, though Oehlenschläger admitted the beauties of his works, which he thought, however,

were mixed with many faults; and his dramas, though full of exalted poetry, are certainly not Shaksperian. Grillparzer is even less to be considered as a follower: he is a romanticist, with great poetical power; but fancy takes the place of reality, and plots and characters are unnatural, and sometimes repulsive: the 'Ahnfrau' affords a good specimen of his defects and excellences.

There are, however, some dramatists who, with inferior poetical power to Oehlenschläger and Grillparzer, perhaps come nearer to Shakspere than either. J. M. R. Lenz, whom we have mentioned favourably as a critic, was also a dramatist, and his plays, published after his death, in 1828, by Tieck, have considerable merit. Heinrich von Kleist, who died by his own hand at the age of thirty-five, in 1811, was the most richly gifted. Some of his characters are sharply delineated, and, though often placed in improbable situations, are naturally developed and well expressed. His plays still retain possession of the German stage. 'Der Zerbrochene Krug' (the Broken Pitcher) is a comedy, the plot turning on the difficulty of identifying in a law court the man who broke the pitcher. The plot is very intricate, and though ingeniously wrought out, scarcely sufficient to keep up an interest through five long acts. 'Prinz Friedrich von Homburg' is much more natural, and is well worked out. Katharine of Heilbronn,' with some good characterization and poetical power, is damaged by the extravagance of the plot. A German Count and the daughter of an armourer have a vision, on the night of St. Sylvester, in which a cherub introduces each to the other, as in the tale of Kamur-ez-Zeman and the Princess Budoor in the 'Arabian Nights.' Accidentally meeting in reality, they of course fall in love, the maiden with the most devoted attachment, the Count with a determination to resist the impulse, on account of the lowness of her birth, and because he had been led to suppose his future bride was to be the daughter of an Emperor. The maid, of exquisite beauty, pursues the Count on foot wherever he goes, though she has to sleep with his horses. The old armourer believes that this is produced by the magical art of the Count, and appeals him before the Vehm-gericht, who are represented, in a tedious protracted act, as sitting in judgment the girl is returned to her father. The Count prepares to marry a most attractive lady, whose "teeth belong to a girl of Munich, whose hair is ordered from France, whose glowing cheeks are derived from the mines of Hungary, and whose shape, so much admired, is due to a chemise manufactured by a smith out of Swedish iron." Katharine becomes acquainted with the design of a rival for this lady's hand, to attack them at night; on foot she crosses mountains and floods to convey the letter with the intelligence; she is