Abstract
Venning analyzes the role of the nineteenth-century German Romantic Ludwig Tieck in mythologizing Shakespeare in Germany. Examining Tieck’s work as a playwright, translator, critic, dramaturg, and director, Venning argues that through his literary and theatrical efforts, Tieck contributed to the transformation of Germans into readers and spectators who claimed Shakespeare as their own national playwright. The chapter situates Tieck’s bardolatrous criticism as a direct precursor to the affective, humanistic, and character-driven Shakespearean criticism popular in the early twentieth century and focuses on Tieck’s theatrical efforts in Dresden and Potsdam to recover original Shakespearean practices as a way of highlighting Shakespeare’s genius. The chapter concludes with analysis of the lasting social and cultural effects of Tieck’s work in Germany.
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- 1.
All translations from German are mine unless otherwise noted.
- 2.
These, he translated as Alt-Englisches Theater oder Supplemente zum Shakspear (Berlin: in der Realschulbuchhandlung, 1811) and Shakespeares Vorschule (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1823–9): I, v. On Tieck’s studies while in England, see Neu (1987).
- 3.
- 4.
See Graham Holderness’s argument that “quasi-religious structures,” much like the Romantic idolization of Shakespeare, are what ensure the propagation of myths. Holderness (1988, 11).
- 5.
Tieck was by no means the first German who suggested that a German national drama should be modeled on Shakespeare. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had argued this during the eighteenth century, yet they had failed to build a significant following for Shakespeare in Germany beyond a small circle of critics and literati. Their failures may have partially been due to the fact that the German states in the eighteenth century were not yet moving towards becoming a single nation and the Germans were thus not actively searching, en masse, for their own national drama: Lessing himself makes this point in his Hamburg Dramaturgy. See Lessing (1962, (nos. 11–3) 31–38, (no. 73) 173, (nos. 101–4) 261–62).
- 6.
Puss in Boots was not staged until 1844, at the Berlin Court Theatre under Tieck’s own supervision. It failed miserably. It would not be until Jürgen Fehling’s 1921 staging of the play in Berlin, which was seen by Max Reinhardt, that the play would be acknowledged as a masterpiece. See Gillespie, “Introduction” to Tieck (1974, 12).
- 7.
Michael Patterson, “‘Contributing Our Half’: Ludwig Tieck’s Shakespeare Productions in Dresden and Berlin, 1820–1843,” in Courtney and Mercer (2003, 86).
- 8.
Tieck’s role in the translation was primarily as a supervisory editor, overseeing and revising the work of his colleagues. For a detailed analysis of the Schlegel-Tieck translation, see Koyro (1966, 46–47, 62). For an overview of the translation process, see also Larson (1987) and Paulin (1985, 256–59).
- 9.
For a detailed account of Tieck’s time in England, see Zeydel (1931, 48–92).
- 10.
As examples, see Müller 1994, 5, 402 (17 October 1826) and Marmier, “Tieck,” in Nouvelle revue germanique (New German Review), 195 (1 March 1833), quoted Roger (2003, 72–3). I thank B. Grady for her assistance in translating from French. Tieck’s amateur performances were admired by foreign visitors, including the English: see Zeydel (1931, 224–5).
- 11.
Adolph Stahr, “Shakespeare in Deutschland,” in Prutz (1843, 73).
- 12.
Roger Paulin, “Tieck und Shakespeare,” in Schmitz (1997, 253–64).
- 13.
This publication is a hypothetical imagining by Lüdeke, presenting Tieck’s various notes, of how Tieck’s planned book might have been structured.
- 14.
Ludwig Tieck, letter to Solger on 27 April 1818, in Matenko (1933, 428). Italics mine.
- 15.
See Gertrud Hille, “Die Tieck-Semperische Rekonstruktion des Fortuna-Theaters: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Bühnenreformen im 19. Jahrhundert,” Schriften der Gesellschaft für Theatergeschichte 39 (1929): 72–109.
- 16.
Patterson in Courtney and Mercer (2003 (op. cit. 6), 92–93).
- 17.
Ludwig Tieck, Die Sommerreise, quoted in Danton (1907, 60) (trans. Danton).
- 18.
Ludwig Tieck, “Shakespeare’s Treatment of the Marvelous,” trans. Louise Adey, in Bate (1992, 61–62).
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Venning, D. (2018). Ludwig Tieck and the Development of the Romantic Myth of a “German Shakespeare”. In: Mancewicz, A., Joubin, A. (eds) Local and Global Myths in Shakespearean Performance. Reproducing Shakespeare. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89851-3_5
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