GERMAN CRITICISMS OF SHAKSPERE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4512, 6 September 1875, Page 3

GERMAN CRITICISMS OF SHAKSPERE.

(From " Blackwood.") It provokes me to be told, as I am constantly told, that the Germans appreciate Shakspere more than the English, and that they have taught us of late truly to estimate him. I am sick of hearing of Schlegel and Goethe and the rest, and what they say. We might just as well tell the Italians that we English understand Dante better than they do. Some of the German criticism on Shakspero is as bad as Voltaire's. Dr. Roderick Benedix, himself a dramatist, has perhaps even surpassed him. He thinks that none of Shakspere's creations are equal to many by the German playwriters—.as, for instance, to Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," or Schiller's "Karl Moor," "Wallenstein," and "Philip II." But the very best of their criticism is not worth much. Even Goethe's " Analysis of Hamlet," much as it has been praised, seems very poor to me—not to be mentioned, for insight and sympathetic sense, with, for instance, Lamb, Coleridge, or Hazlitt. The

single phrase of Hazlitt—" We are all of us Hamlet"—is worth all that Goethe aud Schlegel ever wrote. Not that I count for much the English criticism on Shakspere, which is very traditional for the moat part, and greatly overshadowed by stage influences. For instance, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are one thing in Shakspere and quite another thing in the public mind, where they take the form and shape of Mrs. Siddons aud the Kembles. But the Germans have the vice of anatomising Shakspere, and laying him out into parts and pieces, and admiring the worst as much as the best. They find admirable reasons to show that the notoriously ungenuine parts of his plays are as admirable as the others. When they once go in to praise, they praise everything. They select " Cymbeline" for public performance at his anniversary, as one of his great plays, and admire it throughout—the interpolated passages as much as the genuine ones. Nothing can be more absurd in many respects than Burger's translation of " Macbeth." Poet though he was, he seems to have lost all sense of poetry or reason in this translation, in which, in fact, he so ludicrously travesties the original that one cannot but smile at the absurdities he introduces. The fact is that Burger, who was a very vain man, thought himself far superior to Shakspere, and kindly assisted him, and eked out his shortcomings. Think of this opening in " Macbeth" : Soldier. Hold ! not in such a hurry, good sir. Guard. Now, then? Said. I prithee, what is it you will tell the king ? Giutrd. That the battle is won. Sold. But I have been lying. Guard. Lying rascal! Then thou art indeed wit thy wounds a desperate joker. This is a literal translation of one of Burger improvements to Shakspere. Melton. You must be joking Malldt. Neither I nor Burger. This was his notion of Shakspere. Schlegel was far better than this; but Schlegel was not original in his views, and took nearly all his notions from Coleridge ; and as for Tieck, he was ready to think anything was by Shakspere—even " Fair Em" and the " Tyrant" of Massinger ; and he also thought Shakspere wrote Green's " Friar Bacon," and the " Prince of Wakefield," and " Locrine," and " The Merry Devil of Edmonton," and many others. In fact, take the German criticism on Shakspere for all in all, it seems to me to be very commonplace. It is vehement and indiscriminate in its praise as in its blame, without any true critical sense.