John Mccarthy, Ed. Shakespeare As German Author. Amsterdam: Brill, 2018. 242 Pp.

Summary

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 midnineteenth 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.