Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749–1832),major German poet. Goethe's early attraction to Shakespeare, stimulated by Dodd's Beauties, Wieland's translations, and Herder's enthusiasm, influenced his historical prose tragedy Götz von Berlichingen (1773). In his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795) the semi-autobiographical protagonist is involved in a production of Hamlet. As theatre director in Weimar (1791–1817), Goethe staged some Shakespeare plays himself, including King John (1791), Hamlet (1795), King Lear (1796), and a reduced Romeo and Juliet (1811). His own later tragedies are subjected to classic control, while he continued to value Shakespeare's place in the history of poetry rather than of theatre, as his essay Shakespeare und kein Ende! (Shakespeare and No End!, 1815) reveals.
Werner Habicht
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