Goethe's literary essays · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
II
_Cymbelline, a Tragedy, Based on a Shakespearian Theme_ [by J. G. Sulzer]. Danzig, 1772. The author, obliged by a severe illness to avoid all fatiguing work,--so we are informed in the Preface,--amused himself with the study of Shakespeare’s works. We could have told him in advance that this was no reading for a convalescent; whoever wishes to share in the life that glows through Shakespeare’s plays must himself be sound in body and mind. At all events, our author, moved by a cool, weak, critical modesty, regretted that so many “incongruités” should mar the “many just sentiments” and “some beauties” (as the eminent Dr. Johnson likewise remarks) that are to be found in this play. So he resolved to separate the dross from the gold (that is _vox populi critici_ in regard to Shakespeare since time immemorial), and to attempt nothing less than this: what Sophocles would approximately have done if he had tried to make a play out of the same material. So he _travestied_--no, not travestied, for then something of the appearance of the original would remain--_parodied_--no, not that either, for then something could be guessed by the very contrast--what then? what word will express the poverty that is here, compared with the infinite riches of Shakespeare! Shakespeare, who felt the spirit of several centuries in his breast, through whose soul the life of whole centuries was stirring!--and here--comedians in silk and buckram, and daubed scene-painting! The scene a wood; in front a thick copse, through which one enters a grotto; in the background a large pasteboard rock, on which ladies and gentlemen sit, lie, are stabbed, etc. That is the way Sophocles would have handled this theme! It is bad enough to take Shakespeare’s play, whose very essence is the life of history, and reduce it to the Sophoclean unity which aims merely at presenting action; but to model it on the “Treatise on Tragedy” in the first part of the old _Leipziger Bibliothek_![9] We are certain that every one, not merely readers of Shakespeare, will cast it aside with contempt. [9] By Nicolai.
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