Goethe's literary essays · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ON THE GERMAN THEATRE
Most necessary would it be perhaps to discuss Shakespeare and combat the prejudice that the works of this extraordinary writer should be given in the German Theatre in their complete length and breadth. This false idea has meant the suppression of the older revisions of Schroeder, and prevented others from prospering. It must be emphatically insisted, and with solid reason, that in this case as in so many others the reader must be distinguished from and part company with the spectator; each has his rights, and neither should be permitted to injure the other’s.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.