The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. William Shakespeare

[ 1 ] According to a statement by the famous writer Georg Brandes, Shakespeare must be counted among the German classics. And when one considers the extraordinary influence that Shakespeare exerted on Goethe, Schiller, and the entire development of German literature after he was rediscovered in Germany in the mid-18th century—particularly through Lessing—especially following the excellent translations of his works by Schlegel and Tieck, one must agree with this statement.

[ 2 ] An entire legend has grown up around Shakespeare; entire libraries have been written about each of his works. Scholars have read all sorts of things into his works and interpreted them in various ways. Ultimately, a number of writers—who considered the actor, lacking formal education, incapable of conceiving all the ideas they found in Shakespeare’s works—have arrived at the hypothesis that it was not the actor from the Globe Theatre, William Shakespeare, who wrote the works bearing his name, but rather some eminent, highly learned man—such as Lord Francis Bacon of Verulam—was the poet who, given the low regard for literary activity in those days, borrowed the actor’s name. These assumptions are based on the fact that no manuscripts in Shakespeare’s own hand have been found; furthermore, on a notebook discovered in a London library in which some sought to find individual passages corresponding to certain passages in Shakespeare’s works, and so on.

[ 3 ] Shakespeare’s works themselves, however, serve as evidence of his authorship. His plays reveal that they were written by a man who knew the theater intimately and possessed the finest understanding of dramatic effect.

[ 4 ] It was simply in keeping with the general custom of the time that Shakespeare himself did not publish an edition of his works. Not a single one of his plays was printed during his lifetime. The plays were jealously guarded against being made public through printing; people were meant to come to the theater to see the plays there, not to read them at home. All that could have been produced at the time were pirated editions, transcribed during performances using the then-emerging art of shorthand, and thus containing not the authentic text but numerous distortions and errors.

[ 5 ] These occasional gaps and errors have led some scholars to claim that Shakespeare’s works, as they currently stand, are not works of art in their own right, but that they were originally compiled quite differently. One proponent of this view is Eugen Reichel, who believes he can see in the author of the Shakespearean plays the representative of a particular worldview. Nevertheless, the fact remains that these plays, as they are, make such an extraordinary impression. We see this captivating effect even in works that we know for certain are incomplete, such as Macbeth. Proof of this was provided by the performance of Henry V at the opening of the Lessing Theater under the direction of Neumann-Hofer, which made a tremendous impression despite a dreadfully poor translation and a subpar performance.

[ 6 ] Shakespeare’s plays are, first and foremost, character-driven dramas. The tremendous appeal of these works lies not primarily in the plot, but in the magnificent development of the individual characters. It is precisely in the way the poet presents a human character before us, allows that character to live out his or her life before our eyes, and portrays him or her in all his or her thoughts and feelings—in the depiction of a single personality—that lies the work’s immense appeal.

[ 7 ] This artistic development, which reached its pinnacle in Shakespeare, was made possible only by the preceding cultural developments of the Renaissance period. It was only through the greater appreciation of the individual personality that emerged from this Renaissance culture that Shakespeare’s character drama became possible. In the early Middle Ages, even in Dante—despite his strong personality—we see, at its core, the expression of Christian ideas as they were understood at the time. The Christian archetype of his era took precedence over the individual personality. This was simply the prevailing view. The Christian principle had no interest in the individual personality. Only gradually, under the new worldview, did an interest in the individual human being emerge.

[ 8 ] The fact that Shakespeare’s fame spread so quickly proves that he found an audience that took a keen interest in theater—an audience that thus possessed a rich sense of and understanding for the portrayal of character that Shakespeare offered them. It was precisely this characterization that mattered to Shakespeare; he was far from seeking to instill any ethical or moral ideas in his audience. The idea of tragic guilt, for example—which Schiller believed he had to impose on his heroes to justify their downfall—was completely foreign to Shakespeare. He allows events to unfold just as natural processes do, each arising logically from the next, yet without being influenced by the notion of guilt and atonement. It would be difficult to identify a concept of guilt in this sense in any of Shakespeare’s plays.

[ 9 ] Nor was Shakespeare concerned with portraying an idea—not jealousy in Othello, not ambition in Macbeth—no, he wanted to portray the specific character of Othello, of Hamlet, of Macbeth. It was precisely this approach that allowed him to create such great characters, because he did not burden his figures with theory. He knew the stage inside and out; he knew how to present a scene effectively, and it was precisely as a practitioner that he was able to develop the action in such a way that it swept the audience along. — There are no plays in the entire canon of world literature that are so thoroughly conceived from the actor’s perspective. This is what ensures Shakespeare’s fame as the playwright who wrote these plays.

[ 10 ] Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564; his father was a wealthy citizen, and he attended the Latin school in his hometown. Many legends have sprung up around his early life; it is claimed that he was a poacher and led the life of an adventurer. All of this has also been cited as evidence against Shakespeare’s authorship, and yet all of it has actually benefited his poetry. The very fact that, although well-educated, he had been spared formal academic study ensured that he could approach things much more freely and impartially, viewing them unburdened by the clutter of bookish learning. And it is precisely the poet’s adventurous nature that explains some of the greatest merits of his works. The bold flight of imagination, the sudden shifts in events, the passion and daring—all of this speaks to a man who had been tossed about in life, who must himself have led an eventful life.

[ 11 ] After Shakespeare’s father’s financial situation had deteriorated, Shakespeare came to London in 1585. He began his career in the theater in the most menial of jobs; he looked after the horses of theatergoers while they attended the performances. Later, he was promoted to supervisor of a number of such stable boys, until he was finally given a role on stage himself and was allowed to play his first major role in 1592.

[ 12 ] His fame soon spread—as an actor and as a playwright—and his wealth grew along with it, so that by 1597 he was already able to buy a house in Stratford. Especially after he became a co-owner of the Globe Theatre, he became a very wealthy man.

[ 13 ] The plays of Shakespeare’s early period—“Love’s Labour’s Lost,” “As You Like It,” and some of the royal plays—are not yet significantly different from other plays of the same period, such as those written by Marlowe and others; and the power of expression, purity, and naturalness were still compromised by a certain artificiality of language that was in keeping with the fashion of the time. Only gradually did the great character dramas follow: Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus, which were to establish Shakespeare’s fame for all time. Based on a number of his later works, some of his biographers and critics have sought to infer that the poet had undergone gloomy experiences and events during that period, which they claim led him to a bitter view of life. Yet such a conclusion is particularly difficult to justify in Shakespeare’s case, since he, like no other poet, steps back behind his characters. He does not express his own thoughts on a matter through the mouths of his characters, but rather allows each one to think and act in accordance with their own character.

[ 14 ] It therefore seems pointless to ask what position Shakespeare himself took on these various questions. It is not Shakespeare... Hamlet ponders “To be or not to be”; he is terrified by his father’s ghost, just as Macbeth is by the witches on the moor. Whether Shakespeare believed in witches or ghosts, whether he was a man of faith or a free spirit, is entirely irrelevant here. He asked himself: How must a ghost or a witch be portrayed on stage in order to have the effect on the audience that he intended? And the fact that the impact of Shakespeare’s characters has remained just as great to this day proves exactly how he answered that question.

[ 15 ] It should not be forgotten that, in fact, the conditions of today’s stage are not particularly conducive to the impact of Shakespeare’s plays. The emphasis placed today on set design and all manner of props, along with frequent scene changes—all of this detracts from the portrayal of character, which remains the essential element. In Shakespeare’s time, when a change of scene was simply indicated by a sign being hung up, and when a chair and a table were sufficient to represent the furnishings of a royal palace, the impact in this regard must have been even greater.

[ 16 ] But while for a modern playwright so much depends on the staging of all these details—just as even today playwrights usually prescribe the set design and so on down to the smallest details, so that a poor production completely fails to have the desired effect—Shakespeare’s plays are powerful even in the most inadequate productions.

[ 17 ] And when the time comes that we once again focus more on what is essential than we do today, the impact of Shakespeare’s art will become ever more powerful: through the power of his character portrayals, which have remained vivid and unrivaled throughout the centuries.