why then take the trouble to translate metrically, when the best work of the poet is thereby lost and only the faulty reproduced. A prose translation which more easily reproduces the unadorned, plain, natural purity of certain passages therefore deserves preference to the metrical.[1]
While directly following Schlegel, Ludwig Tieck deserves credit as an elucidator of Shakespeare. This was set forth, in his Dramaturgic Pages, which appeared fourteen years ago in the Abendzeitung, and which awoke the utmost interest in "the theatre-going public," as well as among actors. Unfortunately there prevails in these pages a wide-ranging or straying, wearisome, pedantic tone, which the delightful good-for-nothing, as Gutzkow called him, assumed with a certain lurking spirit of roguery. What he lacked in a knowledge of classic tongues, or even in philosophy, he made up in decorum and gravity, and we are reminded of Sir John in the chair, when he delivers his harangue to the Prince. But in spite of the puffed-out doctrinal gravity under which little Ludwig sought to conceal his philologic and philosophic deficiencies or ignorantia, there are
- ↑ Heine is here far too sweeping and "general," assuming that faults which are few and far between in Schlegel and Tieck's translation are universal. Nor is the principle absolutely true. Shelley's translation of a portion of Goethe's "Faust" is incomparably better than that of Hayward.
