This is a translation of extracts from Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (c.1796), in which Goethe's protagonist is (somewhat ecstatically) introduced to Shakespeare’s plays. The plays are received as “performances of some celestial genius, descending among men, to make them, by the mildest instructions, acquainted with themselves.”

Pamphlet - 62.1/GOE
Acc no: 8140394

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Goethe’s love-affair with Shakespeare continued with this translation of Romeo and Juliet which was published in 1811, during the Napoleonic occupation of much of Germany. The political and the literary meet at this point with a German resistance against rule as well as neo-classicism. 

OSP - 50.29 adaptations German/1860
Acc. no: 81409452

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