Article

Eighteenth-Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard: Ulrich Bräker's A Few Words about William Shakespeare's Plays (1780)

ERNE, Lukas Christian

Abstract

Assesses Ulrich Bräker's Etwas über William Shakespeare Schauspiele, with attention to how his commentary combines "idolatrous adoration and unashamed irreverence for Shakespeare and his plays" and to its place in the eighteenth-century German reception of Shakespeare.

Reference

ERNE, Lukas Christian. Eighteenth-Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard: Ulrich Bräker's A Few Words about William Shakespeare's Plays (1780). Theatre Research International, 2000, vol. 25, no. 3, p. 255-65

DOI : 10.1017/s0307883300019714

Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:14486

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

1 / 1 Theatre Research International Vol. 25 No. 3 pp. 255-265 Eighteenth-Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard: Ulrich Braker's A Few Words About William Shakespeare's Plays (1780)

LUKAS ERNE

Britain began making Shakespeare her national Deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, was poet early in the eighteenth century, and Ger- founded in 1865. Fifty years later, the German many followed suit a few decades later, progres- novelist Gerhart Hauptmann could still claim sively turning 'unser Shakespeare' into one of that 'there is no people, not even the English, three national poets, with Goethe and Schiller. that has the same right to claim Shakespeare as As early as 1773, Johann Gottfried Herder the German. Shakespeare's characters are a part included his essay on `Shakespear' in a collec- of our world, his soul has become one with tion entitled Von Deutscher Art und Kunst. ours: and though he was born and buried in The drama of the 'Sturm und Drang', which England, is the country where he Herder's collection programmatically inaugu- truly lives.' 2 rated, appropriated what Goethe (Gotz von Ber- Only a few years before Shakespeare started lichingen), Schiller (The Robbers) and their changing nationality, he had been all but contemporaries (mis)understood to be Shake- unknown in Germany. Johann Christoph speare's dramatic technique. By the end of the Gottsched, who undertook to reform the century, the assimilation had advanced far German stage from the 1730s along the lines enough for August Wilhelm von Schlegel, the of French classical drama, castigated Shake- famous translator of seventeen of Shakespeare's speare for his 'many blunders and mistakes plays, to indulge in no slight national chauvin- against the rules of the stage and common ism: 'I am eager', he writes in a letter to his co- sense,' and henceforth treated him alterna- translator Ludwig Tieck, 'to have your letters tively with disdain or silence. 4 Johann Elias on Shakespeare. . . . I hope you will prove, Schlegel's comparison between Shakespeare among other things, that Shakespeare wasn't and the German seventeenth-century play- English. I wonder how he came to dwell wright Gryphius (1741) confined itself to com- among the frosty, stupid souls on that brutal ments on Julius Caesar. Apart from a much island? . . . The English critics understand maligned translation of the same play by nothing about Shakespeare.' Even though Caspar Wilhelm von Borck, the German recep- Tieck failed to prove that Shakespeare was not tion of Shakespeare prior to 1760 consisted of of English birth, the conviction that Shake- little more than scattered remarks. Even in the speare was best understood by German rather following decade, when Shakespeare's fame rose than by English critics only grew in the course rapidly, Christoph Martin Wieland, who under- of the nineteenth century. Appropriately, it was took prose translations of twenty-two of Shake- in Germany that the first periodical devoted speare's plays, Heinrich Wilhelm Gerstenberg exclusively to Shakespeare, the Jahrbuch der (Briefe fiber Merkwiirdigkeiten der Litteratur, 256 Theatre Research International

1766-7) and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Ham- in 1761, and soon he had to feed not only his burgische Dramaturgie) are the only German fast-growing family but also four young siblings critics who dealt with Shakespeare in depth of whom he took care after his father's early prior to the explosion of interest in the 1770s. death. Even though he managed to purchase a Surprisingly, it was not in Germany but in weaving-mill in 1780, his dealings in yarn and German-speaking that the recep- cotton only intermittently allowed him to tion of Shakespeare first took roots, more spe- escape from poverty and debts until his death cifically among Bodmer's circle in Zurich. in 1798. 6 Johann Jakob Bodmer studied Shakespeare in This looks hardly like the biography of an the 1720s, probably using Rowe's edition, pro- eighteenth-century Shakespeare critic. Yet in duced a now lost blank verse tragedy—the first 1780 Braker wrote a booklet disarmingly in German—on Antony and Cleopatra in 1724- entitled, A Few Words about William Shake- 5, referred to Shakespeare as the 'English Sopho- speare's Plays: By a poor ignorant citizen of the cles' in the introduction to his prose translation world who had the luck to read him 7 The work of Paradise Lost in 1732, and praised his power- contains observations about all thirty-six plays ful dramatic language in a poetics of 1740. The in the order in which they appear in Eschen- artist Johann Heinrich Fussli (Henry Fusely), a burg's translation, the edition Braker used. 8 It student of Bodmer's who later emigrated to comes as a small surprise that Braker is no England to become a famous illustrator of Johnson, and a modern critic will come away Shakespeare, made a drawing of the Ghost in from a reading of his booklet with few new Hamlet as early as 1755-6 and went on to insights into Shakespeare's plays. Indeed, it is undertake a (now lost) translation of Macbeth. all too easy to smile at the simple man's ignor- Even Wieland's translation, which formed the ance of dramatic conventions: his objection to material basis for the enthusiastic Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors is that no twins are so appropriation in the 'Sturm and Drang', took its alike that their wives would mistake them for origin during his stay in Switzerland from 1752 each other (51) ; he hopes that Richard III, which to 1759. It was published in Zurich (1762-6), as he calls 'the cruellest and most abominable was the second comprehensive Shakespeare play' (72), will never be performed ; he conjec- translation, Johann Joachim Eschenburg's prose tures that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet's grave- rendering of the thirty-six First-Folio plays digger scene in a churchyard (103) and imagines (1775-7). 5 him having done field work among flocks of A slightly later witness to Shakespeare's sheep before creating the pastoral atmosphere rapidly growing popularity in the German- of As You Like It (40). It would be equally speaking world was also Swiss. Born of poor possible to denigrate Braker's critical discern- farming parents as one of eleven children in a ment for his inability to appreciate the fairy small village in the , a rural area in world in A Midsummer Night's Dream and the eastern Switzerland, Ulrich Braker (1735-98) is witches in Macbeth, or for his general dislike of no doubt the most improbable eighteenth-cen- Romeo and Juliet. tury Shakespeare critic. Working for his father On other occasions, however, Braker's obser- as a goat-boy, Braker spent only a few months at vations are far from ridiculous. He rightly points school where he learned no more than elemen- out that Hamlet's sending Rosencrantz and tary reading skills. At twenty, Braker left his Guildenstern to their death 'not shriving-time poverty-stricken home to try his fortune abroad allow'd' is extremely harsh considering it does only to fall into the hands of a corrupt recruiting not emerge from the text that they were aware officer who fooled him into enrolling in the of the contents of the letters they carried (104). Prussian army. As an involuntary mercenary, He notices that there is an intriguing discre- Braker briefly took part in the Seven-Years' War pancy between Brutus' suspiciousness of (1756-63) opposing Friedrich the Great's Prussia Caesar and his trust in Antony (81). He com- and the Empress Maria Theresia's . He pares Arthur's threatened to Gloucester's real deserted at the battle at Lobositz (1756) and blinding, opposing Hubert's mercy to Corn- returned to his native Toggenburg. He married wall's cruelty (96). While he warms to Claudio's Eighteenth-Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard 257

Figure 1. Title page of Etwas fiber William Shakespears Schauspiele (A Few Words about William Shakespeare's Plays). [Courtesy of the Kantonsbibliothek (Vadiana) St. Gallen.]

humanity, he blames Isabella for wanting to be tion, especially its manifold scenic changes (77). 'more of an angel than a human being' (34). He rightly questions Cymbeline's place (in the Though Braker spends most time on character First Folio and, correspondingly, in Eschen- criticism, he is not incapable of other dramatic burg's translation) among the tragedies ; and in insights. He points out, for example, that Cor- his commentary on The Merchant of Venice, he iolanus is noteworthy for its dramatic construc- praises the carefully dramatized double plot,

258 Theatre Research International

Figure 2. Portrait of Ulrich Braker by Heinrich Fiissli (1720- 1802). [Courtesy of the Kantonsbibliothek (Vadiana) St. Gallen.]

how the play 'succeeds in combining two stor- Lichtensteig, he is not unaware of the possibil- ies, the Jew's cruelty and Bassanio's love affair, ities and limitations of stage representation. as if they were one' (36). Speed and Lance, Braker rightly guesses, are far Thanks to itinerant players whose perform- more stageworthy than their masters. Claiming ances Braker witnessed in the near town of that Troilus and Cressida is a play to be read Eighteenth - Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard 259 rather than to be performed (90), he sensed, even suggestion 'Paunchy Falstaff' (47) Finally, he though Eschenburg's translation does not fea- profoundly dislikes Love's Labour's Lost— ture the Quarto epistle, that what is extant is a unsurprisingly, considering all its 'jokes for the reading version not to be 'clapper-clawd with elect"—and accuses Shakespeare of having his the palmes of the vulger'. 9 And the Ghost in characters utter little more than 'endless empty Hamlet, Braker thinks, would similarly suffer prattle' (42). rather than profit from performance (104), a While Braker feels special affinity with point which a good part of Hamlet's stage 'simple people'—singling out the mechanicals history supports. in A Midsummer Night's Dream (29), Speed and Braker is a naive yet all but stupid reader. Lance in The Two Gentlemen of Verona (31), What accounts for a good portion of his com- Launcelot Gobbo and his father in The Mer- mentary's undeniable charm is its striking com- chant of Venice (38), and Dogberry and Verges bination of idolatrous adoration and unashamed in Much Ado About Nothing (53)—the powerful irreverence for Shakespeare and his plays. On are not always to his taste. He dislikes not only the one hand, Braker's observations are inter- Richard III (72-3) but also Prospero, who is 'too spersed with laudatory exclamations ('great god good to be true' (28), and Henry V (65-6). In what of the theatre' (43), 'you miracle worker' (40), is perhaps Braker's single most sustained piece 'great maker of men' (61), 'divine poet' (85) ) as of analysis, he sees in Henry V an unscrupulous Braker is time and again amazed by the wonders hypocrite and empty moralist rather than a of Shakespeare's plays. His commentary is pre- reformed hero. The evidence he adduces is not ceded by an extensive prostration before 'great just what he sees as the cold-hearted rejection of William' which constitutes a refreshing vari- his earlier boon companions but also the hasty ation of the poet's conventional dedicatory and premature removal of his father's crown in 2 self-abasement: Henry IV, the exaggerated praise by the corrupt Archbishop of Canterbury, and the disappear- Heavens, what folly! An ignorant dunce, a boorish ance of Falstaff in Henry V which should all dolt, a clown who's been hatched out in some wild contribute to make us suspicious rather than snowy mountain by two blockheads, who has accepting of Henry (64-6). Formulating the case neither education nor talents—and this idiot has in his characteristically groping idiom, Braker- the impudence to lay hands on the greatest of by addressing the question of Henry's conver- geniuses, to accost the greatest of men and criticize his writings, so admired and adored by the entire sion—hits upon one of the play's central prob- learned world. Heaven forbid! No, learned sir, I lems and anticipates arguments that have would quake if any word of criticism were to slip remained prominent in the critical debates of out, if any censorious thought were to arise in my the twentieth century. breast. (25) Braker's mixture of reverent adoration and irreverent criticism blends for much of his Having vowed to refrain from all criticism, commentary into an intimate conversation Braker candidly proceeds to frank and often with Shakespeare, who is addressed 'as if he incisive objections. He is outraged by the vio- were sitting at the same table with me' (25). lence of Titus Andronicus and finds it shameful 'You've certainly created a fine masterpiece to 'stage such horrors as bring the whole human here, great William' (84), he compliments race into disrepute' (88), just as Samuel Johnson Shakespeare on Antony and Cleopatra. Braker's found that `the barbarity of the spectacles .. . criticism comes in the same personal terms as can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audi- when he sums up his commentary on The Merry ence.' Troilus and Cressida is another play on Wives of Windsor: which Shakespeare 'squandered [his] talents' Forgive me, great William, for saying so, but how- (91), while A Midsummer Night's Dream is ever much your great genius may be in evidence, I full of 'wooden verses' (29). On two occasions, can't help feeling you put this play together during Braker even objects to the plays' titles: Julius a careless spell, when you weren't quite in the right Caesar should be called 'Brutus' (79) and for The mood, perhaps merely to oblige some merry ladies Merry Wives of Windsor he makes the fine by entertaining them. (48)12 260 Theatre Research International

Interestingly, Braker's repeated direct address to hope, now indignant and rebellious . . . . I was 'dear William' recalls young Goethe who, in his transported to those times, I went everywhere, famous essay 'For Shakespeare's Day' (Zum following those hypocritical witches, Goneril and Shakespears Tag) of 1771 addresses the play- .ttcgan, and c v CH at the Vely found wright as 'Shakespeare, my friend', and wishes myself tugging at that egoistic, credulous Lear's sleeve with all my might. I accompanied kind him back among the living to figure as Pylades Cordelia and honest Kent with a thousand bles- to Shakespeare-as-Orestes. 13 (Though writing sings. I hotly pursued that devil, Edmund, with only a few years after his greater contemporary, curses . . . . I found wretched Lear and his fool out Braker did not know Goethe's essay which in the storm, and good Kent joined us. We found remained unpublished until 1854.) Despite the you, poor Edgar, in a miserable hovel—poor Tom's vast gulf that separates Braker's background a-cold. (95) from Goethe's, their relationship to the play- A Few Words about William Shake- wright is strikingly similar 'As yet, I have not Braker's far from being an attempt at thought much about Shakespeare', Goethe speare's Plays, affirms, 'vague notions and feelings are the detached, objective criticism, is the fascinating record of a reading experience that mixes puzzle- most I have been capable of (163). Braker, ment, excitement, incomprehension, gratitude similarly, professes to write down 'nothing crit- and, above all, wonder. ical, only feeling, sentiments' (25). Both In this strange encounter between an eight- Goethe's and Braker's Shakespeare is 'for all eenth-century Swiss peasant and Shakespeare, time' effortlessly crossing temporal, linguistic, we simultaneously witness another meeting, cultural, social, and personal boundaries to that of deeply rooted rural pietism with the emerge wholly intact as a friend who talks to advent of the Enlightenment which is slowly their sensibilities. Braker treats Shakespeare's plays with the reaching out into rural areas. In a telling com- parison, Braker says about Julius Caesar, 'I same familiarity that makes him welcome the know if off by heart like the Lord's Prayer' playwright at his table, relating their fictive (79). In fact, his encounter with Shakespeare is cosmos whenever possible to the world with as much of a religious as of a literary kind. A which he is familiar: Launcelot Gobbo seems pious and God-fearing man throughout his life, to him a faithful replica of young rustics in Braker sees in Shakespeare—as the concluding Switzerland (38) ; Petruchio is invited to visit A Few Words make clear—a prophet his native land and deal with some women he pages of who reveals more fully than any theologian the knows (49) ; Ariel prompts him to reflect on cases of alleged necromancy in his own time intricate reality of God's kingdom on earth: (27) ; and Cade's rebellion figures angry, boastful But I'll say this: if ordinary people only understood rural artisans of the kind he encounters in his your works, you couldn't help but do more good daily life (70). Braker addresses not only Shake- than millions of garrulous theologians with all speare but also various characters directly, prais- their lumber But they don't understand, they ing, questioning or accusing them: think you should keep dark and not reveal all the deeds of shame and amorous intrigues that have 0 Timon, you forgot that you were a man, that occurred over the ages in this or that corner of the your treasures are exhaustible, you forgot that your world. Poor people! (108) idolizers, your worshippers are men of a deceitful race who've learnt dissimulation only too well. How then did unschooled and penniless Braker, Had you got to know yourself and your treasures peasant and trader in yam, come to read and love and all your neighbours better, you'd never have Shakespeare's plays, and proceed to write a been changed into a god—nor into a devil. (86) commentary about them? Leaving the local village school after a few months, he improved Occasionally, all critical distance vanishes as his reading and writing skills at home, occasion- when Braker immerses himself in King Lear: ally taught by his father. Early on he found I read and couldn't stop, so completely was I carried gratification in the reading of religious texts, away; now I was inflamed with anger, now so full especially the Bible. In the 1770s, with a grow- of compassion that I could have wept, now full of ing brood of children to care for, his business Eighteenth - Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard 261 went from bad to worse. Crippling debts dramatic subject or form which would invite a weighed on Braker and abject poverty threatened comparison with Shakespeare that could only his family. Fired by the reading of The Sorrows make himself look ridiculous. In his play, he is of Young Werther, whose hero he reproaches for content to deal with simple villagers of the kind having less grounds for suicide than himself, he he was familiar with, peasants and artisans, considered taking action against his sea of trou- soldiers and housewives, who gather and talk, bles, but, contrary to other readers of Goethe's quarrel and are reconciled, after a session of the novel, he refrained from the deed. Reading and law court which met to settle disputes among writing at night provided a welcome escape from the villagers. the dire reality of his professional life. When he Certain dramatic features of Shakespearian began his diary in 1770, his 'scribbling' met with comedy such as eavesdropping and cross-dres- his wife's scorn and derision, and his friends sing find their way into Braker's play as does the urged him to spend his energy on work rather theatrum mundi topos to which Jaques' All the than on useless books. In one diary entry (1 July world's a stage' speech, and many other passages 1784), Braker confesses that he has given in too in Shakespeare, give voice: often to the temptation of reading Don Quixote at night, a confession his wife—to whom Braker Of a thousand million people, each one plays his seemed deeply quixotic—would have found own part, good and bad and mediocre and another deeply ironic. thousand ways in-between—whichever way he's When he was admitted to the 'Moral Society prompted by his spirit. Everyone makes his of Lichtensteig' in 1777, however, he gained entrance in this theatre of the world and plays his part, long or short—until he is hit. Down he access to a great number of books from which tumbles, falls asleep. The other comedians dig a he read avidly. Diary entries reveal his familiar- hole for him. It's all over—he can't hear when his ity with several other British classics—John part is talked about. And a few days later no one Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Addison and Stee- remembers him 14 le's Spectator, Samuel Butler's Hubridas, Oliver Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, and Tobias Although the play's lack of dramatic coherence Smollett's Humphrey Clinker—though none may seem un-Shakespearian, the last thing comes close to rivalling Shakespeare's plays in Braker's German-speaking contemporaries Braker's esteem. The latter have so deeply would have associated with the English play- impressed themselves on Braker that references wright is a tight dramatic construction. Even for to the plays keep appearing in his diary: in one Herder, Shakespeare's plays consist of 'nothing entry (22 April 1781), Braker opposes the perfect but individual leaves from the book of occur- beauty of creation to men who are often mal- rences, of Providence, of the world, fluttering in content or 'angry like Timon', while in another the storm of time—individual marks of peoples, (17 March 1782), after the death of an acquain- stations, souls!'' Similarly, Goethe, finding in tance who had been badly treated by her family, Shakespeare the very opposite of the fetters he writes that he would like to 'make a funeral French classicism had imposed upon its drama, oration like Antony for Ceasar, if I were an makes a point of dividing the action of Gotz von orator'. Berlichingen into more than fifty scenes spread Having written A Few Words in 1780, Braker out over a multiplicity of places throughout went on to write a play, whose title, The Night Germany. By writing a 'Shakespearian' play at the Tribunal or What You Will (Die Gerichts- with a conscious lack of dramatic tightness, nacht oder Was ihr wollt, 1780), leaves no doubt Braker—removed as he was both socially and about the source of inspiration. Braker's What geographically from the centres of learning— You Will, a play in two acts and twenty-two was again in tune with the general spirit of scenes, is no Shakespearian masterpiece. In fact, contemporary Shakespeare reception. it is little more than a series of dramatic dialo- After the booklet on Shakespeare and his gues which, though vigorously written, make no Shakespearian What You Will, Braker next attempt to form a dramatic whole. Braker was wrote his autobiography, The Life Story and too conscious of his limitations to choose a Real Adventures of the Poor Man of Toggenburg 262 Theatre Research International

Figure 3. Title page of Die Gerichtsnacht oder Was ihr wollt (What 'You Will). [Courtesy of the Kantonsbibliothek (Vadiana) St. Gallen.]

(Lebensgeschichte and natiirliche Ebenteuer print in 1987, A Few Words had first been des Armen Mannes im Toggenburg), his best- published in the Shakespeare jahrbuch of known work. 16 When Braker circulated it 1877, 1 ' but it has attracted little attention and among his literature minded acquaintances, has passed unnoticed by Shakespeare scholars news of the odd scribbling peasant spread and despite the existence of an English translation Braker lived to see the publication of his auto- since 1979. 18 On the bicentennial anniversary of biography in 1789 and a second volume with Braker's death in 1998, however, interest in him excerpts from his diary in 1793 (dated 1792). soared. The first three of five bulky volumes of a While Braker's What You Will only went into scholarly edition of his complete writings were Eighteenth-Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard 263

Figure 4. Pierre Byland as Braker in Quelque chose sur le theatre de William Shakespeare, directed by Marcel Robert, Theatre Saint- Gervais, Geneva, 1998. [Photo courtesy of the Theatre Saint- Gervais.]

published. 19 At the Theatre Saint-Gervais, duction of Braker's What You Will (24 July-30 Geneva, Braker's A Few Words about William August 1998), an event that was witnessed by Shakespeare's Plays was adapted as a one-man over 20,000 spectators and reached nationwide play with Braker reading, writing about, talking media coverage in Switzerland.' The fact that to and being carried away by Shakespeare during the (temporary) Lichtensteig Globe was the nightly hours in his modest home, Shake- financed by Switzerland's most controversial speare's presence being signalled by the twelve politician, the populist tribune Christoph Blo- piled-up volumes sitting on a chair opposite cher, who has hitherto successfully striven to Braker. 2° Most extraordinarily, Lichtensteig, keep Switzerland in isolation outside both the where Braker would have witnessed perform- European Union and the United Nations, only ances of itinerant players, saw the erection of a added further piquancy to the event. 22 Ulrich replica of 'Shakespeare's Globe' to house a pro- Braker—who wrote one of the most curious 264 Theatre Research International

Figure 5. Pierre Byland as Braker in Quelque chose sur le theatre de William Shakespeare. [Photo courtesy of the Theatre Saint-Gervais.] chapters in the Shakespeare reception of the Gestalten sind eM Teil unserer Welt, seine Seele ist ems eighteenth century as he surreptitiously mit unserer geworden: und wenn er in England geboren und begraben ist, so ist Deutschland das Land, wo er wahrhaft scribbled away during the nightly hours in East- lebt.' ern Switzerland—has now reached centre stage 3. 'voll Schnitzer und Fehler wider die Regeln der Schau- in his native land, and the moment may have biihne und gesunden Vernunft'. Hansjiirgen Blinn, ed., come for this unsung swain to be remembered Shakespeare-Rezeption: Die Diskussion um Shakespeare elsewhere too. in Deutschland 1741-1827, 2 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1982-8), 1. p. 40. See also J. G. Robertson, 'The Knowledge of Shakespeare on the Continent at the Begin- ning of the Eighteenth Century', MLR, 1 (1906), pp. 312-21. 4. From our modern vantage point, Gottsched, on the Notes losing side in what was a kind of German 'querelle des anciens 1. Edgar Lohner, ed., Ludwig Tieck und die Briider et des modernes', was proved wrong by history. In his own Schlegel: Briefe (Munchen: Winkler, 1972), p. 23. The ori- time, however, he was highly esteemed. His tragedy Sterben- ginal, of which I give my own translation, reads: 'Auf Ihre der Cato (Dying Cato) of 1732, which consists to a consider- Briefe fiber Shakespeare bin ich sehr begierig. . . . Ich hoffe, able degree of translated passages from Addison's Cato, was Sie werden in Ihrer Schrift unter anderem beweisen, Shake- the most successful play in Germany for several decades. speare sey kein Englander gewesen. Wie kam er nur unter die 5. For the early Shakespeare reception in Germany and frostigen, stupiden Seelen auf dieser brutalen Insel? . . . die German-speaking Switzerland, see Friedrich Gundolf, Englischen Kritiker verstehen sich gar nicht auf Shake- Shakespeare und der deutsche Geist (Berlin: Bondi, 1911), speare.' Roy Pascal, Shakespeare in Germany 1740-1815 (Cam- 2. Gerhart Hauptmann, 'Deutschland und Shakespeare', bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937) and The German in Die Kunst des Dramas, edited by Martin Machatzke Sturm und Drang (Manchester: Manchester University (Berlin: Propylden Verlag, 1963), 56. 'Es gibt kein Volk, Press, 1953), Blinn, Shakespeare-Rezeption, and Martin auch das englische nicht, das sich eM Anrecht wie das Bircher and Heinrich Straumann, Shakespeare und die deutsche auf Shakespeare erworben hate. Shakespeares deutsche Schweiz bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: Eighteenth - Century Swiss Peasant Meets Bard 265

Eine Bibliographic Raisonnee (Bern, Munchen: Francke auf mid spillt seine Rolle, kurz oder lang-nachdems ihn Verlag, 1971). trift. Dan ligt er nider, schnarcht ein. Die andern Como- 6. Writings about Braker's life include: Holger Broning, dieanten scharren ihn in die Erde. Dan ists aus-er hurts Ulrich Braker, der Arme Mann aus dem Toggenburg: Leben, nicht, was mann von seiner Rolle spricht. Und in ein paar Werk und Zeitgeschichte (KOnigstein: Athenaum, 1985) and Tagen denkt sich seiner niemand mehr'. Ulrich Braker, Die Christian Holliger of al., Chronik Ulrich Braker: Auf der Gerichtsnacht oder Was ihr wollt, edited by Alois Stadler Grundlage der Tagebiicher 1770-1798 (Bern, Stuttgart: Paul and Peter Wegelin, 2 vols. (St. Gallen: Erker, 1987), 2. p. 102. Haupt, 1985). 15. My translation. The original reads: 'Lauter einzelne 7. Etwas iiber William Shakespeares Schauspiele von im Sturm der Zeiten wehende Blatter aus dem Buch der einem armen, ungelehrten Weltbiirger, der das Gluck Begebenheiten, der Vorsehung, der Welt!-einzelne Geprage gen* denselben zu lesen. The original 182-page manu- der Volker, Stande, Seelen!', 'Shakespear', in Von Deutscher script is now in the Stadtbibliothek Vadiana in St. Gallen, Art und Kunst: Einige fliegende Bliitter, edited by H. D. Switzerland (Ms 919). I quote from Derek Bowman's transla- Irmscher (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1968), p. 78. tion (London: Oswald Wolff, 1979). 16. Derek Bowman's translation of Braker's autobiogra- 8. Eric A. Blackall ('Ulrich Braker und Eschenburg', phy was published by Edinburgh University Press in 1970. Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 98 (1962), pp. 93-109) has shown The German text is available in several editions and on the that Braker also read Eschenburg's critical appendices with World Wide Web on gutenberg.aoLde/braeker/tocken/tock- care, although he substantially differed from Eschenburg in en.htm. critical perspective. 17. Ernst Gotzinger, ed., 'Das Shakespeare-BUchlein des 9. Quoted from the epistle preceding the text of the first Armen Mannes im Toggenburg vom Jahr 1780', Shakespeare quarto (1609). Compare Richard Dutton's recent argument Jahrbuch, 12 (1877), pp. 100-68. that, 'surely the point of the epistle is that it is announcing a 18. See note 7 above. The one article in English that I am reading version of the play, new to a print readership and aware of-dealing with the question of how Braker, as a superior to what had doubtless been performed in a cut text former goat-boy, responds to the pastoral in Shakespeare-is by the King's Men at the Globe' (`The Birth of the Author', in Werner Bronnimann, 'Ulrich Braker: The Goatherd as a Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum Reader of Shakespearean Pastoral', Compar(a)ison: An Inter- (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), p. 84). national Journal of Comparative Literature, 2 (1993), 10. Johnson on Shakespeare, edited by Arthur Sherbo, pp. 313-22. The Yale Edition of Samuel Johnson, VIII (New Haven and 19. Ulrich Braker, Samtliche Schriften, edited by Andreas London: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 750. Biirgi (Munchen: Beck Verlag, 1998). 11. Harley Granville Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, 20. Quelque chose sur le theatre de William Shakespeare First Series (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1927), p. 1. par un pauvre et inculte citoyen du monde qui a foul du 12. The hypothesis that The Merry Wives is an 'occa- plaisir de le lire, Theatre Saint-Gervais, Geneva, 22 April-10 sional' has of course long been elaborated by Leslie Hotson May 1998, directed by Marcel Robert. and others and is now generally accepted. 21. In analogy to 'Shakespeare's Globe', the Lichtensteig 13. Goethe's Collected Works, 12 vols. gen. eds. Victor theatre was officially named 'Braker's Globe'. The produc- Lange, Eric Blackall, and Cyrus Hamlin (New York: Suhr- tion was directed by Nikolaus Windisch-Spoerk and featured kamp, 1983-89), vol. 3: Essays on Art and Literature, edited one of Switzerland's most popular actors, Walo LtiOnd. by John Gearey, tr. by E. and E. H. von Nardhoff (1986), 22. In the meantime, the Lichtensteig Globe, having p. 164. fallen into disuse, has been sold by Blocher to the 'Euro- 14. 'Unter tausent Milionen Menschen spillt ieder seine papark' Rust in Southern Germany-the second biggest besondere Rolle, gut und bos und mittelmassig und noch amusement park in Europe after Euro Disney outside tausenderley Zwaschentarten-nach dem Trieb seines Paris-where, after its reconstruction, it is now serving for Geists. Da tritt ieder so ein Weilchen auf diesem Welttheater dramatic and other entertainments.