ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: EARLY INNOVATIONS IN SHAKESPEAREAN PERFORMANCE: LUDWIG TIECK, WILLIAM POEL, AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO THE NAZARENES AND PRE-RAPHAELITES Natalie Marie Tenner, Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Directed By: Professor Franklin J. Hildy Department of Theatre and Performance Studies This dissertation attempts to reanalyze the Elizabethan stage work of Ludwig Tieck and William Poel through a historically cultural lens, instead of within the frame of Shakespearean performance. Connecting these men personally and idealogically to two artistic groups, the Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites, reveals, through their respective productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Measure for Measure, their positions as Romantic artists in changing societies. The German Romantics used their art to progress towards a unified German nation. Tieck, who knew Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, and Schleiermacher, exhibited more political awareness than he is usually give credit for. His production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on an attempted recreation of an Elizabethan stage can be read as a theatrical event in which Tieck displayed, both by product and by procedure, his ideal nation in which all classes are connected intellectually and culturally, but at the same time understand the specific role they must fill in society. Poel’s production of Measure for Measure on an Elizabethan stage, when viewed in relation to Pre-Raphaelite thought, reveals a tension in Poel’s work between his pristine Victorian aesthetic and his appreciation for the flawed human being. This manifested itself in Poel’s producing a play with sexually explicit and morally difficult themes, which he then heavily cut to soften some of the discomfort. Under the influence of Ruskin and the Pre- Raphaelites, Poel would have been exposed to ideas which praise humans over machines, and accept a wider range of human emotion and expression than was typically acceptable to his Victorian society. If Poel did not share some of the Pre-Raphaelite fascination with more difficult subjects, he could easily have stayed far away from this difficult play. His choice of the play, and his connections with the Pre-Raphaelites, cause me to question the typical view of Poel as overly prudish. I argue instead that he was negotiating a new place for the artist in society, using Shakespeare and Elizabethan practices, which exalted the full range of human capacity through such tools as the noble grotesque, while keeping the ultimate goal of elevating and improving his audience. EARLY INNOVATIONS IN SHAKESPEAREAN PERFORMANCE: LUDWIG TIECK, WILLIAM POEL, AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO THE NAZARENES AND PRE-RAPHAELITES By Natalie Marie Tenner Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2012 Advisory Committee: Dr. Franklin J. Hildy, Chair Dr. Heather S. Nathans Dr. William L. Pressly Dr. Gary Jay Williams Dr. Kristen A. Messer ©Copyright by Natalie Marie Tenner 2012 Dedication To the many doctors in my family, and my mother who supports us all. ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Franklin Hildy, Dr. Heather Nathans, Dr. William Pressly, Dr. Gary Jay Williams, and Dr. Kristen Messer for their time and help with this project. I would also like to recognize Claudia Mastriana, a graduate student in the German language department for her help in editing my translation. I am indebted to some of my fellow students for their support, generous resource sharing, and participation in writing groups. Ashley, Erin, Matthew, and Ara helped to make this possible. iii Table of Contents Dedication ………………………………..…………………….………………….ii Acknowledgements ………………………………………………….………………..iii Table of Contents …………………………………………………..……………….……iv Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………….……………………………………1 Literature Review……………………………………….……………………………13 Chapter Breakdown………………………………………………..…….……………19 Chapter 2: The Artists in Their Context………………………………………………..…24 German History……………………………………………………….……………………24 Ludwig Tieck……………………………………...…………………………………………35 Nazarenes…………………………………..…………………………………………42 English History………………………………………………………………………………49 Pre-Raphaelites…………………..……….……………………………………………55 William Poel……………………………………………………………………………62 Conclusion…………………………..……………………………………………………69 Manipulation of Time – Nazarenes……………………………………………………..……69 Chapter 3: Romanticism………..……………………………………………………………74 Importance of Individual………………………….…………………….……………………77 Nature vs. Industry…………………………………………..…………………………84 Imitation….……………………..………………….………………………………………87 National Unity and National Identity ………………………………………………….… …90 Manipulations of Time – Pre-Raphaelites………………………………………………112 Chapter 4: German Unity and Shakespeare: Ludwig Tieck’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream…………………………………………………………………………………..19 Tieck’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream……………………………………………………123 Romantic National Artists……………..……………………………………………………129 Unser Shakespeare……………………………….…………………………………………143 Tieck’s Theatre Inheritance………………………………………………………………147 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………157 Manipulation of Time – Tieck………………………….…………………………………161 Chapter 5: Full Emotion and Bare Platform: Poel’s Pre-Raphaelite Understanding of the Human in Art……………………………………..………………………………………164 Poel’s Measure for Measure……………..………………………………………………166 Shakespeare in the Theatre……………………..…………………………………………171 Shakespeare as ‘legitimate’……………………………………………………………182 Alternative Representations…………..……………………………………………………195 Poel, Shakespeare, and the Grotesque…………………………………………….………206 iv Manipulation of Time – Poel………………………………………………………………218 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….…220 Appendix 1: Translated Selection from Tieck’s Der junge Tischlermeister………………222 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………227 v Chapter 1: Introduction This dissertation grew from two questions, which appear at first glance to be basic and to have very little in common. 1. Why did Ludwig Tieck, a German theatre practitioner, devote so much of his life to the English poet Shakespeare and feel it was necessary to perform Shakespeare using Elizabethan methods? 2. Why did William Poel in 1893 choose Measure for Measure, a little known Shakespeare play at the time, which relies on themes that in appearance seem completely opposed to Victorian middle-class values, as the inaugural production on a reconstructed Elizabethan stage? Ludwig Tieck, often referred to as the “father of Romanticism” is mostly remembered for his novels and contributions to literary criticism, but he was also a fervent lover of Shakespeare and the first person known to have advocated for performing Shakespeare on a reconstructed Elizabethan stage. He was working in the early nineteenth century, before Germany was a nation and at a time when Goethe, Schiller, and other artists were trying to establish a German theatre tradition as opposed to theatre modeled after the French. Tieck was also interested in establishing German theatre as representative of the ‘German spirit’, and yet turned to Shakespeare, not Goethe or Schiller, as his model playwright. William Poel was working in England later in the nineteenth century and was the first Englishman to attempt Shakespeare on a reconstructed Elizabethan stage. Although he was working well after England was established as a country, the Industrial Revolution and imperial expansion were causing English citizens to question who they were and what was important to their identity. The human being was taking a subordinate position to industrial technology, and Poel, along with 1 other artists, was trying to reposition art and the importance of the human being in an industrial society. The specific choices of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Tieck and Measure for Measure for Poel also suggest some interesting possibilities. Tieck chose this play for a performance commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia, using August Wilhelm Schlegel’s translation and including Felix Mendelssohn’s full score. The spectacle of the event, the talent involved, and the audience for which it was produced made this production a display of national pride.1 Why was Shakespeare, an English playwright, involved in this event at all? And what does national pride mean to a people who were not yet a political nation? Poel had been experimenting in England for twelve years with Elizabethan performance practices before his production of Measure for Measure, including an early production of the first quarto version of Hamlet. However, Measure for Measure was the first production for which Poel was able to use a fairly complex reconstructed Elizabethan stage. His company for that production became the founding Elizabethan Stage Society a year later. This was an important production for his career, which makes his choice of Measure for Measure difficult to reconcile with his treatment of the text. The play deals explicitly with issues of sex, prostitution, pregnancy out of wedlock, and corruption, all of which Poel apparently felt were inappropriate material for the stage, causing him to cut the text to make it more palatable, even though part of his mission for the Elizabethan stage was to perform the full Shakespeare text. There are several elements that do not match up here, and that is why I have chosen this production to help understand Poel’s relationship to Shakespeare, the theatre, and the larger Victorian society. 1 Gary Williams, Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night’s Dream