THE CREATIVE RECEPTION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IN THE NETHERLANDS: THE CASE OF ARTHUR VAN SCHENDEL by YVONNE STEINMETZ-ARDASEER A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of The University of Birmingham for the degree of MASTER OF LITERATURE Department of English Faculty of Arts The University of Birmingham September 1998 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ARTHUR VAN SCHENDEL'S EX LIBRIS DESIGNED BY DAVID BUENO DE MESQUITA SESTRI LEVANTE, SEPTEMBER 1934 Courtesy of Nederlands Letterkundig Museum en Documentatiecentrum ' s-Gravenhage SYNOPSIS THE CREATIVE RECEPTION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE IN THE NETHERLANDS: THE CASE OF ARTHUR VAN SCHENDEL As a young man, the Dutch novelist, short story writer and poet, Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946) developed a passion for Shakespeare. The plays came as a revelation to him, kindling his creativity to such an extent that he imaginatively adopted and adapted many of the playwright's characters and ideas. The principal results were a life of the poet, Shakespeare (1910), a play Pandorra (1919), the novel Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw (1940), and a poem "Stratford-upon-Avon" (1944). In this thesis I will explore the intertextuality between the works of Shakespeare and those of Van Schendel. To this end I will study the latter's complete works, all the associa­ ted material, including correspondence and manuscripts, kept in the Literary Museum and Documentation Centre in The Hague; and also biographies, books and articles concerned with Van Schendel that have appeared since the publication of his first novel Drogon (1896). This dissertation will comprise: - a discussion of Van Schendel's life and works - a reading of Shakespeare - comments on five of Shakespeare's plays, included in the second enlarged edition of Shakespeare, and on Pandorra - and last but not least an evaluation of Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw. approximately 64,000 words TO THE LOVING MEMORY OF MY HUSBAND CARL STEINMETZ AND MY GRANDSON CARO STEINMETZ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to Professor Ton Hoenselaars who drew my atten­ tion to Arthur van Schendel's Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw. This proved to be an eye-opener, for I discovered that Van Schendel had not only written a biography of Shakespeare, but some of his works show intertextuality with Shakespeare's plays. I am much obliged to the librarians, archivists and staff, who assisted me in tracing letters, manuscripts, books, and ar­ ticles, in particular those of: - Het Letterkundig Museum en Documentatiecentrum (LM) , Den Haag - Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), Den Haag - Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, Leiden - Archief Theater Instituut Nederland, Amsterdam - Van Looy Archief, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem - Johnson Library, Stratford-upon-Avon - Records Office, The Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon. My thesis has greatly benefited from the guidance, suggestions and advice of Professor Stanley W. Wells, for which I offer him my warmest thanks. I am also grateful to Dr Charles Ver- geer who drew my attention to letters to and from Arthur van Schendel unknown to me and provided me with copies of relevant material. My children and friends supported me with good faith and I owe especially Drs E.G. van Weezendonk, who read my thesis with great care, sincere gratitude. It stands to reason that errors that might be traced are my own responsibility. Delft, September 1998. TABLE OF CONTENTS page Introduction i-xvi Chapter 1 The Life and Work of Arthur van Schen- del, His Place in Dutch Literature 1 1.1. Arthur van Schendel's Life 1 1.2. The Poet/Novelist Arthur van Schendel 43 1.3. Arthur van Schendel's Place in the Dutch Literature of the Nine­ teenth and Twentieth Centuries 44 Chapter 2 A Discussion of Shakespeare 55 2.1. Introduction 55 2.2. Shakespeare Man and Playwright 57 Chapter 3 Arthur van Schendel's Views on Five of Shakespeare's Plays, Shakespeare per­ formed in The Netherlands, Arthur van Schendel's Involvement, and a Discus­ sion of his only Play Pandorra 128 3.1. Introduction 128 3.2. Arthur van Schendel's Views on Five of Shakespeare's Plays 129 3.3. Arthur van Schendel's Involvement 158 3.4. A Discussion of Pandorra 167 3.4.a. Date and History 167 3.4.b. The Title 169 3.4.c. Intertextuality and Intertraffic the Mind 170 3.4.d. The Play 174 Chapter 4 Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw 178 4.1. Introduction and a Discussion of Some of Van Schendel's Short Stories 178 4 .2 . ,Reviews which Appeared on the Publi ication of Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw 185 4 .3 . tAn Evaluation of Meneer Oberon en Mevrouwi 194 4 .3 .a The Style 196 4 .3 .b The Title 197 4 .3 .c The Story: Analogies between A Midsummer Night's Dream and Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw 198 4.4. Concluding Remarks 227 Conclusion 229 Bibliography 234 248 INTRODUCTION Since 1600 Dutch translations and discussions of, and refe­ rences to, English literary and other works, such as books, plays, and to a lesser extent poems, have appeared regularly. English authors, playwrights, poets and their works have been the subject of monographs, articles and dissertations. A great number of these translations or sometimes adaptations (in the case of performances of plays), treatises, and articles cover a wide field - see for instance Sir Thomas Browne M.D- and the Anatomy of Man (1982) by Cornelis W. Schoneveld et al. 1 , and Intertraffic of the Mind (1983) by Cornelis W. Schoneveld2 - and quite a few of them are devoted to Shakespeare. In the 1890s L.A.J. Burgersdijk translated all Shakespeare's plays in twelve volumes3 ; Renetta Pennink wrote a dissertation called, Nederland en Shakespeare: Achttiende Eeuw en Vroege Romantiek (The Netherlands and Shakespeare: the Eighteenth Century and Early Romanticism, 1936) 4 ; Robert H. Leek com­ posed a book entitled, Shakespeare in Nederland: Kroniek van Vier Eeuwen Shakespeare in Nederlandse Vertalingen op het Ne- derlandse Toneel (1988) 5 , which is a survey, covering four 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 2 Dissertation Leiden University (Leiden: Brill/Dniversitaire Pers, 1983), 3 1884-1888, (3rd rev, ed. Leiden: A.W.Sijthoff, 1983), 4 Dissertation University Utrecht ('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff), 5 (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers), This book appeared as an unpublished dissertation at the University of Auckland, New Zealand (n.d. [= 19/2]) in two volumes and is entitled, 'Shakespeare in the Netherlands: a Study of Dutch Translations and Dutch Performances of William Shakespeare's Plays." centuries, of Shakespeare's plays translated into Dutch and performed on the stage in The Netherlands; Bart Westerweel and Theo D'haen edited Something Understood: Studies in Anglo- Dutch Translation (1990) 6 ; and A.J. Hoenselaars included some considerations of Shakespeare in The Netherlands in his edited collection, Reclamations of Shakespeare (1994). 7 These ex­ amples comprise only a small number of all the works written by Dutch scholars and translators both in Dutch and English; they show a continual interest in the literary output of Great Britain in general and to a great extent in William Shake­ speare's life and works in particular. Arthur van Schendel (1874-1946) takes up a modest place among those mentioned above. My thesis offers a study of his literary interaction with Shakespeare. In this introduction, I briefly survey those of his writings, both novels, short stories and a play, that are most relevant to my theme, men­ tion the works that are to be dealt with thoroughly in the following chapters, and say something about the English re­ ception of his work. Van Schendel was sixteen when he first saw a play by Shakespeare. That was Hamlet, performed by a German theatre company, and when he was seventeen, he enrolled at the Academy of Drama in Amsterdam. He then began to read all Shakespeare's plays, in the translation by L.A.J. Burgers- dijk, which he borrowed from the library of the Academy of 6 (Aisterdan - Atlanta, GA: Rodopi), 7 (Ansterdan - Atlanta, GA: Rodopi), 11 Drama. 8 When he became proficient in the English language, first through self-study and later through his studies at a college of education (in order to become a teacher of Eng­ lish), he read Shakespeare's plays in the original language. This gave him so much pleasure that his interest in Shake­ speare and his works increased, which resulted in a biography of the playwright and a thorough knowledge of the characters and plots of his plays. Van Schendel was a poet, but foremost a novelist and short story writer, who composed only one play. Shakespeare (1910), one of his two biographies, the play Pandorra (1919), the novel Meneer Oberon en Mevrouw (1940), the poem "Strat- ford-on-Avon" (1944) 9 , the various allusions to characters in Shakespeare's works scattered through his writings, and also his ex libris10 bear witness to his lifelong admiration for the great playwright. His Shakespeare may be regarded as a ro­ manticized biography. The second edition, published in 1922, was enlarged with discussions of five of Shakespeare's plays. According to one of Van Schendel's biographers, G.H. van 's- Gravesande, the author hoped that his Life of Shakespeare would prove an eye-opener for his friends and entice them to 8 In Arthur van Schendel ('s-Gravenhage: BZZT6H, 1983) Charles Vergeer remarked that as a student of the Acadeay of Drama Arthur van Schendel was in charge of its library and read Shakespeare's plays in the Burgersdijk translation (168), 9 In Eerdenkingen (Reminiscences), Verzawld rert fWJ vol.