Caroline Schelling

Caroline and Wilhelm Schlegel’s Translation of Shakespeare

The edition to whose initial volumes Caroline contributed was the following:

A. W. Schlegel, Shakespeare’s Dramatische Werke übersetzt, vols. I–VIII

(Berlin 1797–1801); vol. IX (1810); new, revised, and annotated edition by Ludwig Tieck, 9 vols. (1825, 1830–33); revised edition by H. Ulrici and the German Shakespeare Society, 12 vols. (Berlin 1867–71). Numerous other reprints.

Cf. The Encyclopedia Americana (1919) 376:

His [Wilhelm Schlegel's] universal receptivity for poetical values, together with his rare facility for linguistic expression, predestined him to be a translator of the first order. His translations from Shakespeare were his greatest artistic contribution to German literature. It is due to him that Shakespeare is hardly less known in Germany than in England. Only 17 plays of the so-called Schlegel-Tieck Shakespeare were translated by Schlegel (1797–1810); the remainder were added, from 1825 to 1833, by Graf Wolf Baudissin and (very inadequately) by Dorothea Tieck, while Tieck himself acted only as a reviser and annotator.

Interestingly, certain editions of Romeo and Juliet list Caroline as the primary translator, as does the edition of H. H. Furness in 1899:

This present edition will include selected translated excerpts from earlier studies on Caroline’s contribution to Wilhelm Schlegel’s translation of Shakespeare to give the reader an idea of the nature of that contribution:

• Michael Bernays:

(1) “Der Schlegel-Tiecksche Shakespeare,” Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-gesellschaft 1 (1865) 396–405.

(2) Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Schlegelschen Shakespeare (Leipzig 1872).

(3) “Vor- und Nachwort zum neuen Abdruck des Schlegel-Tieckschen Shakespeare,” Preussische Jahrbücher 68 (1891) 524–69.

• Hermann Conrad:

(1) “Karolinens Textentstellungen im vierten und fünften Akt des Kaufmanns von Venedig,” originally published (with a slightly different title) in Deutsche Revue 36 (November 1911), reprinted (slightly altered) in the appendix to Unechtheiten in der ersten Ausgabe der Schlegelschen Shakspere-Übersetzung (1797–1801): nachgewiesen aus seinen Manuskripten (Berlin 1912) (reprinted material from Zeitschrift für französischen und englischen Unterricht [1912] Heft 4–6, and Deutsche Revue 36 [Nov. 1911] 4:241ff.).

(2) Shakespeares Kaufmann von Venedig (Leipzig 1912).

• Rudolf Genée:

A. W. Schlegel und Shakespeare: ein Beitrag zur Würdigung der Schlegelschen Übersetzungen (Berlin 1903).

• Richard Jonas:

“Ausgaben von Dichtwerken; Erläuterungsschriften,” Jahresberichte über das höhere Schulwesen, ed. Conrad Rethwisch, 21. Jahrgang 1906 (Berlin 1907) (on Conrad’s revision of the Schlegel-Tieck translation).