Walter Kaufmann
GOETHE VERSUS SHAKESPEARE : SOME
CHANGES IN DRAMATIC SENSIBILITY
The contrast between these two poets concerns me be–
cause in throwing light on Goethe's modernity and relative proximity
to us, it may help those who are more intimate with Shakespeare to
gain an approach to Goethe. The only comparative evaluation I
shall offer will be Goethe's own, which is worth citing at the outset.
In a conversation with Eckermann (March 30, 1824), Goethe, at
the height of his fame, rejected the notion that Tieck, the German
romantic, might be his equal, and added: "It is just as
if
I were
to compare myself to Shakespeare, who also did not make himself,
and who is nevertheless a being of a higher order to whom I look
up." The most enthusiastic admiration is also evident in Goethe's
autobiography and his essay, "Shakespeare without End"-but es–
pecially in
W ilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.
The account of Wilhelm's
first acquaintance with
Sha~espeare,
in Book III, becomes a paean
before shifting to the author's long reflections on
Hamlct;
and in
the second chapter of Book IV it is intimated that Goethe actually
named his hero, who was to occupy him for fifty years, after Shake–
speare. Against this background of unreserved admiration, I shall
now attempt to model some over-all differences, not piecemeal, but
by first sketching a picture of Shakespeare, perhaps in some respect'S
unorthodox.
I shall confine myself entirely to a very few of Shakespeare's
dramas to suggest two major points which are interrelated: these
plays are not primarily psychological, notwithstanding the poet's psy–
chological penetration; and the crux of these plays is that the hero
belongs to, and lives in, a world of which the other characters have
no inkling.
The insistence on explaining all behavior psychologically is a
