GOETHE VERSUS SHAKESPEARE
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same sense as Michelangelo: a unified world on the verge of disinte–
gration; the exaltation of the individual to a plane somehow higher
than that reached by all subsequent individualism. And the poet no
less than his heroes into whom he breathed his spirit may justly be
called-in Goethe's previously cited words--"a being of a higher
order."
As
I now tum to compare Goethe with Shakespeare, my inten–
tion is certainly not to belittle Goethe but to understand him and to
show how he is nearer to us, more like ourselves in what he has to
say to us. I hope to sketch not what the nineteenth century saw in
Goethe but what we today may find in him.
Goethe's
Faust
has much in common with Shakespeare's dramas.
The Prologue in Heaven suggests clearly that
Faust,
too, transcends
the plane of psychological analysis; and there is no character in the
play (excepting of course the Lord in the Prologue) who understands
Faust. The parallel extends to another point which Francis Fergusson
has stressed in relation to
Hamlet: Faust,
too, deals not only with
the hero but with the society in which he lives. There is the scene
"Before the City Gate" and another in "Auerbach's Cellar"; and
later on Gretchen's entire milieu is brought to life.
If
Goethe uses
this social background in large part to model Faust's character that
much more clearly, the same consideration applies to
Hamlet .
More–
over, where there are elements of ritual in
Hamlet,
we have choruses
in
Faust,
ranging from the Easter choirs to the
Dies /rae
in the Cathe–
dral scene. Nor are ghosts lacking. Again, there is an abundance of
psychological insight and much humor. Finally, Faust's character in–
vites comparison with Hamlet's, Gretchen with Ophelia, and Valen–
tine with Laertes.
At this point, the similarity may seem misleadingly close; and
to gain a clue to the important differences, it may be well to cast
a sidelong glance at Goethe's Tasso, who is in some ways even closer
to Hamlet. Here, however, the differences are more obvious. While
both dramas depict an individual against the background of a so–
ciety, Hamlet is far lonelier than Tasso and far surpasses him in
stature. In fact, we hardly exaggerate when we say: none of the other
characters in the play understand Hamlet, but he does not state this
expressly-while Tasso never tires of informing us that none of the
