“Our inimitable Shakespeare is a Stumbling-block to the whole Tribe of these rigid Criticks”. English and German Women in Eighteenth-Century Debates on Shakespeare

The essay intends to examine the influence of women in the rise of Shakespeare criticism both in England and in Germany in the first half of the Eighteenth century since, so far, women do not seem to have been considered as relevant agents in the development of this relentless process. It interrogates the possible influence of the English actresses who, having the possibility to interpret Shakespeare’s female roles for the first time, discursively contributed to the development of a new taste and sensibility and, in so doing, to the process of canonization of Shakespeare as a national emblem to be ‘exported’ via journals and the emergent literary criticism on the continent. By specifically referring to the German context, the essay also explores the role that women played not as actresses, Shakespeare was not performed on the German stage until the last decades of the eighteenth century, but as translators of English journals and essays. It is precisely in the English journals that Shakespeare’s ability to involve the spectators and raise multifaceted emotions were often used to praise the originality of the English dramatist, to justify his irregularity, and to question the rigidity of the French theatre and its presumed superiority over the English one. And it was mainly due to a woman, Luise Adelgunde Victorie Gottsched, that first editions of The Spectator, The Tatler and The Guardian became available in German and to a public of German readers that went beyond the well-educated elite.