I have written a lot about Shakespeare and Germany, and I have been focusing mostly on Hamlet, and how Hamlet has been treated in Germany. This has been extremely fascinating for me, researching and discovering the depth of the scholarship, particularly in Germany on the subject of Shakespeare and Hamlet.
But where am I going with this? I want to take a step back and look at what I already know, what research I have already done in order to see if I can come up with some sort of working thesis.
1. Deutschland ist Hamlet -- I posted about Freiligrath's famous poem along with a translation and interpretation. There has been scholarship in Germany since the mid 1800s about Germany's relationship with Hamlet, including the debate whether Germany is Hamlet or not.
2. Shakespeare in Nazi Germany -- I have also found several books dealing with theatre and Shakespeare and how these plays were seen and produced in Germany under the Nazi regime of the 1930s and 40s. There were some productions that were very pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic, especially a production of The Merchant of Venice, and some productions that were blatantly critical of the Nazis, like Fehling's Richard III or Gründgen's Hamlet.
3. König Lear -- I have an edition of King Lear in English and German, and I have done some comparative analysis of the two languages, and I have at least one more post in draft status which looks at the footnotes of my German translation, which helps explain some things from the English text. I would like to do more close readings and analyses of King Lear using both of these texts.
So, what thesis should I be following? What should I spend my time focusing a little more in depth on? For this week, I will do one more post on each of these three points as I continue to develop a thesis, but for now, I think I am leaning more toward a study of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany. I would like to do a Reader Response analysis and look at how Shakespeare can be interpreted in any way to prove whatever point the director or audience chooses.
