A recepção de Shakespeare na Alemanha

Abstract

This is an article about a decisive moment in the formation of Western modern literature. We are talking about Lessing’s criticism of the excessive influence of neoclassical French theatre on German theatrical production. Lessing (1964) considered that the aristocratic model imported from France did not correspond to German society’s context at all – society which had already been marked by an incipient bourgeois mode of life. So the German critic dedicated his theoretical efforts to affirm the necessity and to raise possibilities about a literary production which had more consonance with German zeitgeist. It is in Shakespeare’s work that Lessing found his answer, and this fact will unleash the appearing of the Sturm und Drang movement and will consequently give birth to an incipient bourgeois literature. So we analyze here the way this Shakespearian influence happens and its relevance in the formation of a bourgeois literature.