SOURCE: Atkinson, Margaret E. “Introductory.” August Wilhelm Schlegel as a Translator of Shakespeare: A Comparison of Three Plays with the Original, pp. 1-8. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958.

In the following essay, Atkinson reviews Schlegel's translations of Shakespearean drama.

There is no doubt that August Wilhelm Schlegel fully realized the magnitude of the task he was undertaking in his translation of Shakespeare's plays. This emerges clearly from statements in his essay, “Etwas über William Shakespeare bei Gelegenheit Wilhelm Meisters,”¹ and from scattered remarks in his other theoretical writings and in his letters and reviews.² On the one hand he was acutely aware of the intricate problems inherent in the very process of translation, and on the other his reverence for the complex organic unity and absolute uniqueness of any literary work and his particular admiration of Shakespeare's artistry impelled him to set himself a high ideal of achievement.

Schlegel naturally...