Essays on Shakespeare and European Renaissance Culture (1874 & 1876)

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This volume provides the first English translation of two articles by Wilhelm Koenig, a Shakespeare scholar active in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century: 'Ueber die Entlehnungen Shakespeare's insbesondere aus Rabelais und einigen italienischen Dramatikern' (1874) and 'Shakespeare und Giordano Bruno' (1876). Koenig paints a fascinating scenario that reveals the fundamental unity of European culture in the age in which the greatest English writer of all times was producing his ground-breaking work, the innovative character of which Koenig does not hesitate to trace directly back to some of the European antecedents that he highlights here. Not all the parallels that Koenig adduces have become common knowledge among Shakespeare scholars. However, even more important than the actual question of direct derivation of one passage from another, collectively these two essays, as reproduced in this volume, allow anglophone readers to visit, or revisit, some of the most vital passages in Shakespeare and in more or less well-known European renaissance authors (including Rabelais, Grazzini, Verlato, Bruno), in a juxtaposition that gives rise to stimulating synergies.