Tom Lundskær-Nielsen

University College London

Brandes and Shakespeare

Georg Brandes' interest in Shakespeare began in earnest at the age of 20 when he devoured the complete plays and wrote his first articles about him. The best known one from his early years is ‘Det uendeligt Smaa og det uendeligt Store i Poesien' (1870; The Infinitely Small and the Infinitely Great in Literature) with its partial analysis of Henry IV , Part I, and in particular of the character of Hotspur, and it culminated in the 1890s with his lectures on Shakespeare in 1891-92, followed by the monumental Skakespeare biography ( William Shakespeare I-III ) that was completed in 1896 and translated into English two years later.

This biography has over the years come in for both lavish praise and strong criticism, in relation to a variety of aspects such as its methodology, its subject matter, its accuracy and attention to detail (or the lack thereof), and not least the widespread perception that Brandes may have presented a portrait that is part Shakespeare and part Brandes. Jørgen Knudsen, in his huge biography of Brandes, even refers to this ‘composite character' as ‘Branspeare'.

My aim in this paper is, first, to examine some of these aspects of Brandes' portrait of Shakespeare and compare them with the treatment in some modern Shakespeare biographies, and secondly to assess how much influence Brandes' work had on later Shakespeare research.