Shakespeare’s Metamorphoses in the Poetics of E. T. A. Hoffmann

This article examines the multifaceted influence of William Shakespeare’s legacy on the works of the German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann. This influence is analyzed on several levels. On the level of character, Hoffmann reinterprets Shakespearean archetypes, as seen in figures such as Prosper Alpanus (Prospero), Zaches-Zinnober (Caliban), and Kapellmeister Kreisler (Jacques the Melancholic). On the plot level, the transformation of specific elements from Shakespeare’s plays is noted. For instance, the scene of metamorphosis involving Prosper Alpanus and the fairy Rosenschön in “Little Zaches Called Zinnober,” which employs insect imagery and the rhetorical device of litotes, correlates with Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech in “Romeo and Juliet.” Similarly, the episode with the three caskets in the novella “The Bride’s Choice” constitutes an intertextual play with the plot of “The Merchant of Venice.” An important aspect of this literary inheritance is Hoffmann’s assimilation and innovative transformation of stylistic devices characteristic of Shakespeare, such as irony, grotesque, and phantasmagoria (e. g., “Little Zaches,” “The Golden Pot,” “Lord of the Fleas”), as well as the principle of “theatricalization of narrative.” The latter is realized both through the inclusion of staged spectacles and the “play-within-a-play” technique (e. g., in “Don Juan,” “The Extraordinary Sufferings of the theater Director”), and through the frequent motif of characters acting under a false guise (e. g., in “The Devil’s Elixirs,” “Ignaz Denner,” “The Devil Signor Formica”). Hoffmann’s reception of the Shakespearean tradition bears the imprint of ideas from his predecessors and contemporaries, such as J. W. von Goethe, F. Schlegel, and L. Tieck. However, their interpretations did not become dogma for him. Hoffmann’s own reading of Shakespeare is original, free from the conventions of classicism, and paves the way for subsequent modernist interpretations of the English playwright.