ABSTRACT
The centrality of William Shakespeare in the reception stage of early modern English drama in seventeenth-century Europe is of German invention. Views of seventeenth-century English troupes as the importers of Shakespeare to the Continent are contradicted by the fact that the actors most often mentioned are acrobats and musicians. The influential German Shakespeare translation by Christoph Martin Wieland responded to the requirements of middle-class drama and the good taste regulated by neoclassical aesthetics. Stendhal saw Shakespeare's work as an incentive for a radical transformation of French drama which should bring it closer to the problems and needs of contemporary society. Instead of importing Shakespeare into Germany and other Central and Eastern European countries, the English comedians acted as cultural mediators, blending a number of local dramatic and theatrical influences. The major representatives of the German Klassik, Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang Goethe, significantly transcend the limits of the Enlightenment understanding of Shakespeare.
