Introduction
There is a considerable amount of proof that William Shakespeare’s plays influenced Wagner’s work, both in his autobiography My Life and his articles. The notion of naturalness, according to Wagner, was a key element of both Shakespearean play and future theater in general. While the narrative of Wagner’s operas was inspired by Shakespeare, the interpretation of the play was frequently different, since Wagner incorporated many of his ideas into his operas. Despite the fact that the characters in Wagner’s operas are similar to those in Shakespeare’s plays, there is evidence that Wagner viewed the comedies differently.
This paper hypothesizes that the general impacts of Shakespeare’s plays on Wagner lie in the field of a storyline, but fail to affect the essence of what the music conveys. More specific impact lies in the gradual conversion of Shakespeare’s ideas of social injustice into Wagner’s music. Nonetheless, both specific and general influences were susceptible to Wagner’s interpretation, which made the music so distinctive and well-known, even many years after the composer’s death.
The Background of the Study
Many literary works point to the pronounced impact of Shakespeare’s plays on Richard Wagner’s operas. In fact, Wagner himself acknowledged his obsession with Shakespeare in his autobiography My Life. In the article A Work of Art of the Future (1849) and later, in the book Beethoven (1870) and articles On the Purpose of Opera (1871), On Actors and Singers (1872), Wagner called Shakespeare’s theater the theater of the future, and the principle of naturalness, which presupposes empathy of the audience, was seen as the main principle of Shakespearean drama. In the book Opera and Drama (1851), Wagner put Shakespeare’s dramaturgy above Greek tragedy and spoke in detail about it as the path that musical drama should follow.
There are also many examples of the direct impact of Shakespeare’s plots on Wagner’s work. After the youthful tragedy “Laubald” (1828), written under the influence of “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “King Lear”, “Romeo and Juliet” and “Richard III”, in 1836 the composer turned to the plot “Measures for measure” and created his second opera — “Das Liebesverbot”. The extent to which Shakespeare’s influence was felt in Wagner’s music was investigated by authors such as Istel and Baker, Halliwell, Furness, Mueller, and others. All of these works illuminate Wagner’s works and interpret them through the lens of Shakespeare’s influence. While all these works focus on the similarities between Shakespeare’s plays and Wagner’s music, they do not cover the difference in a systematic and easy-to-follow way.
Though certain differences are mentioned in these works, there has so far been no coherent study that aimed to reveal how Wagner’s views opposed those of Shakespeare and how these differences were portrayed in the composer’s music and operas. This paper aims to address this gap by showing not only the impact that Shakespeare’s plays had on Wagner, but also how the composer’s vision was different from that of the famous English playwright. Being a synthesis of previous research, the paper uncovers Wagner’s perception of Shakespeare’s work, seen, on the one hand, as a higher art, but, on the other, as a material for further modification to more fully reflect the society and life of Wagner’s times.
Aims of the Research
The research aims to explore influence of Shakespeare’s plays on Wagner’s music and determine how Wagner’s vision on many plays was different from that of a playwright. The second aim is to explore in detail how Das Liebesverbot is impacted by Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for measure and what differences can be traced between Shakespeare’s and Wagner’s vision on the play.
Methodology
The study is a systematic review of the works on Shakespeare’s impact on Wagner’s music. First of all, Wagner’s autobiographical works were taken for the analysis, since the composer revealed many of his thoughts on Shakespeare’s comedy and drama in his writings. Since these works date to the last century, they were retrieved from libraries in their English translation. These works comprise My Life and Shakespeare, Opera and Drama, and Theatre, and Time by Wagner, the latter comprising an abridged collection of Wagner’s articles that feature his attitude to Shakespeare’s work.
Secondly, Google Scholar, SCOPUS, and Web of Science were used in a first broad search to find the existing critical literature on the topic. The keywords that were searched were “Wagner”, “Shakespeare”, “opera”, “music”, and “drama”. Only the articles where the combination of at least two words was used in the title were considered for the research. The chosen articles were additionally verified for their consistency with the research topic.
The first broad search through the above-mentioned search engines revealed that there are about a thousand articles that fit the criteria. To narrow down the search and focus on the most relevant studies, the inclusion criteria were elaborated. The requirements for inclusion in the given study comprised a clear indication of the research topic, a description of the methodology, and interpretations provided by the authors on what the study revealed. Thus, 13 works were chosen for the research.
The next step was to document and summarize the general features of the found articles. In the analysis, the emphasis was placed on the impact of Shakespeare’s plays on Richard Wagner, the differences in the perception of those plays by the playwright and the composer, and, more specifically, on the influence of Shakespeare’s comedy “Measure for Measure” on “Das Liebesverbot”.
Discussion
The Place of Shakespeare in Wagner’s Theoretical Writings
Many of Wagner’s theoretical works point to the esteem the composer held for Shakespeare. In works such as A Work of Art of the Future (1849), On the Purpose of Opera (1871), On Actors and Singers (1872), and the book Opera and Drama (1851), the composer elaborated on his thoughts on Shakespeare’s plays. Indeed, while Wagner lauded Greek drama for the manner in which it combined music and drama, Shakespeare’s dramatic writing, from Wagner’s perspective, had outperformed theirs. Wagner asserted that Shakespeare had enhanced spoken drama far beyond the Greeks by renouncing the Greek Chorus and substituting it with emotionally intriguing subordinate characters who move the plot forward, unbroken, through the acts of the drama. Shakespeare’s works were the peak of classical art for Wagner.
Wagner argued that since Shakespeare had perfected the medium, following playwrights had little to add to the dramatic theatre in the same way as musicians had suffered after Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Furthermore, Wagner believed that “a door had been left open in Shakespeare’s drama,” a room that can only be stuffed by introducing additional music to characters of a dramatically pertinent narrative: the convergence of Beethoven-quality music with Shakespeare’s drama.
In general, Wagner believed Shakespeare was responsible for establishing modern theater. This idea can be traced in Wagner’s Opera & Drama where Wagner wrote: “With the fullest necessity did Shakespeare’s Drama spring from Life and our historic evolution: his creation was just as much conditioned by the nature of our poetic art as the Drama of the Future, in strict keeping with its nature, will be born from the satisfaction of a need which Shakespearean Drama has aroused but not yet stilled”.
At the same time, Wagner was at times skeptical of Shakespeare’s work in his Opera & Drama, mostly because Shakespeare’s command of verse and dramatic circumstance were not properly represented by the companies he worked with. Shakespeare, Wagner thought, had been misused by nineteenth-century society. Shakespeare’s plays had grown enormously popular in Germany in the century preceding Wagner’s. Their success not only exposed Wagner to Shakespearean tragedy but also fueled Wagner’s ambition to save Shakespeare’s writings from perceived maltreatment.
Wagner considered himself the genuine successor to Shakespeare’s literary heritage, and his “music plays” as the inevitable progression of Shakespeare’s foundation. Shakespeare’s ability to construct psychologically deep, intriguing characters that carried the action along without the need of a chorus was praised by Wagner. In Wagner’s opinion, the chorus represented a less sophisticated manner of transmitting the story, and by eliminating it, Shakespeare lifted his writings above those of the ancient Greeks.
Wagner saw his operas as a continuation of Shakespeare’s dramatic art, which largely used the same artistic means as those employed by the great playwright. Thus, Wagner portrayed true human emotions in his operas and showed people’s feelings in all their complexity, a feature he borrowed from Shakespeare. Indeed, Wagner credited Shakespeare’s characters as emotional and intriguing, unlike Greek heroes, who were devoid of many human feelings.
This inner complexity and humanity of Shakespeare’s characters were transferred to Wagner’s own works. The difference between Shakespeare’s drama and Wagner’s opera lie primarily in the diverse means of art they use. Thus, Shakespeare’s theater only portrayed characters’ feeling through actions, while Wagner used music to depict those feeling that could not be transformed in action.
References to Shakespeare in Wagner’s My Life
Wagner underlined Shakespeare’s importance in his dramatic growth in My Life. He placed Shakespeare’s works above the Greek drama, because, according to Wagner, Shakespeare stripped it of all the artifice and portrayed real human passions on the stage. In his operas, Wagner sought to portray the same vividness and feeling that Shakespeare’s works held. Wagner believed that Shakespeare was the first to portray real human emotions without artifice and pretence and that his works held a rare truthfulness uncharacteristic of Shakespeare’s age.
Thus, in My Life, Wagner wrote: “I had not omitted the smallest detail that could give this plot its proper coloring, and I had drawn on…my acquaintance with Lear and Macbeth, to furnish my drama with the most vivid situations. But one of the chief characteristics of its poetical form I took from the pathetic, humorous, and powerful language of Shakespeare”.
Despite his reverence for Shakespeare’s works, Wagner borrowed mainly the plot of stories, which he later modified to fit his operas. In some aspects, Wagner hoped to recreate old Greek tragedy with his Gesamtkunstwerk; in others, he believed Greek drama to be devoid of emotions and portrayed Shakespearean passions in his works. Wagner’s music became more complicated as it grew over the years.
References to Shakespeare in Wagner’s Leubald und Adelaide
At the age of 15, Wagner wrote the great tragedy Leubald and Adelaide, in which Shakespeare’s great influence is felt — mainly his “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “Lear” — and Goethe’s “Goetz von Berlichingen”. This was the first dramatic experience of the composer, who would later always write librettos for his operas himself. Wagner gave the name to the heroine under the impression of Beethoven’s “Adelaide”. The youthful creation is overloaded with scenes of murders, sinister witchcraft, incredible events, encounters with ghosts. However, in it Wagner for the first time comes to the idea of a redemptive death in the name of love, which he later brilliantly embodies in “The Flying Dutchman”, “Tannhauser” and “Tristan”.
The narrative was, in reality, a variation of “Hamlet”: the difference was that Wagner’s hero, stunned by the sight of his father’s shadow, who was slain under very similar conditions to “Hamlet,” indulged in a series of murders. Leubald, who resembles Hamlet, makes a pledge to the father’s ghost to eliminate the Roderich line from the face of the Earth. At the same time, the opera is filled with juvenile maximalism: Leubald murders Roderich, his sons, and all his loyal relatives in a violent struggle, whereas in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the hero does not go so far.
The plot of Wagner’s tragedy closely resembles Shakespeare’s works. Thus, Wagner introduces ghosts, as in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Richard III, and witches, as in Macbeth. There is Leubald’s father’s ghost, which hinders Leubald and Adelaide from reconciling, and the spirit of Roderich. Similar to Shakespeare’s approach in Richard III, the souls of the other members of his beloved’s family, slaughtered by Leubald, come to torment him. Leubald, tormented by these spirits, attempts to liberate himself by witchcraft and finally dies.
The language of the opera is also largely borrowed from Shakespeare’s richest pathetic and humorous vocabulary. The boldness of the pompous and deliberately exaggerated syllable characteristic of this opera shows Wagner’s attempts to copy Shakespeare’s style. Despite certain drawbacks of this work, it was from this tragedy that Wagner’s musical work started since he wanted to write music to match Leubald.
References to Shakespeare in Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer
The main literary source of the libretto of Wagner’s opera Der Fliegende Holländer, as is known, is the short story by G. Heine, From the memoirs of Mr. von Schnabelevopsky. Heine, in an ironic manner, expounds a well-known legend about a sailor doomed to eternal wanderings, from which only female fidelity can save him. The narrator is watching a play in the theater, according to the plot, in which the Dutchman still finds his deliverer and dies, finding eternal rest. However, the hero of Heine does not see the whole play because after the scene of the bride swearing allegiance, he runs away from the theater with the girl sitting in the gallery above him. He returns during the last scene, when the Dutchman leaves his wife, but the “Flying Dutchwoman” throws herself into the sea, remaining faithful to him forever.
Wagner, taking this plot as a basis, not only supplemented the missing episodes but also changed the very nature of the story. His task was to motivate the Dutchman’s desire to leave the heroine more convincingly and thereby create a romantic conflict that would end in a tragically sublime finale. The reason for the breakup may be suspicions of her infidelity, that is, jealousy, because the eternal fidelity of the wife is the only condition for the salvation of the Dutchman. Othello is the most famous work in which the theme of jealousy appears, and it could hardly have failed to arise in the memory of the composer, who was fascinated by Shakespeare at that time.
The character system in Der Fliegende Holländer and Othello is centered around the plot based on the theme of jealousy: the two main characters decide to marry, but one or more characters become the cause of their quarrel. In Shakespeare, this is Iago, who harbors a personal dislike for Othello and invents the story of Desdemona’s love affair with Lieutenant Cassio. Wagner’s reason for distrust is Hunter Eric, Senta’s ex-fiancé. In both works, the girl’s father appears, thanks to whom the acquaintance of the main characters takes place, he himself brings the hero into the house; but if Brabanzio vehemently opposes Desdemona’s marriage with Othello, then Daland is glad of the Dutchman’s intention, as he hopes to find a rich son-in-law in him.
In both Shakespeare’s play and Wagner’s opera, the main protagonist is perceived as having connections with another world. Othello is perceived by everyone as a stranger because of his Moorish appearance, so Desdemona’s love for him looks unnatural, beyond reasonable explanation. Unlike Othello, the Dutchman is really connected with another, unearthly world, both with the devil and with his divine beginning: the devil put a curse on him, and the angel gave him the opportunity to get rid of it.
If Othello’s otherness is obvious to everyone, then the opposite is true here, although in both cases, only a loving woman understands the true essence of her lover. No one, except Senta, has any thoughts about the true nature of the sailor or the portrait depicting him, which Senta constantly admires. Even Eric, who clearly noticed the resemblance of the guest to the man in the portrait, perceives him only as a rich rival. However, the legendary figure of the sailor, who so excited his beloved, comes to life for him in a dream. The prophetic dream motif, widely spread in literature, can be found in almost every Shakespeare play, including Othello.
Eric does not identify the guest with the Flying Dutchman until the last. He is much more surprised by Senta’s behavior. Perhaps here Wagner was influenced by Hamlet, with the text of which the composer was also well acquainted: Prince Hamlet cannot believe that his mother so quickly forgot her worthy husband and gave her hand to an unworthy one.
In Der Fliegende Holländer as in Othello, Senta’s love for the Dutchman does not arise from witchcraft. Comparing in both works the story of the origin of the love of the heroes, one can see the obvious similarity.
The Relation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Die Meistersinger is the Wagner opera most based on any sort of historical fact. It takes place in a familiar replica of Nuremberg in the 1600s, when organizations of Mastersingers were at their peak throughout Germany. Hans Sachs, the opera’s main character, was a historically significant individual who lived from 1594 until 1676. Nothing supernatural occurs throughout the opera. However, there is mention of a mischievous imp causing a riot. No potions are consumed, and no renegades traverse the millennia.
Yet, Meistersinger is as much a legendary narrative as any of Wagner’s operas. The central myth in this story is that of Germany, which the spirit Sachs symbolizes and whose destiny he spells out in the conclusion. The blend of reality and myth proved to be more politically explosive than any previous Wagner invention, since later Meistersinger became a propaganda spectacle in Nazi Germany.
As a bright, rebellious young singer-poet clashes with the regulated narrowness of the Mastersinger’s guild. Meistersinger basically becomes a metaphor for Wagner’s own troubles. Hans Sachs, who encourages the youthful poet while instructing him with the knowledge and expertise, also serves as a channel for reflections on the essence of German art and its significance in uniting Germany’s separated peoples.
Despite the serious character of this work, Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg adopted some features of Shakespeare’s comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. In this comedy, Shakespeare describes the lunacy of love and mocks human foolishness. It features some of Shakespeare’s best poetry, hilarious humor, heartfelt love moments, intrigue, and dramatic magic. In this work, Shakespeare examines the concept of love that comes at random, and the idea that people are more in love with themselves rather than with others.
The resemblance between Shakespeare’s comedy and Wagner’s opera lies in the details. Both in comedy and in drama, the characters take their beloved ones for other people, the situation that leads to a farce, which, in Shakespeare’s play, finishes with joy and laughter, and, in Wagner’s opera, renders the viewers to think over the fate and future of their beloved Germany. In fact, there are more differences between the two works than similarities, as the latter can be traced only in minor events, while the tone of the opera and comedy is completely different.
The Transformation of Measure for Measure into Das Liebesverbot
Wagner’s opera Das Liebesverbot, oder Die Novize von Palermo is a large comic opera by Richard Wagner in 2 acts, with a libretto by the composer based on the play by Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”. While the plot of Wagner’s operas was taken from Shakespeare, the interpretation of the play was often different, as Wagner put many of his ideas into operas.
The main question of the opera is what happens if the power transforms into a legal problem from being the highest law. In the opera, power passes from the Duke, who has it by divine right, to Angelo, whose experience of justice, in turn, is parodically duplicated by Constable Elbow. Though the characters much resemble those in Shakespeare’s play, there is evidence that Wagner interpreted the comedy differently. Wagner’s autobiography, written in 1865-1870, largely clarifies the basic ideas of his opera. Setting out its plot, the composer immediately identifies three important deviations from his original source.
The opera takes place not in Vienna, as in Shakespeare’s play, but in Sicily, in Palermo. The main character is the viceroy of the King of Sicily, a German by birth. In Shakespeare, the Duke’s departure is only an excuse to temporarily cede power to the governor and observe his actions from the outside. In Wagner, the king really leaves for Naples and transfers to Frederick all his powers, which not only assume rule in accordance with established laws, but also give the right to carry out a radical reform of the morals of the capital. To this, it should be added that the opera takes place on the day of the carnival.
In general, Wagner leaves unchanged the main motives of Shakespeare’s plot and the functions of the main characters. The young nobleman Claudio is sentenced to death under the law prohibiting love; Lucio goes to the monastery to ask for help from Claudio’s sister Isabella. Isabella tries to convince the royal viceroy Frederick to pardon Claudio, but she ignites passion in him and pretends to sacrifice her honor for the sake of saving her brother. Instead of Isabella, Mariana, once abandoned by Friedrich, goes on a date.
Despite his promise, before the meeting, Friedrich orders the execution of Claudio; in the finale, his hypocrisy is exposed. The carnival element makes significant changes to the finale of the opera: the date takes place during the carnival, and substitution becomes possible thanks to the use of masks. Frederick and Mariana, taken by surprise, are publicly stripped of their masks, and the people of Palermo become Frederick’s merciful judge. Wagner’s king is completely deprived of the function of the supreme judge, he appears at the very end, when the governor has already been forgiven by the people and is himself involved in a merry carnival procession.
As for the minor characters, Wagner builds his own system. Some of the features of the simpleton-constable Elbow get the leader of the detectives, Brigella, whose name refers to one of the masks of the Commedia dell’arte. Name Angelo (Angel) goes to one of Claudio’s friends. The cheerful element of Palermo, whose inhabitants are trying to resist the harsh despotism of Frederick, is concentrated around Daniel’s wine cellar, where Dorella, Isabella’s former maid, and another character named Pontius Pilate serve. The farcical scenes of Shakespeare’s play served for Wagner only as a distant prototype of comic opera scenes.
The images of the main characters, despite the formal similarity, underwent serious changes in the opera. First of all, this concerns the figure of the governor. Shakespeare’s Angelo follows an old law that has not been enforced for a long time and therefore has lost its force. Friedrich, on the other hand, has broader powers and sets himself a more serious task — to eradicate debauchery, in which, in his opinion, the Sicilians are mired, and not its manifestations, but “the cause and root of evil” (den Grund und die Wurzel des Übels). Friedrich considers carnival to be the main “evil” of this way of life.
In Shakespeare, the vicar Angelo receives an exceptionally positive characterization at the beginning of the play. The Duke temporarily transfers power to him, explaining that he is strict and impeccable. Only the Duke, then Isabella, knows about his unworthy act towards Marianne (broken promise to marry her and slander), and only in the finale is the whole truth revealed publicly. Wagner’s characters from the very beginning of the opera unanimously give Friedrich only a negative characterization. “The German fool” (“der deutsche Narr”) is what Lucio calls him and calls on everyone to laugh at the new law, while Isabella calls him a hypocrite.
Further in the play, these two characteristics — “fool” and “hypocrite” – are constantly pronounced by other characters. The hypocrisy of Shakespeare’s Angelo first lies in the fact that he is not so perfect, because he deceived and slandered Mariana, then in the fact that he deceives Isabella by promising to pardon her brother and ordering his execution. But Angelo is sincere both in his passion for Isabella and in condemning love before talking to her. Before meeting Isabella, Angelo does not rule out that in the future, he may be punished under the same law if he violates it.
Another basicс idea of the opera lies in open sensuality, the cult of the flesh, and the joy of life. Wagner took the liberty to strongly condemn the puritanical hypocrisy that prevailed in the society of those times. Wagner said that he saw a stern, morally strict stadtholder, inflamed with passionate love for a beautiful novice, when she, begging for mercy for a brother sentenced to death for a love offense, infected him with the beautiful heat of her human feelings and fanned a disastrous flame in him, an inflexible puritan. It was important for him to reveal the sinfulness of hypocrisy and the unnaturalness of the harsh court of morality.
In many ways, these thoughts were inspired by Wagner’s ideas of the radical group “Young Germany”, which included Laube, with whom Wagner became close during his stay in Leipzig. The members of the “Young Germany” waged a literary struggle against the idealization of the Middle Ages and the departure into religious mysticism, which was characteristic of German Romanticism of that time. Wagner opposed to all this, the only thing that had an unconditional value for him was love. Subsequently, it is love, sacrificial, consuming, and redeeming that becomes the basis of both Wagner’s philosophy and his entire work. The composer did not accept Shakespeare’s harsh, pessimistic concept, contrasting the cruel tyrant and hypocrite with heroes who are free to express their feelings.
The opera takes place in Palermo, where the German Friedrich, who became the ruler, brings down severe punishments on the Italians. His first victim is Claudio, whose mistress is to become a mother. Claudio is sentenced to death. His sister, Isabella, begs the ruler to cancel the sentence. Admiring her beauty, he is ready to pardon Claudio in exchange for her love. Isabella is outraged, but pretends to agree — in fact, she should be replaced by a disguised mistress of the ruler.
Lucio, who is in love with Isabella, is overcome with jealousy and calls on the people to expose the hypocrite Friedrich. Exposed, he demands to be executed in accordance with the law punishing adultery. However, the people repealed the bloody law, freeing everyone who was thrown into prison, starting with Claudio, and joyfully welcomed the returning king, who temporarily ceded power to Frederick.
In an irreconcilable conflict, Wagner confronted the sensual joy of life and gloomy asceticism, which turns out to be hypocrisy, a lie. Unlike Shakespeare, whose work reveals the sinister aspects of immorality and divergence of words and deeds in a harsh, close-to-reality form, the playwright stresses the freedom of feeling. Antagonistic forces are embodied in contrasting, musically generalized images.
The introduction to the opera is a concise, dramatically concentrated disclosure of its content; the victory of the carnival theme means the triumph of the joy of life. The music sharply contrasts with Shakespeare’s plot, which is wrought with sadness, injustice, and hypocrisy of the world. Thus, while Shakespeare wrote Measure for Measure as a disclosure of hypocrisy, in Wagner’s interpretation, the opera is a light-hearted triumph of free feeling, which, though opposed to pretence, is of itself the highest value.
Results
The hypotheses of the research were proven; the systematic review found that Shakespeare’s plays had a major impact on Wagner’s storyline. Wagner’s bibliographic works testify to the fact that the composer held Shakespeare in great esteem and elevated his works above Greek drama. More specifically, Shakespeare’s concepts of social injustice were gradually translated into Wagner’s music. Wagner considered his symphonies a development of Shakespeare’s dramatic art, employing many of the same aesthetic tools as the renowned playwright.
Consequently, Wagner’s operas depicted actual human feelings and displayed people’s moods in all their complexities, a trait he took from Shakespeare. Likewise, Wagner praised Shakespeare’s protagonists as emotive and interesting, in contrast to Greek heroes who lacked many human emotions. Wagner’s compositions reflected the deep richness and empathy of Shakespeare’s characters.
More specific influences of Wagner on Shakespeare’s work are singular for each drama. Thus, in the drama, Leubald and Adelaide Wagner borrowed from Shakespeare’s plot, basing it on plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Richard III, as well as high-level language. While the heroes in Wagner’s drama must resemble those in Shakespeare’s play, Wagner, with his juvenile maximalism, exaggerates the scenes portraying multiple murders and, later, unbearable remorse and regret.
In this drama, Wagner attempts to make the characters even more vivid than in Shakespeare’s play by amplification and the use of high-strung lexis. In Das Liebesverbot, unlike Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Wagner concentrated on the idea of free love, all-forgiving and joyful, as contrasted to the idea of hypocrisy and punishment that Shakespeare portrayed in his drama. Wagner’s music serves to establish this work as a light-hearted comedy in contrast to a more sinister meaning envisaged by Shakespeare.
In Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Wagner uses Shakespeare’s method, when characters take their beloved people for the other ones to add comic notes to the opera. However, the tone of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is more serious than that of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the drama itself makes viewers ponder rather than laugh. In Der Fliegende Holländer, Wagner draws parallels between Shakespeare’s Othello and the Dutchman, both of whom are perceived as not belonging to this world. Moreover, the plot of the drama is partially similar to that of Othello.
The primary distinction between Shakespeare’s drama and Wagner’s opera is the variety of artistic media employed. While Shakespeare’s theater only depicted characters’ emotions via actions, Wagner employed music to represent emotions that could not be portrayed through action. In his autobiographic works, Wagner said that Shakespeare advanced drama well beyond the Greeks by omitting the Greek Chorus and replacing it with emotionally compelling subsidiary characters who propel the action across the drama’s acts.
However, both specific and general influences were subject to Wagner’s interpretation. Thus, Shakespeare’s comedy Measure for Measure was interpreted by Wagner from the standpoint of “Young Germany” — a liberal literary and social group that defended political freedom. Shakespeare’s harsh, gloomy vision was rejected by the composer, who invented heroes who were free to express their emotions in opposition to ruthless tyrants and hypocrites.
Conclusions
While the paper points to a pronounced influence of Shakespeare’s plays on Wagner’s music in terms of plot and discusses social problems, the degree to which these influences were modified by the composer was not extensively debated. Moreover, not all areas of interest in the field of Shakespeare’s impact on Wagner’s music are covered by the range of research questions throughout the current study. Therefore, further research is needed to cover the issues raised in the current work more fully.
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