Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy: A New and Complete Translation

Wendy Arons

September 3, 2012

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 This site hosts the online publication of the first complete, annotated English translation of G. E. Lessing’s Hamburg Dramaturgy, translated by Wendy Arons and Sara Figal, and edited by Natalya Baldyga. The project, which was supported by a multi-year National Endowment for the Humanities “Scholarly Editions and Translations” Grant, was published in print form by Routledge Press (2018). Routledge afforded us permission to prepublish our work here and make it available  for peer to peer commentary while the work was in progress; essays that received comments from readers have been retained on this website (they appear at the bottom of the table of contents).  The published book incorporates comments and suggestions that were made here, and it is also enhanced by the addition of critical introductions contributed by Natalya Baldyga and Michael Chemers.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 0 While Lessing made numerous contributions to aesthetic theory in his lifetime, the text that most cogently and comprehensively documents his dramatic theory—and the text that has had the greatest historical and intellectual influence on the practice and theory of theater—is the Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie, 1767-1769). This  collection of short essays represents one of the first sustained critical engagements with the potential of theater as a vehicle for the advancement of humanistic discourse.

¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 We imagine that if Lessing were alive today, the interactive dialogue made possible by the open peer review platform hosted at mediacommons would appeal to him immensely; he was a firm believer in the value of discourse and criticism. He intended to publish his essays serially, in pamphlet form, over the course of two years (although he quickly fell behind deadline and ended up publishing many in a batch); our translation was also intended to appear serially, beginning in the fall of 2012 – like Lessing, we too fell behind deadline and, in the end, published our translation in big batches as well (!)[1]

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 Our aim has been to produce a translation that will engage contemporary Anglophone readers and convey the edgy liveliness that captivated eighteenth-century readers; this requires translation choices that may be open to debate, discussion, and even controversy. Even though the book is published, we continue to invite Lessing scholars to weigh in on our word choices in translating theoretically significant terms; teachers and students of German to comment on our approach to decoding grammar and syntax; historians to give feedback on our annotations; and literary theorists and theater artists to dialogue with this historical text that, in many ways, speaks to modern concerns. For those wishing to consult the German text, a version can be found online at Project Gutenberg.  Our source text is from Werke und Briefe in zwölf Bänden. Herausgegeben von Wilfried Barner zusammen mit Klaus Bohnen … [et al.]. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985-2003. Text in blue indicates material that was omitted by Helen Zimmern in her 1890 translation of The Hamburg Dramaturgy (reprinted by Dover in 1962). 

¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0 This site is structured to allow you to engage with our work by holding conversations in the margins of the text. We require all commenters to register, and we ask that you post under your real name to make the conversation more personal and engaging.  By registering to comment you implicitly agree to the stipulations in our notes to commenters.  See How to Read This Text if you are new to this endeavor.

• ¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0
• [1] For an account of Lessing’s timeline writing The Hamburg Dramaturgy, see Natalya Baldyga, “Missions, Misunderstandings, and Mythologies” in the print volume of this translation; and H.B. Nisbet, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: His Life, Works, and Thought.,(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 379-82; 391.