Shakespeare’s Endings

The autumn conference of the German Shakespeare Society will take place on November 25 and 26, 2016, in Weimar.

The year 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, who has shaped literature and culture worldwide to the present day. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, in “Shakespeare und kein Ende”, describes the nearly inexhaustible stimulation of the imagination emanating from Shakespeare’s works.

The autumn conference 2016 would like to take this year of commemoration as an occasion to have lively dialogues about the dramatic and metaphorical meaning of endings and their poetic and aesthetic configurations in Shakespeare’s work. AT the heart of the presentations and discussions will be Shakespeare’s later works, as well as especially the endings of the plays and poems. How can Shakespeare’s oeuvre be interpreted under the aspects of endings and finiteness? Which political and religious implications are contained in the endings of his plays? Can genre-specific characteristics of the ending be identified? Which aesthetic strategies are employed in relation to the ending: are endings staged as theological-causal consequences, or are they the beginning of something new and unexpected?

Does the diachronic passage through Shakespeare’s work consolidate specific ways of shaping the end that are particularly evident in late works, for example? What conditions of validity are possibly formed there with regard to cultural practices of memory? To what extent do Shakespeare’s texts stage their own immortality in the act of reception? With these questions in mind, the conference aims to highlight historical cross-sections and lines of development that will be reflected on from different disciplinary perspectives. Leading international Shakespeare researchers will be invited to Weimar as speakers whose fields of research relate to Shakespeare’s late works, the forms and poetological functions of the end and the aesthetics of his works. Among those invited are: 1. Philipa Berry, 2. Gordon McMullan, 3. David Margolies, 4. Lucy Munro, 5. Kiernan Ryan, 6. Elizabeth Hodgson, 7. Howard Jacobson, etc.

In addition, it is planned to accompany the conference program together with theater practitioners and to enrich it with performances, e.g. the “Tempest” staged by Stefan Wey as a poetic shadow play at the Figurentheater Erfurt and the second part of “Faust”, completed shortly before Goethe’s death and directed by the Weimar General Director Hasko Weber.

Here you can download the invitation flyer, programme and registration as well as the president’s invitation letter.

Please note the following changes to the programme:

Unfortunately, Howard Jacobson had to cancel his participation in the fall conference in Weimar at short notice for health reasons. This is of course very regrettable. However, we have managed to find a no less interesting and competent replacement in the renowned Shakespeare researcher and journalist Andrew Dickson (University of London; The Guardian). Dickson is an expert not only on the German Shakespeare scene, but also on the German Shakespeare Society, to which he has dedicated his last year’s book “Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe”, published last year, to which he dedicated a whole 60 pages. We are extremely grateful to Andrew Dickson for agreeing to stand in for Howard Jacobson, who is ill, at such short notice and ask all members for their understanding of the change to the programme.