Heinrich VIII / Henry VIII Shakespeare’s last drama, Henry VIII, is one of his greatest works with its national-political themes and compositional innovations. It depicts the conflicts at the English court in London at the beginning of the Reformation and concludes with a vision of the future fate of the English nation. The focus is…

About the work: Shakespeare’s “Scottish play” is the tragedy of an individual obsessed with power. The title character is one of the most brutal criminals in Shakespeare’s plays. For the English Macbeth actor Henry Irving, he was the diabolical arch-villain, the incarnation of evil par excellence; David Garrick, on the other hand, emphasised his courage…

Ein Sommernachtstraum / A Midsummer Night’s Dream About the work: The strong breaks in the history of interpretation make A Midsummer Night’s Dream one of Shakespeare’s most consequentially reinterpreted comedies. The interpretations of the 20th century, which concentrated on the structure of meaning, its subject matter, its world of images and symbols and the contexts…

König Lear / King Lear Shakespeare’s tragedy about the ageing King Lear is based on the figure of the legendary British King Leir from pre-Roman times. The story of the king, who hands over his kingdom to two of his daughters and is rejected by them, is multi-layered: a drama that is not only about…

König Heinrich IV, Teil 1 / King Henry IV, Part 1 Henry IV, Part I (first printed in 1598) owes its fame and enduring traction as a play not to the king of the title, who came to power through injustice and rules his country with difficulty, but to the character of Sir John Falstaff,…

Die zwei Herren aus Verona – The Two Gentlemen of Verona Trying to steal your best friend’s girlfriend is considered ungentlemanly even among today’s young people; even wanting to rape your friend’s girlfriend can jeopardise any male friendship. You can only rely on the feelings of women to bring everything to a good end. As…

Titus Andronicus Titus Andronicus, one of the most successful stage plays of Shakespeare’s time, is a horror play which, because of its grotesque and extremely bloody content, was long attributed to Shakespeare only reluctantly and with a sneer, but for the same reason has in more recent times repeatedly become the basis for modern adaptations…