“Schakespear in der Klemme: Johann Friedrich Schink and the Problem of Adaptation”

In his short play Schakespear in der Klemme, oder wir wollen doch auch den Hamlet spielen, 1 Johann Friedrich Schink pictures the ghosts of William Shakespeare and David Garrick in heaven as they meet the ghost of Jean-François Ducis, author of the famous 1769 French adaptation of Hamlet, and two actors of Schink’s Theater Schule, directed by Müller, who are about to perform Hamlet. This hilarious play is, in Andreas Höfele’s words, “a solid, if none-too-subtle piece of theatrical entertainment combining the ever-popular sport of bashing the French with a laugh at the current craze for Hamlet”. 2 This paper aims to demonstrate that the play’s nationalist lampoons and hilarious gags are also significant metatextual elements, which are worth investigating to outline Schink’s insights into the problematic issue of Shakespearean adaptations. Studies on Shakespeare’s afterlife, particularly in Germany, build up the theoretical basis of this contribution, and the ‘close reading’ methodology is used in the analysis of the play.