talk about Shakespeare; everything is inadequate. I have
touched upon the subject in my _Wilhelm Meister_ but that is not saying
much. He is not a theatrical poet; he never thought of the stage; it was
far too narrow for his great mind: nay, the whole visible world was too
narrow.

"He is even too rich and too powerful. A productive _nature_[17] ought
not to read more than one of his dramas in a year if it would not be
wrecked entirely. I did well to get rid of him by writing _Goetz_, and
_Egmont_,[18] and Byron did well by not having too much respect and
admiration for him, but going his own way. How many excellent Germans
have been ruined by him and Calderon!

"Shakespeare gives us golden apples in silver dishes. We get, indeed,
the silver dishes by studying his works; but, unfortunately, we have
only potatoes to put into them."

I laughed, and was delighted with this admirable simile.

Goethe then read me a letter from Zelter, describing a representation of
Macbeth at Berlin, where the music could not keep pace with the grand
spirit and character of the piece, as Zelter set forth by various
intimations. By Goethe's reading, the letter gained its full effect, and
he often paused to admire with me the point of some single passage.

"_Macbeth_," said Goethe, "is Shakespeare's best acting play, the one in
which he shows most understanding with respect to the stage. But would
you see his mind unfettered, read _Troilus and Cressida_, where he
treats the materials of the _Iliad_ in his own fashion."

The conversation turned upon Byron--the disadvantage in which he appears
when placed beside the innocent cheerfulness of Shakespeare, and the
frequent and generally not unjust blame which he drew upon himself by
his manifold works of negation.

"If Lord Byron," said Goethe, "had had an opportunity of working off all
the opposition in his character, by a number of strong parliamentary
speeches, he would have been much more pure as a poet. But, as he
scarcely ever spoke in parliament, he kept within himself all his
feelings against his nation, and to free himself from them, he had no
other means than to express them in poetical form. I could, therefore,
call a great part of Byron's works of negation 'suppressed parliamentary
speeches,' and think this would be no bad name for them."

We then mentioned one of our most modern German poets, Platen, who had
lately gained a great name, and whose negative tendency was likewise