Rudolph Heinrich Genée

* 12.12.1824 ; ✝ 19.01.1914

Actor, Virtuoso Speaker, Theatre Historian

Biography

Genée, the son of theatre director Richard Genée, first encountered with the theatre while his father was in charge of the Danzig City Theatre. Though he received early training as a bass singer, he soon turned to journalism and writing. As a writer he was best known for his several plays and stage adaptations, among them adaptations of Shakespeare plays, and was also active as a public reader of Shakespeare. Some of his works were written under the pseudonym ‘P. P. Hamlet’.

Although Genée kept his distance from the professional study of philology – which is no doubt why he never had more than limited contact with the Shakespeare Society – he none the less published a series of Shakespeare studies, though these met with a mixed reception from specialists.

Treatises

• Geschichte der Shakespeareschen Dramen in Deutschland. Leipzig, 1870.
• Shakespeare. Sein Leben und seine Werke. Hildburghausen, 1872.
• W. Schlegel und Shakespeare. Ein Beitrag zur Würdigung der Schlegelschen Übersetzungen. Berlin, 1903.
• William Shakespeare in seinem Werden und Wesen. Berlin, 1905.

Literature

Primary Literature

• Das Wunder. Berlin, 1854.
• Ein neuer Timon. Berlin, 1857.
• Die Geburt des Dichters. Ein Festspiel zur hundertjährigen Geburtstagsfeier Friedrich Schiller’s. Danzig, 1859.
• Marienburg. Historischer Roman. Berlin, 1884.
• Zeiten und Menschen. Erlebnisse und Meinungen. Berlin, 1897.
• Pro memoria. Für mich und Andere. Berlin, 1913.

Secondary Literature

• Ludwig, Albert: „Rudolph Genée, Nekrolog“, Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, 51 (1915). Pp. 205-213.

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