Borck, Prussian ambassador to London, had translated "Julius Caesar."
This was followed, a few years later, by a version of "Romeo and Juliet."
In 1762-66 Wieland translated, in whole or in part, twenty-two
Shakspere's plays. His translation was in prose and has been long
superseded by the Tieck-Schlegel translation (1797-1801-1810). Goethe
first made acquaintance with Shakspere, when a student at Leipsic,
through the detached passages given in "Dodd's Beauties of Shakspere."[5]
He afterward got hold of Wieland's translation, and when he went to
Strassburg he fell under the influence of Herder, who inspired him with
his own enthusiasm for "Ossian," and the _Volkslieder_, and led him to
study Shakspere in the original.

Young Germany fastened upon and appropriated the great English dramatist
with passionate conviction. He became an object of worship, an article
of faith. The Shakspere _cultus_ dominated the whole _Sturm- und
Drangperoide_. The stage domesticated him: the poets imitated him: the
critics exalted him into the type and representative (_Urbild_) of
Germanic art, as opposed to and distinguished from the art of the Latin
races, founded upon a false reproduction of the antique.[6] It was a
recognition of the essential kinships between the two separated branches
of the great Teutonic stock. The enthusiastic young patriots of the
Göttinger _Hain_,--who hated everything French and called each other by
the names of ancient bards,--accustomed themselves to the use of
Shaksperian phrases in conversation; and on one occasion celebrated the
dramatist's birthday so uproariously that they were pounced upon by the
police and spent the night in the lockup. In Goethe's circle at
Strassburg, which numbered, among others, Lenz, Klinger, and H. L.
Wagner, this Shakspere mania was _de rigueur_. Lenz, particularly, who
translated "Love's Labour's Lost," excelled in whimsical imitations of
"such conceits as clownage keeps in pay."[7] Upon his return to