Elze

Elze, FRIEDRICH KARL, Shakespearian scholar, was born at Dessau, May 22, 1821, studied at Leipzig and Berlin, devoting especial attention to English literature, and afterwards continued his studies in England and Scotland. In 1875 he was appointed to the newly-established chair of English Language and Literature at Halle, and here he died January 21, 1889. His early publications include a collection of English songs, and Atlantis (1853-54), a journal dealing with England and America. In editions of Hamlet, Chapman's Alphonsus, and Rowley's When you see me, you know me—the last two edited for the first time—he endeavoured to apply the strict method of classical philology to a modern language. An English translation of his biography of Byron appeared in 1872, and of his Essays on Shakespeare in 1874; these last are selected from the Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, which he edited for the German Shakespeare Society from 1868 to 1879. Other works are his William Shakespeare (Halle, 1876; Eng. trans. 1888) and his Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists (Halle, 2 vols. 1880-84). Elze was a laborious student and sagacious critic rather than a mere antiquary or collector, and, moreover, was sane beyond the measure of great Shakespearians.