Heiner Müller After Shakespeare

Heiner Müller After Shakespeare makes available for the first time Macbeth and Anatomy Titus Fall of Rome, the last of the Shakespeare-inspired plays of the renowned German author to be translated into English. His reflections on the importance of his chosen dramatic model are highlighted in the text of his address Shakespeare A Difference, also included in the volume. Müller (1929-1995), whose Hamletmachine is a contemporary classic, is regarded as one of the most profound visionaries of twentieth-century drama and at the time of his death was one of Europe’s leading intellectual figures. His Shakespeare plays are startling in their imagery and poetry and uncompromising depiction of the violence of power and politics. Truly, they are plays for our age.

“A new volume of Heiner Müller’s coruscating, deeply damaged performance prose/ poetry arrives just in time for further chapters of the continued degradation and decline of the West. His theatre pieces take on galling new dimensions as democracies all over the world are in crisis and citizens of Arab countries pour into the streets to demand self-determination.… Heiner Müller was a connoisseur of tyranny. The violence and the decay are already in the language, and thus his rendezvous with Shakespeare.… After the fire, there is space for new growth in an old forest." - Peter Sellars, director