William Shakespeare: Venus und Adonis – Die Schändung der Lucretia – Nicht-dramatische Dichtungen [zweisprachig] (Shakespeare Gesamtausgabe, 39). Übersetzt von Frank Günther und mit einem Nachwort von Christa Jansohn und Dieter Mehl (†). Cadolzburg: ars vivendi, 2019.

• Werner Brönnimann

Frank Günther may even in these very weeks – as one likes to imagine in this spring of 2020 – be adding some final touches to his version of the Sonnets, thus approaching the completion of his German translation of all of Shakespeare’s works. With almost forty handsomely produced volumes in print, Günther’s achievement is indeed astounding, and his most recent, thirty-ninth addition, which publishes Shakespeare’s often neglected epic poems, affords extraordinary pleasure to its readers and encourages them to slow down, to read with care and to appreciate all the linguistic finesse on display. As with all the volumes in the series, readers will also receive state-of-the-art scholarly information in Günther’s by now well-known reports from the translator’s workshop, by his notes and an analytical essay by Christa Jansohn and the late Dieter Mehl.