Texts Waiting for History

Heiner Müller{u2019}s re-imaginings of William Shakespeare have puzzled and fascinated readers and spectators alike for the past forty-five years. For the first time, this study addresses all of Müller{u2019}s re-workings of Shakespeare, including dramatic adaptations, translations, poems, references in interviews and in his autobiography, as well as fragments of unfinished projects, not forgetting the strong Shakespearean echoes in Müller{u2019}s last play, Germania 3. An analysis of Müller{u2019}s diverse positions regarding different understandings of history and of its catastrophic violence suggests that Shakespeare is at the literary and theoretical core of Müller{u2019}s always complex and conflicted relation with philosophy of history and with the notions of heritage, fragmentation and difference.