Tieck, (Johann) Ludwig (1773–1854), German Romantic poet and dramatist, whose early plays, satirical fairy-tales—
Ritter Blaubart (
Bluebeard, 1796),
Der gestiefelte Kater (
Puss-in-Boots, 1797), and
Die verkehrte Welt (
The World Upside-down, 1798)—were followed by verse dramas,
Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva (1799) and
Kaiser Oktavianus (1804). In 1824 Tieck became Director of the Court Theatre in
Dresden, where he insisted on clear diction and simplified staging, though a performance of
A Midsummer Night's Dream on a specially constructed Elizabethan stage, as Tieck imagined it to have been remained an isolated experiment. He became an influential critic, and his description of work at Dresden, collected as
Dramaturgische Blätter (1826), reveals him as a man of insight and good taste. His interest in the Elizabethan theatre led him to translate several plays by Ben
Jonson, and with his daughter he completed
Schlegel's translations of Shakespeare, whose reputation in Germany he did much to further.
