Karl Friedrich Elze (22 May 1821, Dessau21 January 1889, Halle) was a German scholar and Shakespearean critic.
Life
He was the son of Pastor Karl August Wilhelm Elze. The course catalogue for the winter 1875/76 has a four-hour lecture on the history of English literature one hour each day on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays and Saturdays he publicly lectured on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Elze began his literary career with the Englischer Liederschatz (1851), an anthology of English lyrics, edited for a while a critical periodical Atlantis, and in 1857 published an edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet with critical notes. He also edited George Chapman's Alphonsus (1867) and wrote biographies of Walter Scott, Byron and Shakespeare; Abhandlungen zu Shakespeare (English translation by D Schmitz, as Essays on Shakespeare, London, 1874), and the treatise, Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists with conjectural emendations of the text (3 volumes, Halle, 1880–1886, new ed. 1889).