ELZE, KARL (1821-1889), German scholar and Shake spearian critic, was born at Dessau on May 22, 1821. He studied at Leipzig and in 1875 was appointed extraordinary, and in 1876 ordinary professor of English philology at the university of Halle, where he died on Jan. 21, 1889. Elze's most important works are : his biographies of Walter Scott, Byron and Shake speare; Abhandlungen zu Shakespeare (Eng. trans. by D. Schmitz, Essays on Shakespeare, 1874), and the excellent treatise, Notes on Elizabethan Dramatists with conjectural emendations of the text (3 vols., Halle, 188o-86, new ed. 2889).