Karl Friedrich Elze (May 22, 1821, Dessau - January 21, 1889, Halle) was a German scholar and Shakespearian critic.
Having studied (1839–1843) classical philology, and modern, but especially English, literature at the university of Leipzig, he was a master for a time in the Gymnasium (classical school) at Dessau, and in 1875 was appointed extraordinary, and in 1876 ordinary, professor of English philology at the university of Halle.
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 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 vols, Halle, 1880–1886, new ed. 1889).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.