German Shakespeare???

I'm interested in something my German friend said to me. He said that he studied Shakespeare at college in Germany. I'm confused. I cannot understand how Shakespeare can be translated into German because it would lose the essence of Shakespeare's writing style.

With Shakespeare it is not just WHAT he wrote but HOW he wrote it. For example, he used a type of paragraph structure in English called "Iambic Pentameter". It is a poety style which refes to the rhythm that the words establish in each line. Surely a direct translation would lose the poetic nature of Shakespeare.

I imagine that you could study the stories told in Shakespeare's plays but surely you can only truly study Shakespeare in English. Am I wrong about this? Has anyone here studied a translated Shakespeare?

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Ein Schlumpf ist schon blau! Wenn Mann ein Schlumpf erworgt, dann wurde er vieleicht dunkel violette werden. Nicht wahr?

[color=#0040FF:rfbdc2yx]I have Faust in book form with English on one page and German on the adjacent page. It's pretty cool and easy to refer back and forth. Does anyone know of such a format for Shakespeare's works? Maybe on on-line rather than book form? [/color:rfbdc2yx]