Early Verse Drama and Prose Plays

Goethe’s early plays bear witness to his urgent desire to enliven German theater–an ambition that followed him to the National Theater in Weimar, where he was named director in the early 1790s. This volume contains eight of these plays, written between 1771 and 1787. Not only do they demonstrate Goethe’s unprecedented versatility in experimenting with new forms of dramatic expression, but they also give insight into his development from “Sturm und Drang to classicism. These works include prose plays (“Goetz von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand and “Egmont), tragedies and comedies (“Clavigo, “Stella, and “Brother and Sister), and dramatic verse forms (“Prometheus, Jery and Betty, and “Proserpina).