relieve his own bosom of its perilous stuff; to enable him "to forget
the sun, moon, and dear stars," and, again, that its primary object
was to do justice to the memory of a great man. Writing in old age, he
assigns still another motive as mainly prompting him to the production
of the play: it was written, he says, with the express object of
improving the German stage, of rescuing it from the pitiful condition
into which it had fallen during the first half of the eighteenth
century. What is entirely obvious, however, is that Shakespeare is the
beginning and end of the inspiration of the _Geschichte Gottfriedens
von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand_, as the play in its original
form was entitled. In its conception and in its details Shakespeare is
everywhere suggested, though it may be noted that the comic element
with which Shakespeare flavours his tragedies is absent from _Goetz_.
But for Shakespeare the play could not have taken the shape in which
we have it. Given the model, however, Goethe had to infuse it with
motives which would have a living interest for his own time. One of
these motives was the admiration of great men which Goethe shared with
the generation to which he belonged. During this Frankfort period he
was successively attracted by such contrasted types of heroes as
Julius Caesar, Socrates, and Mahomet as appropriate central figures for
dramatic representation. "It is a pleasure to behold a great man," one
of the characters in _Goetz_ is made to say; and, if Goethe had any
determinate aim when he took his theme in hand, it was to present the
spectacle of a hero for admiration and inspiration. As it was, deeper
instincts of his nature asserted themselves as he proceeded with his
work, and Goetz is overshadowed by other characters in the drama in
whom the poet himself, by his own admission, came to find a more
congenial interest.

The play exists in three forms--the first draft being recast for
publication in 1773, which second version was adapted for the Weimar
theatre in collaboration with Schiller in 1804. It is generally
admitted that in its first form we have the fullest manifestation of
its author's genius, and equally the fullest expression of the
original inspiration that led to its production. Like Shakespeare he
had a book for his text--the Memoirs of Gottfried, written by himself;
and like Shakespeare he took large liberties with his original--no
fewer than six characters in the play, two o