" On one point Goethe himself
and all his critics are agreed: the play as a whole is only a
succession of scenes, loosely strung together, with no inner
development leading up to a determinate end. In his later life Goethe
characterised Shakespeare's plays as "highly interesting tales, only
told by more persons than one." Whatever truth there may be in this
judgment in the case of Shakespeare, it exactly describes _Goetz_. It
is as a tale, a narrative, and not as a drama, that it is to be read
if it is to be enjoyed without the sense of artistic failure. The
anachronisms with which the piece abounds, and which Hegel caustically
noted, have been a further stumbling-block to the critics.[106] In
the second scene of the first Act, Luther is introduced for no other
purpose than to expound ideas which come strangely from his mouth,
but which were effervescing in the minds of Goethe and his
contemporaries--the ideas which they had learned from Rousseau
regarding the excellence of the natural man. Similarly, in the scene
following, educational problems are discussed which sound oddly in the
castle of a mediaeval baron, but which were awakening interest in
Goethe's own day.
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