By the publication of a play, _Alceste_, in which he
foolishly challenged comparison with Euripides' drama of the same
name, Wieland gave the enemy his opportunity. On a Sunday afternoon,
with a bottle of Burgundy beside him, as he tells us, Goethe tossed
off his skit at one sitting. As a piece of improvisation, it certainly
contains excellent fooling. We are introduced to the lower world,
where the four characters in Euripides' play, Admetus, Alcestis,
Hercules, and Mercury, as well as its author, are represented as in a
state of high indignation at the liberties which Wieland has taken
with them in his _Alcestes_. Summoned before them, Wieland appears in
his nightcap, and has to run the gauntlet of their several
reproaches--the purport of them all being that he has foolishly
misunderstood the Greek world which he had undertaken to portray.
Against Goethe's wish the satire was published in the following year,
and rapidly ran through four editions, but Wieland had a genteel
revenge. With that _Lebensweisheit_ which Goethe long afterwards
marked as his characteristic, he published in his review a notice of
the burlesque, in which it is recommended as "a masterpiece of
persiflage and of sophistical wit.
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