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Updated: June 27, 2025
That Lessing, with all his independence of mind, was still in his dramatical principles influenced in some measure by the general inclination and tastes of his age, I infer from this, that the imitators of Nathan were very few as compared with those of Emilia Galotti. Among the striking imitations of the latter style, I will merely mention the Julius van Tarent.
Lessing himself repeated the group in 'Emilia Galotti', which in its turn became the mother of a new brood. The tragedy of lawless passion led by an easy step to the tragedy of social conflict, which portrayed the depravity of princes and nobles in their relation to the common people, or called upon mankind to weep for the woes of lovers separated by the barriers of rank.
All tragedies surely are social, except the "Prometheus." Buergerliche Tragoedie means a tragedy in which the protagonist is taken from common life, and perhaps cannot be translated clearly into English except by "tragedy of middle-class life." So on page 170 we find Emilia Galotti called a "Virginia bourgeoise," and on page 172 a hospital becomes a lazaretto.
Finally the rolling of carriages toward the imperial theatre was heard, and presently the shouts of the applauding audience. The empress heard nothing. She had never attended the theatre since her husband's death, and it was nothing to her that to-night Lessing's beautiful drama, "Emilia Galotti," was being represented for the first time in Vienna.
They partake of the infinite complexity and variety of nature, and no more than nature itself can they be narrowed down to the limits of a precise formula. Lessing was wont to disclaim the title of poet; but, as Goethe said, his immortal works refute him. He had not only poetical, but dramatic genius; and his "Emilia Galotti" has kept the stage until to-day.
So far from being "crushed in spirit" at Wolfenbuettel, the years he spent there were among the most productive of his life. "Emilia Galotti," begun in 1758, was finished there and published in 1771. The controversy with Goetze, by far the most important he was engaged in, and the one in which he put forth his maturest powers, was carried on thence.
This is proved by countless plays which promise very well for the first act or two, and then become muddled, stick or falter notoriously so in the fourth act and finally conclude in a way that is either forced or unsatisfactory or else long foreseen by every one. Sometimes, too, the end is positively revolting, as in Lessing's Emilia Galotti, which sends the spectators home in a temper.
One woman is placed between two men, unexpected friendships are developed, the lute and the zither are played in the moonlight, love and longing abound, nature is made a confidant, der Zaubern der Kunst is overdone, familiar stories Leda and the Swan, Actaeon and Danae are interwoven, there are manifest reminiscences of Emilia Galotti and Ofterdingen, and the prose is uncommonly fluent.
In 'Emilia Galotti', with its drastic comment upon the infamies of princely lust, he saw the subject of court life in a light very different from that in which it habitually appeared to the carefully guarded pupils of the Stuttgart academy. He became acquainted with Ossian, and the shadowy forms of the Celtic bard, big with their indefinable woe, increased the turmoil of his soul.
He took with him 4500 men, and had between 14,000 and 15,000 more in readiness to follow. The royalist army in Calabria numbered about 27,000, including the garrison of Reggio, 2000 men, under the command of General Galotti.
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