(Fifth Act)
A wood. Goetz and George lying in wait for a wild animal. It is painfully evident out here that Goetz cannot cross his boundaries. We realize the mischief of the peasant war. The monster advances; Max Stumpf, whom they have dragged along with them as a guide and leader, decides to leave them and the position. Goetz, half persuaded, half compelled, yields, announces himself as their captain for four weeks and breaks his ban. The peasants are divided in spirit, and the devil is loose.
Weislingen appears at the head of knights and soldiers against the rebels, in order especially to capture Goetz, and thus free himself from the hateful feeling of inferiority. Relations with his wife are very strained; Franz’s overwhelming passion becomes more and more evident. Goetz and George in the painful situation of being associated and implicated with rebels.
A secret judgment is issued against him. Goetz flees to the gipsies and is captured by the Imperial troops.
Adelaide’s palace. The adventuress parts with the happy youth, after she has prevailed upon him to bring poison to her husband. An apparition appears; a powerful scene follows.
From these dismal surroundings, we pass to a bright spring garden. Maria is sleeping in a bower of flowers. Lerse comes to her, and rouses her to beg Weislingen for her brother’s life.
Weislingen’s palace. The dying man, with Maria and Franz. Goetz’s sentence to death is revoked, and we leave the dying hero in the prison garden.
The principles of the earlier revisions were again applied in this case. The number of scene-changes was lessened, securing more opportunity for the development of the characters, the action was condensed, and, though with many sacrifices, the play finally approximated genuine dramatic form. Why it has not in this form spread more widely on the German stage will be eventually understood, I presume, since critics are not disinclined to give accounts of the reception on the stage of the plays of the various German authors, the treatment they receive and the length of time their pieces last.
If these remarks are favorably received, we shall probably discuss next the introduction of foreign plays, such as has already taken place at the Weimar Theatre. This includes Greek and French, English, Italian and Spanish plays, besides the comedies of Terence and Plautus, in which masks are made use of.
Most necessary would it be perhaps to discuss Shakespeare and combat the prejudice that the works of this extraordinary writer should be given in the German Theatre in their complete length and breadth. This false idea has meant the suppression of the older revisions of Schroeder, and prevented others from prospering.
It must be emphatically insisted, and with solid reason, that in this case as in so many others the reader must be distinguished from and part company with the spectator; each has his rights, and neither should be permitted to injure the other’s.