The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing / Miss Sara Sampson, Philotas, Emilia Galotti, Nathan the Wise

by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

A DRAMATIC POEM IN FIVE ACTS.

(Translated by R. Dillon Boylan.)

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The well-known Goetze Controversy is to be thanked for the appearance of this, the longest, and in many respects the most important of Lessing's dramatic works. It was written in 1778-9, in reply to some of the theological censures of the Hamburg pastor. In 1783, it was first acted at Berlin, but it met with little success there or elsewhere, until in 1801, when it was introduced on the Weimar stage, by Schiller and Goethe.