Trained under Ekhof at Gotha, the German actor August Wilhelm Iffland began his professional career in 1779 at the Mannheim Court Theatre. He moved to Berlin to become director of the National Theatre in 1796, remaining there till his death in 1814. In between, he paid a guest visit to the Weimar Court Theatre, at the invitation of its presiding genius, Goethe. A local schoolmaster, Karl August Böttiger, published an account of several of his roles. This was, for its times, an evocative and unusually detailed record of performance style, and here George Brandt complements his analysis with extensive quotation. George Brandt, currently a Senior Research Fellow of the University of Bristol, joined the Drama Department there in 1951, served as its Head of Department over a number of years, and shaped much of its policy, creating among other things the first practical postgraduate film course at a British university. He edited British Television Drama (1981) and British Television Drama in the 1980s (1993) for Cambridge University Press. His German and Dutch Theatre, 1600–1848 (1993), with Wiebe Hogendoorn, was part of the CUP series ‘Theatre in Europe’, and Modern Theories of Drama was published by Oxford University Press in 1998.