¹ At the end of this study is an “appendix” to which the reader may turn for an extension of views given in the preceding paragraphs (together with full bibliographical information for the writers cited; the reference to Korff is Geist der Goethezeit, Leipzig, 1923, p. 229). Further references to this appendix appear where they seem of particular relevance.

² “Ich möchte die Leute gerne schonen, sie sind tapfer und edel” (Götz, pp. 122-123; citations from the play—the version of 1773—are from Kayser's edition). Weislingen reports the Emperor's words: “Laßt ihnen Ruh! Ich kann dem alten Götz wohl das Plätzchen gönnen, und wenn er da still ist, was habt ihr über ihn zu klagen? ... Oh !.. . hätt ich von jeher Rate gehabt, die meinen unruhigen Geist mehr auf das Glück einzelner Menschen gewiesen hätten!” (p. 152).

³ Sievers mentions them, as foes of the peasants, in the first scene of Act i. Götz says (Act I, “Herberge im Wald,” p. 76) that if he has wine and courage he will laugh at their “Herrschsucht und Ränke.” Other references of a more or less hostile nature—familiar enough, and cited here only by page and line—appear on 87,28; 91,14; 101,5; and, by implication, 141,23-26. There is obviously implied hostility in Bruder Martin's reference (p. 81) to Götz as the man whom princes hate.

I should regard as neutral such passages as those on p. 78 (“Fürsten werden ihre Schätze bieten um einen Mann, den sie jetzt hassen”) and p. 126 (“ein Häufchen . . . dergleichen wenig Fürsten beisammen gesehen haben”). It is Weislingen who reads Götz's remark about being the sycophant “eines eigesinnigen neidischen Pfaffen” as a general attack on princes (pp. 90-91). And Götz enters the Peasant War in part to stay the violence of which princes as well as lesser nobles are among the victims.

At the other end of the scale are the not inconsiderable references (typically individual and anecdotal) to the nobler breed of princes, which cannot be dead (pp. 141-142), to Götz's friend the Count Palatine (pp. 86-87) and to the Landgraf of Hanau (“mir ein gar lieber Herr”; p. 87 and again p. 142), to the Bishop of Würzburg (“ein gelehrter Herr . . . leutselig”; p. 89). It can scarcely be denied that these words of praise subtract significantly from any seemingly generic indictments Götz levels against the princes (some in the same scenes).

An ancillary point: the political situation is still fluid enough to permit an extreme upward mobility, at least in prospect, on the part of his class. Sickingen wants to be an elector (p. 125), his hopes seem warranted (p. 151), even Weislingen admits his alarming success (p. 152).

⁴ It is a fascinating coincidence that Goethe sent Herder, with the manuscript of Göte, the news that he was planning to treat in dramatic form the life and death of Socrates. It may well be only a coincidence—Grete Schaeder could well be right in saying that the common element he saw was the battle “wider Philistertum und Nichtswürdigkeit der großen Masse, die schließlich den Sieg davonträgt” (Gott und Welt, Hameln, 1947, p. 47). It is also, of course, conceivable that even with this “plan” he would not have ignored the basic issue and decision of the Crito.

⁵ The issue of Goethe's intent can scarcely be avoided, but it does not demand exclusive validity. The statement about “rescuing the memory” of a noble character, the motto he chose, his aim, cited by Kayser (p. 487) to portray “das damalige Hof- und Ritterleben” all lend credence to an externally oriented view of the protagonist. Still—and in spite of the current reexamination of the “intentional fallacy”— we can perhaps agree with J. B. Priestley in disposing of “the monstrous notion, which is death to all but the most superficial criticism, that we must not discover in a work of art anything outside the limits of the artist's conscious intention” (Literature and Western Man, p. 46). Kayser himself envisions certain facets intruding themselves “gegen die Absicht des Dichters” (Kayser, p. 489). We all know that complete dependence on the writer's own summary judgments leads in any literature to an impossible shackling of critical effort. What can we do, for example, with Goethe's reference to Faust as one of his greatest “Späße” or Storm's statement that Aquis submersus is a demonstration of the consequences of class difference? The familiar remarks in Book 13 of Dichtung und Wahrheit concerning the composition of Götz certainly give us adequate warrant for operating under Kayser's postulate.

Of greater importance is Kayser's analysis (p. 487) in terms of Goethe's insight, in the Shakespearerede, about the collision of the individual's presumed free will with the ineluctable course of events. In this substantial aspect, Götz certainly may be interpreted as in part a document of its time. The more weight one ascribes to the inner conflict, however, the less this is true, for Kayser's analysis fits better with an integral and undivided “will” than it does with one which in any degree recognizes within itself the legitimate claims of the opposing “course of events.”